Rice Pudding: Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #12

For background on the Historical Food Fortnightly, click here.

The Challenge: If They’d Had It… November 2 - November 15
Have you ever looked through a cookbook from another era and been surprised at the modern dishes you find? Have you ever been surprised at just how much they differ from their modern counterparts? Recreate a dish which is still around today, even if it may look a little - or a lot - different!

I've been hankering for rice pudding lately for no particular reason.  And Miss Betsy kept talking about Eliza Leslie in her challenges so I decided to try one of the recipes from Directions for Cookery and satisfy my desire to eat rice pudding and use up some of the white rice we had (we usually eat brown rice).  It turned out well, despite going through lots of gyrations to figure out what a pint of dry rice is and it was quite delicious, though not nearly as sweet as a modern version of rice pudding.  I figured out why when I checked out a modern baked rice pudding recipe (just took the first one Google popped up) and noticed that it calls for about three times as much sugar!

A Plain Rice Pudding, Eliza Leslie's receipt.

The Recipe: A Plain Rice Pudding, Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches, Eliza Leslie, 10th Edition [1840]  (but the preface was written in Philadelphia in 1837) 

Pick and wash a pint of rice, and boil it soft.  Then drain off the water, and let the rice dry and get cold.  Afterwards mix it with two ounces of butter, and four ounces of sugar, and stir it into a quart of rich milk.  Beat four or five eggs very light, and add them gradually to the mixture.  Stir in at the last a table-spoonful of mixed nutmeg and cinnamon.  Bake it an hour in a deep dish.

The Date/Year and Region: Recipe is English, published 1840 in the USA.

How Did You Make It: I followed the recipe except where I accidentally screwed up.  I determined that one pint of rice is 2 cups dry.  I chose to soak the rice first to minimize arsenic exposure.  And some of her other recipes talk about soaking and draining the rice so I thought that was ok.  I think that she also thought that I would be hulling the rice, but since I buy mine in a modern(ish) market, it comes pre-hulled.  I boiled the rice and it was really mushy rice (I assume from presoaking it).  I left that out overnight, kind of accidentally....but I figured that wouldn't kill anyone and it would be baked the next morning.  I cut the butter into smaller pieces and smushed it around in the sugar then stirred that all in the rice.  Honestly, I didn't think it was going to work because the butter wasn't all that soft but it worked just fine.  Next I poured a quart of milk into the rice mixture, then beat 4 eggs in the baking dish.  I beat the cinnamon/nutmeg mixture into the eggs (didn't read the directions super carefully) but I think that didn't impact the end result.  I used a full tablespoon of ground cinnamon and a little more- maybe 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg as I have hardly any left and I still have holiday baking coming up.

Time to Complete: About 1 hour of prep time not counting baking.  About 25 minutes of that was cooking the rice and I wasn't hurrying as I worked, I was Skyping with my sister during some of the prep time.  Another 45-60 minutes for baking.  (I chose to bake it at 325 degrees F and took the smaller pan that was on the bottom rack out after about 45 minutes, then moved the larger pan to the bottom rack for another 15 minutes.)

Total Cost: Grand total: about $3 USD. Rice: approximately 1.5 soles (50 cents at today's exchange rates); milk 2 soles (70 cents); butter: approximately 2 soles (70 cents); eggs 3 soles (about $1); cinnamon/nutmeg: negligible

How Successful Was It?: It was very tasty.  The only thing is it was the faintest hint of sweetness...but that's because we have a palate that gets a lot more sugar.  It still tasted good.  I tried it both the way it was baked and sprinkling a little brown sugar on top (which made it even tastier to my modern palate).

How Accurate Is It?: I don't have loaf sugar and I didn't research what kind of rice they would have used.  And I used all modern appliances and pans.  But in general I think the result was fairly accurate.

Time to Research:  Oh, Eliza!  I looked up multiple rice pudding recipes and I have never seen a person who changes their recipe from edition to edition as much as she did.  Like, it's hard to tell that the rice pudding recipes are even related.  And at one point I found someone who transcribed my recipe to read half a pint of rice and I thought I had messed up big time...but all of my ratios turned out fine using 2 cups of dry rice (then cooked and cooled) to a quart of milk.  I probably spent 1 hour looking up all of the different recipes and trying to figure out how much a pint of rice was in today's modern measures.  But all's well that ends well and I like the final result.

The cooked rice after it sat out for 12 hours.

Going in the oven to bake.

The finished product.  Not that pretty, but very tasty.

What it looks like out of the pan.  Yes, I did eat all of that.

The second and larger pan.  Not sure why, but it's more yellow.  I think it got more of the egg mixture.

Tea Cake: Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #10

For background on the Historical Food Fortnightly, click here.

The Challenge: Let Them Eat Cake! October 5 - October 18
The 16th is the anniversary of the beheading of Marie Antoinette (zut alors!). In honor of Madame Deficit, prepare your best cake from a historic recipe. And then eat it, bien sur.

True confession: I don't really like cake.  If I do eat it, it needs to be super moist, like a carrot cake (really, I like the cake part ok but it's all about the cream cheese frosting).  I can't stand eating sheet cakes.  At our wedding, we didn't have a cake.  So I wasn't overly looking forward to this challenge.  But I decided to make the Tea Cake recipe after making the Cup Cake recipe last challenge and since I don't have pearlash, I used baking soda instead.  My adventure resulted in mixed success, as you shall see.

This was the disaster part of the challenge attempt.

The Recipe: Tea Cake, The American Frugal Housewife: Dedicated to Those who are Not Ashamed of Economy, Lydia Child, 1841, (p. 71 in this edition.)

The Date/Year and Region: Recipe is English, published 1841 in New York.

How Did You Make It: At first I was going to go with a 1/3 recipe, but at the last minute I decided to go for a full recipe to use up more of the sour milk we had on hand.   I should have stuck with my initial idea.  I simply creamed the sugar and butter, then added the eggs, then the milk, then a spoonful of baking soda instead of pearlash, then the flour, two cups at a time.  It was a little stiff, so I added a smidge more milk since I was trying to use it all up. (Interesting side note: period bakers would have known to use sour milk to activate the pearlash.  Here's an interesting blogpost from another Historical Food Fortnightly participant on historical leavening agents.) I also threw in a huge spoonful of cinnamon because I thought it would taste good and there was no spice included (I suppose because it's supposed to be a frugal cake.  I was going for taste.) I did use a modern hand mixer.  This made up a really big batch of batter, bigger than I had anticipated.

Time to Complete: I have completely forgotten about tracking this piece of things....but I'm estimating about 20 minutes with interruptions to mix it up.  I had to bake it in two pans and the first one baked for about 40 minutes at around 350-400 (temp varied in my oven, I was going for 350 but sometimes when I checked it was high).  The second part went into disaster and consumed about 1.5 hours.  I haven't counted the clean up time yet, that is probably another hour.

Total Cost: Around $6-7.  Everything came from the pantry, but I think about $2 for the butter, 50 cents for the milk, 75 cents for the eggs, 25 cents for the sugar, and $2.50 for the flour.  Negligible cost for cinnamon and baking soda.  This made a 9x13 pan plus another pan that is larger than an 8x8 but I am not sure of the exact dimensions.

How Successful Was It?: The pan that baked well was moist and tasty, though not particularly appealing to look at.  It rose and then fell fast and hard, so I added a little more baking soda to the second pan.  In retrospect, that was probably not a good idea.  While both pans had been filled to approximately halfway, the extra baking soda encouraged a high rise that bubbled over the edges of the second pan (approx 9x13).  This was after the first issue of having our gas tank run out- ovens here in Peru run off something similar to a propane gas tank.  You don't know until you go check on things and realize your oven temp is at 150 F and you were aiming for 350.  You con your husband into changing to the backup tank after you can't figure out how to do it and run in the house to reheat the oven, hoping it isn't too late.  Only then do you realize after another 10 minutes that the burning smell from the oven isn't a good thing and you realize the extra baking soda gave the batter life....life that it spent escaping the confines of your glass baking dish.  You wait, figuring how bad can it be?  It probably only needs another 10-15 minutes to bake what remains in the pan.  Unfortunately, things can be very bad.  All that butter, sugar, and egg make a lot of smoke on the bottom of your oven.  So, you call a time-out, scrape the offending mixture from the bottom of the oven and the metal wires it coated on the way down, and put your pan back in for another 10 minutes.  You fail to hear the timer as you are attempting to wrestle your children into bed, and when you remember (mainly because your eldest asks, "Mom, what is that smell?") and you sprint down the stairs to check on the cake, your husband tells you, "It's done," in a tone of voice that indicates there will be no resurrection for this particular cake.  The oven is turned off, smoke hangs in the air, and you leave the whole mess in the oven for "tomorrow is another day."

How Accurate Is It?: I used modern tools.  I didn't have pearlash and used baking soda.  The ratios were correct and it doesn't taste like a regular cake (I actually much prefer it to a regular cake.)  I would be curious to bake this again back home in the States with my consistent gas oven and more space in the dish and see how it goes.  I have a hunch this would bake well in a stoneware dish.

Interpretation: I used my homemade Gluten Free flour blend in this because everyone else in the family is gluten free and it just seems mean to make baked goods they can't eat.  Details are in my post on the Cup Cake.

Time to Research: 5 minutes or less, when another participant commented on my Cup Cake post that I could use baking soda, I knew exactly what I was going to make next.

The ingredients

Batter after creaming butter and sugar and adding eggs.  I had to change bowls after the butter and sugar only, the first one I used was nowhere large enough.

The batter seemed like it would work well in these two pans.

I sent the smaller pan in as a test.  Not much to look at, but it's a moist, tender, chewy tasty cake.  Kind of like half baked cookies, which is probably why I liked it.

This is after the overflow (so it already had to handle the gas going out).

The offending smoky blob.

I concede defeat!  This is the larger pan, which took out the stovetop, oven, and baking dish in one fell swoop.

Cup Cake: Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #9

For background on the Historical Food Fortnightly, click here.

The Challenge: The Frugal Housewife September 21 - October 4
Throughout history, housewives and housekeepers have kept a close eye on their budgets and found creative ways to pinch pennies while providing delicious and nutritious food. Create a dish that interprets one historically-documented method of frugal cooking.

I knew that for this challenge, I could depend on Mrs. Lydia Child (sort-of authoress of The American Frugal Housewife...and by that I mean she basically repackaged the content someone else wrote.  Deets here.)  She did not disappoint.  Not only is her whole book dedicated to economy, but she had instructions for cakes that got progressively cheaper!  I couldn't do the Tea Cake because I don't really keep pearlash around and even if I did, I'm not sure I would bake with it.  Read here for another participant's experience with pearlash.  But, the cup cake was a winner.  And everything turned out swimmingly, from the discovery that it works with my home made GF baking mix made with ingredients I can purchase in Peru to the taste of both regular and gluten free versions.  The only problem was the foil cupcake wrappers that lost some of their color on the cupcakes.....

We will be using these for a party that our eldest is throwing, just because.  It's always helpful to have some reason or audience for your baking experiments.....

The Recipe: Cup Cake, The American Frugal Housewife: Dedicated to Those who are Not Ashamed of Economy, Lydia Child, 1841, (p. 71 in this edition.)

"Cup cake is about as good as pound cake, and is cheaper."  How's that for economy!

The Date/Year and Region: Recipe is English, published 1841 in New York.

How Did You Make It: I cheated and conserved my time by using my hand mixer. But I put in the butter, then the sugar, creamed them per conventional standards. Then I added the flour, mixed until coarse crumbs, then finished off with the eggs.

I opted for about 3/4 cup whole wheat coarse ground flour and 1 1/2 cup regular white flour.  I used Azucar Rubia, which is a brownish sugar that has a grain like white sugar but is slightly less processed (I think that's the difference...it's what I have more of right now.)

Time to Complete: Approximately 30 minutes to mix up two batches and another 40 minutes to cook.  First I made a 1/4 batch using gluten free flour.   I did NOT add any Xanthan gum for the cupcakes (I mix up a batch of the GF flour and typically add Xanthan gum as I am making up the recipe.)  See below for GF flour recipe.  I also made a 3/4 batch using regular flour.  I did have small children helping me, so you could probably achieve the end result faster.

From Mary's Busy Kitchen - Basic Rice Flour Mix - can be used to replace wheat flour in any recipe. 

 *add 1 tsp Xanthan Gum per cup of flour for yeast based recipes and 1/2 tsp Xanthan Gum per cup of flour for all other baking)

3 cups rice flour (brown or white)

3 cups tapioca flour

3 cups cornstarch

3 Tbsp potato flour (not potato starch)

Total Cost: I had everything on hand....but I think it was pretty economical.

How Successful Was It?: They taste good, both the regular and gluten free. I cooked them for 20 minutes at about 300 degrees F.  They were very soupy in the middle, so I rotated the pans and changed shelves from top to bottom and bottom to top.  In the end, some of them have a crispy but edible crust and the color from the foil wrappers leaked onto the batter....but still should be ok for kids who may leave behind the crust anyway.  They also puffed up much more than I had expected given the lack of additional leavening agent.

How Accurate Is It?: I think the ingredients are ok for accuracy (excepting the GF flour).  But, it was a pleasant surprise to note that 1/4 of the recipe makes 4 cupcakes and they taste good!  This may be my new go-to recipe for cupcakes.  It's handy to be able to bring something to a birthday party where your GF kid might not otherwise have something and it's very fast.  You could easily make these in a toaster oven.  The recipe uses very basic ingredients.  I also don't have real tea cups to use here, so I used cup cake liners instead.  That will be better for the party anyway.

Time to Research: I spent about 1 hour trying to find a tomato paste recipe as I bought tomatoes to make some tomato paste and could (theoretically) kill two birds with one stone. Alas, it was not to be. Sauce and catsup recipes abounded, but tomato paste by itself was elusive. At least pre-1960s documentation with ingredients I had on hand eluded me. I made the tomato paste anyway and it was delicious.  So, I was double frugal this week!

Four simple ingredients: Butter, Sugar, Flour, Eggs

It made a much thicker, stickier batter than I associate with cakes made in the modern era.

The 1/4 recipe made 4 gluten free cupcakes, but when I did a 3/4 recipe (aiming for 12) I actually got 16 cupcakes using regular flour.

The finished product fell a bit from their nice domes immediately after taking out of the oven.  You can see the interior of the tester cupcake.

Bonus Pictures of the Tomato Sauce that didn't make it for the challenge.

Our delicious, organic tomatoes!  Usually our tomatoes here are devoid of taste but these are so yummy!

In process.  I stopped taking pictures at this point knowing that I was going to do something else for the challenge.

Gooseberry Jam: Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #8

For background on the Historical Food Fortnightly, click here.

The Challenge: In a Jam (Or Jelly or Preserve) September 7 - September 20
It’s harvest time in the northern hemisphere, and springtime in the southern hemisphere. Make something either to preserve that produce that you’re harvesting, or replenish your supply after the winter! Fruit and vegetable jams, jellies, and preserves are the focus!

Aguaymantos are native to Peru.  I discovered these little gems when we moved down here.  Come to find out, they are also grown in the States and known as ground cherries or cape gooseberries (among other names).  They have a limited life span in the midwest (only about 75 days) but down here they are a year round treat because of the temperate climate.  I love them and want to plant some bushes when we go back home to Minnesota.

I wanted to find a recipe that allowed me to make some jam or jelly out of these little fruits and after some online searching, I finally found a documented historical recipe.  

Here is some background on the berries.  A subquote from that link: 

Cape Gooseberries are native to Peru or Brazil. They were introduced into England in 1774, and into the Cape of Good Hope, Africa by 1807. Hawaii before 1825. From the Cape of Good Hope, they were introduced into Australia. The Australians are the ones who named them Cape Gooseberries.

   Here is a nice blog post on growing these little fruit gems for yourself.

The Recipe: Gooseberry Jam, The White House Cookbook, MRS. F.L. GILLETTE AND
HUGO ZIEMANN, Steward of the White house [1887] (p. 435)

*I'm thinking these are the kind of gooseberries we have here because I found that they were used/known in New England at this time and also because it says they have an amber color. The other gooseberries are kind of greenish.

GOOSEBERRY JAM.

Pick the gooseberries just as they begin to turn. Stem, wash and weigh. To four pounds of fruit add half a teacupful of water; boil until soft and add four pounds of sugar and boil until clear. If picked at the right stage the jam will be amber colored and firm, and very much nicer than if the fruit is preserved when ripe.

How Did You Make It: I took the husks off the ground cherries, rinsed them a couple of times, put the berries into a pot, added a smidge of water, boiled it, added the sugar, boiled some more until I deemed it "clear" and poured the final product into glass jars.  Pretty much just followed the instructions.

Time to Complete: About 1.5 hours.

Total Cost: Total cost about $4.60 USD.  We paid about 11 soles for the ground cherries ($3.85 USD)My husband bought four small bags of ground cherries from the organic market.  We had the sugar and water on hand.  Each bag of ground cherries runs 2.50 or 3 soles per bag (exchange rate now 2.85 soles per dollar).  I didn't weigh them before husking, but the net weight after husking was 1.46 lbs.  The sugar was on sale for 3 soles a kilo.  I used 1.46 lbs of sugar so about 2 soles worth.  I got about 3.5 jars of jam from this recipe and happened to use empty containers from jam I bought before for 10 soles for one jar.  The other jars I got from someone who moved away, so this was quite a good deal since I paid 13 soles for 3.5 jars.

How Successful Was It?: Tastes yummy and looks just the same as what I purchased before.

How Accurate Is It?: I used plain white sugar and modern utensils/pots but I think it's a good representation.  I also made a smaller batch because I don't need as much jam as the full recipe would make, but I kept the same ratios.

Time to Research:  Approximately 2 hours, plus I asked my mom to review her old cookbooks.  I wasn't having luck finding anything online until I tweaked my word search and the 1870s White House cookbook popped up.

This is what the ground cherries look like when you buy them.  You can leave them in their husks, it's kind of paper-like, similar to a tomatillo.

You peel away the husks to reveal the berry inside.

In the pot with a little water.  This is after cooking for a bit, I didn't start with that much liquid.  I included the green (unripe) ground cherries because the recipe said under-ripe was ok.

There is quite a bit of water that gets released when cooking the ground cherries.

I had forgotten just how much sugar goes in jam (this is a 1:1 recipe).

Tons of liquid boiling off.

In goes the sugar.

Another 20-30 minutes of boiling and stirring and it started to look more like jelly.  The timing is all off here because of the high altitude and lower boiling point, and in the end, after it cooled, the jam was pretty sticky/thick.  So I probably could have boiled for a shorter time.

The final product!  Isn't it amazing how I made up a label?  (Just kidding, I reused my empty container!)

Flaxseed Lemonade: Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #7 (plus bonus limeade and modern day juiced lemonade)

For background on the Historical Food Fortnightly, click here.

The Challenge: The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread August 24 - September 6
Create a food item that reflects historical food improvements. Showcase a new discovery in food preparation, a different way of using food, or a different way of serving it. Make sure to include your documentation!

Around the time I was thinking about what I could make (and doing real bread is out, for many reasons....gluten free family and high altitude among them), I got a juicer from a garage sale of another expat who was moving back to the states.  For a mere $2, I could try to juice something.  Naturally, I thought of doing lemonade since there are so many versions of it.  I did a little online research and juicers were invented well before the 1960s cutoff for the Historical Food Fortnightly but I wasn't able to find a juicing recipe historically documented before that date.  I do still plan to make my favorite lemonade recipe of all time which includes juicing three tart apples and one lemon. I found this blogpost when looking for a recipe.

I posted to the HFF facebook group and so many people stepped in to help find recipes!  I received a few "healthy" lemonade recipes, one of which is highlighted below.  And I have the materials to make limeade (an improvement from the 1950s) and the juicer recipe above.  But my husband decided to climb a mountain at the last minute this week and between trying to get a little work done and man the fort with our monkeys, I thought I would post what I have.  I'll come back and update this post when I get the other two batches made.  *Updates below for the other two recipes*

The Recipe: Flaxseed Lemonade, from the "Fluid and Convalescent Diet" section, Dietetics Simplified, The Use of Foods in Health + Disease, L. Jean Bogert [1940] (p. 629)
The Date/Year and Region: Recipe is English, second edition published 1940 in New York.

The book that another HFF member found for me and took the time to grab when Peru servers prevented me from seeing it.

I loved that lemonade could be considered a health food.

How Did You Make It:  Flaxseed (linaza here in Peru) is quite common and easy to procure, so that is the lemonade recipe I decided to make.  It's healthier if you grind it (by healthier, I mean easier for your body to get the nutrients) so we grind the seeds in batches and put it in the fridge and freezer.  So, I only had ground flaxseed instead of unground seeds.  I boiled it for 10 minutes because our stove is hooked up to a gas tank, similar to what you use for propane grills, and simmering is not really an option. I compromised on boiling for 10 minutes instead of simmering for 30-40.  Also, while I was preparing the lemonade, I was googling ideas for helping my husband with his altitude sickness and flaxseed came up as something that can help with altitude sickness, so I had my victim invalid all picked out.  While boiling the linaza, I handsqueezed a lemon into a glass.  The amount of juice from one lemon happened to equal 2 tablespoons, which was convenient.  I added my sugar (dipping into my stash of organic cane sugar from our trip to Colombia....if we're going for healthy lemonade, organic sugar seemed the way to go).  Then I strained the boiled flaxseed through two mesh strainers.  Flaxseed can also be used as an egg substitute and it does get pretty gelatinous.  I didn't have trouble with the flaxseed making it into the drink.  This is a hot beverage (serve immediately) and made about 8 ounces of drink (the rest of the liquid boiling off).

Time to Complete: Approximately 15-20 minutes.

Total Cost: The lemon was about 65 centimos (about 25 cents USD) and we had the sugar and flaxseed already.  I would estimate total cost under 50 cents.  This makes one serving.

How Successful Was It?: I reserved one tablespoon to taste it and gave the rest to my husband.  He drank a few sips, mostly under my watchful eye (aka shoving it in his face and telling him it was great for altitude sickness!)  Most of the mug still remains.  I might heat it up and drink it, it tastes like gelatinous lemon water, which is really what it is, but it doesn't taste bad.  It's not worth throwing away.  But I will point out that invalids and sick people through time don't always take their medicine.  (I'm looking at you, DP!)

How Accurate Is It?: I couldn't follow the simmering instructions exactly, but I think that whole flaxseeds would have produced a similar water to what I had with ground and I am guessing the end result was similar.

Time to Research: Longer than you would think with trying to research online from a country that is sometimes blocked by US servers.  But thanks to the HFF group, around 1 hour total.

Straining out the boiled ground flaxseed.  I had taken a picture of the pot, but the flash made it hard to see. Imagine water with a bunch of floating brown ground up seeds and you've got it.

My tasting tablespoon.  You can see the flaxseed did color the drink.

This is a relatively large mug, I estimate about 1 cup total of liquid.

And here are the other two lemonade recipes I made.

First up was from the 1950s.  I first found it on this blog, then a friend kindly took a picture of the recipe from his copy of the cookbook and I was able to confirm that the blog author faithfully transcribed the recipe. I made the limeade version as limes are very common here in Peru.  I would estimate the cost for this one (making a bit more than a liter) at about $1.50 USD.

Sugar, limes, apples and lemons for the two recipes.

Making the sugar syrup.  1 cup seems like a lot of sugar (1 cup sugar in 1 cup water, 1 cup lime juice, 4 additional cups water).

It looks a little brown from the type of sugar I used, it was nice and yellow-green when it was just juice and water.  It tastes ok...a bit sweet for my taste, but not bad and certainly tart from the lime juice.  I would go to my own recipe of about 6 limes per liter of water plus a little sugar to taste (probably 1/2 cup or less.)

Next up was the juicer recipe, made from this blogpost and with my new juicer.  My husband fashioned a spout out of a plastic bottle (this was why the juicer was only $2) and it worked well enough to get us there.  I would estimate the total cost for this one at about $2 USD.

The lemon, apples, and left over lime skins I added.

The final frothy drink.  Yummy, tart (maybe a bit much...I used tart apples in addition to the lemons plus adding extra lime).  No added sugar.  It only made a couple of small glasses, though, from all that fruit.

Here are the leftovers (the non-shredded limes are from the sugar syrup I made).

Potato Salad: Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #6

For background on the Historical Food Fortnightly, click here.

The Challenge: Seasonal Fruits/Vegetables August 10 - August 23
Concoct a dish based on the fruits and/or vegetables that would have been in season and available to the particular time you wish to interpret. It needn’t be the place you are in at this moment, but it should coincide with the season!

The Recipe: Potato Salad (recipe 1154), The Book of Household Management, Mrs. Isabella Mary Beeton, [1861].

Mrs. Beeton's Potato Salad (in a manner of speaking)

Ahh...I started back to work part-time for my employer and that means a new schedule for all of us.  I actually started this a week before the end of the challenge (with making tarragon vinegar) but didn't finish until the bitter end and the write up was even more delayed.  But I did make the challenge recipe!  I pulled from my free download on my Kindle (I do have the print copy back home in Minnesota, too....but that didn't make the packing cut when we had 2 checked bags each at 50 pounds to get us through almost 2 years).

Recipe:
Ingredients- 10 or 12 cold boiled potatoes, 4 tablespoonfuls of tarragon or plain vinegar, 6 tablespoonfuls of salad-oil, pepper and salt to taste, 1 teaspoonful of minced parsley.

Mode- Cut the potatoes into slices about 1/2 inch in thickness; put these into a salad-bowl with oil and vinegar in the above proportion; season with pepper, salt, and a teaspoonful of minced parsley; stir the salad well, that all the ingredients may be thoroughly incorporated, and it is ready to serve.  This should be made two or three hours before it is wanted for table.  Anchovied, olives, or pickles may be added to this salad, as also slices of cold beef, fowl, or turkey.

Seasonable at any time.  [There you have it.  Mrs. Beeton said it's seasonable whenever I want to make it.]

How Did You Make It:  Peru is the potato capital of the world, there are tons of potato varieties grown here.  They have purple potatoes (purple all the way through), large baking potatoes, red skinned potatoes, and these white potatoes with red dots that I chose just because they looked fun and there is no way I can get exactly the kind of North American potatoes I'm used to using.  So, my fusion cooking of American frontier and Peruvian cooking continues.  I boiled the potatoes on the stove (after googling how to do it, I admit....learning that I'm supposed to put the potatoes in the water when cold and allow them to warm and NOT cover them up lest it make them mushy....I ended up cooking them for about 45 minutes but I'm sure that is because of our altitude.  We're way higher than Denver.  Then I sliced the potatoes a couple of days later, poured the tarragon vinegar over the top (I used up some of my dried tarragon in regular white vinegar), added salt and pepper just by dumping, and used pulverized parsley (I thought we had dried parsley but nope) and soy oil (thought we had olive oil but when I went to put this together late at night I found my husband had used the last of it).  Olive oil costs over $10 a liter here, so we don't buy it all the time.

Time to Complete:  About 1 hour, including 45 minutes to cook the potatoes.

Total Cost: Approximately $1.25 USD.  Potatoes: about one pound for 2.5 soles (about 90 cents USD), oil, vinegar, and spices negligible and from pantry.

How Successful Was It?:  My 2 year old spit it out, but I'm sure that was the bitter vinegar taste.  I think I would have preferred the salad with olive oil instead of soybean oil.  I think this iteration was just ok but I would be willing to try again with fresh parsley and olive oil.

How Accurate Is It?:  Not as accurate as some of my other offerings.  We had a marvelous discussion on the Historical Food Fortnightly Facebook page about salad oil and what that means...and in the end all I had available to me in the house was soybean oil.  The potatoes are clearly what you can buy here in Peru, the parsley I thought we had turned out to be pulverized dust instead of parsley leaves and I'm trying not to purchase more spices as we count down our time here.

Interpretation: One thing I found really interesting with this is the sites I found when searching for "mrs beetons potato salad" online.  Here's a sampling and you can see that different modern people interpreted the recipe slightly differently.  I think this is why our challengers want us to go directly to the source and put our own spin on the recipes.

1988 Newspaper article referencing her salad (changed her directions of salad oil to say extra light olive oil)

Modern blog with her own twist

Time to Research: about one hour of paging through cookbooks to pick a recipe and including the time to figure out what in the world salad oil was.

Prepping the tarragon vinegar.  I dumped dried tarragon in a glass jar with some white vinegar and left it for a week.

My potatoes.  Don't they look fun?

When slicing them, the spotted effect was unnoticeable but they did have some that had red coloring inside.

All my ingredients ready.  Once the potatoes are cooked and cooled, this recipe goes together really fast.

The finished product.