Georgian Gingerbread

 

Winter is a good time to make gingerbread. The eighteenth century had two kinds: hard or “card” gingerbread, what we call a cookie (or biscuit in the U.K.), and a cake. I recently made the latter for our local Jane Austen group tea in celebration of Jane’s 247^th birthday, using the recipe below. It makes our gingerbread look and taste anemic.

 Mrs. MacIver’s recipe from Cookery and Pastry, published 1783 and 1789, is strongly flavored, moist and dense. I made half a batch because two and a half pounds of flour would make far more than I needed for an 8 x 8 inch pan. I’ll give the amounts I used and cooking directions after the recipe. Be warned: you’ll need a scale.

 At the time this recipe was published, the letter “s” was often represented by something that looks like an “f”. No, I don’t know why. After a while, you get used to it.

 And cake pans were not a “thing” yet. Cakes were baked in a frame or hoop. I didn’t have a hoop so I sprayed my pan generously with cooking spray. When the cake was baked and cool, it turned out of the pan easily.

 To make fine Gingerbread . Take two pounds and a half of flour ; mix an ounce of beat ginger with it , and half a pound of brown fugar ; cut three quarters of a pound of orange peel and citron not too fmall ; mix all thefe together ; take a mutchkin and a half (1 ½  English pint) of good treacle , and melt it on the fire ; beat five eggs ; wet the flour with the treacle and eggs ; weigh half a pound of fresh butter , Scots weight ; melt it and pour it in amongst your other materials and cast them all well together ; butter a frame , and put it in the oven .

This gingerbread won't fire without frames . if it rifes in blifters when it is in the oven , run a fork through it . It makes very fine plain bread without the fruit , with a few caraway feeds . All these cakes must be fired in an oven neither too hot nor too cold . The way to know when the cakes are fired enough , is to run a clean knife down the middle of them ; if the knife comes out dry , they are enough ; if the leaft of it ſticks to the knife , put it into the oven again. Susanna MacIver, Cookery and Pastry, 1783, 1789

 Ingredients

 Flour: 20 ounces

Brown sugar: 4 oz.

Ginger: ½ oz.

Citron and (candied) orange peel but I used only citron): 6 oz. (the fruit is optional; you can use a few caraway seeds instead)

Treacle: 1 ½ cup (molasses; I used blackstrap molasses)

Eggs: about 3 ½ to 4  oz. of eggs*

Butter: 4 oz.

 *Eggs were smaller at the time. The recipe for pound cake called for a pound of eggs, which works out to eggs weighing about 1.33 ounces each. Ten percent of their weight is shell, so allow for that in the total.

 Directions:

 Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. (176.667 Celsius).

 Combine the flour, sugar, ginger, and citron, or caraway seeds if you substitute those).

 Melt the butter and let it cool before adding it to the molasses and beaten eggs.

 Add the butter/molasses/eggs to the flour mixture and mix them thoroughly. If you have a kitchen maid with a strong arm, she can do it. I used a KitchenAid stand mixer. The batter will be thick.

 Spray the 8 x 8 inch pan (or a comparable size) with cooking spray. Dump the batter in and spread it around to fill the pan.

 Bake for approximately 30 to 35 minutes. Test with a toothpick or skewer. If it comes out with batter on it, cook a little longer and re-test.

 Let it cool and turn it out of the pan. Cut in small pieces. It’s quite rich and I liked it a lot.

 

Georgian Cats

 

As some of my readers may have guessed from the cover of A Peculiar Enchantment, I am extremely fond of cats. When I began writing Adelaide’s story, making a cat her only friend and confidante was irresistible, and my favorite cat, Meret, served as the inspiration for Tabby. Meret, like Adelaide’s Tabby, sucks on my chin.

 Most historical fiction set in the Georgian period concentrates on dogs and horses as the characters’ animal companions, giving the impression that cats were held in low esteem. But they were not without their human friends. 

Many paintings of domestic scenes include felines: cats with their prey, kittens being dressed by little girls, children playing with cats. Edward Bird depicted a woman taking tea with her cat, who is on the table and appears to have a saucer of milk. 

A 1747 - 1748 painting by J-B Perronneau shows a lady (possibly Marie Antoinette) holding a large blue (i.e. gray, like a Russian Blue cat) in her arms. 

Sometimes the portrait is of the cat, like Jean-Jacques Bachelier's 1761 painting of an Angora cat. 

 

James Boswell, in his Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) described Dr. Johnson’s fondness for one of his cats:

I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat: for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature…I recollect him one day scrambling up Dr. Johnson's breast, apparently with much satisfaction, while my friend smiling and half-whistling, rubbed down his back, and pulled him by the tail; and when I  observed he was a fine cat, saying, “Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this;” and then as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, “but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.” This reminds me of the ludicrous account which he gave…of the despicable state of a young Gentleman of good family. "Sir, when I heard of him last, he was running about town shooting cats." And then in a sort of kindly reverie, he bethought himself of his own favourite cat, and said, “But Hodge shan't be shot; no, no, Hodge shall not be shot.”

 The good doctor’s remarks to Hodge sound eerily like any modern cat devotee’s conversation when no other human is present. 

 Meret, please don’t suck on my chin while I’m typing.