Reconstruction
Welcome to Faye and Abbie's reconstruction of Margaret Bakers Wayfer cakes!
On this page we will take you through our journey of reconstructing a recipe from over 300 years ago. We now had a clear transcription of our recipe and the next task was to source our ingredients. We understood from Baker’s recipe that we needed butter, flour, cream, rosewater and sugar to make her Wayfer Cakes, we made our short shopping list and set off to Tesco. All the ingredients were easy for us to source.
In the grocery store, we first found the butter and faced such a decision over which butter to buy. There was such a selection of butters and spreads, a selection Baker herself would probably be amazed to see. After ‘umming’ and ‘ahhing’ for a while, we decided to settle with the grocery store’s own ‘British unsalted block butter.’ We thought that this kind of butter would be the closest to that which Baker would have used, without having to make the butter ourselves – modern day perks! Baker did not specify which kind of cream was necessary to ‘wet' the mixture, we opted for double cream, as we decided this would again be the closest to what Baker would have used. We also bought the grocery store’s plain flour, as we knew it couldn’t be self-raising flour as this wasn’t invented till 1845. When it came to choosing sugar we knew we would not be able to use what Baker would have used as she would have used loaf sugar. This was a mass of hard refined sugar, rather than small cubes or granulated as we usually have it today, and was the most common form of sugar in the 17th Century. As modern day grocery stores don’t sell loaf sugar (and if they did we wouldn’t have sugar nippers to cut it into smaller pieces) we decided to purchase caster sugar, for lack of other options.
Baker’s recipe specified the following measurements; ‘two quarts of flower,’ ‘two pound of sugar,’ ‘a pound of fresh butter,’ and ‘the yolks of eight eggs.’ This left Abbie and I completely baffled and wondering ‘how on earth are we going to measure a quart? And what did Baker mean by a pound?’
Margaret Baker seems to have wanted to help us modern re-constructionists out with some of these issues of confusing measurements as she has included appendices at the back of her recipe book. Beginning on (f. 133 r). there is an abbreviation page explaining some measurements which she had abbreviated into symbols or letters and a rough guide to the size of each measurement. Of course, that’s just a fanciful notion! But she may have intended this information to be useful for others in her circle that used her book. Furthermore, by including this sort of knowledge we can assume that she was precise and methodical in her own work. Unfortunately for us, Bakers clarification of the measurement ‘quart’ was less than helpful in terms of working out how much it would signify in modern measurements: “a quart signifies a quart of anything.” However, from this at least we knew that we did not have to worry about converting measurements for wet and dry ingredients.
Google helped us in translating our measurements. We found out that a ‘quart’ today translated to two pints or 1.136 litres and a pound was equal to sixteen ounces.This meant that we needed to measure four pints of flour, thirty-two ounces of sugar and sixteen ounces of butter. This seemed a lot, however, we were certain with our translations and so persevered with one problem, we needed more butter. So, off to grocery store we went to purchase another pack of butter.
Unfortunately for us, the first grocery store didn’t have rosewater. Therefore, we bought all the ingredients that we could here, then headed to another grocery store for the rosewater (Abbie even gave them a quick call beforehand to ensure our trip wouldn’t be wasted) We took all the ingredients home and finally began cooking.
It is significant that, even today, rosewater is not sold everywhere. I consider that this may be because it is not used often today, suggesting that it is, even today, a luxury, specialised item. Today, rosewater is still used in some recipes and beauty regimes.
Baker would have made many of these ingredients from scratch at home. Throughout our course we have learnt that many houses of the middle and upper classes would have had many different rooms for the preparing of food. For instance, countrymen were expected to have a buttery, a cellar, a larder, a kitchen, a milk-house and a dairy-house. (Markham 25) As mentioned earlier, it is likely that Baker was of a relatively high status and so she would have had at least some of these spaces, enabling her to make the ingredients, including rose water as this was commonly distilled in the 17th Century. It is likely Baker only needed to go to town for loaf sugar.
Although we attempted to make recipe as authentic as possible, we knew that it would never be 100% authentic. Without access to the same ingredients and utensils as Baker how could it possibly be? We used only modern cooking equipment which was readily available to us: a plastic mixing bowl, a wooden spoon, modern measuring scales, baking trays, a measuring jug and an electric oven.
Once we had reached conclusions about our ingredients and their relative measurements we had to decipher Baker’s methods that we were to follow to make the cakes. This again was not an easy task, while recipes are by definition instructional, they are also very personal during this time period. As Faye has mentioned on the previous page, implied and assumed knowledge in Baker’s recipes make them extremely difficult for us to follow. There is so much information that we are not provided with! We understood Baker’s instruction to ‘Take’ ingredients as ‘add’ them to the mixture, and did so in the order in which she listed them. The instruction “sacke the yolks of 8 eggs” gave us more to think about, at first we thought it might have meant to crack the eggs, we then decided that the specific ingredient of the yolks of eggs meant that the instruction was more likely to mean ‘remove the yolks’ or separate them from the egg white. We decided to do this and use just the yolks in our reconstruction.
What we had completely overlooked is that the word sacke did not belong to that instruction at all and it was an ingredient in itself! We had done a cursory search for ‘sacke’ in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) prior to the reconstruction and as it had not returned a result suitable to breaking eggs we had disregarded the results and made our own assumptions. However, since reconsidering our methods post-reconstruction and returning to the OED we discovered that sacke was actually more likely to be; “A general name for a class of white wines formerly imported from Spain and the Canaries.” This omission of an ingredient is important as it will have had an impact on our reconstruction and final product.
The next definitive instruction was to “role them thin”. Here we were completely lost, we were left guessing as to what our mixture should look like by this stage. What did Baker mean by ‘them’- should the mixture be separated into smaller portions by now? Or did she want us to roll the whole mixture out thin? Baker had left these questions unanswered, we therefore followed the recipes instructions as far as we could filling in the gaps with our own assumptions as we went. Keep reading to see how this played out!
Baker's recipe starts by taking two quarts of flour, two pound of sugar and a pound of fresh butter and, we assume, mixing these ingredients together, although this is not specified. We added the flour and the sugar first and then, due to the large amount this made we decided to split the mixture into two separate bowls. Unfortunately, in my kitchen we only had one large mixing bowl, so a large saucepan had to do for the other half of the mixture.
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Once we had split the mixture it was much easier to mix. We each took a bowl and kept mixing the flour and sugar together, until it appeared to be properly mixed.
We then added 'a pound,' or modern day sixteen ounces, of butter to the mix. We slightly melted the butter before adding it, to make it easier to mix in with the sugar and flour. Inevitably, the huge amount of mixture did lead to a very messy situation ending with mixture all over the counter, Baker must have had one very big bowl!
The next instruction was a vague one: 'put in some rosewater.' It could be that Baker made this so vague because it depends on different taste preferences, however, the implied knowledge here could also be that the adding of the rosewater is to result in a particular consistency. This is unclear and so we took our time with adding this ingredient, adding a little at a time and stirring it in well.
The rosewater smelt amazing so we added quite a bit, nearly half the bottle, we wish we had read this article first, which explains that modern day rosewater is about double or three times the original strength! In hindsight, as we missed out sacke, it is probably good that we added extra rosewater as this made the mixture closer to the consistency it should have been.
We read the next instruction as ‘sacke the yolk of 8 eggs' and so Abbie carefully separated the yolks of 8 eggs, and added 4 to each mixing bowl. However, as discussed, it turns out that sacke was an ingredient which we had overlooked.
We missed out on ‘sacke’ because of the way it is written in Baker’s recipe. When we first saw the recipe we thought that it read as ‘sacke the yolke of eight eggs’ which we then concluded was supposed to mean simply crack the yolk of eight eggs. However, after reflecting on the recipe we now realise that this does mean ‘sacke’ (a general name for a class of white wines), meaning that we are missing an ingredient in our reconstruction. Baker’s handwriting and lack of punctuation makes it seem as if ‘sacke the yolke of eight eggs’ is an instruction, it doesn’t clearly portray that ‘sacke’ is a separate ingredient, which is where our mistake has been made. Looking back, it is clear now that this would have changed the consistency and taste of the cakes and this is something to remember for our next reconstruction.
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Next, we needed to 'wett it with creame,' another very vague instruction from Baker. We took the same approach as with the rosewater, adding a little then stirring it in, then adding a little more.
There is a great deal of implied knowledge throughout Baker's recipe book, and so much in this one short recipe. Baker didn’t mention quantities for the cream or rosewater, this is implied that the cook would know by experience how much to add. In addition, there is no mention of how long to bake the cakes for or on what kind of heat, as this again would be known to the experienced cook. Unfortunately, this is less than helpful for us today!
In Baker's day there would not have been temperature regulators on her oven and so it was down to physical appearance of what they were baking and experience. It is implied in the recipe that the cook would know to monitor the heat and view progress regularly.
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Completely unsure of what the final product would look like, we spread the mixture into two separate baking trays. Baker's instructions were to 'role them thin & put them in the hott irons and so bake them.' At first, this seemed like an impossible task as our mixture resembled quite a mess, it was not one solid mixture. However, after kneading the mixture quite a bit, it began to stick together as dough and we managed to role the mixture into two separate baking trays.
Baker would have thought it unnecessary to explain what she meant by 'hott irons' as it was a standard kitchen utensil. However, this complete confused us!
Our reconstruction points to our own status and expectations for a kitchen today in comparison to Baker’s expectations. The utensils which Baker assumes the user of her recipe book will have varies greatly from a modern-day kitchen, but of course she was never to know the evolution of the kitchen! Furthermore, as students, we are don’t have any more specialised kitchen equipment, especially nothing that would equal ‘hott irons,’ hence why we had to settle for baking trays to cook the cakes in.
WhatsApp Video 2017-05-01 at 20.31.32.mp4Prior to making the Wayfer Cakes, we had pre-heated the oven on 140 degrees. Due to the cakes being made into a thin layer, we decided to keep the oven on a low heat and check them regularly as to not burn them.
WhatsApp Video 2017-05-01 at 20.31.16 (1).mp4Due to the implied knowledge in Baker's book, we had no idea how the Wayfer Cakes were supposed to look or smell, which made it difficult to determine when they were ready. This clip shows Faye checking the cakes with a knife to see if they were still soft or had yet been cooked through the middle ... They were still soft and so we turned the temperature up slightly to 180 degrees and continued to wait.
Due to the implied knowledge in Baker's book, we had no idea how the Wayfer Cakes were supposed to look or smell, which made it difficult to determine when they were ready. Here, you can see Abbie checking on the cakes, smelling them to see if they were cooked or not. We had no idea how they should smell or look and so determining when they were cooked was difficult. We only decided to take the out of the oven when they were looking crispy around the edges. This was to ensure that they would then be cooked all the way through. They smelt like sweet buttery biscuits and we were excited to taste them.
Taste Test!
How do our seventeenth century wayfer cakes taste to twentieth century palates?
"They look and taste more like biscuits!" - Holly Hazeldine
"They're like very sweet biscuits!" - Faye Glover
"It reminds me of a cake my grandmother used to make. Its strange, the texture is of a biscuit but it tastes like a cake." - Rhia Bulley
"I can definitely taste the rosewater, but it's not too overpowering. They're not too aesthetically pleasing, but very tasty!" - Becky Griffin
"they are very very sweet, hard not to enjoy!" - Abbie Burnett
Conclusions
This reconstruction was such a fun experiment which brought us so much closer to Baker's world. Having to transcribe the recipe and figure out the ingredients was quite a task, yet it allowed us to fully comprehend the recipe and turn it into a modern-day reconstruction.
Although we were unable to make the recipe 100% authentic, it has given us such an insight into Baker's cooking process. Through cooking one of her recipes we can now see the volume that Baker cooked in (we made over 60 biscuits with this mixture!) Baker’s recipes may have made such large quantities of certain foods as cooking was such an arduous process during this period. Without electric ovens, or electric whisks and other modern equipment, cooking would have taken a long time, and to make it worthwhile large amounts of food would need to be produced. Alternatively, dishes that were fancy such as Wayfer Cakes may have been made for celebrations and so large numbers would have been needed. Additionally, the large amount of sugar within these wayfer cakes would have ensured that they did not spoil quickly, and so would be preserved until they were wanted. The preservation of food was not an unknown science with almost every book published from the period including recipes used to preserve.(Tigner 132) This is hardly surprising considering that fridge freezers had not been invented yet. Amy Tigner explores methods of food preservation within another early modern manuscript A supplement to The Queen- Like Closet (1674) by Hannah Woolley. Woolley distilled, conserved, candied, pickled and cooked food to preserve it. Like Baker, she understood the value of sugar as a food preservative as it was cheap, readily available and was agreeable to British taste buds. Richard Sheridan estimates that “English Sugar consumption probably increased four-fold in the last four decades of the seventeenth century.” (Tigner 135)
Some of the problems that we encountered while reconstructing the wayfer cakes could have been overcome by being more prepared or spending more money on equipment. For example, if we had measured out all the ingredients separately before adding them together rather than measuring one and adding it straight into the mixture, we may have realised that we needed a much larger mixing bowl. Alternatively, we could have halved the measurements without affecting the finished product. If we were to repeat the reconstruction we would definitely consider halving the measurements, or buying a larger bowl. We would have also included the missing ingredient of ‘sacke’ that we accidentally omitted; it would be interesting to taste the difference between those with and without alcohol. This mistake is important as it highlights that while we believed that we were thoroughly engaging with Baker's recipe, in reality we were actually making our own assumptions and had digressed from her instructions significantly.
However, even taking into consideration the problems that we faced, this was a worthwhile and successful reconstruction of a recipe from Baker's 1675 manuscript. We now both appreciate just how difficult it must have been for Baker to make what is a simpler recipe from her book, let alone the more complex recipes!
By Faye Glover and Abbie Burnett
Markham,Gervase, English Husbandman (London, 16130).
Tigner, A. L. ‘Preserving Nature in Hannah Woolley’s The Queen-Like Closet; or Rich Cabinet’, in Laroche and Munroe, eds. Ecofeminist Approaches, pp. 129-149.
https://www.britannica.com/science/British-Imperial-System Accessed: 29/4/17.
http://joepastry.com/2015/a-short-history-of-self-rising-flour/ Accessed: 29/4/17.
http://www.oed.com/ Accessed: 9/5/17.
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/169485?rskey=aEbNrH&result=4#eid Accessed: 9/5/17.
http://www.elle.com/beauty/a33931/rose-water-uses-and-benefits/ Accessed: 10/05/17
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/rosewater Accessed:10/05/17