A POSY OF 18th CENTURY SWEETS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 256, 26 September 1933, Page 9

A POSY OF 18th CENTURY SWEETS.

DAINTY DISHES FROM AN OLDWORLD COOKERY COLLECTION. The cookery of the eighteenth century is proving curiously attractive to the modern hostess, who often turns to the time-yellowed pages of the past for her latest luncheon or dinner “novelty.” Naturally, the recipe rescued from some old manuscript collection has a special thrill of its own. The following interesting recipes are extracted from the manuscript book of Mrs Mary Moore, who was born in the days of Queen Anne, and whose entertaining collection bears the date 1735. The wife of a British general of that period, Mrs Moore’s favourite cookery recipes may strike our more economic-ally-minded modern women as somewhat lavish in the calls they make on store and larder. But those were the da3's of large families, and quantities can be reduced proportionately to the requirements of to-day. Also the eighteenth-century beauties were not interested in slimming crazes. ROSE WATER AND FRUIT. There is a popular idea tliat the cookery of those far-off times was coarse and crude. But Mrs Moore’s carefully inscribed “receipts,” treasured by her descendants, do not bear evidence of this in the delicate whisking of their whites of eggs and their pints of cream and their dainty flavourings of rose water and fruit juices. * * * * * Tansy pudding is one of the romantically sounding, but rarely seen, confections that had its heyday in the time when Mrs Moore was compiling her cookery collection. Here is her recipe in modern spelling, but the quaint phrasing of the period of its origin: A TANSY. Take 6 eggs, throw off half the whites, have tlio crumbs of 2 rolls grated ready; beat the eggs very well with a little salt and put into them half a pound of sugar and the grated bread, a grated nutmeg and a pint of cream. Squeeze the juice from spinach after pounding it in a mortar, squeeze out almost a pint of tho juice and 4 spoonsful of tho juice of tansy; mix all together, and, if you please, put in a little sack of brandy. Put a quarter of a pound of fresh butter into a bell metal skillet, and set it over the fire till it melt. Pour in your tansy and keep it stirring till it is _ very thick, then pour into a hair sieve, and if there is any whey in it let it run out. Then butter a dish and put it into it and bake half an hour. Eat with sack and sugar or tho juice of an orange and sugar. What would tho nursery say to this sago pudding de luxe ? • SAGO PUDDING. Tako a quarter of a pound of sago. Set a pint of pure water on the fire, and when it bods put the sago into it and boil till it be tender, then stir in 2 oz. of butter, a grated lemon rind, and a noggin of claret. Pour it out and put to it half a pound of sugar and some grated nutmeg. When it is cool beat 7 eggs (leave out 4 of the whites) and mix altogether. When it is quite cold, put it into a dish with puff paste under it, and bake it half an hour. ***** Pyramid cream would decidedly come into the class of what we now regard as party sweets, only to be served on festive occasions. PYRAMID CREAM. Boil three pints of thick sweet cream with some sticks of cinnamon. Let it stand and cool, and there will come over a thick scum, which you must take off. Scald the cream again, and do the same three ■ or four times till you have got all the scum off. Then tako all the scum, sweeten it to your taste, and pub into it six spoonfuls of sack and a grated lemon and a little rose or orange-flower water. Whip it up with a whisk till it rises in a stiff froth; take it off as it rises and lay it on the bottom of a hair sieve to let the thin part run from it. Then heap it high on a saucer broad at the bottom and small at the top, like a pyramid. Strew small comfits of soveral sorts over it and serve as a des- * * * * Carrot pudding sounds inexpensive and homely enough, but this, too, demands plenty of butter and eggs when made in the old-time fashion as a filling for pastry. CARROT PUDDING. Boil two large carrots very tender, clean them and scrape the red part all off them with a knife till you come to the yellow pith, which you must not take. Then weigh half a pound of the red part and pound it in a wooden mortar. Work half a pound of fresh butter to a eream with your hand, then put in half a pound of sugar, a little rose or orange water, and work them well together. Grate a nutmeg in it and beat seven eggs (throw off throe whites). Very well mix all together and put into your dish with puff paste under it. 1 Bake it half an hour.