Veggie Pie, Flaky Pastry, and Colonial Era Vegetarianism

Vegetarian pie - it's what was for dinner in Colonial Australia.

One of the most interesting patterns that has emerged as I collate colonial era recipes is just how many of them don't involve meat.

While there was clearly a prevailing view that meat was pretty good stuff (see the headline "Vegetables Better than Nothing" from an article on working-class vegetarianism I looked at here), I have more entries in the 'vegetables' section of my 'main meals' spreadsheet than I do any other heading, including beef. And by God early Australian colonists loved their beef.

There are no doubt many reasons why people ate vegetable meals in the Colonial era, and not all of them involved personal choice. For a start many people simply couldn't afford meat, or even offal (as you can see in a news report from London here). The situation was better in Australia; but bread, dairy and vegetables were still cheaper than any type of meat - just as they are these days.

Vegetable meals also landed on the Colonial table because of the eating habits of the era. There was a fashion among the Victorian era middle class to eat multiple dishes at each meal, some of which were vegetarian and others meaty. A sample meal plan from Cre Fydd's Family Fare (which provides a year's worth of meal plans for a middle class family and their servants) can  been seen here:



The 'family fare' for January 1st, including the servant's rations ("Kitchen"). Note the number of dishes served at dinner.
 

Lastly, there were some people who chose to eat a purely vegetarian diet on the grounds of health or animal welfare, just as there are today. A summary of the views of the early vegetarian movement in England can be seen in this 1854 letter to the editor of the Freeman's Journal, entitled "Reasons for not eating flesh" (and quite frankly, having my dinner referred to as 'flesh' is a pretty good reason for me).

All of this is to say that I found it unremarkable to see today's first recipe - for a vegetable pie - presented without fanfare in a column of other recipes in an 1897 newspaper.

Vegetarianism, Colonial-style

Of historical interest is the inclusion of mushroom powder in the ingredients list. Mushroom powder is simply ground dehydrated mushrooms, and it was wildly popular as a food additive to give colour and a savoury flavour before the invention of stock powder. You can make mushroom powder from scratch (it is still popular among preppers), or you can put a little bag of dried porcinis through your coffee grinder or blender (which is what I did). Any leftover mushroom powder will sit quite happily in a sealed jar for about as long as the mushrooms would have in their unground state.

Now, on to the pastry. The pie recipe specifies only that you should "cover with pastry", and leaves the rest up to the reader. I took this as an opportunity to double down with my recipe testing and have a go at a recipe entitled "Flaky Pastry", which produces what we would call these days a rough puff. The recipes makes significantly more pastry than is required to make a lid for a single pie, so you can divide it as you see fit, or use the leftover pastry to make some croissants and scrolls. You probably only need one guess as to what I chose to do.

So what was the result when I combined these two recipes? Well, the filling was great, with a thick, mysteriously savoury gravy (thanks to the powdered mushrooms). And the pastry? Well, the pastry was a writhing mass of bubbling butter and flaky crust. If I'd been driving a team of oxen all day and was huddled around a small campfire in the cold bush night, I'm sure it would have hit the spot. But in my humble opinion, there are very, very few people in modern Australia who need that much butter at dinner. Next time I make this pie filling (and there will be a next time), I'll just whip up my usual shortcrust.

Here is the original recipe for the pie filling (the pastry recipe is below):

Vegetable Pie.-Stew together until tender 1 onion, 1 carrot, 1 turnip, a stick of celery, a small cupful of green   peas, a teaspoonful of sago or tapioca, loz. butter, and seasoning of pepper and salt, with just enough water to prevent burning. All the vegetables should be cut into small pieces; put all into a pie dish, cover with pastry, and bake till the crust is nicely cooked. A little mushroom powder is a great improve- ment.

VEGETARIAN RECIPES. (1897, October 30). Launceston Examiner (Tas. : 1842 - 1899), p. 3. Retrieved January 19, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article39702652


Good Old Fashioned Australian Vegetarian Pie

Ingredients

1 tablespoon butter
1 onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 turnip, diced
1 stick of celery, diced
½ a cup of green peas
2 teaspoons ground dried porcini mushrooms
1 teaspoon arrowroot (tapioca flour)
Pepper and salt, to season
Puff Pastry (see note)
1 egg, beaten

Cooking Time

1 hour, but the filling can be made in advance at any time of the day

Yield

4 serves

Method

Melt the butter in a saucepan, and add the onions, carrot, turnip and celery.
Sautee over medium heat for a few minutes, without allowing the vegetables to brown, until the onion is translucent.
Add the peas and dried mushrooms, cover with water, and cook until the vegetables are tender.
Add the arrowroot (dissolved in a few spoons of water) to thicken the cooking liquid into a sauce.
Put the filling into a pie dish, and cover with pastry. Here is some ideas about fancy things you can do with your pie crust. At a bare minimum, pierce it with a fork a few times, and brush it with an egg wash.
Bake at 200C until the pastry is golden brown (about 20 minutes).

Note: Feel free to use a sheet of pre-made puff pastry. The incredible prevalence of advertisements for convenience foods in Colonial era newspapers has convinced me that most Victorian era housewives would have jumped at the chance to buy puff pastry ready made. If you're feeling particularly historically-authentic (or masochistic) try the recipe below which is a 'rough puff' (a puff pastry made in one go).


Here is the original recipe for 'Flaky Pastry':

FLAKY PASTRY.-Take 1lb. of flour, 1/4lb. of butter, and a sufficient quantity of cold spring water. Make a moderately soft flexible dough then roll in 1/2lb. of dry fresh butter. The flour should be perfectly dry, and the butter free from water or buttermilk. The dough should be made with a light hand, and in a cool apartment; and the paste should be baked in a moderately smart but not too hot an oven.

RECIPES. (1870, October 29). The Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946), p. 7. Retrieved August 22, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article138067741

Flaky Pastry for Hardy Cooks

Ingredients

450g flour
110g butter
Enough water to bring the dough together
225g butter

Cooking Time

30 minutes (can be made ahead of time)

Yield

Lots. You will have more than enough for the pie crust above, and a tray of pastries:

Scrolls and croissants. Yum!

If the idea of a great volume of puff pastry doesn't float your boat (which I find highly unlikely seeing as you're reading this blog), you can divide the above recipe by 4 and make just enough for your pie crust.

Method

Combine the flour and 110g butter and work until it has the consistency of breadcrumbs.
Add a few tablespoonfuls of water until the dough comes together. It should be soft and flexible. Stop stop kneading as soon as it reaches this point.
Roll the dough out as large as you can on your bench. Slice the remaining 225g butter thinly. Put a few pieces of the butter on half of your pastry, fold it over, and roll it back out. Continue thus until you’ve used up all the butter.
You can now use the pastry immediately, or keep it in the fridge for a day or the freezer for a month.
But really, you're going to use it straight away, aren't you?

What did you use your leftover pastry for, cookery friends?

"The Horror, The Horror" Vegetable Stew; and What Rich People Think the Poor Should Eat

Despite having a truly chef-worthy name, Adolphe Smith (the author of today's recipe) was not a cook. In fact, he was an early radical socialist whose best known work was the written element of the photojournalism book Street Life in London (1877), which offered the middle classes an insight into just how grim poverty could be.



"The Old Clothes of St Giles." Or, where poor people bought their clothes.
Street Life in London (Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, London, 1877) by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith, http://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/collections/streetlifeinlondon
 

So why, in 1870, was Smith writing to the Food Journal with an article on vegetarian recipes?

Well, like many middle class people before and after him, Smith wanted to help the poor, and he thought a good place to start would be to address the fact that they obstinately wouldn't feed themselves nutritious food.

"To remedy these evils [poor nutrition among those living in poverty], good teachers and willing pupils are wanted: but in England the poor decidedly object to learn, and no one has had the courage to attempt to teach them."  

Vegetables Better than Nothing. (1870). Food Journal, 1, 125-125. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=1XgBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA524&dq=food+journal+1870&hl=en&sa=X#v=onepage&q=%22undoubtedly%20great%20sustenance%22&f=false

It all rather reminds me of that classic bully move, where the bully hits their victim with their own fist, while saying "Stop hitting yourself!". Yes, poor people, "Stop starving yourself!"

In any case, after some half-baked political theories Smith goes on to offer three vegetarian recipes, which form the portion of the Food Journal article that were excerpted in the Melbourne Leader later in 1870.



'The Horror, The Horror' Vegetable Stew.
I fed this to my toddler and she looked like she had feasted on the blood of her enemies.

Today, we turn to the first of the three recipes, root vegetable stew (or, 'A Medley of Out-of-Season Vegetables You Can't Afford'). The first defining characteristic of this recipe is the sheer variety of vegetables involved. And as anyone who has ever been poor knows, 'variety' is the watchword of frugal eating. The second defining characteristic of the recipe is beetroot, so consider yourself warned.

Here is the original recipe, as it appeared in the Leader:

COOKING VEGETABLES.— For a cheap; yet tasty and substantial dish let me suggest that the housewife grate two carrots, two turnips, one parsnip, a little beetroot and artichoke, into one   pint of split- peas, boiled in two quarts of soft water for two hours. The whole might then be boiled with three teaspoonfuls of Indian, wheaten,   or Scotch meal, mixed in cold: water, leaving it to simmer for two hours more ; a little parsley, mint, and thyme will flavour the dish. More     water might be added if necessary. This some what complicated : ' hodge-podge' would well satisfy a middle-class family, and cost less, at     any rate, than a joint. It would not do, perhaps, every day, but might occasionally save the   meat, and avoid the horror, of stinting at dinner.

RECIPES. (1870, September 3). Leader (Melbourne, Vic. : 1862 - 1918), p. 5. Retrieved August 18, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article196691504

Ingredients

1 large carrot

1 turnip

1 small parsnip

1 small beetroot

1 small artichoke

250g split peas

1.5l water

2 T cornflour

¼ cup chopped parsley

¼ cup chopped mint

A few springs of thyme

Cooking Time

2 and a half hours, most of which will not require your presence.

Yield

4 serves filling enough to get you through a cold night on the streets of Victorian London

Method

Grate all the vegetables, and put them in a large saucepan with the split peas and water. A food processor with a grater attachment makes quick work of this – although when you put the beetroot through it will look like you’ve blended some small hapless critter, so prepare yourself for the gore. Seriously, we’re talking blood spatters here reminiscent of a promotional poster for Dexter.

Bring the water to the boil, and then turn down to a simmer. Cook for one hour.

In a cup, mix the cornflour with a dash of cold water. Stir it into the soup.

 

Cook the soup for a further hour, stirring to prevent it sticking.

 

Ten minutes before serving, add the parsley and mint, and the leaves stripped from the thyme.

Add more water at any point if the vegetables rise above the water line.

Season with salt and pepper before serving.

Don't wear white while eating this dish. Or any clothes that you like. Maybe eat it naked.

The Idealised Past; Home-Baking Edition

This may be the greatest slogan ever for a baker: "Staff of Life at a fair and equitable price".

Classified Advertising. (1803, September 18). The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1803 - 1842), p. 4. Retrieved August 19, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article625784

The internet is full of people justifying their choices by referring to an idealised version of the past - whether the Palaeolithic period or the 1950s. The choice to bake bread at home is often justified by the belief that this is the way bread has been baked from time immemorial up until just before the wretchedly decadent present day.

It may surprise you, then, to read the opening lines of the following article from 1870:

THE BEST WAY TO MAKE HOME-MADE BREAD.-Some of our readers who may reside in the country, at a dis- tance from a good baker, may not be unwilling to try a method of making bread, which can be confidently re- commended from many years' experience of its excellence.

Household Recipes. (1870, August 27). Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1870 - 1907), p. 21. Retrieved August 19, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article70461620

There are two reasons why many people in the colonial era chose to outsource their bread production to the local baker.

The first was that many poorer households didn't have an oven, or the fuel to run their oven just to make bread. The second was the sheer amount of labour that went into running a household in the era before vacuum cleaners, washing machines and dishwashers. Women welcomed any way of reducing the burden of keeping everybody fed, clothed and clean. If you want to know just what could be involved in making bread without instant yeast, take a look at the recommended process in the article quoted above.

So does this mean that you shouldn't bake your own bread, because your great-great-great grandmother probably didn't?

Of course not. There are many reasons to bake your own bread, including having control over the ingredients, producing a superior loaf to your local branch of Baker's Delight, or enjoying the chance to take out some of your frustrations during the of the kneading process. I'm a big fan of a home-made loaf myself. But, unfortunately home-baking friends, we cannot claim that we are replicating a lost era where everyone shared our craft.

Did Anyone Really Make this Stuff?

Sometimes, when confronted with a colonial era newspaper recipe for a truly overwrought French dessert, which would challenge even the most accomplished modern cook equipped with a KitchenAid stand mixer, I find myself thinking "Did anyone ever make that? Ever?" It seems even more implausible that anyone whipped it up in a remote bush kitchen.

Being the sort of morose writerly type to get caught in a spiral of self-doubt, this thought then leads me to wonder if anyone was cooking any of this stuff; or if Australia in the 1860s was full of people who every week nearly killed themselves laughing at what The Australasian thought they should cook for dinner.

You'll be pleased to hear that my spirits have been buoyed by finding at least one person who, if not actually cooking the darn things, at least made the effort of snipping them out of the paper and pasting them in a personal recipe book.

From the collection of Museum Victoria is the recipe book of Eliza Duckmanton, which includes handwritten recipes and recipes she found in newspapers. You can see a sample page, complete with a rather charming doodle here:


Eliza Duckmanton (Maker) (1870). Book - Recipe & Remedy, Eliza Duckmanton, 1870. Museum Victoria

It turns out that the creation of a personal recipe book was actually a common practice among literate middle-class Colonial women, as one of the museum curators explains:

It was common for literate colonial women to create their own household management guides to suit their new country. Hand-written recipe books were sometimes even part of a bride's trousseau. This was because few cookery and household management books were available in Australia until the 1890s, and those that did exist were more suitable for English ingredients and kitchen facilities, being either imported from England or being locally produced imitations. Mrs Beeton's 1861 Book of Household Management was one of these; recipes were also published in imported magazines. Cookbooks were also usually aimed at city dwellers rather than country women, who had far less access to many ingredients. 

 Museum Victoria (2011). "Statement of Significance", Book - Recipe & Remedy, Eliza Duckmanton, 1870. http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/items/407598/book-recipe-remedy-eliza-duckmanton-1870


Obviously women in Colonial Australia wouldn't have had access to recipes on the internet, but it was a revelation to me to realise that they also didn't have access to climate-appropriate cookbooks, or in many cases the transmitted knowledge from older female relatives. As a consequence, it seems probable that newspaper recipes were a major source of information for these early colonial cooks.

If you'd like to try one of Eliza's recipes, Museum Victoria blogger Kate C.  has given her Queen Cakes a whirl. You can read all about it and see the recipe here.

Finally, I've got a challenge for you, cookery friends. I haven't been able to locate any of Eliza's clipped recipes on Trove. If you have better luck, I'd love to hear from you!

Creamy Pumpkin Wastersupper for the Invalid

Sometimes I doubt if I have the true grit and crazed single-mindedness to be a writer. But not today. For today I looked at my sick wife and toddler, both suffering from the same cold I myself had, and thought, “This is the perfect chance to test some invalid cooking.”

Invalid cooking, if you’re not familiar with it, is cooking for the sick – more specifically, the perpetually or terminally sick. It's not a chapter you'll find in a modern cookbook, but no Victorian era cookbook was complete without it. Though it’s tempting to say that it’s because people don’t care for their ill or disabled family in their home any more, statistics show this isn’t the case. It’s certainly not because modern medicine has done away with long lingering deaths. If anything, modern medicine does an even better line in long, lingering deaths than its Victorian counterpart.

I think the fall of ‘invalid cooking’ probably came about because of changes in attitudes towards the disabled and ill, who are no longer seen as a different species (at least not in the circles I travel in). When my wife’s mother was dying of cancer, she ate whatever she damn well chose, which was mainly Twisties.

Invalid cooking was still rattling round the margins of our society until relatively recently. At her blog I Taught them How to Cook, Jenny Ridgewell recounts the horror of trying to excite cookery students in 1970s London about the prospect of serving a tasteless aspic on a starched white cloth to a sick person in bed. An even more recent appearance, from my own bookshelf none the less, is in the 1997 edition of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union Cookbook – a work of rural cookery so classic that even Wild Colonial Grandma uses it, despite having views on religion that make Richard Dawkins look like a lily-livered moderate. The good old PWMU suggests such invalid cookery classics as barley water, beef tea, and steamed chicken. It's selections are notably light on flavour, body, or crunchy bits.  

This takes us neatly into the issue of what made the cut as invalid cooking: essentially, the thinner, less flavoursome, and less nutritious, the better; as Victorian ideas about illness posited that people in their weakened state couldn’t handle anything that took too much digesting. (You can read more about the Victorian understanding of illness at this great page from the Victoria and Albert Museum).

Of course doctors still believe that diet can play a role in health, but in the modern era dietary recommendations are usually specific to the condition. For instance, as I speak my household labours under a diet to prevent my wife’s prediabetes getting too big for its britches and turning into the full-blown kind.

So considering all this, you might wonder why I decided to subject my sick family to this fossil of a food genre. Apart from my newly-found overweening literary ambition, that is.

Well, in addition to being easy on their presumably fragile digestive system, a lot of invalid food also had an element of comfort about it. Warm broths, creamy porridges, soothing teas – just the sort of thing to help a modern person through the horror of the common cold.

The recipe that I chose to attempt was selected purely on the basis that we already had all the ingredients at home. I had, after all, been up the night before at 3AM trying to breastfeed a toddler whose entire being seemed geared towards the production of snot and misery. But it turned out to be a happy selection. Not only does this recipe have interesting things to tell us about colonial Australian food culture (more Germans than you’d perhaps expect); not only did it produce a dish unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a modern cookery book or tasted in a modern restaurant; it also turned out to be one of those rare recipes that work so well on their first go that they become an instant family favourite.

So here it is: pumpkin soup, of a kind you’ve never even considered. Made with four ingredients and almost zero cooking technique, it’s a beautiful pale yellow, and creamy without being heavy – a sort of airy savoury custard. Containing a glass of milk and about 200g of completely hidden veggies per serve, we’re talking about a health food here, but if anything it feels like a sweet treat. For people feeling nauseous, or too tired to operate a knife and fork, this is the sick-bed meal for you.

Yes, I realise I’m raving, but I’m 90% sure it’s not the sleep deprivation talking. I can say in all honesty that when I’m sick in the future, this is what I will cook.

 

Here is the original recipe:

Waster Supper, or water soup, is a term they apply to all kinds of soup which re- quire no wine or stock. They are very nice for invalids. I will give a very pala- table one.  

Pumpkin Soup. - Cut the pumpkin in slices and throw the rind away, Boil it in milk until soft, and add a little butter, cinnamon, and sugar. Pass it through a cullender before serving.

DOMESTIC COOKERY. (1873, May 2). Portland Guardian and Normanby General Advertiser (Vic. : 1842 - 1876), p. 3 Edition: EVENINGS. Retrieved August 3, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article65430054

 

Creamy Pumpkin Soup for the Invalid.
(Photo taken by an invalid - be kind!)

 

 

 

Creamy Pumpkin Wastersupper for the Invalid

Ingredients

450g pumpkin (weight without skin)

570ml milk

1 t butter

A few shakes of cinnamon per bowl or mug

Cooking Time

Half an hour or less, depending on how thinly you slice the pumpkin

Servings

2 hearty bowls, or three pathetic man-flu soup mugs

Method

Slice the pumpkin as thinly as you can without getting fussy about it. The thinner the slices, the quicker it will cook, but don’t stress – you are ill, not auditioning for Masterchef.

Put the pumpkin and milk in a small to medium sized saucepan. You’ll know you’ve got it about right if the milk almost or completely covers the pumpkin. If it doesn’t, add another dash of milk. Now is no time for dirtying two saucepans, and the recipe is pretty forgiving.

Bring to the boil, and then turn down to a low simmer. Put the lid of the saucepan on ajar, and cook until the pumpkin is starting to break up. If you cut it nice and thin, this will happen in about 10 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Remove from the heat and blend until completely smooth.

Return to the heat, and add the butter. Stir until the butter has melted, and is thoroughly combined in the soup.

Serve in bowls or mugs, with a shake of cinnamon on top.

It’s sweet already, but if you want it super sweet stir in a teaspoon of sugar or your favourite alternative sweetener.

Enjoy, you sad, sick specimen.