Carrot Pudding

This was a fun one. I started out browsing Cooking in the Archives looking for a vegetable side dish. I ended up settling on a carrot pudding that they did a write-up for a while back. But the original recipe was damaged and there were a few words at the edge of the page that had become illegible. Here is a transcription:

To make Carrot Pudding
Take Six Carrots not to large Boyle them well & as many pip[pins]
w^th y^e juce of one Lemon & four Sugar Rouls Beat them very
well in a Marble Mortor Mix with these a pint of Cream
& three Eggs Sweeten it to your tast Bake it in a Dish w^th pa[xxx]
& put in Cittern & Candid Oringe

The recipe looks pretty straight-forward overall, but not knowing what that missing word was was driving me nuts! The ladies over at Cooking in the Archives transcribed it as "pu[xxx]", but after staring at it for a while I started wondering if the second letter might actually be an "a" and the missing word might be "paste" -- as in "pastry".

I ended up calling in TM's help on this one. After staring at it for a while and comparing it to similar recipes, the best guesses we could come up with were either some sort of crust or some sort of fat. (We looked at another early modern carrot pudding recipe that called for a large quantity of melted butter to be added to the custard just before baking.)

I think this pudding would work nicely as a sort of tart or pie. It's basically a carrot custard and we put pumpkin custard into pie shells all the time! I think it would make a lovely pie. That said, I ended up making it without the crust this time. Mostly because six carrots, six apples, three eggs, and nearly half a litre of cream makes A LOT of custard and I didn't want to deal with either a stupidly huge pie or lots of smaller ones. So I just did one big, crustless pudding this time around. I think it would be fun to experiment with combining this custard with different pastries though. My go-to would probably be shortcrust, but I think a nice flaky/rough puff could also be nice.

I really enjoyed the citrus flavours with the carrots in this. Honestly, it was really good just as it was. But it could also be interesting to try adding different spices. Cinnamon and orange came up in other early modern recipes. And, although I didn't see any that called for ginger, I think that would also be really nice.

TM also pointed out that it's possible that the "sugar rouls" in this recipe are meant to be fresh breadcrumbs or something similar rather than sugarloaves as I'd originally assumed. And, based on what seems to have been the typical size of a sugarloaf -- 3-5 lbs. -- I think TM probably had it right. Four 3-lb. sugarloaves would be an insane amount of sugar. I ended up using 200g of sugar for my pudding. And, based on similar recipes (and my tastebuds), 100-225g seems to be about right for this amount of carrots. I think it'd be interesting to try it with breadcrumbs at some point, but I was really feeling the custard-y approach today, so I left out the starch this go 'round.

Carrot Pudding (Custard-y)

Adapted from Ms. Codex 631 [Recipe Book] by Judeth Bedingfield

Ingredients

• 6 carrots
• 6 apples
• juice of 1 lemon
• 200g sugar
• 2 c. table (18%) cream¹
• 3-4 eggs²
• 40-50g candied citron and/or orange peel and/or mixed peel

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F) and grease a casserole dish.
2. Peel and chop the carrots and apples and place them in a pot with enough water to cover them.
3. Bring to a boil and cook until very tender.
4. Drain and purée the carrots and apples.³
5. Blend in the lemon juice, sugar, cream, and eggs.
6. Pour the custard into the prepared dish and sprinkle in the citron/orange.
7. Bake at 180°C (350°F) for ~2 hours or until just set.

---

¹ I ended up using whipping cream (35%) for my pudding, but I think table cream probably would've been more appropriate. ^Back
2 The original recipe only called for three eggs, but that didn't seem like very much egg to set that amount of custard. I had an extra egg white left over from making a pie, so I tossed that in. I'm not confident that it would've set up without the extra white. Some of the other recipes called for even more egg. I think I'd lean toward using four eggs in the future. ^Back
3 I decided to try mashing my carrots and apples this time, just to see how the pudding would come out. It was delicious, but I think it would've been even better with puréed custard for a smoother texture. ^Back

Rice Pudding (Early Modern -- with Flour)

I was craving dessert last night but I didn't want more tiramisu and we didn't have anything else easily to hand. At first I was thinking of making some sort of hot chocolate but, as usual, I wandered off on a bit of a tangent. I went from hot chocolate to possets to pudding and eventually settled on rice pudding as an appropriate midnight snack.

I found that Cooking in the Archives had done a couple of rice pudding recipes. One that pretty closely resembles a lot of the modern European rice puddings that I've seen: rice, cream, sugar, cinnamon, egg... The only major differences were that the early modern recipe contained no vanilla (which I would normally expect to see in a modern rice pudding) and did contain a few ingredients that would now be considered unusual, exotic, or down-right weird: breadcrumbs, rosewater, bone marrow, and ambergris.

That recipe sounded pretty interesting -- and I probably will give it a try at some point (minus the ambergris) -- but for now I focused my attention on the other rice pudding recipe. It looked very different from any modern rice pudding recipes I've seen (European or otherwise). Mostly because it called for rice flour rather than whole rice grains. It also called for a lot more eggs and butter than I'm used to.

In the end it came out almost like a flan (minus the caramel, of course). It was wobbly and custardy. Fairly bland, lightly sweet, and went very well with a quick mixed berry compote.

Rice (Flour) Pudding

From Cooking in the Archives

Original Recipe

To Make a Rice Pudding

Take six ounces of rice flower a quart of milk set them over y^e fire & stir them well together while they are thick, then put in half pound of Butter six eggs one nutmeg sweeten to y^r tast, Butter y^r Dish that you bake it in /

Modern Recipe

(Halved from original)

Ingredients

• 85g rice flour
• 2 c. whole (3.25%) milk
• 2 Tbsp. sugar
• 1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
• 3 eggs, beaten

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F) and grease a 23cm (9") pie plate or similar baking dish. (one that won't leak!)
2. Combine the rice flour and milk and cook, stirring constantly, over medium-low heat. I chose to add my sugar at this point as well rather than waiting for the mixture to thicken. Either way is fine.
3. It will seem like nothing's happening for a while and then the mixture should thicken quite suddenly all at once. Remove from heat.
4. Mix in the butter. I chose to do this 1 Tbsp. at a time.
5. Mix in the nutmeg.
6. Mix in the eggs. (I mixed them in one at a time.)
7. Pour the mixture into the prepred pie plate and bake for 40 minutes. It will still seem very jiggly and wobbly, but it should be nicely browned on top.
8. Allow to cool (I definite did not follow this instruction), slice, and serve with your choice of toppings: fresh fruit, jam, compote, whipped cream, etc.

Lemonade

It's been a while since I've made anything from historical recipes and I decided that it was high time. Lemonade seemed like the perfect choice to go with our barbecue this past weekend, so I dug up this post from Cooking in the Archives and had a go.

To Make Lemonade
Boil One Quart of Spring Water, let it stand until it is Milk Warm. Pare five clear Lemons very thin and put the parings in the warm Water. Let it stand all Night, the next Morning strain off the peel thro' a fine Lawn Sieve, Squeeze the juice of the five lemons, Strain it, and put it in the Water, put in Eleven Ounces of double Refined Sugar, One Spoonful of Orange flower water, Mix these well together, it will be fit for use.

Now, Marissa (one of the blog authors) argues that there are two valid interpretations of this recipe based on the two definitions of "pare". It could mean to peel or it could mean to thinly slice. So, she sliced up all her lemons, let them steep in the water, and then tried to press the juice from the slices the next day. Which, I don't think is what the recipe intended at all!

Yes, there are two equally valid definitions of the word "pare". However, context matters! What does "put" mean? Does it mean the same thing when I say "put out the cat" vs. "put out the fire"? Is "putting down my book" the same as "putting down my dog"?

If I say that I am sad because I had to put my dog down, would you think that since "put" has multiple definitions any interpretation that uses one of those definitions would be equally valid? Or would you look at the context and realize that some interpretations make significantly more sense than others?

So, back to the recipe! Yes, in isolation "pare five lemons" could mean either "peel" or "slice", but when the recipe later talks about straining off the peel, I feel that the ambiguity is removed. The fact that it says to "squeeze the juice of the five lemons" rather than "squeeze the juice from the parings" or "slices" or some variation thereof is also telling.

I love the Cooking in the Archives blog and I'm thrilled that they're sharing all these wonderful recipes, but I am somewhat disappointed in the lack of critical thinking on display with this one.

Anyway, enough of my griping and complaints! Let's talk about the actual lemonade! This is a food blog afterall.

I scaled the recipe up a bit since I wanted a nice big pitcher of lemonade to serve to guests. I also scaled back the sugar some since everyone at dinner preferred their lemonade quite tart.

Lemonade
7 lemons
6 c. water
11 oz. (~312g) sugar
1 Tbsp. orange blossom water
sparkling water (to serve)
ice (to serve)

1. Bring the water to a boil. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
2. Meanwhile, peel the lemons with a vegetable peeler, taking off as little of the white pith as possible. Add the peel to the warm water. Allow to stand several hours or overnight.
3. Strain the pieces of peel out of the water.
4. Juice the lemons, strain the juice, and add it to the water.
5. Stir in the sugar and orange blossom water. Adjust sugar to taste.
6. Serve with ice and chilled sparkling water.

The original recipe says nothing of ice or sparkling water or dilution, but Marissa suggested these for serving and I find they make lovely additions! You can, of course, drink the lemonade straight, but it is quite... intense. Very lemony, but I found I actually preferred it mixed about 1:1 with chilled sparkling water. The mild fizz actually enhanced the flavours while making it slightly less lip-puckering and more refreshing.

Desart Cakes

This recipe was just recently posted on Cooking in the Archives. I was intrigued by the absence of either butter or eggs. The recipe seemed very sparse, but Ms. Connell seemed to quite enjoy the crisp cookies it made, so I figured I'd give it a whirl.

I opted not to add the vanilla extract to my cookies as it wasn't called for in the original recipe and wouldn't have been available in the days when the recipe was initially written.

I will agree that these cookies are surprisingly tasty given the simplicity of the recipe. Upon tasting one, TF noted that the caraway seeds were "surprising, but harmonious". That said, I probably won't be making these again. They're tasty, but they just aren't tasty enough.

I will admit that I probably didn't roll my cookies thin enough. I'm used to making soft cookies, rather than crisp ones and was a bit too timid with both the thinness of my dough and the cooking time.