SC - seeking edible ways to gild

[Kallyr]

Hello folks! I just returned from my 10th anniversary trip to the
historic-re-enactment sites of Jamestown and Williamsburg, Virginia. I must
confess that cooking-wise, I am quite impressed.

In Jamestown I saw and talked with the employee re-enactor for the Powhaton
Native American  cooking demonstration. She was cooking soup and corn cakes
at the fire, using pots of clay which were slightly pointed on the bottom
for the soup---acorn shaped, in fact. These were set into shallow pits in
the ground, and the lip of the pit supported the pots. Set close to the fire
(but not actually in it or touching it), the soup had no trouble boiling.
Coals could be raked near the pots as needed. The corn cakes (corn meal and
water) were cooked on a flat rock either over the fire (supported) or with a
rock that had been in the fire and then dragged out again.There were also
squash and other vegetables, which would have been placed into the fire
whole and roasted. 

There were no mealtimes for the Native culture. They ate whenever they were
hungry, and it was the cook's (mother's) job to have something always going
for the family (usually a soup).

Inside the museum there was a large variety of native and settler foodstuffs
on display including tubers, berries, nuts, native grains, fish, fowl, etc.
As this time period was 1607 and portrayed the begining of the European
influence on native diet, I was pleased to see that all efforts to "cheat"
and include Euopean food in the native diet were resisted! Every Native
house on display had one or two corn/maize grinders outside, which consisted
of a log partially hollowed out, standing to approx. hip height, the hollow
about 8 inches deep. A thick branch with a rounded end was used as a
"pounder" or mortar to the pestle. My 3-year old particularly enjoyed
grinding maize! The native diet also included some wild oat.

Next door at the Settler site (a re-creation of the original settlement,
placed close to the old site), I was pleased to see some of the equipment
for cooking that I own. The iron kettles (dutch ovens and pot-bellied pots)
were used for baking, and instead of using an iron trivet, rocks or sticks
inside the kettles (as I have been taught), the ladies there baked manchet
in a heavily greased clay bowl that fit rather snugly into the cast-iron pot
(a number 12, just like my favorite!). The pots were placed over coals which
had been raked out of the fire and then had a trivet or "spider" placed over
them, and then the pot was placed on the trivet, with more coals heaped onto
the concave lid of the pot. That's a fairly standard method. It took approx
20 minutes for a 1 lb. loaf to bake in this manner. I intend to experiment
with this method and see if the clay bowl (which was very slope-sided and
would have produced a triangular shaped loaf) reduces premature scorching
and provides a more regular heat, as I suspect it will. At the least, I
could use ceramic terra-cotta tiles, which would function as a bakestone
inside my dutch oven.

Although I did not have the pleasure of seeing the kitchen in the governor's
palace in Williamsburg (this site is dated approx. 1750-76), I was pleased
to be able to talk at length with the cook in the Wythe House. This kitchen
was stocked with all sorts of things I found interesting: It was hung with
drying herbs and cured hams (hoof still attached!) strung on strings or
hooks, had shelves with bulbous vase-shaped ceramic jars for pickles and
preserves, which were sealed with either linnen or soft leather squares tied
on with strings. There was a tin fire "fender" against one wall, not in use,
for banking the fires at night.  There were a marble and a wooden mortar and
pestle, a nutmeg grater in a bowl with cinnamon and nutmegs (my girls
enjoyed doing that!), two knives, two cloths, and some wooden spoons and a
meat fork. A nearby dresser held some plates and bowls, etc. Pots were
stacked on a table or hung from hooks on an overhang in the wall. A display
of food (coated with wax to help it "keep") included an open faced meat and
chopped hard-boiled-egg pie, roast pork with sauce, fresh fruits and
vegetables and loaf breads. Nearby the gardens where stocked with
appropriate produce such as swiss chard, herbs of every description,
spinach, cabbages, etc, though this was the begining of the growing season.
There were also pigs, chickens, and turkeys and dove-cotes.

 The most fascinating item in the kitchen was a clockwork spit, which ran
with a weight. This is how it operated: 
        A metal weight much the size and shape of a modern frozen
concentrate juice can was attached to a rope overhead, with an eye-bolt to
the wall. This rope ran from approx 5 feet away to just overhead at the
right hand side of the fireplace, through another eye-bolt. The end of the
rope was wound around a well-greased metal screw, which had a metal wheel
attached on top for speedy re-winding.  The screw, in turn, had a cogged
horizontal foot and was supported by a bracket attached to the wall. The
cogged foot turned a vertical cog pinned to the same bracket, which had an
attached lip for the thin chain that turned the spit. The chain was twisted
into a figure 8, and had gouged some holes in the edge of the fireplace
where it ran too close to the bricks to reach the spit, which was pushed
over the coals. The spit had a wheel on one end which guided the chain. It
was supported with typical torchiers on each end. The whole principle was to
make the chain and spit provide enough tension so that the weight at the
other end descended slowly. In this case the spit was turning a beef round
roast of approx. 5 lbs weight, roasted plain.

The cook also was making cabbage rolls. She had an open fireplace to use,
similar to the one used in Jamestown, but had some nice copper pots in
addition to the large iron ones. She made the cabbage rolls from onion,
stale bread crumbs, fat bacon  and cabbage. She blanched the leaves in water
boiled over coals raked out of the hearth under a trivet to hold the pot.
The cabbage rolls were then formed and baked with a little broth on the same
coals.

This is becoming fairly lengthy, so I'll wind up briefly: I understood that
the Governor's palace had a grid over the front of the fire for ease of
cooking but was otherwise very similar to the Wythe kitchen. The cook told
me they used primarily Mrs. Glasse's cookbook, improvising with ingredients
to hand. I found a "Williamsburg" Cookbook on sale, but was unable to tell
if it was an original manuscript. I suspected that it really was a
culled-together effort in disguise as a ms reproduction, so I did not
purchase it. I've gotten finicky in my old age.

For those who were waiting for the Cone sugar price/description, it was 4.50
for approx 8 ozs, and was made of semi-refined sugar (I assume--I did not
buy one, but saw they were using what tasted like modern brown or white
sugar for cooking in other places, rather than crude sugar, which has a
slightly different and less musky taste ). These sugars were used for their
confections including rock candy and preserved/candided ginger. Faux Cone
sugar would be easily reproduced at home by mixing a little brown sugar in
with the white, tossing with a little water, and packing into a Pilsner
Glass or other cone-shaped mold and allowing to harden (perhaps pouring it
dry into the mold first, and then dropping in water a little at a time). You
would then use a rasp or grater to get the granules needed for sprinkling,
or whack off a hunk for cooking. It seems a suitable way of treating sugar
for camping, since it will get rock-hard anyway!

About the ginger (since someone is bound to ask): It was pale yellow/orange,
moist, coated with granulated white sugar and obviously boiled in sugar
syrup, had a slight "bite", and was processed with sulphur dioxide for
freshness.

And, to fuel the debate, there was dark, semi-sweet chocolate for sale in
bar form. It was not consumed in bar form or as a confection at Williamsburg
to the best of their knowledge in the 1700s. Rather, it was grated with
butter and melted, and stirred with sugar into hot milk.

There was a truly terrific grain mill run by a windmill. The whole building
was on a pivot and had a huge beam with a wagon wheel attached. Thus the
entire windmill could be turned to face the wind. The mill sails were made
of canvas, which surprised me.


I really enjoyed my trip, and am determined to go back again soon. We were
unable to cover 50 percent of the ground we wished to see, due to small
children and time constraints, but I do reccomend this trip for anyone
swinging down that way, though the tickets were quite steep. I really feel
the price was worth it, however. They are 2 fabulous Living History sites.


TTFN

Aoife

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