Lady Catherine's Bread Pudding (circa 1705)

Receipt or recipe books were an important aspect of well-to-do women’s lives in the early modern period. The collection of recipes, written down and stored for both a woman’s own use or distributed among her home and family members, emphasized how women were at the center of domestic knowledge production. Furthermore, recipe books themselves were a collaborative effort-- typically combining passed down cures to sickness or a distant cousin’s cake recipe-- that were often written by more than just the woman who ‘owned’ the book. Recipe books also paralleled trends outside of the household’s sphere; into the 17th and 18th centuries, the inclusion of goods like sugar showed an alarming, growing acceptance of enslavement and exploitation through the quickly expanding British Empire. As such, recipe books with a greater reliance on imported goods demonstrate how notions of empire extended into everyday life. One such book, of a Lady Catherine Fitzgerald, exemplify how both of these ideas weaved together in the early 18th century. Her identity as an upper-class woman in England during the 18th century whose recipe book comprises various medical, domestic, and cookery receipts written between 1703 and 1707 show the importance of such books in recording the activities in the domestic and international stage.

Among the nearly three hundred pages of recipes found in Lady Catherine’s receipt book from the 18th-century, many recipes seem foreign to our modern palettes. However, the collection also includes incredibly familiar foodstuffs as well, such as her To Make a Bakd Puding recipe found on page seven. I decided to recreate this recipe as bread pudding has often been a favorite dish of mine. The recipe is as follows:

Take 3 [illegible] and cut them in thin slices, then boyle it soft, then take 8 egs, the yolks of 7 & one white and beate them very well, boyle the bread in a quart of creame, then stirre in the egs and a handfull of fine flower and a sliced nutmeg & some greene Citron & orenge, then putt it all in a dish, and lett it stand ¾ of an hour heate the oven as hott as for white breade, when the bread and cream is boyld, lett it stand a while covered close to soften the bread, then bruise all the little lumpts of the bread, then putt the egges in, & wett the flower in 3 spoonfulls of rosewater and stirre it in very well. If there be any lumps in it runne it through a cullender, and then put in the sliced nutmeg and a little salt and a spoonfull of sack and sweeten it with sugar to your taste, then put in the citron and orenge well mixte together & a little melted butter.

To recreate this recipe with modern ingredients and appliances, quite a bit of tweaking had to be done. For one, I cut the recipe in half to create a smaller portion, in case the final product ended up a disaster. I have broken down the recipe’s steps below.

Take 3 [illegible] and cut them in thin slices, then boyle it soft, then take 8 egs, the yolks of 7 & one white and beate them very well, boyle the bread in a quart of creame, then stirre in the egs and a handfull of fine flower and a sliced nutmeg & some greene Citron & orenge, then putt it all in a dish

For this step, I took seven slices of white loaf bread and placed them in a 9 x 13 Pyrex dish. Of course, Lady Catherine would not have had the luxury to buy pre-made loaf bread and would have probably have made the loaf herself or with the aid of a house servant. She might have created a cogburg, farmhouse, or cottage loaf, which would have been a large size to make for plenty of bread for the recipe. Furthermore, given her social status, Lady Catherine would have likely had a lighter bread, similar to my white bread, as lighter loaves were often seen as reserved for the upper classes.

The next step in the process was taking the one cup of cream and boiling it with a small amount of butter and allspice. I did not follow the recipe entirely at this stage, as I did not want to boil all of the ingredients together. I let the cream boil until small bubbles formed around the rim of my (very tiny) pot and then I promptly poured the mixture onto my bread. Finally, in a separate bowl, I combined the three eggs, ¼ cup of sugar, orange extract, and small amount of flour and whisked them together. For Lady Catherine, as with most families in the early modern period, eggs would have come from a flock of hens who meandered about their property rather than the closest grocery store. The cream, which would have been perhaps 20% milk fat, might have come from the estate’s cows. For this recipe, since I used half and half, which only contained 15% to 18% milk fat probably altered the final product. Finally, and most interestingly, the use of sugar highlights not only the wealth of Lady Catherine, seeing that sugar was a luxury reserved for the elite, but also the wide stretching arms of the empire. By the mid-17th century, sugar plantations began to grow in scale in the Caribbean such as Barbados. These plantations produced cane sugar, which came from the stalks of tall grasses, and involved the horrific treatment of enslaved African peoples. The sugar would promptly be sent back to Europe for mass consumption by the elite. For Lady Catherine’s recipe, she would have purchased her sugar at a high cost, and reserved its use for special occasions and would have used it sparingly. She would have not used the white, refined sugar I did, but rather a darker, brown sugar given the refinement process was not entirely fleshed out. I then poured the egg mixture over the bread and cream.

Then putt it all in a dish, and lett it stand ¾ of an hour heate the oven as hott as for white breade, when the bread and cream is boyld, lett it stand a while covered close to soften the bread, then bruise all the little lumpts of the bread, then putt the egges in, & wett the flower in 3 spoonfulls of rosewater and stirre it in very well.

After all of the ingredients were combined, I let the mixture sit for ½ an hour in the refrigerator to let the liquid soak. Lady Catherine calls for adding rosewater-- simply water infused with rose petals. Rosewater would have been used as a flavor enhancer, as the fragrance of the roses would have improved one’s dish. I opted out of this portion of the recipe, as I had no roses on hand. To mimic the taste of the rosewater, I added a handful of dried cranberries to give a floral taste. Finally, I chose to put my mixture in a conventional oven at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. I chose this because most modern bread recipes have these exact temperatures and times, which follows Lady Catherine’s instruction of “heate the oven as hott as for white breade.”

When my bread pudding was done, I of course had to sample! The taste was quite good, given the small amount of sugar in the dish. The cranberries added a nice taste as well. While this recreation might not replicate exactly what Lady Catherine would have done three centuries ago, this recipe demonstrates the complexities of receipt books in early modern Europe. The recipe combines common ingredients for a 18th century home, as well as new ingredients and technologies coming from all parts of the world-- often with a dark underbelly. As such, Lady Catherine's book represents the importance of women in knowledge production, the prominence of shared information, and a growing importance of empire in the home.