A Selection
of Recipes of the Type Eaten in Irish Country Houses
Strawberry Toast (early
Victorian era)
Cut slices of
bread (rolls are best) not too thin. Melt some fresh butter in a saucepan and
dip these slices into it, then shake them so as to have as little butter as
possible left in them. Take some bruised wood strawberries mixed with sugar and
spread the slices rather thickly with them. Sugar the whole slightly with white
sugar. Put them into a frying pan on the fire until the toast is quite crisp. Let
this be done as quickly as possible so as not to spoil the freshness of the
fruit – this is very important.
Recipe to Give Apples the
Flavour of Pineapples
Put the apples in
a deal box with dried elder flowers.
Chicken à la Tartare
This dish was extremely
popular on Irish Country House menus, appearing often on Abbeyleix
menu book of 1800-1805 and also in a handwritten recipe book belonging to Viscountess de Vesci (dated
1839). The version given here is from 1935 but the basic method is the same.
The Abbeyleix recipe recommends that the leg bones
should be broken and the chicken flattened with the back of a knife. Instead of
cooking with vegetables, the chicken was seasoned with salt and pepper,
bread-crumbed, broiled on a stew pan, and ‘sent up’ with Brown Italian
sauce.
Ingredients:
1 broiling chicken
1/4 lb melted butter
4 sprigs parsley
1 small onion
1/4 lb mushrooms
1 clove garlic
salt & pepper
bread crumbs
Method:
Clean the chicken
and split it in half, removing the backbone and breastbone. Place it in a
frying pan in which the butter has been melted. Chop the parsley, onion,
mushrooms and garlic and add them to the butter with salt and pepper. Cover the
frying pan and allow the broiler to simmer for 15 minutes, turning it
occasionally so that the flavour is absorbed. The chicken is then dipped in
bread crumbs and broiled until well browned. The chicken meat is delicately
flavoured with the mushrooms, onions, garlic, and parsley combination. The
pre-cooking in the butter sauce also assures the tenderness of the meat.
Anchovies
with Parmesan Cheese (Victorian Era)
‘Anchovy cheese’
was a popular Victorian dish served as an appetiser or as a side dish for a
second course. First some long pieces of bread were fried in oil or butter,
then half an anchovy fillet was then placed on top of each piece and sprinkled
with finely grated parmesan cheese. The anchovies were then browned in an oven.
They were piled up on a platter and squeezed with lemon or orange juice before
being sent to the table.
Victorian
Ingredients:
5
eggs
2
cups of sugar
1½
cup of butter
2½
cups of flour
2
teaspoonfuls of baking powder
grated rind and juice of 1 orange
Method:
Beat the whites of
three and the yolks of five eggs separately. Stir to a cream two cups of sugar
and one-half cup of butter, then add beaten eggs,
one-half cup of cold water, two and a half cups of flour, two teaspoonfuls of
baking powder, the grated rind of one orange and all the juice, except one
tablespoonful. Bake in two large square biscuit pans.
Filling for orange cake:
Whites of two eggs
saved from the cake, one tablespoonful of orange juice, two small cups of
pulverized sugar.
For
further Victorian cake recipes click here
Soyer’s
Poor Man’s Soup (1847)
The following recipe for soup for the
starving poor was created by the famous chef, Alexis Soyer,
and was widely copied for Irish soup kitchens during the Great Famine. Soyer’s recommendation that the peelings and ends of
vegetables be used was based on his opinion that these held the most flavour. Spices
were omitted as Soyer argued that they flatter the
appetite making the stomach crave more food.
Ingredients:
2
oz dripping
4
oz of leg of beef cut into 1in dice
4
oz onions, thinly sliced
4
oz turnips, cut into small dice (‘the peel will do’)
2
oz leeks, thinly sliced (‘the green tops will do’)
3
oz celery leaves
12
oz wholemeal flour
8
oz pearl barley
3
oz salt
¼
oz brown sugar
2
gal (9l of water)
Method:
Heat the dripping in
a large saucepan (capable of holding 2 gallons of water) over a coal fire, then
add the cubes of beef and thinly sliced onions, stirring with a wooden spoon
until fried light brown. Add the peelings of two turnips, fifteen green leaves
or tops of celery, and the green part of two leeks (all of which will have been
cut into small pieces). Stir this over the fire for ten minutes then add one
quart of cold water and the flour and pearl barley. When this is well mixed,
add seven quarts of hot water, seasoned with salt and brown sugar. Stir
occasionally until boiling and then simmer gently for three hours.
A Tasty Breakfast Dish, 1911 (
Place a number of
soft herring-roes in a good oven to bake for five minutes and prepare some
rounds of toast. Remove the roes and mash them up with butter, pepper and salt.
Spread the rounds of toast thickly and place a poached egg upon each.
To Pickle Hams and Tongues,
1911 (
Take any quantity
of water you choose and make it into a strong brine
with common salt and bay salt. Then to every half gallon of this pickle add a
half pound of salt petre, a half pound of brown sugar
and a half pound of treacle. Put it into a stew-pan and when it comes to the
boil skim it and allow it to get quite cold, then put in your hams or tongues.
Turn the hams twice a day for a month, the tongues for three weeks, then hang
up to dry.
Food News, August 1911 (
“Sandwiches made
of finely-chopped violets spread over thin slices of buttered bread are being
sold in many
Kummel (Drink Recipe from
1910-20)
1 pint of dry gin
¼ of crushed sugar
candy
½ of caraway seed
Add the crushed
sugar and caraway seeds to the gin, cork the bottle tightly and store it for
three months. After that time, strain the liquid, rebottle it, cork it securely
and lay it down for two years before drinking.
Orange Gin
6
3 lemons
1 gallon gin
Cane sugar
Make as with
kummel.