Georgian and Regency Recipes

I love collecting recipes from this period of history.

One of these days I hope to have a Georgian house with an Aga-type cooker (and the time!) so that I can give  some of them a go.

Not all the recipes are for food, though.

Here are some of my favourite (interesting) non-food recipes:

Recipes for Making Wines

British Madeira.

Put one bushel of good pale malt into a tub, and pour upon it eleven gallons of boiling water; after stirring them together, cover the vessel over, and let them stand to infuse for three hours; then strain off the liquor mixed together.

Take of French brandy, two quarts; raisin wine, five pints; and red port, two bottles ; stir them together, and let the cask be well bunged, and kept in a cool place for six or ten months, when it will be fit to bottle. This wine will be found superior to the Cape Madeira; and, after having been kept in bottle twelve months, will be found not inferior to East India Madeira. Good table-beer may be made with the malt after it has been infused for making this wine.

British Port Wine.

Take of British grape wine or good cider, four gallons; recent juice of red elderberries, one gallon, or of the juice of red beet-root, two quarts; brandy, two quarts ; logwood, four ounces; rhatany root (bruised), half a pound.

First infuse the logwood and rhatany root in the brandy, and a gallon of the grape wine or cider, for one week ; then strain off the liquor, and mix it with the other ingredients. Keep it in a cask well bunged for a month, when it will be fit to bottle.

British Sherry.

Take of pale ale wort, made as directed for British Madeira, four gallons; of pure water, seven gallons; of white sugar, sixteen pounds. Boil them together gently for about three quarters of an hour, constantly skimming it; then pour it into a clean tub, and dissolve it in four pounds of sugar candy (previously powdered) — then ferment with yeast for three or four days, in the same manner as directed for British Madeira.

When poured off clear into a sweet cask, add five pounds of the best raisins, bruised and stoned: stir up the liquor once or twice a day by means of a stick; and after standing slightly bunged two days, add about a gallon of French brandy ; then bung the cask closely, and in three months bottle it for use.

British Champaigne

Take of white sugar, eight pounds; the whitest raw sugar, seven ditto; crystallised lemon acid or tartaric acid, an ounce and a quarter; pure water, eight gallons; white grape wine, two quarts, or perry, four quarts; of French brandy, three pints.

Boil the sugars in the water, skimming it occasionally for two hours, then pour it into a tub, and dissolve in it the acid. Before it be cold, add some yeast, and ferment in the same manner as directed for British Madeira. Then put it into a clean cask, and add the other ingredients.

The eask is then to be well bunged and kept in a cool place for two or three months; then bottle it and keep it cool for a month longer, when it will be fit for use. If it should not be perfectly clear after standing in the cask two or three months, it should be rendered so by the use of isinglass before it be bottled. By adding a pound of fresh or preserved strawberries, and two ounces of powdered cochineal, to the above quantity, the pink champaigne may be made.


Taken from

The Lady’s Magazine, or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex; Appropriated Solely to their Use and Amusement. Vol. 47. January to December 1816

 

 

A Recipe for taking off the disagreeable taste of turnips from cow milk

Take two ounces of salt-petre, and pour upon it into a bottle for use.  As soon as you have milked, take a common-sized tea-cup full of the liquor, and put it into ten or twelve quarts of new milk, when quite warm, and it will take off the taste of the turnips entirely both in milk and bitter.

 

Nothing can be more wholesome than salt-petre, as it is in daily use in all kinds of meat

Taken from The Gentleman’s Magazine: and historical chronicle September 1787

 

NB I don’t recommend this recipe and have only reproduced it out of interest!

French way of making fine Lace or Linen

Take a gallon of furze blossoms and burn them to ashes, then boil them in six quarts of soft water; this, when fine, you are to use in washing with your suds, as occasion requires, and you will have the linen etc not only exceeding white, but it is done with half the soap and little trouble.

 

Taken from British Lady's Magazine, April 1818