It’s time for a break from writing about Regency midwifery practices (a topic I’ll return to later). Today I want to share with you my March Folly—the Regency dinner party my big-hearted husband and I hosted for a few close friends. I began planning for it by reading John Mollard’s 1802 cookbook: The Art of Cookery Made Easy and Refined, Comprising Ample Directions for Preparing Every Article Requisite for Furnishing the Tables of the Nobleman, Gentleman, and Tradesman.1 My note to the author—Dear John: Cookery made easy? Refined? With ample directions? Ha! You are living in the past, my friend.
March Folly Menu
The March Menu from John Mollard’s 1802 Cookbook1
The dinner was held on March 28th, which led me to choose Mollard’s March menu consisting of three courses. (The image at left is the best I can capture from Mollard’s book.) His first course offered four dishes; the second, seven; and the third, nine, for a total of 20 dishes. Knowing there was no way we could prepare and serve 20 dishes for six people, I chose six dishes: Soup and Boullie [sic] and Soles Fry’d and Boild [sic], the two top dishes in the first course; Harricott or Begetables [sic], Fillet of Pork Roasted, and Potatoes Mashed, the top dish in each column of the second course; and a dessert of Pippins and Rice, the last dish shown at the bottom right-hand corner of Mollard’s menu, my choice from the third course. I added a seventh item—a white caudle—because I had written about caudles and their uses during pregnancy but had never tasted one.
Executive Decisions
Right off the bat I had decisions to make. First, I decided to forgo making one of Mollard’s 14 soups—anyone for mock turtle of calf’s head soup?—and go with the “Boullie.” The Free Dictionary online defines a bouillie as a gruel, as does Reverso. Bouillie d’avoine, for example, is porridge. A Google search eventually yielded a French peasant soup recipe for a bouillie from SparkRecipes, which turned out to be an excellent choice, as can be seen in the photo below. I figure the contemporary recipe was a good match for Mollard’s “boullie,” even though I substituted salt pork for the recipe’s ham hocks.
Bouillie soup made with salt pork and cabbage, based on a recipe from SparkRecipes2 (© 2015 Diane H. Morris)
Next I had to choose between the “Soles Fry’d and Boild” or the “Crimp’d Cods Head.” What the heck is a crimped cod? Come to find out, crimping is a particularly English style of torture in which fish are cut alive to make their flesh firm. So, another executive decision was made: no crimped fish, no fried fish and no soles (which I could not obtain locally). The recipe for “Entrée of Soles” is given below:
Mollard’s Recipe for Entrée of Soles
Let good-sized soles be cleaned and filletted; roll them up, put them into a stew pan, add a little fresh butter, lemon juice, pepper, and salt, and simmer them over a slow fire till done. Serve them up with sauce over, made of button onions, mushrooms, egg balls, pickle cucumbers scooped round, slices of sweetbreads, and good strong cullis colored with lobster spawn.
Of course I had questions: What are egg balls? Why is there no recipe for the sauce of button onions and mushrooms? Can I forgo the sweetbreads and still be said to cook an authentic Regency dish? What is a cullis and do I have to use it? Can I substitute caviar for lobster spawn? Does a gas range qualify as a “slow fire”?
Other issues arose as I studied the menu and ingredients. I needed to be flexible and practical while trying to adhere as closely as possible to Mollard’s recipes. There were decisions to make at every turn.
A Classic (?) Regency Recipe for Egg Balls
Recipe for egg balls from John Mollard’s 1802 Cookbook1
I had never heard of egg balls, but they were required for the fish dish. The recipe (shown at right) looks fairly straightforward. Hmm. For a 21st-century gal used to detailed instructions and online cooking videos, this recipe looked like something my grandmothers would understand. How much flour should I add? What consistency was I aiming for? What liquid should they be boiled in? How many egg balls did the recipe make? Questions, questions.
I made the egg balls using my best guesses and simmered them in chicken broth. After our guests arrived and we passed around teacups of caudle and glasses of wine, we talked and laughed the way friends do, with the result that I forgot to take a picture of the simmering egg balls. The photo below shows the prepared “Soles Boild” recipe. A single egg ball sits near the 9 o’clock position on the plate. The black dab next to it is caviar. The pickled cucumbers and vegetables sit on the north side; the stewed scrod toward the south.
Stewed fish with pickled vegetables and one egg ball, from Mollard’s 1802 cookbook (©2015 Diane H. Morris)
I’m no food stylist, as you can see for yourself, but the dish was surprisingly good. Since Mollard’s cookbook didn’t have a recipe for an onion and mushroom sauce, I used his pickling recipe to make pickled cucumbers with pearl onions and mushrooms. We gave the pickled vegetables and fish a five-star rating. The egg balls got two stars, mainly because they didn’t have much flavor.
Up later this month: More tales of lessons learned when cooking from a Regency-era cookbook. And more photos of the final products. Altogether the food was very good and the company delightful!
Source:
1Mollard, John. The Art of Cookery Made Easy and Refined, Comprising Ample Directions for Preparing Every Article Requisite for Furnishing the Tables of the Nobleman, Gentleman, and Tradesman (London, 1802), pp. 83, 94 (PDF pp. 36, 28, 39).
2SparkRecipes at recipes.sparkpeople.com