Imagine you're a baker in the 18th century and you don't have wheat available to you. In different
parts of Great Britain and America substitute grains were what people used every single day.
So if we're in America more than likely we'll be using corn. In Great Britain depending on where
you're at if you're in the north you're probably using something like oats and oatmeal and in the
book that we're studying today barley is the corn or the grain of choice for the common people. So
especially poor folks and and middling farmers they're going to be using lots and lots of barley
that's their substitute. Different parts of this book it says most people ate barley bread that's
what they were eating every day. So today we'll be using barley meal. Barley's not something we
use today much sometimes we'll use it in a soup you know pour that pearled barley in there and
and it kind of gives us some texture in a soup or will we hear about barley malt being used in beer
but that's about it that's really all the barley we interact with. But it's a fun grain to work
with and an interesting one. So the description or almost recipe that we'll be working with today
comes out of William Ellis's Country Housewife's family companion and this is from 1750 and William
Ellis's really writing his book to small farmers in that sort of middle lower England area. And he
writes a lot for poor people and this one is kind of specifically geared toward that. It says "to
make barley meal shortcakes stir barley meal with water melted fat a little yeast and salt make this
mixture into pancake fashion and as large right then cut into pieces like little cakes fry them in
hog's lard or other fat and they eat extraordinary well in a poor man's family without any sauce".
So some of these descriptions can be incredibly difficult to understand and in fact I've already
interpreted this recipe one way for a behind the scenes video and even now in front of the
camera I'm changing my mind about how I want to do this episode. Right here right now I want to
change it because I don't think I figured it out right. It's almost like you have to read these
things out loud to yourself multiple times before they make any sense. So make this mixture into
pancake fashion and as large and then cut into pieces like little cakes. Now what does that mean
does it mean that you make them into pancakes and then cut the pancakes up and fry them in lard or
does it mean you make the dough up you know the amount of pancakes and then you break them up
into little pieces and toss them into you know a vat of frying lard almost like donuts I think
these are actually donuts that's what I think now they knew about the concept of donuts and donuts
show up in 18th century cookery but they tend to be a very German thing or northern European
thing not English and this I think is actually a country Farmer's donut so that's what we're going
to be making today. So even though I'm kind of interpreting this and changing it on the fly it's
not like we know exactly what the measurements are here um you know there's there are no measurements
whatsoever we just have our list of ingredients which is very very common. We've got barley meal
here sometimes you can find in the store barley flour what I've taken is uh just pearled barley
is usually the easiest thing to find you can find pearl barley and grind it up into a meal
I just did it with a blender you know in the 18th century well they were would have had their mill
close by and then they would have gotten their their barley ground up there. There we go this is
probably about 12 ounces of a barley meal and the recipe calls for uh melted fat now we could use
something like lard but butter's gonna be better I've got some butter over here that's melted.
We definitely want to add salt to this he he includes that in our recipe and that really
you know gives it pop without salt you would you would say what is this it's very very bland. Next
up on the list here is he calls for yeast now when we hear about yeast we think those little packets
that come in the store it's dry active yeast whatever. They got yeast from the Brewer so that's
where yeast comes from and it always comes in a liquid measure if they give us any measurements
because that yeast is what comes off the top of a brewing batch of beer or possibly the emptins the
the kind of the the stuff that sinks to the bottom of your batch of beer. Now we probably don't want
to use brewers yeast because it tends to have a lot of hops in it it has a bitter flavor unless
it's an ale yeast maybe so if you're Brewing ale you can use that at yeast or you can take
that package of yeast we can add water to it a little bit of flour and let it kind of sit
and percolate a little bit and then you'll get your nice our substitute for 18th century yeast.
The last thing that we need to think about here is the the water that goes in and I
wanted to add all these liquid ingredients first and then I would kind of know how
much water to add this is very very thick so we're definitely going to need some water.
So we definitely want these thicker than pancake batter because they have to hold
their shape a little bit and also once we get it into the kind of consistency we want which is
just like um just slightly firm dough right so it just needs to hold its shape we're going to
let this rest for a little bit that we want to let this yeast to do just a little bit of its
own thing we're not going to let it rise like bread or anything like that we don't not very
long maybe 15-20 minutes most of the activation most of the work the yeast is going to do is in
the heat of the oil so it'll do its own thing once it's there but we do want to let this rest.
Well here they are they look cute don't they they're not donuts right but maybe that's what
I would call them he you know the the recipe or the description calls them barley meal
shortcakes I would probably call them Poor English Farmer Donuts some something like
that uh they definitely turn out better than my first idea which is fry them up kind of
like pancakes and then cut them and put them in uh that didn't work out because they were just
too thin they didn't have any body to them they kind of looked like chips almost in that the way
they cooked up. This is so much better you know we dumped them in the into the hot lard it was
about 325 degrees or so they took a little while to cook because you know they're they're kind of
dense. So maybe 5-10 minutes but they have a really really good texture once they are done
um these have cooled off a bit so they're they're a little delicate when they're hot
so you have to be careful or they might break but now they're really nice I did sprinkle a
little bit of sugar and spice on there um so let's find out what they taste like. Texture is perfect.
When they come out you think maybe they didn't get cooked in the middle they're cooked in the middle.
Savory, just a little bit of hint of sweet on top but very filling and really interesting texture
in that this isn't flour flour this is a meal so you know there's still some texture to the
to this grain instead of it just being you know pulverized into you know a flour that just kind of
turns into a dough and I really like that maybe if you're looking for um you know a comparison
you might call it similar to a hush puppy you know if that's if you're familiar with those
it's always great fun to dig into the books not necessarily recipe books sometimes but
books like this that are much more descriptive or even you know a journal or something and
they talk about a food and you say how do I recreate that how can I get there with with
this description that I've given and this one was a little tricky it took me multiple tries and and
even after reading through the fourth time it's like wait a minute wait a minute this is this is
something completely different that's kind of the fun this is it's food detective work it's
a mystery sometimes to get to the product that is being described but that is what we try to
do here you know stepping into the footsteps or the shoes of people in history and trying
to taste and smell what they got to eat so this is a great fun experiment thank
you for joining me today as we Savor the Flavors in the Aromas of the 18th century.