Last year, I started a tradition of making something named after Queen Victoria on her birthday, May 24. So far I have made Victoria Sandwiches and Victoria Buns, both recipes from Isabella Beeton. This year, I’m breaking the Mrs. Beeton-baked-goods trend and trying out a frozen punch recipe from American author Fannie Merritt Farmer instead.
Read More »
The English custom of eating spiced buns on Good Friday dates back to at least Tudor times, when a London law forbade the sale of spiced buns except on Good Friday, Christmas, and at burials. The first known mention of the name “hot cross buns” comes from a rhyme in the 1733 book Poor Robin’s Almanack: “Good Friday comes this month, the old woman runs, with one or two a penny hot cross buns.” Although on modern hot cross buns the cross is usually piped on with pastry, in most recipes before the 20th century the cross is cut or stamped into the buns. This 1896 recipe from Fannie Merritt Farmer is an exception to both traditions; in her version, the cross is piped on with icing.
Read More »
The earliest brownies, like this recipe from Fannie Merritt Farmer’s 1896 The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, contained no chocolate whatsoever.
Read More »
Fannie Merritt Farmer’s The Boston Cooking School Cook-Book was an instant best seller when it was first published in 1896, and remains in print to this day. Called “The Mother of Level Measurements,” Farmer was known for her insistence on accurate measurements, unusual in a time when many recipes used vague quantities such as a “heaping spoonful” or a “handful.”
Read More »
Finding historic muffin recipes is always a bit confusing, as no one seemed to be able to agree on the term “muffin” throughout history.
Read More »
History in the Making 