Inquiring readers: Summer is my favorite time to eat vegetables – with corn succulently sweet, tomatoes bright red and juicy, blueberries plumb and flavorful, and oranges burst-in-your-mouth ripe. I’ve wondered for ages how people in centuries past stored, preserved, and prepared foods in a world without packaging, refrigeration, freezing, or canning. Out of necessity people ate foods that were fresh, and therefore nutritious and flavorful. This post discusses foods that were plucked, eaten, and prepared during the months of July through September (and beyond, depending on their preservation.)
Fantastic hairdress with fruit and vegetable motif, 18th c., anonymous. French. Public Domain, The Met Museum
Luckily, I found two websites that made my search for British food easy: one is for the seasonal foods of England at the The European Food Information Council. (See the list of fruits and vegetables below.) In that site I looked up fruits and vegetables in Great Britain, clicked on August, and received the following information on the food during this month.
Fruits:
Bilberry, blackberry, blueberry, cherry, crab apple, elderberry, gooseberry, greengage, loganberry, plum, raspberry, redcurrent, strawberry, watermelon
Vegetables:
Artichoke, aubergine, beetroot, bell pepper, broad bean, broccoli, cabbage, carrot, cavolo nero, celery, chard, chili, courgette, cucumber, fennel, garlic, haricot bean, kohlrabi, lamb’s lettuce, mangetout, marrow, mushroom, onion, pak choi, pea, potato, radicchio, radish, rucola, runner bean, samphire, spinach, spring onion, sweet corn, tomato, turnip, watercress
I also checked the National Trust site, which discusses foods in season in August – July – and September. This site includes a more extensive list of foods, and suggests recipes as well.
The foods listed in the EIFC are those available in Great Britain today. The variety of foods in Jane Austen’s day were different. I was curious to know which fruits and vegetables were readily available for a family in Steventon or Bath’s markets, particularly in late June through early September. For centuries, foods were imported into the British Isles through trade from far flung lands. Over time, the choice of produce increased, but which recipes were adapted by Austen’s contemporaries to take advantage of the influx of new spices and produce?
Eighteenth-century cookery books, such as Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, provide vital clues, as do contemporary journals, such as James Woodforde’s Diary of a Country Parson. This man’s musings are filled with food references and dining habits. Both books provide colorful, real time descriptions of late 18th century dining habits. (I’ve chosen a time during Austen’s formative years, when her parents labored with family and servants in raising fruits, vegetables, and farm animals in Steventon.) Another good resource is Martha Lloyd’s Household Book, annotated by Julienne Gehrer, which discusses the recipes used by the Austen family and Jane’s close friend, Martha.
British food of yore:
This post concentrates primarily on fresh fruits and vegetables. Meat was plentiful for aristocrats throughout the year, and for the gentry, middle class, and landowners. (Rural poor suffered from the land enclosure acts (1604-1914), when communal lands were fenced off, which forced agricultural workers – who once fed their families in a communal fashion – to find menial work elsewhere.) This post does not discuss the difficulties the dispossessed found in finding food and work in cities, but focuses on Austen’s life and the people with whom she associated, and the food eaten by her social strata.
Renowned British food historian, Ivan Day, and Phillip Effingham, whose organization runs a Love Your Greens campaign, discussed the quintessential British vegetable in a 2011 article by BBC News. Food fads come and go, but Mr. Day chose the humble garden pea for its longevity in British food history.
“It grows easily throughout Britain, and has done for centuries. Its name dates from Chaucer’s time, when it was known as pease. In its dried form, the pea is the basis for traditional staples such as pease porridge. When eaten fresh, with little more than butter as a garnish, it was prized by Tudor kings and commoners alike as a welcome burst of bright green in summer.” – What is the UK’s national vegetable? – BBC News
Mr Effingham chose four vegetables:
“Cauliflower, cabbage, carrots and onions. If I had to choose one, in terms of sales, versatility and year-round production in Britain, it would come down to the carrot …. Not the white, knobbly wild carrots native to Britain. He means the orange carrot, developed in the Netherlands during the reign of William of Orange.” – BBC News
As I researched information about foods eaten during the late 18th century, I found the following passage in Pastor Woodforde’s diary:
I read a good deal of the History of England today to Nancy whilst she was netting her Apron. Very dry again. I feed my Geese with Cabbage now. – Pastor Woodforde, July 24, 1781: Full text of “The Diary Of A Country Parson”
The cabbage growing season lasted year round, with planting scheduled in sequence. Therefore, the good pastor could feed fresh cabbages to his geese during a time of drought.
- Summer cabbages: sow from late February/early March (under cloches or similar cover) until early May; transplant in May/June
- Winter cabbages: sow in April/May; transplant in late June/July
- Spring cabbages: sow in July/August; transplant in September/October — Cabbages (RHS.org.uk)
Cabbage was also used in a Hannah Glasse recipe “To make Gravy for Soups, Etc.” She added two onions and a carrot, thus three of Mr Effingham’s choices were included. Mr Day’s peas were cooked in this manner: “If you have peas ready boiled, your soup will soon be ready made.”
Hannah Glasse’s recipe in The Art Of Cookery : Hannah Glasse : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Hannah also included a recipe of Peas Soup, which is so reminiscent of my Dutch mother’s pea soup. Her only addition was carrots, but Hannah’s recipe could be in my family’s recipe bank.
In a July entry in his diary, Woodforde mentioned peas and a gooseberry tart, in August he wrote of consuming mulberries and pears after dinner. The following passage from October 12, 1770, described the enormous amount of food he and his guests consumed in one day. Fruits and vegetables played a pale role against the copious servings of meat and liquor. Still, they were fresh.
“Mrs. Carr, Miss Chambers, Mr. Hindley, Mr. Carr, and Sister Jane dined, supped and spent the evening with me, and we were very merry. I gave them for dinner a dish of fine Tench which I caught out of my brother’s Pond in Pond Close this morning, Ham, and 3 Fowls boiled, a Plumb Pudding ; a couple of Ducks rested, a roasted neck of Pork, a Plumb Tart and an Apple Tart, Pears, Apples and Nutts after dinner; White Wine and red. Beer and Cyder. Coffee and Tea in the evening at SIX o’clock. Hashed Fowl and Duck and Eggs and Potatoes etc. for supper. We did not dine till four o’clock — nor supped till ten. Mr. Rice, a Welshman who is lately come to Cary and plays very well on the Triple Harp, played to us after coffee for an hour or two . . . the Company did not go away till near twelve o’clock.”
The Parson’s fresh Tench, a fish that often substituted for carp, is rarely eaten today. (Wikipedia)
Little imagination is needed to understand why gout presented a common problem in the 18th century, for the condition is caused by excessive consumption of alcohol, meat, and sweets. The Pastor was a hardworking man, however, and on August 17th, 1770 he described a day of work, inserting comments about food and drink:
“Begun shearing my Wheat this morning and gave the shearers according to the Norfolk custom as under, a good breakfast, at ii o’clock plumb cakes with caraway seeds in them, and some Liquor, a good dinner with plumb Puddings and at 4 Beer again. N.B. the above are called elevens and fours’. Only Ben and Will my shearers of Wheat. Before the dew is off in the morn’ they mow Oats. My Wheat this year not above 4 Acres. They shear with sickles instead of Reap-Hooks. The form of them like a Reap-Hook but the Edge of it like a saw, and they do exceeding well. Will brewed this morning a barrel of Ale before he went shearing Wheat at 12 o’clock. – Woodforde
One can only imagine the calories the men expended before dining!
A food that Parson Woodforde mentioned repeatedly, regardless of the season, was plum pudding. Interestingly, this pudding’s traditional recipe is “made with raisins, currants and … suet — that’s the solid white fat surrounding the kidneys and loins of animals like cattle and sheep…” – Plum pudding has no plums, and what it does have is odd. In other diary entries he also referenced Sugar Plumbs and Plumb Tart.
On May 1, 1772, the parson wrote,
“In the evening Mr Creed, myself and the Counsellor [Melliar] walked down into Cary and saw the Fair, it being Cary Fair today I saw’ Miss Hannah Pew in the Fair and I gave her some Sugar Plumbs.”
Having never tasted a sugarplum, I researched the recipe.
“A 1668 British cookbook described sugarplum as being ‘small candy in the shape of a ball or disk; a sweetmeat.” – A Sugar Plum is What You Make Of It – Washington Post
Panning: adding layers of sweet which give sugar plums and comfits their hard shell. Visions of Sugar Plums, Jane Austen blog
The Historical Cookery Page provides detailed instructions for making sugar plums. It prefaces its recipe with this statement:
“The dictionary defines a sugarplum as a small round or oval piece of sugary candy. English being the flexible language it is, the name could have come from the resemblance to a small plum. Or it could have come from actual plums preserved in sugar, a relatively new idea in 16th Century England. Prior to this time sugar was so expensive that it was used very sparingly … In the 1540’s, however, sugar started being refined in London which lowered the price considerably … Preserving with sugar allowed the sweet fruits of summer to be enjoyed all year round, especially during the holiday season.”
Screen shot of a few variety of plums
Plums were also known as a stone fruit, or a fruit with a hard pit, like cherries, peaches or apricots. The diversity of plums in color and size is astounding – over 2,000 varieties exist in the world. The plum traveled from China, where it was cultivated for thousands of years, and made its way across the world. With the various species grown in different climates, it was no wonder that nutritious plums (dried as prunes) were available year round. And yet … plum pudding had no plums!
As sailors discovered, fresh fruits in the form of oranges and lemons maintained health, preventing scurvy and promoting healthy gums and teeth, important to one’s health when dentistry was in its infancy and, frankly, barbaric. Plums (and many summer grown vegetables), attained peak season from July to August, although many were available from June through October.
Pickling was one means of preserving fruits and vegetables for the long fall, winter, and early spring months. This pickling recipe from Martha Lloyd is all encompassing and can still be followed today:
India Pickles
Take half a pd: of Ginger put it in water one night scrape it & cut it in thin slices put it in a bowl with dry salt & let it stand till your other ingredients are fit. Take half a pd: of Garlic, peel & cut it in pieces put it in dry salt three days then wash it and put it in the sun to dry. Take a qt: of a pd: of Mustard seed bruised very fine; and oz: of Termrick [tumeric], a Gallon of the strongest vinegar, ptu these ingredients into a stone jar, let it be three parts full. Take white Cabbage, & quarter it keep it in dry salt three days, then dry it into the Sun. (to is scratched out.) Take white Cabbage & quarter it keep it in dry salt three days then dry it into the sun. So do Calliflowers, Cucumbers, Mellons, Peaches, plums Apples or any thing you of this sort. Radishes may be done the same way leaving on the young tops, also french beans & asparagus the three last are to be salted but two days & dried as the others. You need not empty your jar, but as things come in season put them in and fill it up with fresh vinegar. The more every thing is dried in the sun the plumper it will be in the pickle, if the pickles are not high colour’d enough, add a little more term’ric [tumeric] which makes it the colour of the india Mango. Never put red Cabbage or Walnuts because they spoil & discoulor all the rest. – Martha Lloyd, p 104
Preserving foods:
The methods of preservation Martha mentions in this recipe are salting or brining, pickling, and drying in the sun. Another method of preservation included boiling fruit in sugar or in a heavy syrup. If there was no sun, one method of drying was to place the fruit or vegetable in a cooling oven to draw out the moisture.
Pickled vegetables and eggs were stored in glazed crocks, and soaked with vinegar (as Martha’s recipe directs), and were then covered with leather or a pig bladder. Sugared fruits preserved in heavy syrup was a costly method of preservation. Mold developing on top was scraped off.
Martha also mentioned curing, jugging, and potting. She made vinegar, jellies, and wine from fruits in season including raspberries, currants, elderberries, and oranges. In addition to wine, her cookbook included beer recipes made with ginger or spruce.
Gooseberry (Ribes uva-crispa – botanical illustrations), 1885, wikimedia commons
Gooseberries were quite versatile. Martha’s recipes included the fruit to make cheese, wine, and vinegar. They were also dried, including grapes, and plums (which turned into prunes.) Gooseberry season started in June, but the fruit didn’t sweeten until July. They are suitable for cooking, but needed sweetening unless they were used as a savory. (Laura Mason & Catherine Brown, The Taste of Britain, British Food History)
The rich had additional methods of preserving food and eating fresh foods out of season. Orangeries, or a Georgian form of green houses, enabled fruits and vegetables to grow year round. Ice houses, dug deep into the ground, had thick walls for insulation. Straw or sawdust provided additional protection. Great blocks of ice were shipped from far northern climes and transported to grand houses all over England.
As a final comment, no matter how well vegetables and fruits were preserved, the best way to eat them was in season when they were freshly obtained from the earth, tree, bush or vine.
Resources:
- Preserving the Harvest in the 18th Century | Washington Crossing Historic Park
- Gehrer, J. Martha Lloyd’s Household Book: The Original Manuscript from Jane Austen’s Kitchen, (2021). The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
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