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Drink and Meal Recipes for an
Following her husband through various garrisons
in Upper Canada, Louisa Kingsmill in 1845 put her pen to work recording
recipes collected from fellow officer wives or popular cookbooks.
Her husband’s regiment was the Royal Canadian Rifles. The unit
was composed of British veterans.
Many senior officers and captains served in the Peninsular war
and some “Waterloo men”, while the subalterns were mostly youthful
Canadians. Louisa’s recipe
book captures the culinary influences on an officer’s mess. Drink Recipes
While stationed at Fort
Malden in Amherstburg (Canada West), the lieutenant’s wife documented a
drink recipe unique to one regiment. This is rare.
It was not until the Crimean War did regimental drink recipes
become better known. The
recipe is called the “34th
Regiment’s Cold Punch”.
Louisa received this recipe from Mrs Cox.
It appears Louisa made an error when recording the regiment this
recipe belonged to. Mrs Cox’s
husband, Lieutenant Francis Hawtrey Cox, served in the 39th
Regiment of Foot in the 1830s, not the 34th:
Take 2 dozen Lemons, peel them and step the rinds in two
quarts of Rum for twelve hours – add two Quarts Brandy – the juice of
two dozen lemons – 3 ½ pounds of loaf sugar, six quarts of cold water
and two quarts of boiling new milk.
The similarities to the
Another drink recipe of note was from the wife of Captain Pillpotts
Taylor. The irony is Captain
Taylor was a bit of prude when it came to social etiquette and decency.
For example, while attending a fellow officer’s wedding in
Amherstburg in 1845, Taylor remarked: “The groom was a jolly ensign of
our regiment who took his bride home to barracks within an hour of the
ceremony… he is however a Canadian and knows no feeling of delicacy.”
Pare thin 6 oranges, 6 lemons, steep the peels, in a bottle of
Rum or Brandy, a mixture is best. Stop close 24 hours. Squeeze the fruit
in two lbs sugar. Add 4 Quarts of cold water and one of new milk boiling
hot. Stir the Rum into the
above. Let it stand after being well stirred until it curdles. Run it
through a jelly bag until clear. Bottle and cork immediately.
Other drink recipes in this manuscript appear
to have been copied from printed cookbooks dating between 1817 and 1845.
These included how to make curacao, mock arrack (also known as
“rack punch” or “Vauxhall punch”), spruce beer[2],
and a concoction of beer, wine, and brandy.
What stands out is the vast quantities of sugar being deployed in
each recipe. Sweet drinks are not
a modern invention.
Food Recipes
Like the drinks, many of the food recipes recorded by Louisa can be
traced to cookbooks of the time.
One cookbook’s influence stands out above the rest.
First published in 1817, Dr William Kitchiner’s The Cook’s
Oracle was a best seller in both the United Kingdom and North
America. This recipe book &
cooking manual was repeatedly published and expanded into the 1860s.
Any culinary journey into late Regency or early Victorian society
begins with The Cook’s Oracle.
Applying a pseudo
scientific method, Kitchiner attempted to unlock the secrets of the
culinary art and lay them bare for the cooking novice to see.
All the recipes he prepared himself were based on the virtues of
“cleanliness, frugality, nourishment, and palateableness.”
Each Tuesday evening at his home, a “Committee of Taste”
separated Kitchiner’s culinary successes from his failures. It appears
the Cook’s Oracle was years in the making.[3]
In her collection of forty-six
recipes, Louisa borrows a dozen from Kitchiner. Many are sauces,
instructions on how to make certain ingredients, and this salad
dressing:
2 eggs, 12 minutes, put in cold water. Cut fine with a
tablespoonful of cream, 2 tablespoonful oil or melted butter, add by
degrees a teaspoonful of powdered sugar or salt. The same of made
mustard, add very gradually 3 tablespoonsful of vinegar. Let this sauce
remain at the bottom of the bowl until the salad is about to be eaten.
A good sauce for cold meat, celery, and cucumber.
While many recipes come from printed cookbooks, some appear to be the
creations of those sharing with Louisa. One
example is the “sauce for wild fowl” given to Louisa by Captain George
Talbot of the 43rd
Light Infantry:
A glass of Port, ½ tsp. Mushroom Catsup, ¼ of a teaspoon
Cayenne pepper, an anchovy, 3 Eschalots chopped small, juice of ½ a
lemon or an equal quantity of vinegar.
An easy recipe to try from this manuscript is the macaroni dish:
Simmer the Macaroni in milk and when quite tender mix two
ounces of salt butter, put grated cheese into a dish and then a layer of
Macaroni – begin and end with cheese and on top strew sifted bread.
Brown in a dutch oven.
The bread is fine white flour. One
contemporary cook book[4]
suggests the cheese be parmesan or stilton.
To end, here is Louisa’s own variation on an “Italian Salad”. Bon
appetit!
Roast two fowls or a small Turkey. Cutt off all the white meat
and chop but not too fine.
Boil a salt Tongue and skin and chop up the lean. Boil blood beet and
skin and chop up into small dice. Cut up three or four sticks of good
sized celery into small bits. Mix the white meat and brown together and
add two thirds their bult of beetroot to them.
Then add the celery to the whole and stir together. When about to
use, pour over the ingredients the following:
Italian salad sauce:
1 pint of fresh cream
Pound fine the yolks of eggs, put the mustard to it, then the
oil, then the vinegar gradually after which add the cream to which the
oil and vinegar are amalgamated.
The remainder of the Fowl, Tongue,
will made a good salad for family use with a simple salad dressing.
[1]
This recipe in turn is very similar to the drink “Eau de Vie”
found in the The New London Cookery (London, 1827).
[2]
Spruce beer had changed significantly compared to a hundred
years earlier. By
Victorian times it was made with molasses and flavoured with
essence of spruce.
More on mid-18th century spruce beer
found here.
[3]
At least one of Kitchiner’s recipes, “Gallon of Barley Broth”,
dates to 1810.
[4]
Margaret Dods, The Cook and Housewife’s Manual, Third
Edition (Edinburgh, 1828). Select Bibliography ------ The Servant's Guide and Family Manual (London, 1830) Margaret Dods, The Cook and Housewife's Manual. 3rd Edition (Edinburgh, 1828) Lady, The New London Cookery. (London, 1827) Louisa Kingsmith, Receipt Book, 1845. (in the Fort Malden National Historic Site collection 80.23.2) William Kitchener, Apicius Redivivus or The Cook's Oracle. (London, 1817) William Kitchener, The Cook's Oracle (London, 1821) Editions consulted: 1822, 1827,1830, 1836 , 1845, 1863.
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