The Tudor Kitchen Again

This course on preserving food in the 16th century was just for one day, there were eight of us again including one of the young men,Chris, who was on the Bakehouse course. I was really pleased to see him again because he was so enthusiastic and willing to have a go at things. Preserving food was far more than an engaging pastime in the 16th century, it was vital to the survival of families through the hard winter months, especially the lean months before the new seasons crops in the garden became available. The main methods were salting, smoking, pickling and using sugar to make preserves. Ruth spent some time talking to us about the various methods and also about life in general during this period, then we made a start on the practical side of things. There were three things going on at once, my partner and I were pickling shallots,another group pickled beetroot and the third lot salted and brined kale leavesand stalks. We had to prepare our spiced vinegar, deciding which spices we would use then putting it in the fire to boil up while we peeled the shallots. No measuring jugs of course so we had to decide by eye how much vinegar we would need - we got it wrong first time and had to prepare a second lot as well! By the way, when I say we put the pot of vinegar IN the fire to boil I do mean that quite literally, it isn't a typing error! These are my finished pickled shallots.


All these processes are time consuming and so by the time it was all finished it was lunch time. It was nice enough to sit outside by the lake and enjoy the sunshine and the lovely scenery. We were joined by a group of mallard anxious to assist with any leftovers!
In the afternoon we moved on to salting and drying or smoking fish, sousing a piece of pork, doing spiced beef and finally making a sweetmeat with quinces which is rather like a fruit jelly when it's finally finished.
Again we split into groups so I didn't have anything to do with the spiced beef but I gather that it is first rubbed with salt and the dry spice or spices of your choice - pepper,cinnamon and ginger were among the possibilities but it is a purely personal choice.It's then put in a bowl with a heavy weight on top to press out as much liquid as possible. While this is going on you boil the wine vinegar and then leave it to go cold. The liquid from the pressed meat is poured off, the cold vinegar poured over,weights put on again and there you are. Two of us did soused pork which is a short term method and will keep the pork for maybe two or three weeks. We prepared our spiced vinegar first(we used rosemary, thyme and ginger) and left it to go cold after it had boiled. Meantime the pork is washed in vinegar or rubbed all over with salt then put in a dish and covered and weighted down like the beef and from then on the process is the same. This is the pork just before the weights were put on.



This is cod which has been rubbed with salt and laid over sticks to drain as much liquid as possible off, eventually they will be hung in a part of the kitchen with good air flow and away from the smokiness of the fire and they will dry out completely. The finished object looks highly unappetizing!



Oily fish take smoking much better than other kinds so that is what we did with the mackerel - heads were cut off and then the backbone removed before they were put in a very strong brine to soak.



After soaking they each had a hole poked in the end and a piece of string threaded through with which they were tied onto a long stick varying the lengths so that the fish would smoke evenly without getting in each others way. Then they were strung up in the corner by the fire in the same place that bacon and hams were hung.


Large pieces of pork are salted every day for a week and left to drain, turning them each day. Then they are salted once a week for 6 weeks before eventually being put up in the rafters over the fire to smoke.

While all this was going on the quinces which we had peeled and prepared immediately after lunch were cooking away in their pot on the fire along with the peel and cores tied up in muslin. When they were done the pieces of fruit were taken out of the liquid and pounded to a paste in a huge iron mortar and pestle and the contents of the muslin bag discarded. The paste was returned to the liquid along with half the volume of water in sugar (still with me here I hope!). This is all done by eye of course - no measuring jugs in those days. This never actually got finished because of the time element but would have been boiled up again next day and finished by whoever was volunteering in the Tudor kitchen. When it's ready it is ladled out out onto boards and spread and left to cool.Then it is turned regularly over a period of time until sugar crystals form.Then it can be stored for up to 3 or 4 years or eaten straight away. It's a luxury item of course, only a rich household would be able to afford the sugar to make it and it would be kept for high days and holidays. As a matter of fact I've made this before on another course using damsons and the end result is very good.



This final photograph is at the end of the day, the jug is filled with water and weighing down the soused pork, the wooden bucket (which is very heavy)is weighing down the spiced beef and the figure to the side is Chris testing the quinces to see how they taste! Very good according to him. This was the most enjoyable course I've done yet at the Weald & Downland, I really felt I'd learnt a lot that was new to me.

Sorry the photos aren't that great, as before the low light level in the kitchen doesn't help and also I seem not to have taken many this time, must have been too occupied actually doing stuff!

A Tudor Kitchen

At last I'm getting to the final part of my visit to Sussex and, as I'm fighting off a migraine, this is likely to be fairly short and sweet but I want to get it done before I go again next week for another course, this time on preserving food in Tudor times. Fortunately I kept a journal of sorts otherwise I'd be struggling to remember what happened by now!. The photographs will be mostly of the Weald and Downland Museum as the ones I took inside Winkhurst kitchen of the breadmaking etc turned out very badly, there is no electric light, only the light from the door and tiny windows plus candles and I'm not a good enough photographer yet to make the right adjustments.


There were eight of us doing the Tudor Bakehouse course, four men and four women. It's very unusual to get an even balance like that, usually there are only one or two men at most. The men were very useful as they did all the playing with fire to get the oven heated up and had a thoroughly good time doing it. Did their masculine egos no end of good as we ladies looked on admiringly! In the morning we made just plain household bread using flour as it would have come from the miller ie wholemeal - really wholemeal which makes a very solid and filling loaf. It's possible to make finer flour by sieving which removes a good portion of the bran but still leaves what we would consider a wholemeal flour and then it's possible to boult it which is incredibly hard work.The wholemeal flour is rubbed through a muslin cloth using a large wooden ladle and it takes forever to produce quite a small amount of fine white flour. As you can imagine this sort of flour was used only on special occasions and in wealthy households. The photo isn't very clear and was taken on the second day when we were all women, only two of us did both days.
We made bread with two doughs, one left overnight to rise in a cool atmosphere and the other made that morning and using the traditional warm rise.

The overnight rise actually made much nicer bread and I'm going to give that a try in the near future. While the dough was rising the oven was fired up, it took 5 large bundles of sticks to heat it to sufficient temperature to bake bread. When you judge it is hot enough, the fire embers are raked out and the inside is given a quick once over with a damp bundle of rags on a stick and the loaves are loaded in with a paddle. The wooden oven door, which has been soaking in water is then quickly put in place and sealed with a mixture of flour and water mixed to a sort of sticky pastry consistency - my job for this particular time and as I always make my pastry by hand rather than machine I was able to judge the consistency pretty well.The term the 'upper crust' comes from this process as, of course, the bottom of the loaves tends to be rather black fom the residue of the ashes, consequently the bread was sliced horizontally and the wealthy family members got the nice clean upper crust and the servants and also rans got the grotty bits off the bottom - so now you know!






By the time the bread came out of the oven it was time for lunch which we had sitting in the warm sunshine by the lake. Then it was back to the kitchen to prepare dough to make fancy breads, we divided into three groups and one lot made a panettone type dough, another did a herby bread and my group made something similar to Scottish Black Bun - a heavily fruited and spiced dough enclosed in a plain dough case (Black Bun actually has pastry as the outer case). The oven was fired again - more good times for the boys - and the various breads were baked. Of all of them I liked the herb one best, that group had used a lot of fennel among their herbs and as I love the taste of aniseed it really appealed to me. Then came the really hard work as we had to clean all the utensils and scrub the wooden tables using salt as a scourer and a disinfectant.

The next day we made all kinds of pastry and pies. We split into groups again and my partner and I made a bean tart using butter beans as the main ingredient. It neither sounded nor looked particularly appetizing but those who tasted it said it was actually very nice. Other things made were a jam tart, apple dumplings and custard tarts. As on the previous day the oven was fired twice, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. In the afternoon we all made hot water crust pastry which is something I like to eat but have never tried to make before. It was surprisingly easy and I shall certainly have a go at the filling I concocted for mine using apples, raisins, brown sugar and cinnamon topped off with walnuts of butter. Others made savoury fillings using fish and herbs or cheese and onions.Unfortunately the course finished before these had baked so we never got to try the results of our labours. I just know that apple-y/cinnamon thing of mine was good though. It will all have been eaten the following day by volunteers and visitors to the museum.


As I was leaving I took these photographs of Romany caravans and the traditional piebald horses as well as the colourful miniature Romany caravan below , both were part of the preparation for a weekend about Romany people and their way of life. I wish I could have seen that, it must have been fascinating.

OK Bloggger is at it again, it's says it has uploaded photos but they are not appearing. It's been like this since last night so I'm going to publish this now and keep trying to edit the photos in during the day. I'm going to be at home baking and writing letters so I can do it in between things - I hope!

Success! Thanks to those who reminded me about Mozilla Firefox, it's worked the oracle. The photos have all turned out to be of the course after all so I'll put up some of the rest of the Museum tomorrow.

In The GreenValley

I've been so busy the last couple of days that I haven't had time to sit and write, Thursday was one of those days - a real struggle from start to finish though everything worked out in the end, Friday was just busy, busy. Now the weekend stretches ahead of me and hopefully I can write quite a bit. There are all sorts of ideas buzzing round my head. But for now the story of the rest of the weekend in Wales.

On Friday evening the group of 10 plus our leader met for drinks and got to know each other a little before sitting down to an early dinner. Afterwards at around 7pm we moved to a small conference room and Stuart and Gilly arrived in period costume and with great quantities of period clothing of all kinds fom underwear to heavy coats and cloaks. Both were so interesting and so knowledgeable about the subject that I was totally engrossed and was quite startled when another lady, obviously rather less enthralled, remarked that it was 10.30pm and time we were going to bed! I think Stuart could easily have talked on all night really. I could have listened to him as well. Next morning after breakfast we set off in shared cars to the farm which was a few miles outside Chepstow. We eventually stopped near the top of a steep,narrow,winding lane and parked the cars on a small grass verge before walking about half a mile up a track to the farm itself, stopping along the way to speak to the Tamworth pigs in their field. Actually they are a Tamworth/wild boar cross which makes them as close to the pigs of the 1620s as possible. Tamworths are the traditional cottagers pig and my favourite breed,I love their colour and they are usually quite friendly.After gathering in the small yard just by the farmhouse we had a short introduction to the history of the farmhouse and its restoration. Then as it was a hands on weekend we were straight into the various tasks involved in preparing our period style lunch. The open fire was already lit and the first tasks were to set a ham joint to boil in a pot of water over the fire and then put a joint of pork to roast on the spit in front of it.

We then went into the dairy to learn how to make butter, this is something I've always wanted to try. There wasn't room for everyone at once but eventually we all had a go at churning using a wooden churn about two feet high which stood on the table. At first it was easy but as the cream thickened it became really hard work to keep the paddle moving at the slow rythmic pace which was needed. Eventually the texture changed again as the buttermilk started to separate out. Once all the buttermilk was poured off the butter had to be squeezed with paddles to make sure every possible drop of moisture was removed. Then it was back to the kitchen to make bread for the butter to go on.
Of course it isn't possible for eleven people to all make bread at the same time so we split up and some were basting the pork while others were collecting fruits, herbs and salad ingredients from the garden. I collected and chopped the herbs to be rubbed on the gammon joint before it was enclosed in a pastry case and there were gooseberries to be made into a pie. Pastry making was another job to be done but I didn't do that as I was kneading the bread - a really therapeutic thing to do especially as I was able to work outside. So the morning passed with various interesting tasks and eventually the bread was ready to go in the bread oven where Gilly had lit the fire some hours previously so that it would be hot enough. The ashes are raked out as quickly as possible, a quick wipe round with some damp rags tied to a stick and the nine loaves went in before too much heat was lost. The doors consisting of two flat pieces of stone were well sealed with handfuls of wet clay. When the bread was baked the pies went in and while those were baking we made a salad and a sauce for the pork. Then it was time for lunch outside sitting in a shady part of the garden, The pastry - made with wholewheat flour was awful though the contents were good, don't know whther this was the flour or a certain lack of skill on the part of the pastry makers! The bread was pretty good as was the butter and the roast pork and its sauce were absolutely gorgeous and the salad was fantastic - it tasted as good as it looks. It included redcurrants, rose petals, borage flowers, pot marigold petals, raspberries and all sorts of other interesting herbs and leaves from the garden. In the afternoon we were shown the other buildings outside - the stables where the big working horses would be kept and the cow shed/hayloft where the cattle were kept during the winter months and of course the privy. The farm has no electricity, plumbing or water laid on to the site so the toilet facilities consist of the privy - a wooden frame with wattle and daub walls , a thatched roof and a piece of sacking for the door!! It's one thing I didn't take a photo of and I can't think why I didn't. It was actually much better than it sounds. Stuart and Gilly also showed us the garden in detail explaining exactly what is grown in the way of herbs, vegetables, soft fruits etc. Everything that is grown in the garden is true to period including some wonderful red gooseberries and red and white currants.
In the afternoon I'm not that sure what the others were doing but I chose to work in the garden along with a couple of other ladies which was a real pleasure even though it was very full of weeds. Since the people involved with the farm can only go at weekends, and the main task at present is restoration of more of the buildings plus building field walls and laying hedges, the garden tends to be fairly low on the list of priorities. The afternoon was hot and sunny and the farm is far enough off the beaten track that there is no sound whatever of traffic, all you could hear was the buzzing of bees and other insects among the flowers. Absolute bliss! I was very reluctant to stop and return to the hotel but we had pleasant evening chatting about the day's events.

This is the cowshed with the hayloft above it. I love this building.

Here are the stables which stand at a right angle to the farmhouse on the left hand side.
On Sunday morning we returned to the farm for a walk round the orchards and the fields. The hay had recently been cut and was ready for turning so that the underneath which was still damp was flipped over and open to the sun. All the genes of my 'ag lab' ancestors came to the fore and I turned out to be really good at doing it, the little flip with the hay rake came to me easily and I found the slow,rythmic action very therapeutic in much the same way as kneading bread dough.

This is the hay meadow after we had finished turning the hay.

The tour of the orchards was really interesting as all the varieties of fruit that are grown were available in 1620. Some of the old varieties have wonderful names - Cornish Aromatic is a lovely one, and there are Costard apples, Warden pears and Black Worcester pears and there are also damsons, medlars,and quinces. This is a Black Worcester pear, they are apparently very rare now. The fruits would be harvested in the autumn and stored in the apple loft which is one half of the upper storey of the farmhouse. They would need to be checked regularly and any that were going rotten taken out before they could turn the others. Some varieties of apples and pears would last well into the New Year.
It was sad to have to leave such an idyllic place but having been there I can now watch my DVD of Tales From The Green Valley and really know what it is like and, unlike most other people, know exactly were it is!