Category: Reenacting

Fun and Feasting in Cambridge

On By kittycalashIn Events, Food, Living History, Reenacting2 Comments

Well, we didn’t feast, it was too hot. But I helped make a feast. I didn’t document it with  photos because I didn’t think my companion would appreciate it. But here’s what we did.

General Washington was set to dine with the gentry, so a repast needed to be made. The captain’s wife volunteered to provide the meal and I served as scullery maid, a role I do find comfortable. (Anyone else identify with Daisy on Downton Abby? She’s the character I feel most like.)

The menu:

Salmagundi
Onion Pie
Bread & Cheese
Pickles
Fruit
Ratafia Cakes
Claret

We worked in the NPS staff kitchen in the carriage house behind Longfellow House: air conditioned, but the kitchen is in a former bathroom. Still, there was a sink and some counter space, so we were set.

A salmagundi is a kind of mixed salad, by which I do not mean tossed. It is perhaps most similar to a chopped, layered salad today. Colonial Williamsburg has an adaptation here, and that formed the basis of our creation.

We used one bag of pre-washed leaf lettuce, one roasted chicken (I did not have to rip it up! I got to chop eggs instead), two tins of anchovies, a medium ham, a lemon, etc. Although we had wooden bowls for prep work, we ran out of places to put the chopped ingredients, so ended up using the NPS staff containers from the dish drainer. With a glass full of egg yolk, a bulk food container of egg white, a black plastic dish of ham and a plastic water cup of anchovies arranged on the crowded sink, we achieved a workable if slightly bizarre mise en place.

What’s astonishing is how much space all that food takes up. You think it’s not enough when it’s contained, but get it on a platter and wow! That’s a shockingly large amount of food. The captain and his wife will be enjoying that salmagundi all week, I fear.

The onion pie was pre-baked from the CW recipe as well. I favor Chesire Pie, and know it is a unit favorite (since four of us devoured one for breakfast at Monmouth…mmmm, pie….)

The pickles were amazing! Made from a 1747 Hannah Glasse recipe, pickled cucumber slices are pretty simple. You may, of course, wish to reduce the quantities:

“To pickle large cucumbers in ſlices. TAKE the large cucumbers before they are too ripe, ſlice them the thickneſs of crown pieces in a pewter-diſh ; to every dozen of cucumbers ſlice two large onions thin, and ſo on till you have filled your diſh, with a handful of ſalt between every row : then cover them with another pewter-diſh, and let them ſtand twenty-flour hours, then put them in a cullender, and let them drain very well ; put them in a jar, cover them over with white wine vinegar, and let them ſtand flour hours ; pour the vinegar from them into a copper ſauce-pan, and boil it with a little ſalt ; put to the cucumbers a little mace, a little whole pepper, a large race of ginger ſliced, and then pour the boiling vinegar on. Cover them cloſe, and when they are cold, tie them down. They will be fit to eat in two or three days.”

Read more at Celtnet: http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/glasse-of-pickling-14.php
Copyright © celtnet

Ratafia cakes are funny little things. I only had one, when they came back from the table (I did mention Daisy, right?) but I might try them. They are not ideal for camp eating–in fact, they would be downright inappropriate–mostly because they are rather fragile and travel poorly.

The rest of us–the privates and sergeant and the Young Mr, who was playing Washington’s aide de camp as a young scamp–ate bread and cheese and fruit in the shade of a tree. It was too hot to eat much.

In the Pink

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, making things, Reenacting, Research
Detail, back pleats
Detail, back pleats

I swear I try to be positive about the mistakes I make. But not only did I discover this morning that I had lost my struggle with spacial processing, now I have found clear imagery to show how I should have handled the pleats on the Zombie Coat. Live, learn, unstitch and restitch: that’s all I can do. Now I have only to decide whether to do the unstitching this weekend, or next week. It will have to be done: now I know the way I’ve done it is wrong, and the master’s eye will be on that mistake and then he will know, and I will know that he knows, and it will just go on from there to tired shame.

Man's wool coat, 1770s. Meg Andrews.
Man’s wool coat, 1770s. Meg Andrews.

My favorite part of the description is this:

Either the coat was altered for another man or the wearer got fatter! … There is a half moon insertion under the arms… There’s no detail photo of that half-moon insertion, but I do so wish there was. The description notes additional changes: “If you look at one cuff you can see a lighter part of a button shape next to the seam. The cuffs have been removed and then added to the edge of the cuff to lengthen the sleeve.” At least we know garments in the past, even ones as lovely as this, were altered and changed.

Puckering on the Zombie Coat. It’s still a nice blue, and you know what? It fits me, so maybe he’ll lose it to his refugee mother.

I will probably be inserting shapes of various kinds into the Zombie Coat, since I do now have a diagnosis for this puckering at the shoulder blades. “Viewed from the back and sides, it appears that the sleeve is binding on the front of his shoulder, causing pulling across the back shoulders – the puckers are caused by the stretching of the fabric across the rounding of the back and shoulders. If you make the top of the upper sleeve wider, or raise the shoulder cap it will create more fullness over the top of the sleeve and reduce the binding that is translating down the sleeve and across the back.”

By the time I make the changes I need to, the Zombie Coat will have acquired its own pre-history.

Apprehending Chicken

On By kittycalashIn Events, Food, Living History, Reenacting, Research4 Comments
Living History Chickens. Don’t mess with them.

I have written in the past about the Living History Chicken, ripped and delicious, and the joys of making such a creature fit into a cast-iron pot. While “chicken ripper” might be the appellation you desire, it’s not what I want to be known for.

Last time, I dissed the modern ham as an item ill-suited to camp cooking (tasty, but it doesn’t look right). I have also seen hams on a spit cooked slowly (too high above) a fire, and heard a rumour about a very authentic ham-dining experience with a very authentic digestive result. That’s taking things farther than I care to take any regiment, so what to do?

Continental Army rations included, among other things, a pound of flour and a pound of beef a day per man. In Rhode Island at least, that beef might also have been fish, and I have seen chicken listed, too, as it is, technically, meat. Not wanting to inflict our fishy Ocean State customs on all comers, I think I’ll spare the regiments a pound of fish a day. But chicken? What to do? Hope to cook it?

Or maybe we should eat more fruit.The Afternoon Meal by Luis Meléndez, ca. 1772. MMA, 1982.60.39

One option is to rip the carcass apart (see above) and boil it. That would get the job done, for a bone-in chicken stew. However, I am thinking of string roasting chicken (or cornish game hens, since modern grocery store chickens are awfully large).

To be quite technically correct, I could only cook chicken for the Second Helping Regiment. They had a documented poultry thief among their number, one John Smith, who apprehended poultry if it failed to give the correct countersign when challenged. However a chicken is prepared, it will be a messy business, as we have no forks. It’s fingers, knives and spoons for us, as we have no forks. That does increase the appeal of boiling, since the meat would come off the bone more easily.

Drawing Beef and Flour

On By kittycalashIn Food, Living History, Reenacting
The Durham Ox: yet to come in 1778
Drawn meat: The Durham Ox.

Or beeve and flower, depending on how you’re spelling in 1778.
John Buss of the 10th Massachusetts complained mightily of the rations he drew, and the quality of the beef, pining in his letters home for cheese and cider. His affection for cheese has become part of the unit’s lore and an in-joke, so I did make certain to have plenty of cheese for Monmouth. Bread, cheese, ham, fruit in season, beef stew: yawn, after a while.

Trying to cook authentically in the field could result in dull, repetitive menus, recreating the soldiers’ experience, but unless everyone you’re feeding has signed up for that, you may have an unhappy crowd on your hands. Mostly they just want food, but people will grumble if you are cooking the same thing every week (and that opportunity exists). When I was a kid, my mother cooked chicken and broccoli every Sunday night, and to this day, I won’t eat chicken and broccoli unless it is in satay sauce.

Sorry, Private: not in this man's Army.
Sorry, Private: not in this man’s Army.

The 10th can count themselves lucky that they weren’t on the expedition to Quebec, when Newfoundland was on the 2nd Rhode Island’s menu, as well as squirrel-head-and-candle-wick soup. (Try explaining this Newfoundland business to your creative writing group. I tried historical fiction and got a reputation for being “dangerous,” and you can, too.)

At Monmouth, we served as another regiment’s….disposers…on Sunday morning, and were treated to the extra steaks they cut from a ham. Grilled and stacked on bread with hard cheddar cheese, this was delicious. Our conversation turned quickly to the question of grilling. After all, we only have kettles and sticks. I said I’d buy and carry a grate if they wanted ham so much, but the Adjutant proposed weaving a grid of green sticks and holding that over coals, and just brushing off the ashes when the meat fell into the coals. The minor detail left out is what we would use to retrieve the meat, though it must be a stick by any other name.

One cannot fry in or on tinware: the tinning will melt. We know soldiers carried as little as they could even in the regular infantry, so light infantry units were packing nothing but what they had to carry. No frying pan; no grate. Upon reaching this conclusion, we turned our sad-eyed stares on the other regiment with their table and stools and grill and ham, and were rewarded with another grilled ham piece each. Dogs have got a good thing going.

Begging and sharing aside, what about ham? The joke we make at home about ham being the natural prey of cats who butcher, brine, and cook the ham they beg for applies just as much to light infantry troops and their hangers-on. (They shouldn’t really have me along, but they are stuck and I’m pretty handy for getting the meals out, the canteens filled, and the wounds bandaged.) But a ham? Harder still to justify. Salt pork, yes; salt beef, yes. But the attractive and portable boneless hams at the supermarket are, sadly, more delicious than authentic.

One can take on the task of preparing meat properly oneself, in one’s copious spare time, but that won’t fix July and August’s meals. Staring sad-eyed at other regiments seems a parasitic and reputation-destroying plan. What to do?

Tune in next time for more adventures in historic meats!