November 1, 2010

Colonial Shortbread from 1791

Colonial Recipe
I finally made the 100% authentic shortbread that I wrote about in this post. I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out, it had a lot of strange ingredients that aren't used in modern shortbread such as orange peel, caraway, almonds and the froth from beer.

I ended up using about a cup of beer froth and I thought it was a good adjustment. The shortbread had a very old, English taste to it. It was a pretty good mixture of flavors and overall tasted pretty yummy. It wasn't as sugary as the shortbread of today.

Colonial Recipes


We don't use caraway much anymore besides for bread. It was interesting to taste it in a desert food. If you don't have the chance to bake it over a fire, it will turn out exactly the same in a normal oven.



Colonial Recipe Cooking in tin has it's advantages over modern nonstick pans; you can cut straight in the pan without worrying about nicking the nonstick coating. Shortbread has enough butter that it won't stick at all.
I hope some of you get a chance to try this sometime. We ate it as a part of an authentic colonial meal that Jodi from Curious Acorn prepared. There was ham, pumpkin and apple pudding (with heirloom pumpkin which was more like a squash,) Indian slapjack (cornmeal pancakes) with quince jam and apple cider. Everything was delicious.

8 comments:

  1. How beautifully it turned out!! Looks yummy!

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  2. Hey Stephanie Ann! =) Just wanted to remind you about your Les Miz week prize...please email me your address: missannaolivia@gmail.com

    Thanks! ~*~ Blessings on your evening!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anna, I did send it again. I wonder why it isn't sending?

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  4. Caraway seeds are much more common in the Czech Republic - so much so that an Irish woman visiting this summer, who did not like them, had a lot of trouble finding a dish that did not contain them. But I can't imagine it in a sweet dish either, although I would like to try it - the same woman suggested it to me, when I told her I loved caraway. We usually add them to potatoes (plain boiled potatoes, potato stew, potato soup...) and, of yourse, bread and related foodstuffs. It's really one of the staples of spices around here, and I guess it goes into many other dishes that I don't know how to prepare yet...

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  5. I don't know much about Czech food, it would be cool to hear more about it, Hana.

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  6. I think I should post more on my old crafty blog... so far there's something about sweet dumplings, from the things that are decidedly Czech. http://marmota-b.blog.cz
    (Oh, and while we're at it, could you please go there and leave me a message with your e-mail in the little box at the left? I want to have a means of contacting you outside the blogs privately - like about the giveaway - and I can't figure out how to do it. :-)

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