The "Making Do" Challenge -- Frontignac (Elderflower Syrup)

I am still attempting to keep this blog going by doing historical recipes but using just what I have at hand.  My elder tree is flowering, so what to do with all those blooms?  I have enough dried for tea and other recipes.  Some recipes are for making elderflower fritters but I am not in the mood for that.

I revisited a book I have used before, Flower Cookery -- The Art of Cooking with Flowers.

No ISBN; the Library of Congress Number is 67-24072

The author is Mary MacNicol and the book was published in 1967 in New York by the Fleet Press Corporation.

I feel very strongly that Ms. MacNicol did not test all these recipes; rather her goal was to gather them into one volume.  She cites her sources in many cases.

There are seven pages of recipes for the elder flowers and berries.  Jam, wine, fritters, vinegar, pickled buds, sauces, ices, even pancakes.

The one that caught my attention is on page 57 and is listed as

Elder Flower Water, "Frontignac"

When elders are in flower gather them on a dry day.  They should be in full but fresh blossom.  Put the flowers in a preserving pan with sufficient water to cover them, and boil for 1/2 hour.  Then strain through a fine sieve, or woolen bag, and let it stand.  When cold put again in the pan, and allow 1/2 lb. of sugar for each pint of the flavoured water.  Boil 10 minutes, skimming well all the time.

When cold, bottle for use, corking the bottles tight and sealing them down.

For an ordinary shape of ice use a breakfastcupful of this syrup and make like any other ice, but use less sugar.

                                                                          The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie


I thought it was interesting the recipe is called a "water", when it truly is a syrup.  I thought waters were distilled and did not have sugar in them.  But I learn new ideas all the time.

The name Tillypronie was amusing to me, so I decided to see if I could look it up and find out more about Lady Clark and her book.  I was pleasantly surprised to find a lot about it.

Tillypronie is in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.  You can read in detail about it here.

The house was originally built 150 years ago in 1867 by Sir John Clark, the diplomat son of Queen Victoria’s physician, Sir James Clark, who was himself the son of a butler from Banffshire. 

There are some pictures of the grounds and it is a gorgeous place to live.

I was more interested in Lady Clark, so here is what I learned about her:

 Lady Clark was not just an exemplary hostess; she was also a highly accomplished cook. After her death in 1897, Sir John arranged for the thousands of recipes she had collected throughout her lifetime, and particularly during his diplomatic postings in Brussels, Paris and Turin, to be edited into a single volume which was published in 1909. Virginia Woolf gave the resulting book a glowing review in The Times Literary Supplement at the time.

It made me sad that her book was published after she died.  You can read more about it here.

The book is considered a valuable compilation of Victorian era recipes. Lady Clark obtained the recipes by asking hostesses or cooks, and then testing each one at Tillypronie. She documented each recipe's source with the name of her source, and often also the date. There is comprehensive coverage of plain British cooking, especially of meat and game, but the book has sections on all aspects of contemporary cooking including bread, cakes, eggs, cooking for invalids, jams, pies, sauces, sweets (puddings) and vegetables. She had lived in Italy and France, and the cuisines of these countries are represented by many dishes, as is Anglo-Indian cooking with a section called "Curries".

It looks so interesting!  I looked around the 'net and found a digital copy of her book (you can also buy print copies).  Her recipe is found here, under the Ices category.  Ms. MacNicol cited it word-for-word in her book.

My Notes

Elderflowers, sugar, and water are all that are needed here.  Here are my flowers:



That is how many I picked.  Here is what was left after I removed most of the stems:



"Water to cover" meant they were floating a little off the bottom, but not too much.  I measured 8 cups.




When the water got hot, the flowers and water darkened.  After it reached a boil, I turned down the heat and let it simmer for 30 minutes.



I used a coarse strainer first to get out the flowers and stems.  Then I poured it through a fine strainer to get out the small particles.

It measured 6 cups (3 pints).  I let it cool for a few hours.

Three pints meant 1 1/2 pounds sugar, which I weighed and then added to the liquid.  I heated it to a boil, stirring to dissolve all the sugar, then set it to a slow boil for 10 minutes.  I did not stir it and there was nothing to skim.

Once that cooled down, I bottled it.  I measured 5 1/4 cups syrup.  They are stored in the refrigerator.

The Verdict


Sweet, but not too sweet.  Flavorful and if you don't know what elderflowers taste like, I think it is hard to describe.  Floral but not perfumy, light and yet enticing.

I enjoyed sipping it from a spoon and putting some in my tea.

I had some leftover pie crust so I rolled that into strips, baked them, and then brushed them with the syrup (three times) while they were still hot.  I served them cool, with an unbrushed crust for a taste comparison.  The flavor was enhanced by the syrup but it was very subtle.



I also put together a simple dessert of sliced oranges and fresh strawberries, and drizzled a little of the syrup over them.  That was tasty.

Recently I was looking at a recipe for Roman honey cakes, made of cheese and flour and an egg, baked, then soaked in honey.  I think this syrup would be good to use instead of honey, too.  I don't have much honey in my pantry, so it is worth a try.

Success!  Worthwhile and perhaps I will try Lady Clark's suggestion to turn it into an ice.

What are you cooking?

The "Making Do" Challenge -- Stuffed Eggplant

I decided that I needed to "up" the challenge of maintaining an historical food blog during a pandemic by cooking an historical recipe without running to the store for all the ingredients.  This is what they had to do:  cook with what you have and still make it taste good.  (I've been doing that a lot lately and love the creativity it inspires!)

Two eggplants were telling me they needed to be used.  I kept thinking about a recipe I did a long time ago for this blog,  Eggplant -- The Perfect Way.   It is wonderful, with cheese and basil and spices.  But I did not have the right cheese and definitely no basil -- the snails made short work of that in my garden and the seedlings are not big enough yet.

But I did have a packet of ground lamb in the freezer.  Lamb and eggplant are a good pairing, and both together suggested a particular geographic location to consider for recipes.

ISBN 978-0-520-26174-7

I really like this book.  The foreword was written by food historian Charles Perry who deftly puts the recipes and time period into context.  It even contains a description of how to make murri, a soy-sauce-like condiment used at the time.  The recipes themselves are easy to understand and enticing to make.  The color plates are mostly of art, servingware, and kitchenware from the time period.

I chose Recipe 44, on page 94.

Stuffed Eggplant

Ibn Razin, in one of seventeen recipes for stuffed eggplant, calls for extra stuffing to be spread over the eggplant before it is put in the oven.

Take some of our large eggplants.  Remove the head [ris] of each eggplant and hollow out the inside in order to extract the pulp while taking care not to cut the skin; indeed, [the skin] should be of a good thickness.  Then take some meat and pound it in a mortar and boil it.  When it is cooked, pound it in the mortar [again] in order to make it still more tender.  Put [it] in a pot [dast] and add fresh sheep tail fat, dry coriander [seeds], caraway, pepper, Chinese cinnamon, and fresh chopped coriander [cilantro] and parsley in great quantities.  Fry all of it until it is roasted.  Add salt and stuff the eggplant with this mixture.  Close up [the stuffed eggplants] with what was cut off [i.e., the head].  Insert [in each eggplant] three sticks of good-quality wood that has been smoked [in order to reattach the head], then put them in the pot and cook over a lively fire in the sheep tail fat until they are well cooked.  Then put them on a serving dish [zubdiyya] and sprinkle with dry coriander.  At the moment of serving, remove the sticks and throw them away.



My Notes

I had no cilantro so I decided to use just parsley (from my garden!).  Instead of sheep tail fat, I used olive oil.

I thought it interesting that there was no mention of "purging" the eggplant, after having read Perry's discussion of how eggplant was unpopular until it was discovered that salting it would remove the bitterness.  I decided to follow the preparation directions in order -- that is, hollowing the eggplants before cooking the filling -- so I put the prepared eggplants into salted water while making the filling.

Honestly, I wasn't sure which end of the eggplant was the head.  I decided it was the big end so it would be easy to hollow it and still leave thick walls.



I used a knife with a long, slender blade to roughly cut a circle into the length of the eggplant.  This defined the thickness of the walls.  Then I used a sturdy spoon to scoop out the flesh.  Sometimes I poked the flesh a few times with the knife to make it easier to scoop.

Considering the meat I had was already ground, I decided I didn't need to pound it, boil it, and pound it again in order to make it tender. 

The one pound of lamb was sauteed in olive oil and I added

     1/4 teaspoon powdered coriander
     1/4 teaspoon caraway seeds
     1/2 teaspoon pepper
     1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
     1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Nearly done

Once it was cooked, I added 1/4 teaspoon salt and stirred it in well.

Stuffing the eggplant was easy.  I just spooned the filling in, pushing it down to compact it after every few scoops.  My goal was to stuff it to the brim and just a little past.

Stuff it!

I didn't happen to have any smoked sticks around so I decided to use toothpicks instead.  Then I fried the eggplants in olive oil, turning them to cook on all sides.

The picks were angled a little to help hold on the head.

I cooked them until the head fell off and the stuffing starting coming out. 

To serve them, I put them on a plate with the head next to it, after removing and throwing away the toothpicks.  Then I sprinkled them with some powdered coriander.

The Verdict



I served them with a tossed green salad and some of the sorrel puree that had been thinned and flavored with beef bouillon. 

The stuffing was great -- very flavorful and I think I got the spice balance just right.  The eggplant was slightly undercooked in places, making it harder to cut than the well-cooked parts.  But the combination of eggplant and filling was tasty! 

The eggplant was a little bland by itself, which served as a good support for the filling.  The combination was savory, spicy, creamy (the eggplant), slightly chewy (the filling).  I noticed that the coriander sprinkled on top was warmed by the hot eggplant and provided a lovely, enticing, spicy scent when I sat down to eat.

Success!

The ends of the eggplant were not cooked well at all.  I believe this is because they never touched the hot oil in the pan.  The sides were all that were eaten.

The note in italics at the beginning of the recipe came to mind at this point.  If I had baked the eggplants instead of frying them, I think they would have been thoroughly cooked, even at the ends.  I would not have had the issue of needing to stop cooking when the head fell off, either. 

If I did this again, I would try baking them.  I might even spread more of the filling over the top before doing so!

I did have extra filling, which went well in a quesadilla for my lunch the next day.