Recent reading

[luzula]

First off, congratulations to the US!! : D I'm so relieved, and I can't even imagine how my friends from the US must feel.

My reading the last few weeks: I've been catching up with Yuletide 2019, which I read nothing of back when it happened, because I was far too besotted with Keith and Ewen. Hopefully I will manage some recs before Yuletide 2020 happens. Other than that, it's mostly been fandom reading, as usual. I've skimmed and partly read Jeremy Black's The Politics of Britain, 1688-1800 and An illustrated history of eighteenth-century Britain, 1688-1793.

And then it's mostly been actual 18th century texts. I don't know what I would do without the Internet Archive and HathiTrust! They have such a wealth of scanned material, and I've been dipping into, among other things, issues of the Scots magazine from the 1740s, An Essay on Ways and Means of Inclosing, Fallowing, Planting, etc Scotland by William Mackintosh of Borlum (1729) , A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Midwifery by William Smellie (1752), The Country Housewife's Family Companion by William Ellis (1750), A New and Easy Method of Cookery by Elizabeth Cleland (1750). Yes, apparently most men were named William back then.

I needed the midwifery book because one of my characters is pregnant. That book is just...extremely hands-on. For example, it says that if you need to stick your hands in to help get the afterbirth out, you can feel your way around by knowing that the uterus is firmer than the afterbirth, which in its turn is firmer than coagulated blood. OMG. No mention of washing your hands first, though.

If I try an old recipe, I will document the result. : ) I see that sweet cakes were made with yeast back then! Or barm, a word I did not know before. Checking Wikipedia, I see that baking soda/powder is only from the mid-19th century.

If I was in a fandom that actually had lots of fanworks, instead of just 40 works, undoubtedly I would be reading more fic instead! This is apparently what happens when there is not enough fic...

Comments

[antisoppist]

One of the episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? (when celebrities research their family history) had a fascinating chunk about the invention of baking powder because one of Clare Balding's ancestors turned out to be an American baking powder pioneer (there were rival businesses) and became a millionaire in the 1860s. It made sense of the bit in Anne of Green Gables when Diana enters one of Anne's short stories in a competition to advertise baking powder. It seems there was a cut-throat and soaring market in the late nineteenth century for being able to make cakes without having to rely on yeast.

[feroxargentea]

Re: barm - bread rolls are still routinely called barm cakes in this bit of England, and a chip barm is a bread roll filled with chips (hot cheap food if you're poor and hungry).

[regshoe]

Aww, you should totally try a historical recipe and post the results! I've tried one or two of the 19th century recipes from English Heritage's The Victorian Way videos, and it's great fun (I'm thinking of having a go at their gingerbread recipe this Christmas).

'Barm cake' is one of the many regional words for bread rolls, I think—it's one of those things that varies widely in what words people use across the country, leading to many internet arguments (I'm in favour of 'butty' and 'bap', myself—I'm not sure how much actual difference there is in the foods themselves).

[mific]

A good resource for you might be Townsends, the C18th cooking guy on Youtube. Slightly more early US cooking but many of his recipes are from Britain. Plus his vids are just plain fun - I'm slightly addicted! https://www.youtube.com/user/jastownsendandson
And the barm one is https://youtu.be/xf3w6gstzas. :)

[luzula]

Oh, that's cool--I only vaguely remember that bit from Anne of Green Gables. Ha, it's hard to imagine a cut-throat market for baking powder, but I guess it's had time to settle down since then...

[luzula]

Oh, interesting! Although I am boggling at the chip barm--that is an odd combination. But then, there exist pizzerias in Sweden that will put chips on pizza, which is also weird to me.

[luzula]

Heh, that seems a harmless thing to have internet arguments about, considering!

Years ago, some friends and I had dinners where we made uncommon/regional recipes; for example, we made "black soup" from Skåne, which is a soup with blood in it that is spiced with gingerbread spices. Did not much like it, though. But anyway, yes, I will definitely report back if I try anything!

[luzula]

Oh cool, I will check him out! Thanks. : )

[feroxargentea]

It makes sense after a morning's hard labour -- cheap hot starch, a lot cheaper than fish and chips (and more portable). Which is why it's a northern thing, I guess.