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Seasonings, Every-Day
The ingredients used for these seasonings should be powdered separately, then mixed together, preserved in dry bottles well stoppered, and stored in a cool dry place. They may be prepared during an hour of leisure, and will be found most convenient for flavouring purposes. No. 1. Mixed Spice for flavouring Soups and Gravies.--Take two pounds of black pepper, one pound of ginger, half a pound of grated nutmeg, half a pound of allspice, half a pound of cinnamon, one ounce of cloves, and three pounds of dry salt. No. 2. Seasoning of Herbs for Soup, etc.--Two ounces of thyme, two ounces of sweet marjoram, two ounces of parsley, two ounces of winter savory, one ounce of sweet basil, and one ounce of thin lemon-rind. No. 3. Spice for Ragouts.--Half a pound of mustard, half a pound of black pepper, half a pound of grated lemon-rind, two ounces of cayenne, one ounce of ginger, one ounce of allspice, half an ounce of grated nutmeg, and one pound of dry salt. No. 4. Sweet Spice for flavouring Pastry.--Two ounces of cloves, two ounces of cinnamon, two ounces of mace, two ounces of nutmeg, and two ounces of sugar. No. 5.--Mixed Spice for flavouring Sausages.--Five pounds of black pepper, two pounds and a half of ginger, one pound of nutmegs, one pound of cloves, half a pound of aniseed, and half a pound of coriander-seeds.
Five dry seasoning mixes given in commercial quantities: No. 1 alone comes to nearly eight pounds. Divide everything by sixteen or thirty-two and you will still have more than a domestic kitchen uses in a year.
- Scale firstRead the pounds as parts. No. 1 becomes 4 parts black pepper, 2 ginger, 1 nutmeg, 1 allspice, 1 cinnamon, plus a pinch of cloves and 6 parts salt; work in tablespoons rather than pounds. A quarter-cup batch of any of these fills a small jar.
- The salt is the pointNos. 1 and 3 are between a third and two-fifths salt by weight, so they are closer to seasoning salts than to pure spice blends. If you add one of them by the spoonful to a soup, salt the dish afterwards, not before. Nos. 2, 4 and 5 contain no salt at all.
- Powder separately, as directedThis is the instruction that matters. Whole spices vary enormously in hardness, and grinding cloves alongside cinnamon bark gives a mix that is coarse in one part and dust in another. Grind each one, sieve it, then weigh and combine.
- Freshness beats convenienceGround spice loses its volatile oils within a few months, so a jar prepared "during an hour of leisure" is past its best long before it is used up. Make small quantities and expect to replace them within six months.
- Drying the herbsNo. 2 assumes dried herbs throughout, weighed dry. Fresh herbs at these weights would mould in the bottle. The thin lemon-rind must also be dried hard before grinding, or it will clump the whole mix.
- Winter savory and sweet marjoramWinter savory (Satureja montana) is peppery and resinous; summer savory or a little dried oregano stands in acceptably. "Sweet marjoram" is ordinary marjoram, not oregano, though the two are close enough in a mix of this kind.
- MaceIn No. 4, is the outer covering of the nutmeg seed — lighter and more floral than nutmeg itself. Buy it ground, since blades of mace are difficult to reduce to powder without a spice mill.
- No. 5 is not a cureDespite the name, this is a flavouring for fresh sausage meat only: it contains no nitrite or nitrate and will not preserve anything.
- StorageBottles must be bone dry and tightly closed. Salt-containing mixes draw moisture from the air and set solid; keep them away from the stove and out of light.
Ready-mixed seasonings like these belong to the era before commercial spice packers dominated the British larder, when a cook who wanted consistent flavour ground and blended her own. The five numbered mixes cover soups and gravies, soup herbs, made dishes, pastry, and sausage meat, and the scale of the quantities — two pounds of pepper in No. 1 alone — looks more like a professional or institutional order than a family's. No. 2 is essentially a dried bouquet garni in powder form, and No. 4 resembles what British shops still sell as mixed spice.