Dinner with Mr Darcy E-Book

Pen Vogler

• Herausgeber: CICO Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 184

Beschreibung

'A delightful collection of Austen-inspired dishes' – Bee Wilson, Stella Magazine 'It's a great idea - a book that you can read as well as cook from, and one that, uniquely, sends you straight back to the novels themselves' – Telegraph Online 'In this charming bit of historical reconstruction, Pen Vogler takes authentic recipes from Austen's time and updates them for today. You'll find everything you need to recreate Netherfield Ball in your front room.' – Kathryn Hughes, The best books on food, The Guardian Enter Jane Austen's world through the kitchens and dining rooms of her characters, and her own family. Food is an important theme in Jane Austen's novels - it is used as a commodity for showing off, as a way of showing kindliness among neighbours, as part of the dynamics of family life, and - of course - for comic effect. Dinner with Mr Darcy takes authentic recipes from the period, inspired by the food that features in Austen's novels and letters, and adapts them for contemporary cooks. The text is interwoven throughout with quotes from the novels, and feature spreads cover some of the key themes of food and eating in Austen's time, including table arrangements, kitchens and gardens, changing mealtimes, and servants and service. Whether you are hoping to beguile a single gentleman in possession of a substantial fortune, or you just want to have your own version of the picnic on Box Hill in Emma, you will find fully updated recipes using easily available ingredients to help you recreate the dishes and dining experiences of Jane Austen's characters and their contemporaries.

Leseprobe

DINNERWITHMR DARCY

DINNERWITHMR DARCY

Recipes inspired by the novels and letters of Jane Austen

PEN VOGLER

For my MumFor being much likeMrs. Austen and nothinglike Mrs. Bennet

This edition published in 2020 by CICO Books

An imprint of Ryland Peters & Small Ltd

20–21 Jockey’s Fields

London WC1R 4BW

341 E 116th Street

New York, NY 10029

www.rylandpeters.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First published in 2013.

Text © Pen Vogler 2013, 2020

Design & photography © CICO Books 2013, 2020

The author’s moral rights have been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress and the British Library.

eISBN: 978-1-78249-914-5

ISBN: 978-1-78249-848-3

Printed in China

Copy Editor: Lee Faber

Designer: Louise Leffler

Food Photographer: Stephen Conroy

Home Economist: Emma Jane Frost

Stylist: Luis Peral

Art Director: Sally Powell

Head of Production: Patricia Harrington

Publishing Manager: Penny Craig

Publisher: Cindy Richards

NOTES:

All recipes serve four unless indicated otherwise. All eggs are large (UK medium) unless indicated otherwise.

CONTENTS

Introduction

BREAKFAST WITH GENERAL TILNEY

Northanger Abbey

MRS. BENNET’S DINNER TO IMPRESS

Pride and Prejudice

PORK AND APPLES: AN AUTUMN DINNER WITH THE BATESES

Emma

JANE’S FAMILY FAVORITES

Letters of Jane Austen

THE PICNIC PARADE

Emma

TEA AND CAKE

Mansfield Park

THE BALL AT NETHERFIELD

Pride and Prejudice

AN OLD-FASHIONED SUPPER FOR MR. WOODHOUSE AND HIS GUESTS

Emma

CHRISTMAS WITH THE MUSGROVES AND OTHER CELEBRATIONS

Persuasion

GIFTS, DRINKS, AND PRESERVES FOR FRIENDS AND THE SICK AT HEART

Sense and Sensibility

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

The picnic at Box Hill in Emma: Mrs. Bennet preening herself over a fat haunch of venison, roasted to a turn; a gooseberry tart offered to a tired and homesick Fanny Price—Jane Austen’s novels and letters are lightly sauced with dishes, dinners, and picnics, which tell us much about her characters’ warmth, neighborliness, ambitions, and anxieties, and about the important role that food played in comfortable society in Georgian England. And, with a bit of help from contemporary recipe books, Jane’s novels let us put together a wonderful idea of what life tasted like at the time.

In Jane’s comic Juvenilia, she happily describes whole meals her characters enjoy, but in the mature novels, her least lovable characters are often those most preoccupied with what they eat. We are a little repelled by the indolent and greedy Dr. Grant in Mansfield Park, and a little scared by the active and punctilious—but equally greedy—General Tilney in Northanger Abbey. It is great fun to laugh at Mrs. Elton’s social anxiety as she professes to be shocked at the quality of the rout cakes in Highbury, in Emma, or the ghastly Mrs. Norris as she “spunges” pheasants’ eggs and cream cheese from Mr. Rushworth’s housekeeper, or pilfers the remaining jellies after the Mansfield Park ball, but Jane’s true heroines are unembarrassed by hunger or greed.

In her letters, however, Jane shows a lively interest in housekeeping and she describes meals she has enjoyed, or plans to have, and the many edible gifts that were made within her large family and circle of friends.

Her first home at Steventon Rectory in Hampshire offered marvelous training for what Mary Crawford archly describes as “the sweets of housekeeping in a country village”. Mr. Austen was both rector and farmer, producing meat from his pigs, and dairy from five Alderney cows. He was particularly proud of his excellent mutton. Mrs. Austen ran the dairy, poultry yard, and a productive fruit and vegetable garden, besides having a family of six boys and two girls (Jane was the seventh baby.) They were self-sufficient in all, except some Georgian essentials such as coffee, tea, oranges, lemons, and spices.

When Jane was twenty-five, her father retired, and the family moved to Bath. Jane’s letters started to mention prices and the problems of getting good meat and dairy, later reflected in Mrs. Grant’s gentle rejoinder to Mary Crawford when she points out the “exorbitant charges and frauds,” which were part of housekeeping in towns. Jane has a very funny passage on the price of fish:

“I am not without hopes of tempting Mrs. Lloyd to settle in Bath; meat is only 8d. per pound, butter 12d., and cheese 9½ d. You must carefully conceal from her, however, the exorbitant price of fish: a salmon has been sold at 2s. 9d. per pound the whole fish. The Duchess of York’s removal is expected to make that article more reasonable—and till it really appears so, say nothing about salmon.” (Letter to Cassandra, May 5 1801.)

The widowed Mrs. Lloyd and her daughters, Martha, Eliza, and Mary, had become great friends with the Austen family when they lived in Mr. Austen’s second parish of Deane in Hampshire. After the deaths of Mrs. Lloyd and Jane’s father in 1805, Martha joined the Austen household, partly to combine resources, but also because Martha was the trusted “friend & sister under every circumstance” for the Austen sisters (letter to Cassandra, October 13 1808.) She moved with Mrs. Austen, Jane, and Cassandra to Southampton where, by 1807, they were in a town house in Castle Square; here at least they had access to fresh sea fish and their own garden. Their happiest domestic arrangements came with the cottage at Chawton in Hampshire, which became their home in the summer of 1809. It was the gift of Jane’s brother Edward, who had been adopted by a childless couple, the Knights, and inherited the estates of Godmersham in Kent, and Chawton Manor in Hampshire. There were other wealthy friends and relatives, too: Mrs. Austen’s cousin lived at Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire; her son Henry, Jane’s favorite brother, was a successful banker in Covent Garden. Jane, Cassandra, and Mrs. Austen all spent happy visits in these houses, writing light-heartedly to one another of their temporarily grand lifestyles and dinners.

It was at Chawton that Martha Lloyd compiled her Household Book of recipes, and gave us a wonderful record of dishes that Jane ate with her family and friends. Many of the recipes in Martha’s book were given to her by her circle, but it is also easy to trace the influence of some of the key cookery writers of the day. Foremost of these was Hannah Glasse, whose Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, written in language “the lower Sort” could understand to “save the Ladies a great deal of Trouble,” was a smash hit in the second part of the eighteenth century. The earliest source for the recipes in this book is John Nott’s The Cook’s and Confectioner’s Dictionary of 1723. His recipes crystallized English food of an earlier generation, but which was still enjoyed eighty years later. The latest is one recipe from Mrs. Beeton from 1861 (because it makes me laugh). A few from Eliza Acton are also included; her Modern Cookery for Private Families, was published in 1845, a little after Jane Austen’s lifetime, but Eliza’s sensible take on fresh food and elegant recipes that work was learnt in the France of her youth, so we can assume that the French cooks of Jane Austen’s world (the Monsieur Halavant employed by her brother Henry, or the “two or three French cooks at least” that Mrs. Bennet imagines Mr. Darcy to have) would have been producing similar dishes.

The aim of this book is to give some ideas to anybody who would like the fun of reconstructing dishes and dinners from Jane’s life and novels, without having to struggle with a “peck of flour” or “one spoonful of good barm.” I hope that many of these dishes are different enough from our own to be worth exploring; you will find sweetbreads, mutton rather than lamb, boiled rather than roasted meat. I hope also to revive some tastes that have become unjustly unfashionable (bring back caraway seeds!) and also some of the sense of fun in food that the Georgians had with their “hedgehogs” and “hen’s nests”. But there won’t be any scary calf’s heads or fish heads, delicacies for the Georgians, but the stuff of health and safety nightmares for us, on the menu.

So I hope you will enjoy rustling up some “rout cakes” for your card parties, or impressing your own Mr. Darcy with venison and roast partridges and, above all, that you will enjoy tasting your way into Jane Austen’s England.

Breakfast with General Tilney

NORTHANGER ABBEY

General Tilney looms over the breakfasts of Northanger Abbey with his comic but uncomfortable mix of gastronomy and discipline. Catherine, breakfasting with the Tilneys in Bath, finds his attentiveness a trial, but he does put on a good spread: “never in her life before had she beheld half such variety on a breakfast-table.” At Northanger Abbey he drinks cocoa and serves the richest of breads (rather like brioche) from a Staffordshire breakfast service. Mrs. Morland, thinking that her daughter was spoilt by grandeur, not love, worries that “I did not quite like, at breakfast, to hear you talk so much about the French bread at Northanger.”

Mrs. Austen (Jane’s mother) gives us an idea of the kind of elegant variety Catherine would have encountered; staying with her cousin at Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire, she was offered a breakfast worth writing to her daughter-in-law about: “Chocolate, Coffee and Tea, Plumb Cake, Pound Cake, Hot Rolls, Cold Rolls, Bread and Butter, and dry toast for me.”

Breakfast would be served at around 9 or 10 a.m., but workers or travelers might breakfast early on something hot or meaty; William Price has pork and mustard and Henry Crawford eats hard-boiled eggs before leaving Mansfield Park for London. The big cooked breakfasts of everything from kidneys to kedgeree were not part of the country-house weekend or visit until Victorian times, but visitors to Bath were spoiled with luscious, sugary Bath Buns and the local version of French bread, Sally Lunns.

BATH BUNS

Mrs. Raffald tells us to “send them in hot for breakfast,” which sounds rather indigestible for these rich, buttery buns, and may have been why, when Jane was staying with a rather mean aunt, she joked to Cassandra that she would make herself an inexpensive guest by “disordering my Stomach with Bath bunns.” (January 3 1801)

Makes 12 cakes

1 lb/450g all-purpose (plain) flour

1 tsp salt (optional — not in original, but we find yeast buns very bland without it)

⅔ cup/150g butter

¼ oz/7g sachet active dried yeast

2 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp caraway seeds

1 cup/225ml milk

For the glaze

2 tbsp superfine (caster) sugar

1 tbsp milk

Sugar nibs, or a few sugar cubes, roughly crushed and mixed with a few caraway seeds. These are in place of the caraway comfits—sugar-coated caraway seeds—that Mrs. Raffald would have used.

1 Add the salt, if using, to the flour, and rub the butter in until it is like coarse breadcrumbs; sprinkle in the yeast, sugar, and caraway seeds, and mix together well. Warm the milk, and stir it into the dry ingredients to give a soft dough; add a little milk if necessary.

2 Give it a good knead for about 10 minutes on a floured surface until it is smooth and pliable; return to the bowl, cover with a cloth, and let it rise in a warm place until double in size; it may take a good 2 or 3 hours because the butter in the dough impedes the rising action of the yeast.

3 Punch the air out of the dough and make up 12 cakes. Put them onto greased baking sheets, cover with a damp dish towel (tea towel) or plastic wrap (clingfilm) and leave to rise again for up to 1 hour.

4 Preheat the oven to 375°F/190°C/Gas Mark 5.

5 Bake for 12–15 minutes until they are golden brown.

6 Heat together the milk and sugar for the glaze, and brush it over the hot buns, then strew the crushed sugar cubes and caraway seeds over the top.

Bath Cakes Rub half a pound of butter into a pound of flour, and one spoonful of good barm. Warm some cream and make it into a light paste, set it to the fire to rise. When you make them up take four ounces of caraway comfits, work part of them in and strew the rest on the top. Make them into round cakes the size of a French roll. Bake them on sheet tins and send them in hot for breakfast.

ELIZABETH RAFFALD, THE EXPERIENCED ENGLISH HOUSEKEEPER, 1769

MEAL TIMES

As the middle classes or “middling sort” began to grow more numerous in Georgian times, one of the ways that the gentry sought to distinguish themselves was by taking later meal times, particularly dinner.

People rose between 6 and 8 a.m., but breakfast for the leisured classes was taken at 9 or 10 a.m., or later. Jane wrote letters before breakfast or, in Bath, went shopping. In Pride and Prejudice, when the note is delivered with news of Jane’s illness, Elizabeth walks three miles or so after her own breakfast, to find the Netherfield party still at theirs.

“Morning” was the time up to dinner when callers would be offered a little something, such as cold meat or cake. Miss Bates, always generous, hopes Emma and Harriet will have “sweet-cake from the beaufet” when they call on her. Lunch or luncheon (or “noonshine” as Jane and others sometimes called it) was generally a thing of the Victorian future when dinner had moved to the evening from the afternoon; but it might be taken by travelers. When Kitty and Lydia meet Elizabeth and Jane returning from London, at the George Inn, Lydia says “we treated the other three with the nicest cold luncheon in the world” (although the elder sisters paid.)

Ladies might take about an hour (or, in the case of Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst, an hour and a half) to change before dinner. The ridiculous Mr. Collins tells Elizabeth not to worry about dressing up for dinner with Lady Catherine: “I would advise you merely to put on whatever of your clothes is superior to the rest,” as “She likes to have the distinction of rank preserved.” Men would also dress for dinner, particularly if they had been out shooting or hunting. In The Watsons, Mrs. Robert Watson chides her husband for not putting fresh powder in his hair, nor making “some alteration in your dress before dinner when you are out visiting”.

Your dinner time was a statement of how traditional or fashionable you saw yourself, although it grew later for everybody around the turn of the century. In December 1798, Jane wrote from Steventon to Cassandra at Godmersham: “We dine now at half after three, & have done dinner I suppose before you begin—We drink tea at half after six. —I am afraid you will despise us.” But by 1805, she dined at four or five o’clock. Mrs. Dashwood dines at a comfortable four o’clock at Barton Cottage, whereas General Tilney prefers six o’clock and the Bingley-Hurst household, anxious to distance themselves from the “trade” source of their fortune, dine at 6:30 p.m.

Tea, coffee, and cake were taken an hour or so after dinner, once the gentlemen had joined the ladies from the dining room. A rural party would amuse itself with cards, music, or even dancing, whereas those in town might go to the theatre, before taking supper some time between 9 p.m. and midnight. Supper might be anything from bread and cheese, or some cold leftovers, such as apple tart, to a complete meal of a few freshly-cooked “made” dishes, such as those the old-fashioned Mr. Woodhouse liked to offer his guests. Jane’s niece Anna “had a delightful Even’ with the Miss Middletons—Syllabub, Tea, Coffee, Singing, Dancing, a Hot Supper, eleven o’clock, everything that can be imagined agreable.” (Jane to Cassandra, Friday 31 May 1811). A ball supper would be even later: “We began at 10, supped at 1, & were at Deane before 5.” (Jane to Cassandra, November 20 1800).

In Persuasion, Elizabeth Elliot knows she should ask Mrs. Musgrove’s party to dine with them, “but she could not bear to have the difference of style, the reduction of servants, which a dinner must betray,” and convinces herself that giving dinners was old-fashioned, country hospitality. And who can blame her? A hostess whose guests stayed the whole evening would have to provide not just a dinner of several dishes, and several servants to wait on them, but another two whole meals. Entertaining was a serious, and expensive, business.

ENGLISH MUFFINS

Mr. Woodhouse comments on Emma passing the muffins to her guests an overattentive (and indigestible) twice. Muffins were also served with after-dinner tea in Pride and Prejudice and in The Watsons. Traditionally they were toasted front and back (not in the middle) and pulled (not cut) apart around the waist and, of course, laden with butter.

Makes 12 muffins

1 lb/450g strong bread flour

¼ oz/7g sachet active dried yeast

1 tsp salt (optional—not in original, but we find yeast buns very bland without it)

2 tbsp/25g butter

Generous 1¼ cups/280ml milk

1 egg

1 Mix the yeast and salt, if using, into the flour and make a well in the center. Warm the butter in the milk until it melts. Beat the egg, and pour into the center of the flour; add the milk, and draw the flour in from the edges until you have a dough.

2 Knead it on a floured surface until it is smooth, then return the dough to the bowl, cover it with a clean dish (tea) towel and leave to rise in a warm place until double in size—about 45–60 minutes. Punch out the air and make the dough into a flat cake about ⅜ inch/1cm high on a floured board, and cut out circular cakes with a cookie (biscuit) cutter. Let them rise again in a warm place on a lightly floured baking sheet for half an hour. Heat a griddle or heavy-based frying pan with very little oil or lard, and griddle them for 8–10 minutes each side on low to medium heat.

Muffins Mix two pounds of flour with two eggs, two ounces of butter melted in a pint of milk, and four or five spoonfuls of yeast; beat it thoroughly, and set it to rise two or three hours. Bake on a hot hearth, in flat cakes. When done on one side turn them. Note: Muffins, rolls, or bread, if stale, may be made to taste new, by dipping in cold water, and toasting, or heating in an oven, or Dutch oven, till the outside be crisp.

MRS. RUNDELL, A NEW SYSTEM OF DOMESTIC COOKERY, 1806

SALLY LUNNS

Sally Lunns were warm and golden bread cakes, eaten at breakfast with butter or clotted cream—even more extravagant than the rich French bread that General Tilney served. Legend has it that they were named after their inventor, Solange Luyon, a French Huguenot refugee who worked at a bakery in Bath.

Makes 6 cakes

¼ oz/7g sachet active dried yeast

2 tbsp superfine (caster) sugar

2 eggs plus optional extra egg white for glazing

Generous 1¼ cups/280ml cream or milk

1 lb/450g strong bread flour

1 tsp salt (optional — not in original, but we find yeast buns very bland without it)

Butter or clotted cream, to serve

1 Blend the yeast with the sugar and beat it thoroughly with the eggs and cream. Sift in the flour and salt, if using, to make a dough that is smooth, but not sticky (add a little milk if it feels too dry.)

2 Knead it on a floured surface for about 10 minutes until it feels elastic. Put it back in the bowl, cover with a clean dish towel (tea towel) and let it rise for 1½ hours.

3 Punch the air out of the dough and divide it into 6 cakes (you may find it helpful to flour your hands.) Lay the cakes on a greased baking sheet.

4 Cover and let them rise again until double in size—30 minutes to 1 hour.

5 Preheat the oven to 400°F/200°C/Gas Mark 6. Glaze them with egg white or milk if you fancy it, and bake for 12–15 minutes.

6 Serve with butter or clotted cream.

Note: Margaret Dods warms a little saffron in the milk or cream to improve the color, but organic eggs with good orangey yellow yolks should make them properly golden.

Sally Lunn Cakes Make them as French bread, but dissolve some sugar in the hot milk. Mould into the form of cakes. A little saffron boiled in the milk enriches the colour of these or any other cakes.

MARGARET DODS, THE COOK AND HOUSEWIFE’S MANUAL, 1826

CHOCOLATE TO DRINK

Chocolate wasn’t yet eaten as a solid sweet, but, like cocoa, taken as a drink, luxurious enough to be served at a wedding breakfast Jane attended. It was grated from a solid block and gadget-lovers such as the General would have had a special chocolate mill to give it a fine froth—quite a palaver as the original recipe shows!

3½ oz/100g bittersweet (plain) good-quality chocolate (70% cocoa solids)

1¾ cups/400ml milk or milk and light (single) cream

1 Chop the chocolate into very small pieces or, even better, grate it into a mixing bowl.

2 Warm the milk or milk and cream to just below boiling point, then turn off the heat.

3 Whisk in the chocolate.

4 Serve in coffee cups or small teacups.

Chocolate Those who use much of this article, will find the following mode of preparing it both useful and economical:Cut a cake of chocolate in very small bits; put a pint of water into the pot, and when it boils, put in the above; mill it off the fire until quite melted, then on a gentle fire till it boils; pour it in a basin, and it will keep in a cool place eight or ten days, or more. When wanted, put a spoonful or two into milk, boil it with sugar, and mill it well. This, if not made thick, is a very good breakfast or supper.

MRS. RUNDELL, A NEW SYSTEM OF DOMESTIC COOKERY, 1806

Scotch Orange Marmalade

Each 1 lb of oranges requires 1 1