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Fruit (Apples chestnuts filberts)
Apples, chestnuts, filberts, grapes, medlars, oranges, pears, walnuts.
Dessert. With moderns the dessert is not so profuse, nor does it hold the same relationship to the dinner that it held with the ancients-the Romans more especially.
On ivory tables they would spread hundreds of different kinds of raw, cooked, and preserved fruits, tarts and cakes, as substitutes for the more substantial comestibles with which the guests were satiated. However, as late as the reigns of our two last Georges, fabulous sums were often expended upon fanciful desserts. The extravagance in dessert of the present day may be said to be in the flowers and other decorations more than in the fruit, the latter being quite subsidiary to the former. The dessert certainly repays, in its general effect, the expenditure upon it of much pains; and it may be said, that if there be any poetry at all in meals, or the process of feeding, there is poetry in the dessert, the materials for which should be selected with taste, and, of course, must depend, in a great measure, upon the season. Pines, melons, grapes, peaches, nectarines, plums, strawberries, apples, pears, oranges, almonds, raisins, figs, walnuts, filberts, medlars, cherries, &c. &c., all kinds of dried fruits, and choice and delicately-flavoured cakes and biscuits make up the dessert, together with the most costly and recherché wines.
The shape, pattern and material of the dessert service are subject to changes of fashion; some persons selecting china, chaste in pattern and colour; others, elegantly-shaped glass ones intermingled with gold. The beauty of the dessert services at the tables of the wealthy tends DESSERT DISHES. to enhance the splendour of the plate, The garnishing of dessert needs especial attention, as the contrast of the brilliantcoloured fruits with nicely-arranged foliage is very charming. Leaves for this purpose should be those of fruit if not of the one they decorate. Strawberry, and vine leaves have a pleasing effect; and for winter desserts, the bay, cuba and laurel are sometimes used. A dessert would not now be considered complete without candied and preserved fruits and confections. The candied fruits may be purchased at a less cost than they can be manufactured at home. They are preserved abroad in most ornamental and elegant forms. And since , from the facilities of travel, we have become so familiar with the tables of the French, chocolate in different forms is indispensable to our desserts. Olives, too, should not be omitted; these should be served in a small, deep glass dish.
Dessert Biscuits (which may be flavoured with ground ginger, cinnamon, &c.) - INGREDIENTS for 4 dishes of biscuits.-1 lb. of flour, lb. of butter, lb. of sifted sugar, the yolks of 6 eggs, flavouring to taste. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 6d..
Put the butter into a basin; warm it, but do not allow it to oil; then with the hand beat it to a cream. Add the flour by degrees, then the sugar and flavouring, and moisten the whole with the yolks of the eggs, which should previously be well beaten. When all the ingredients are thoroughly incorporated, drop the mixture from a spoon on to a buttered paper, leaving a distance between each cake, for they spread as soon as they begin to get warm.
Bake in rather a slow oven from 12 to 18 minutes, and do not let the biscuits acquire too much colour. In making the above quantity, half may be flavoured with ground ginger and the other half with essence of lemon or currants, to make a variety. With whatever the preparation is flavoured, so are the biscuits called, and an endless variety may be made in this manner.
TIME.-12 to 18 minutes, or rather longer, in a very slow oven.
The bulk of this entry is an essay on the Victorian dessert course, but it closes with a workable recipe for dessert biscuits. These are rich drop biscuits, closer to a shortbread batter than to a rolled cookie, and the notes below deal with the baking.
- The missing fractionsThe butter and sugar quantities have lost their fractions in this printing: it reads "lb. of butter, lb. of sifted sugar" against 1 lb of flour. Half a pound of each is the most likely reading, since with six yolks that gives a soft dough that will drop from a spoon; a quarter-pound of each would be too dry to spread as described.
- A very slow ovenTake this at around 275-300F (140-150C). The instruction not to let them "acquire too much colour" is the point of the low heat, since a pale, dry, crisp biscuit is what is wanted; at 350F the high butter content browns the edges before the centres set.
- Sifted sugarThis means caster sugar, sifted to remove lumps, not icing sugar. Granulated will work but leaves a slightly gritty crumb.
- Buttered paperBaking parchment on a flat sheet replaces the buttered paper and needs no greasing. Leave a good two inches between spoonfuls; the dough is rich in butter and spreads considerably as it warms.
- Beating the butter"Warm it, but do not allow it to oil" is the hinge of the recipe. The butter should be soft enough to cream but still opaque; once it separates into liquid fat the biscuits go greasy and flat instead of short. Modern room-temperature butter beaten with a paddle achieves the same thing.
- Egg yolksVictorian eggs were generally smaller than a modern large egg, so six yolks here may be closer to five modern ones. Add them gradually; if the mixture looks too stiff to drop, a spoonful more yolk is safer than milk.
- Flavourings"Essence of lemon" is lemon extract, used sparingly, or the grated zest of a lemon. "Currants" here means dried currants stirred in rather than a flavouring proper. Ground ginger or cinnamon at one to two teaspoons per half batch is in keeping.
- Yield"Four dishes of biscuits" is a serving measure rather than a count. A pound of flour will give roughly five dozen small biscuits, which keep a fortnight in a tin.
The dessert described here is the last course of a formal Victorian dinner, served after the cloth was drawn: fruit, nuts, confections and sweet wines, eaten at leisure and arranged as much for display as for eating. Several of the items would puzzle a modern shopper. Filberts are hazelnuts, named traditionally for St Philibert's day in late August, when the English crop ripens. Medlars are inedible until bletted, that is, held until the flesh softens and browns almost to rot, which is why they appear in winter desserts and nowhere else. Beeton's aside about the Romans and their ivory tables is standard nineteenth-century table talk, drawn from classical authors rather than from evidence, and she notes that candied fruits are cheaper bought than made, being preserved abroad. The biscuits at the end are the one thing on the page the cook was still expected to produce herself: plain, pale, keepable, and made in one batch that could be split and flavoured two ways so the dessert table looked more various than it was.