Although it has taken me a while to transcribe the entire booklet written by Maggie Ritchie, I have enjoyed it and hope you have too. The index pages above were at the back of her booklet and list the 30 items in alphabetical order. I hope that Maggie used these recipes to establish her own kitchen and nourish her own family for many years.

Next we will move on to a variety of recipes found tucked away in an antique store. Literally tucked away. The box was inside a cabinet, as though someone intended to come back for them later.

This recipe from Maggie Ritchey might remind you of one of her previous entries, Corn Flour Shape, but I bet it doesn’t taste all that bad. In fact, I suspect this would taste lovely. It is chocolate, after all. It sounds like a pudding, but not in the traditional sense that it was boiled in a pudding bag. This is more similar to modern pudding. This would make a delicious gluten free dessert for those who need it.

Chocolate Shape

Put into a clean saucepan 1 gill milk, add to it 1/2 oz gelatine & dissolve this very slowly remembering always to dissolve it slowly. When dissolved add 1 tablespoonful sugar 1/2 teaspoonful vanilla, the yolks of 3 eggs well beaten, 3 oz grated chocolate. Mix this into the yolks of the eggs, stir thoroughly well together, if not quite thick return to the saucepan for a minute or two, being careful not to curdle. Pour into a wetted mould & set aside to become quite cold. Then turn out on a glass dish & whipped cream may be served with the shape. Note an oz & 1/2 of almonds blanched & chopped may be added.

Along with the recipe for boiled green vegetables, I never really thought I’d need a recipe to boil potatoes. This is something my mom did with some regularity as we were growing up, but I guess if a person had never ventured into the kitchen, a quick and dirty on how to boil potatoes is a good thing. Also, I recommend you leave out the newspaper and just use a clean cloth if you must.

Boiled Potatoes

Take as many potatoes as you wish for dinner, peel them as thinly as possible. Be careful to have them all one size. Put them into a saucepan with enough cold water just to cover them, with a good pinch salt. Put them on the fire & bring them slowly to the boil. Boil them until soft enough to be pierced with a fork, pour the water from them, put a clean cloth or a newspaper into the pan & allow them to stand by the side of the fire from 10 to 15 minutes, until you are ready for them.

This recipe for jelly cake is quite similar to the previous one for a Swiss roll, in that the cakes are spread with jelly rather than icing. It sounds delicious.

Jelly Cake

Put into a basin 2 teacupful flour rub into this 2 oz butter with a pinch salt. Put into another basin the yolkes of 3 eggs, 6 oz castor sugar, work these to-gether to a cream, add 1/2 teacupful milk & mix these into the flour & butter, whip the whites to a stiff froth. Add them lastly & lightly to the mixture. Shake in 1/2 teaspoonful baking powder & a little flavouring. Have 2 tins greased, round ones if possible. Grease & line them with paper. Divide the mixture & put half into each tin. Bake in a quick oven for about 15-25 minutes. Have a piece of paper spread with a little sugar on it, turn out half the jelly cake onto this. Spread some jam on to it & turn the other half on to it. Cut it into as many pieces as you like.

This recipe for curry calls for chutney as one of the ingredients. These days we tend to think of chutney as a preserve or sweet condiment, but historically chutney can vary in sweetness, texture, ingredients and level of spice. Chutney comes from India and Pakistan, and can be vastly different from one side of the region to the other. In the 19th century – while India was still a British colony – certain sweeter chutneys were exported back to England, and this is probably what Maggie Ritchey was familiar with. They were mainly made with fruit, vinegar and sugar, boiled down to a reduction. Depending on the type of chutney available to you, it could kick up the spice on this dish, so be careful.

Curry

Put into a saucepan a piece of butter the size of a small egg, let it melt, add to it one onion finely minced & 2 apples minced. Cook these together until soft, then add 1 tablespoonful curry powder, 1 tablespoonful flour, 1 teaspoonful chutney, pinch salt, 1 tablespoonful lemon juice, & 1 pint water or stock. Let these cook til quite soft, rub them thoroughly through a sieve, return to the saucepan, make quite hot & throw in either 1 lb veal, rabbit, mutton, lean pork fish, or fowl cut up in neat joints or pieces. Let this simmer very slowly by the side of the fire 1 1/4 hours. Serve on a hot dish with plenty of boiled rice in a separate dish. Note. In making curry from cold meat, make the sauce in the same manner, then make it very hot, throw in the cooked meat, allow it to remain in the saucepan by the side of the fire for about 15 min to get hot through, but on no account allow it to boil. Crated cocoa nut, 2 tablespoonful in with the apples etc. is a great improvement.

This recipe is for a jelly roll. I have one from my grandmother with similar instructions but with the measurements, which is very helpful! Again, the kitchen Maggie Ritchey was cooking for must have been quite different from even mid 20th century kitchens because she used weights rather than volume measurements. I have read recently that in baking especially, weights are more precise and so could possibly give a better outcome. I am not convinced, but I also think that as a home baker for my family and friends, the outcome is not as crucial as a head cook in the kitchen of a great house or restaurant.

Below the transcription of Maggie’s recipe, for comparisons sake I will add the more modern jelly roll recipe. Gramma A says that Gram had an electric mixer pretty soon after they were available, so even if this recipe is from the 1930s the mixer could still have been used. The first electric hand mixer was available to homemakers in the 1910s. Who knew?

Swiss Roll

Put on the scales 3 eggs take their weight in flour & in fine sugar. Put the sugar & eggs into a basin & work them to-gether with a wooden spoon until they become creamy, then add by degrees the flour. Stir again, add few drops flavouring. Grease a baking sheet, lay into it a sheet of paper & grease it. Add to the mixture 1 teaspoonful baking powder. Spread it evenly all over the tin, place it in a hot oven & bake from 7 to 12 min. Have on the table a sheet of paper with a little sugar spread on it, turn the roll on to this & lay some jam in & roll it up as quickly as you possibly can.

*****

Jelly Roll (Mother)

Liberally butter cookie sheet with lip and flour

Sift together and set aside until needed:

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

Have 1 tablespoon melter butter ready

1/4 teaspoon salt

Beat 4 eggs until very thick and light. Gradually add 3/4 cup sugar, beating all the while – add 1 teaspoon vanilla. Remove beaters and fold in flour mixture carefully. Just before putting into pan, add melted butter – don’t stir too well. Bake at 400 for 15-20 minutes. While baking lay out linen dish towel sprinkled with powdered sugar and get ready a jar of dark jelly by beating it with a fork. Turn out cake onto cloth – quickly make cuts along edge of cake so it will roll. Spread with jelly, roll up and wrap in cloth until it remains in shape.

I never really thought I’d need instructions on how to boil green vegetables, and honestly I think it rather funny that Maggie’s example is a cauliflower – which is not green at all! However, her notes do say that these instructions apply to all green vegetables except spinach. I find the addition of washing soda to the food somewhat off-putting. However, washing soda is relatively similar to baking soda and you could use that instead. Washing soda is more alkaline and thereby more caustic in large quantities. I think I would just use water to boil my veggies.

Boiling of Green Vegetables

Take a cauliflower, thoroughly wash it & free it from all clay & dirt, if possible let it be in cold water for at least 1/2 hour. On no account put salt in the water that it is steeping in. Have a saucepan of boiling water on the fire, add to it a good pinch salt & a tiny bit washing soda the size of a pea. Place the cauliflower into it with the flower down & boil it without a lid, from 15-20 min. Take it up, cut the coarse stalk from it, place it in a hot vegetable dish & serve it with white sauce. Note This applies to the boiling of all green vegetables with the exception of spinach.

This recipe is for a coconut candy that appears to be quite easy. Of course, I have no idea what quantity of coconut you would need, but might it be fun to get a coconut and grate it just to find out? It’s a rather labor intensive process, even if it is pretty easy. I discovered a funny post over at another site detailing how to open the coconut and extract the meat inside. This blogger says her coconut yielded a sandwich baggie full, which might be around 1 1/2-2 cups.

A second thing about this recipe is curious to me. In the last sentence, that last word sure looks like cochineal to me. The cochineal is an insect used to derive red food coloring, but it doesn’t have any taste. So, I am not quite certain what that could be about…possibly the candy from a fresh coconut would be red?

Cocoa-nut Ice Tablet

Put into a lined pan 4 lb loaf sugar, add to this 2 pints water. Boil until it becomes brittle, take it off the fire, let it cool a little. Add a grated cocoa-nut, stir together, pour into a greased tin & set aside to get nearly cold, then mark into whatever squares you like. Note that in using a fresh cocoanut, the milk from it is always used. 2 lbs sugar into a pan with 1 pint water, treat it in the same manner with cochineal.

Sometimes when you try to describe how to do something, it just doesn’t translate well and the action must be seen to be understood. That is where I am with the description Maggie gives us of how to place the pie crust over this meat pie and further with the leaves. Hopefully it made sense to her and she was able to duplicate the pie to great success in her own kitchen. Recently, we started watching Downton Abbey and I do so wonder if Maggie Ritchey was training to work in a kitchen such as that – large with many layers of staff and propriety – or if she was just learning home economics for a large family. I will never know.

Rabbit Pie

Take a rabbit, cut it up into neat joints & wipe the joints. Lay some of these into a pie dish. Sprinkle over these some pepper & salt, a little chopped parsley, then some very thin slices of bacon rolled, some more rabbit & so on until the dish is full. A squeeze of lemon juice & a tiny grate of nutmeg, enough cold water or stock to fill the dish. If light, a couple of hard boiled eggs cut in quarters may be added. Roll out the pastry, to about 1/2 an inch in thickness & turn it so as to get it to a square. Wet round the edges of the dish, cut off a strip from the pastry & lay it round the edge of the dish with the rough edge in & well lapped across. Wet this piece of pastry all round & cover it with the rest of the paste & take care to press the edges well together. Nick them round with the back of a knife & make a large hole in the centre, cut out some strips from the trimmings of pastry & make some leaves by taking a straight strip an inch & 1/2 wide, placing your knife across it & taking from it a diamond, then mark it down the centre, with the back of a knife, so  as to vein it. Brush the pie over with a well beaten egg. Place in the oven & bake for about 1 3/4 hours, taking care to change the pie to a cooler part of the oven so as to thoroughly cook the meat.

I am not much with pie doughs, rolled cookies or anything that requires the right balance of flour to make it not too dry but just dry enough to roll. My doughs always wind up being too sticky or dry and then I lose patience. There are many puff pastry recipes out there, all of them more detailed than Maggie’s recipe pictured above. If you have never made puff pastry, I recommend reading a few other recipes before trying this one. There apparently is a technique to rolling and chilling the dough that could make or break your pastry.

Most of the recipes I read have the dough chilled in between rolling, so where it is noted “roll out three times” you will need to refrigerate in between for about 20 minutes.

Rough Puff Pastry

Put into a basin 7 oz flour, add to it 4 oz butter broken in pieces the size of a filbert. Add a squeeze of lemon juice. Put your right hand into the basin, pour in enough cold water to mix to a stiff dough. Roll out three times. Put as little flour as possible into the paste and roll out evenly.