{"id":9230,"date":"2019-11-21T13:57:11","date_gmt":"2019-11-21T18:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/?p=9230"},"modified":"2019-11-22T10:19:33","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T15:19:33","slug":"a-taste-of-the-past-real-shrewsbury-cakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/2019\/11\/21\/a-taste-of-the-past-real-shrewsbury-cakes\/","title":{"rendered":"A Taste of the Past: Real Shrewsbury Cakes\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Students from Karen Metheny’s Cookbooks and History course are contributing guest blog posts about their assignment to recreate a historical recipe. The first of this series comes from Kaya Williams.<\/em><\/p>\n

A Taste of the Past: Real Shrewsbury Cakes\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Consider this a recipe for adaptability: Take one 19th-century recipe and combine with\u00a0<\/span>21st-century technology. Sprinkle in a nearly-forgotten deadline and a pinch of last-minute\u00a0<\/span>grocery shopping (be careful not to overseason with hustle). Place in a tiny and sparsely-stocked\u00a0<\/span>kitchen for one to two hours and bake until cooked through.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a baking experience unlike any other I had encountered: a centuries-old recipe\u00a0<\/span>modified for the present day, with challenges and delights alike spilling out of the bowl. In the\u00a0<\/span>process of baking \u201cReal Shrewsbury Cakes\u201d from Priscilla Homespun\u2019s <\/span>The Universal Receipt\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Book <\/span><\/i>(1818), I became hyper-aware of the ways in which my modern kitchen could compromise\u00a0<\/span>the integrity of the historical recipe.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As soon as I began preparing the cookies, I realized just how historically inaccurate my\u00a0<\/span>kitchen could be, with anachronisms baked into this five-ingredient recipe.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I deliberately selected a recipe whose ingredients would not be impossible to find,\u00a0<\/span>avoiding entries that featured rosewater, pearlash, or lively emptings. But as I ticked off the\u00a0<\/span>items on my shopping list, I began to realize that even though the ingredients were the same in\u00a0<\/span>name, they may not have been manufactured by the same process. The all-purpose flour I used\u00a0<\/span>was likely machine-ground, giving it a finer texture than flour produced in an older mill.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Likewise, the butter I used was mass-produced and kept rather firm in refrigerated transport,\u00a0<\/span>making it more difficult to combine with dry ingredients than would have been the case with\u00a0<\/span>home-churned or locally-made butter. The \u201cpowdered loaf sugar\u201d that I used \u2014 sold in plastic\u00a0<\/span>packaging at Whole Foods \u2014 is also a far cry from that which may have been available at the\u00a0<\/span>time the recipe was created; I imagine that my store-bought, pre-ground cinnamon from Trader\u00a0<\/span>Joe\u2019s is not what the cookbook\u2019s author had in mind when she called for \u201ca dram of beaten\u00a0<\/span>cinnamon.\u201d Without close proximity to a chicken farm, the eggs I used weren\u2019t nearly as fresh as\u00a0<\/span>they may have been for a home cook in the 19th century who may have owned their own\u00a0<\/span>chickens. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Though my ingredients were lacking in historical veracity, the confines of my modern\u00a0<\/span>kitchen may have been the greatest influence on the recipe\u2019s temporal accuracy. Nearly every\u00a0<\/span>tool I use for preparation was made of plastic or silicone \u2014 materials not invented nor used\u00a0<\/span>commercially until nearly a century later (Science History Institute, n.d.; SIMTEC 2016). My\u00a0<\/span>stove and oven are fueled by electricity, not gas or a wood-burning flame. And it was\u00a0<\/span>near-impossible not to glance at the digital clock on my microwave to keep track of time \u2014 a\u00a0<\/span>privilege in which no 19th-century cook could indulge. But my greatest historical inaccuracy was\u00a0<\/span>also the one thing preventing my recipe from disaster: lacking a kitchen scale, I used Google to\u00a0<\/span>find conversions from weight to cup and tablespoon measurements. It\u2019s a tool no 19th-century\u00a0<\/span>(and very few 20th-century) chefs could use to ensure that their recipes would succeed, but if I\u00a0<\/span>was going to present the finished product to others, I knew I couldn\u2019t eyeball the measurements\u00a0<\/span>and still produce something edible.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, some techniques were maintained if for nothing else than a lack of\u00a0<\/span>equipment, like hand-mixing dough (I do not own an electric mixer). Instructions to cut the\u00a0<\/span>dough using a wine glass were easy enough to follow, and though I didn\u2019t have a rolling pin, a\u00a0<\/span>drinking glass sufficed to flatten the dough. Likewise, the parchment paper I purchased was\u00a0<\/span>unbleached and sold in cardboard packaging \u2014 not too far off from the quality and consistency\u00a0<\/span>of paper available in the 1800s.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I also incorporated some of my own baking knowledge to ensure baking success; rather\u00a0<\/span>than combining all ingredients at once, I first cut the butter into the flour as I would a pie crust to\u00a0<\/span>avoid a sloppy, sloshy mess, and I knew that a 350-degree oven would be standard enough that it\u00a0<\/span>would bake the cakes through without burning them. (Whether or not it was actually a \u201cquick\u201d\u00a0<\/span>oven, I wasn\u2019t entirely sure.) When instructions called for the dough to be rolled \u201cout thin\u00a0<\/span>enough for an ounce weight of the paste to make a cake as large as the top of a breakfast cup or\u00a0<\/span>basin\u201d or rolled out somewhat thicker to be as large as the top of a wine glass (Homespun 1818:\u00a0<\/span>20), I reverse-engineered the measurement by first balling an ounce of dough and flattening it to\u00a0<\/span>fit the space, then using that as a point of reference for rolling out the rest of the dough.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

The greatest challenge wasn\u2019t time or equipment but physical space: though the recipe\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>ingredients weren\u2019t outrageously proportioned, my kitchen is so small that I could not roll out all\u00a0<\/span>the dough at once. (Even rolling out half the dough at one time at the designated thickness began\u00a0<\/span>to spill over the edge of the counter). I also had to bake the dough in batches of eight on half-size\u00a0<\/span>baking sheet, as my oven is too small to fit a full-size sheet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even so, the final product \u2014 two dozen pale, shortcake-like cookies \u2014 was a success by\u00a0<\/span>most metrics. Though I personally prefer a moister cookie (and thus found these \u201cReal\u00a0<\/span>Shrewsbury Cakes\u201d rather dry), several tasters with an affinity for shortcake found them tasty.\u00a0<\/span>It\u2019s unlikely that I\u2019ll return to this recipe again, but the relative ease of producing the recipe made\u00a0<\/span>me eager to explore the possibilities that await in the world of historical cookbooks. Perhaps the\u00a0<\/span>best treats aren\u2019t the newest but the ones proven tried and true by time itself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bibliography\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Homespun, Priscilla. 1818. <\/span>The Universal Receipt Book. <\/span><\/i>Philadelphia: Isaac Riley.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Science History Institute. n.d. \u201cThe History and Future of Plastics.\u201d Accessed November 18,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. <\/span>https:\/\/www.sciencehistory.org\/the-history-and-future-of-plastics<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    SIMTEC. 2016. \u201cThe History of the Silicone Elastomer.\u201dAccessed November 18, 2018.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    https:\/\/www.simtec-silicone.com\/the-history-of-the-silicone-elastomer\/<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Students from Karen Metheny’s Cookbooks and History course are contributing guest blog posts about their assignment to recreate a historical recipe. The first of this series comes from Kaya Williams. A Taste of the Past: Real Shrewsbury Cakes\u00a0 Consider this a recipe for adaptability: Take one 19th-century recipe and combine with\u00a021st-century technology. Sprinkle in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16753,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,10,18,24,27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9230"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16753"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9230"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9280,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9230\/revisions\/9280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/gastronomyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}