Ice Cream Sunday

I had great plans on Sunday to make an onion soup, but when I arrived Dennis suggested that we make chocolate ice cream instead.  How could I say no to that?!  Chocolate ice cream!  

(Oh hey, it's me in eighteenth-century garb!)

Many of you will say, "Ice cream?  In the eighteenth century?  I don't believe you."  Well, believe it!  The Governor's Palace has an icehouse-- a twenty-foot deep hole made for keeping ice.  The Governor (and other wealthy Virginians with icehouses) would have had ice shipped down from the northern colonies in the dead of winter and would have packed it into their icehouses.  Ice was cut from lakes and packed with salt and sawdust for shipping, so it wasn't the kind of thing that you would mix in with your drinks.  Nor was this a refrigerator-- foods were much fresher then and bought and consumed daily, so there was no need for refrigeration of vegetables, fruits, or meats.



Ice was shipped almost specifically for ice creams, and occasionally for putting around (not into) drinks for a cool treat during the hot summer months.  "During the summer months?" you might ask.  "Wouldn't the ice have melted?"  No.  Reports suggest that ice could remain, well, ice, until September or October in the ice house, even if it had been brought in the previous December or January.  A test of the Governor's Palace icehouse a decade ago or so confirmed these reports.

Their iced creams, however, differ slightly from our ice cream.  Theirs was more like frozen custard.  To make eighteenth-century ice cream, you must start out by making a custard.  You can flavor it however you want-- fruit ice creams were especially popular with denizens of the eighteenth-century.  Since we made chocolate ice cream, we started by grating some pure chocolate that we had made in our chocolate program.  We then got together about a dozen egg yolks and five pints of cream in a pot over the fire, taking care not to let it boil.  As it heated, we added in the grated chocolate, along with sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a dash of cayenne pepper for a bit of a kick.  Once the mixture had thickened, we took it off the fire and set it to cool for several hours.  We had to cool it, because to make eighteenth-century ice cream you put the custard into a metal canister, set the canister in a bucket, and pack ice around it.  If we had put the custard into the canister hot it would have simply melted the ice.  Useless.

As it was, we put the cooled custard into the canister, canister into bucket, ice packed around it, and spun.  Yes, we spun the canister in the ice, by hand, for two hours.  You notice the handle on the lid?  It's for spinning.  You can also just use your hands and turn the whole canister (as I am doing in the first picture, above).  You spin.  And spin.  And spin some more.  As the ice melts you drain it from the bucket, and add in more ice and rock salt-- the rock salt makes the ice colder.  We spun for two hours before it was time to clean up the kitchen for closing, and it probably could have used another hour of spinning to harden completely.  But ta-da!  We made ice cream!  Since it melts we can't display it, so I just had to take some home with me.



And it was delicious. :)

Eleanor the Armoury Cat

Yesterday I worked at the Anderson Armoury kitchen, instead of at the Governor's Palace.  The Armoury kitchen is part of the Armoury complex, operated by James Anderson during the American Revolution.  When Anderson got the government contract to be the Public Armourer he expanded his blacksmithing operations and hired about forty workers for his forges.  He also hired a man named William Parker to cook for them all.  Each man would get a ladle of stew and a pound of bread each day, so long as food supplies held out.  Soon I'll post about making stew in a pot and bread in our military grade outdoor brick bread oven, but today let's talk about the best part of working at the Anderson kitchen: Eleanor the Cat.

Eleanor is the Armoury cat.  She was found in a woodpile as a kitten, and years ago one of the employees took pity on her, got her up to date on her shots, gave her a name and a collar, and started a savings account for her food and vet visits.  So, when I arrive in the mornings at Anderson I'm greeted by a little ball of tortoiseshell love.  Yes, she's only loving me because her food bowl is kept in the kitchen and she wants me to open the door and feed her, but it's still love.  She rubs against my legs, sits on my lap, purrs.  She's an independent little thing, though, who comes and goes at her will during the day.  She can be moody, too.  But I think she can sense that I love her.

She might be playing me, actually.  Ah, cats.  So cute and manipulative.



One time it was raining, so we were making "muffins" (recipe in Hannah Glasse) on a dry pan in the kitchen, since we couldn't use our outdoor bread oven.  I was sitting in a chair waiting for a muffin to brown on one side, when Eleanor hopped up on my lap and slept there for about half an hour, purring.  Seriously, isn't this the best job ever? 

Pineapple Fritters

Today at work I made a very tasty dish: Pineapple Fritters!  Pineapples would have been consumed by Americans in the eighteenth-century, but they were a very, very expensive fruit.  Only the richest could afford to purchase and eat them.  If you visit Williamsburg you will see images of pineapples everywhere, for the fruit came to symbolize hospitality to Virginians in the eighteenth-century.

I used a recipe from "The French Family Cook" for strawberry fritters, but I prepared it with pineapple since we had one available in the kitchen (and it desperately needed to be used before it went bad).  The recipe reads, "Make a paste with some flour, a spoonfull of brandy, half a glass of white wine, the whites of two eggs beat and green lemon shred fine. Mix it well, neither too thick nor too thin. It should rope in falling from a spoon. Dip some large strawberrys in to it, fry them and glaze them with a salamander."

So, I got out some white wine (you will need quite a bit more than half a glass of wine), brandy, flour, and eggs-- remember to use only the whites.  Since we had no "green lemons," or limes, on hand, I grabbed a lemon, too.  I mixed all the ingredients, except the lemon, together as the recipe says until I got something like the consistency of pancake batter, maybe a little thicker.  If you've made onion rings at home, that's a good consistency to have in mind while mixing this up.  Finally, I cut the lemon in half, squeezed in just a little juice for flavor, and grated in a bit of lemon zest. Then I took my whole pineapple, peeled it, cored it, and cut it into rings.  I placed a frying pan full of lard over the fire, waited for it to heat, then dipped my rings into the batter and put them into the lard.  Once they had cooked to a nice golden brown on each side I took them out.

The next step was challenging for me, but will be easy for you.  Spinkle sugar over each fritter, the finer the better. I suggest castor sugar.  Once you have on the sugar, put it under the broiler until it carmelizes, and then you're done!  This was challenging for me because electric broilers didn't exist in the eighteenth-century.  I had to use a device called a salamander.  A salamander looks like this:

You put the round part in hot coals until it's red hot and shimmering with flame, then use the rod to hold it steady over the items you want broiled.  It's not exactly light-weight either, and I had to return it to the fire multiple times to keep it hot enough to achieve the look I wanted for these fritters.  Some have little legs to set them down, as in the illustration, but mine did not.

Once done, serve immediately.  And enjoy!


(Salamander illustration found here)

The Most Expensive Dish in Virginia

On Saturday at the Governor's Palace I prepared the most expensive dish available in eighteenth-century Virginia.  To prepare it I used three different cooking methods!  What could it possibly be?

Macaroni.  With cheese.  Yes, my friends, our ubiquitous mac 'n' cheese cost a pretty penny back in the day for those of us in the southern colonies.  We can only verify that this dish was prepared at the Governor's Palace.  Dunmore imported 25 pounds of macaroni noodles from Italy and cheese from Italy and England.  Because the macaroni noodle-making machinery lived in Italy and had not yet made it to Virginia-- or even England-- and the Virginia climate is not suited to producing hard cheeses, the Royal Governor imported every ingredient in this dish.  By the nineteenth century it's gotten a bit cheaper, but as of c.1774, having macaroni with cheese on the table meant you were very wealthy indeed.

To prepare this dish eighteenth-century style, I first boiled the hard noodles in water and a little milk, then drained them off and layered them in a rounded dish-- you could use a deep pie pan.  I put slices of Parmesan and hard English cheddar over top with a little salt, then added another layer of noodles and repeated the process until the bowl had been filled to the top, with pasta as the top layer.  Then, bake it in a "quick" oven, so, perhaps around 350 or so for 20 minutes, until the cheese has melted and the noodles have browned a bit on top.  Then take out your dish, let it cool a few minutes (but not too long) and flip it upside down on a plate so that you get a molded effect-- mine was domed.  Then grate some cheese on top, broil for minute or two, until the cheese bubbles (but not til it's brown and burned), and ta-da!  You have eighteenth-century macaroni.  Enjoy!