The Queen’s Beef.

Today, January 17th …

Queen Victoria was at her favourite home of Osborne, on the Isle of Wight on this day in 1899. She was a few months shy of her 80th birthday, and this is what was on the menu for luncheon:

Potage aux huitres.
Oeufs brouilles aux truffes.
Côtelletes de Veau à l’Allemande.
Poulets decoupés à l’Anglaise.
Boeuf braise au Macaroni.
Faisans à la Casserole.
Chicorée à la crème.
Poulets rôtis.

Buffet.
Cold Rt Fowls. Cold Rt. Beef.
Cold Tongue Spiced Beef.
Galantine Game Pie.
Salade Normande.

Soufflés à la Circassienne.
Crème de Pêches à la Montreuil.
Petits Gâteaux Condés

Some of Her Majesty’s subjects who had the misfortune to be residents of a workhouse on this exact Tuesday in 1899 had, for their midday (main) meal:

Vegetable broth
Bread 4 oz
Cheese 2 oz
Dumplings 8 oz

Did the Good Queen agonise over this difference while she picked and nibbled her way around her lunch (did she have all her own teeth by then)?. It seems unlikely, but perhaps I am being uncharitable.

History has not usually seen fit to record the names of the individuals who functioned as cooks in the workhouses, and I don’t know who was the Good Queen’s chef in 1899 – perhaps some other historian can enlighten me. Her best known chef however – although he was in the role for less than a year - was the Anglo-Italian, Charles Elmé Francatelli. He left her service in 1842, so was not responsible for today’s menu, but food fashions did not change quickly during the Victorian regime, and we can be fairly confident that the dishes in his book The Modern Cook, published in 1860 would still have been the standard in 1899.

Francatelli gives a selection of braised beef dishes, all variations on the following theme:

Braised Roll of Beef, a la Flamande.
Take a piece of sirloin of beef, well covered with fat, weighing about twenty pounds; bone it, leaving the fillet adhering to the upper part; daube or interlard the fillet in a slanting position, by inserting with a large daubing needle some pieces of ham or bacon about a quarter of an inch square and four inches long; then roll the beef up close, and fasten it round with a string so as to secure its shape. Break up the bones and place them with the trimmings at the bottom of a braizing pan; then place the roll of beef on the bones, and garnish with four carrots, four onions, with a clove stuck in each, four heads of celery, and a faggot of parsley with thyme and a bay leaf, and two blades of mace; moisten with half a bottle of sherry and two glasses of brandy; set the whole on the stove to simmer for about ten minutes, then add a sufficient quantity of good stock or consommé, nearly to cover the beef; place thereon a well-buttered paper, and, after having caused it to boil, set the braizing pan to continue gently boiling on a smothered stove for about five or six hours: the time for this must be regulated by the degree of tenderness of the meat. When the beef is done, drain, trim, and put it into a convenient-sized pan, containing a little of the liquor in which it has been braized; and with a portion of the remaining part, work some brown sauce for the remove; boil the rest down, and with this glaze the beef. Place it on a dish, garnish round with alternate groups of turned and glazed carrots and turnips, glazed onions, and Brussels-sprouts; pour the sauce above alluded to round the dish, glaze the beef, and send to table.

Tomorrow’s Story …

An Extraordinary Banquet.

A Previous Story for this Day …

Popeye and Spinach.

On this Topic …

We have previously looked at the menu for Queen Victoria’s Christmas Dinner in 1899.

Quotation for the Day …

And now, dear Lord, I cannot wait/ Because I have a luncheon date. John Betjeman

The art of tarts.

Today, January 6th …

Today is Twelfth Day, or Epiphany, or Three Kings Day, whichever you prefer. It is the end of the traditional Christmas season, celebrating the day when the three Wise Men paid their visit and gave their gifts to the infant Jesus, or the last party day before starting the real work of the year, whichever you prefer. It is the day to put the ham bone in the freezer ready for winter soup, take down the tree, and have some Twelfth Cake or King Cake.

Every country with a European heritage has its version of the Twelfth Cake. It may be a special sweet bread, or a fruit cake, or a flaky pastry confection, and the symbolic associations are at least as important as the gastronomic. One more slice than the number of guests should be cut, the extra slice being “for God”, and is to be given to the first poor person who comes to the house. For purely secular luck, a tradition which has its roots in ancient pagan fertility rites says that a small item – a bean, a coin, or a tiny doll – must be hidden inside the cake, and the finder is elected king or queen for the day. This was a dubious privilege, with the winner – depending on the particular local custom – being responsible for leading the fun (usually drinking), paying the bill, performing the rituals that rid the house of evil for the forthcoming year, or hosting the Candlemas celebrations on February 2nd.

The proud domestic pastry-makers of England had a variation of the homely jam tart which allowed them to show off their skills at church socials. It was the “Epiphany Tart”, and kudos was attached to the intricacy of the pastry lattice on top of the open tart, and the number of different coloured jams which it contained. A popular design was in the form of the Star of David, which in expert hands allowed for 13 different colours, and must have looked like an edible stained-glass window.

For your pastry, try this recipe, from Charles Francatelli, chef to Queen Victoria.

Tart Paste
Spread a pound of flour on the table with a hollow in the centre; add half a pound of butter, three ounces of sugar, one egg, half an ounce of salt, and a gill of water; mix and work the paste into a smooth compact body.

On Monday: Funny fish bits.

Tea-time memories.

Today, November 16 …

The first volume of Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past” was published on this day in 1913. In his novel, the sudden fragrance of a small French cake called a madeleine dipped in lime-blossom tea, evokes the flood of memories on which the story is based. Proust knew instinctively what scientists have now proven: that the sense of smell is an enormously powerful trigger of memory.

It is probably the best known piece of gastronomic literary prose in the world, and so beautiful that it is almost impossible to read it without wanting to rush out and find some madeleines and linden (lime-blossom) tea to try to capture the experience for oneself. Alas, the association between memory and its triggers are far too personal, but in case you want to try anyway, the recipes follow.

A madeleine is simply an ordinary small cake, its only differentiation from any other being that it is baked in a shell-shaped mould, making it not ordinary at all, for this small difference makes this small cake special and elegant and romantic. The most famous are from Commercy in France, and Larousse gives a recipe:

Madeleine de Commercy.

Work together in a bowl 625 gm of fine sugar, 625 gm sieved cake flour; 12 eggs; 1 ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda; the grated rind of a lemon; a pinch of salt.
When this mixture is very smooth, add to it 300 gm melted butter. Mix well.
Put this mixture in special buttered madeleine moulds. Bake in a very slow oven.

It probably does not seem necessary to give a recipe for tea, but Charles Elmé Francatelli (an Englishman in spite of his name), saw fit to include one in his “Cook’s Guide” (1867), and who am I to argue with the chef to Queen Victoria? Anyway, the medical advice at the end might come in handy if the memories you trigger in your experiment are scary ones.

Lime-Flower Tea.

To half an ounce of lime-flowers pour one pint of boiling water; allow the tea to stand for about ten minutes, pour it into a cup, sweeten with honey, and drink it perfectly hot.
This tea, from its antispasmodic quantities, is a safe remedy in cases of indigestion, and is also beneficial when administered for hysteria.

Tomorrow …The Clerical Gourmet.