Good Things in England - A Practical Cookery Book for Everyday Use, Containing Traditional and Regional Recipes Suited to Modern Tastes. Florence White
Roundell, Nantwich, Cheshire
1. Melt a tiny piece of bacon fat in a baking tin.
2. Cut the rashers from the back of the side of bacon, as the fat and lean in that part are more equally divided.
3. When the melted bacon fat is hot but not scorching hot, lay the rashers in the tin, being careful to put the fat half of one rasher over the lean half the other.
4. Bake for about 10 minutes in a hot oven.
Relishing Rashers of Bacon
Dr. Kitchiner’s Recipe, 1817
1. If you have any cold cooked bacon, you may make a very nice dish of it by cutting it into slices about 1/4 inch thick.
2. Grate some crust of bread and powder the rashers well with it on both sides.
3. Toast them in front of the fire (or under a gas or electric grill).
4. They will be browned on one side in about three minutes. Turn them and do the other.
N.B.—These are a delicious accompaniment to poached or fried eggs; the bacon having been boiled first is tender and mellow — they are an excellent garnish round veal cutlets or sweetbreads, or calf’s-head hash, or green peas, or beans, etc.
Potatoes and Fried Bacon
An old Devonshire Breakfast Dish Mrs. Arthur Hillyard, Stoodleigh Rectory, 1890
It is the custom in Devonshire to re-cook the potatoes left over from the day before, in the pan in which the breakfast bacon has been fried and serve the two together. The potato is mashed, seasoned with pepper and salt, turned into the hot bacon fat, stirred about over the fire and finally shaped into a thick flat cake, well browned underneath and turned over brown side uppermost on to a hot dish. The crisp curls of bacon are placed on it and around it, or in a separate dish.
[There was nothing more individual than English housekeeping and cooking in Victorian days; we all had our own little ways until we tried imitating our neighbours. In Devonshire and many other places in England they always fry their breakfast bacon.]
Yorkshire Way of Cooking Bacon
Mr. A. Dupuis Brown writes: ‘Recollections of my boyhood in Yorkshire remind me of the method of cooking the breakfast bacon, which was always roasted in an oblong tin dish suspended by hooks from one of the bars of the open fire range. It was not fried.’
The Double Hanging Grid
Wherever there was an open range with bars, sprats, bloaters, fresh herrings, dried or finnan-haddock, as well as sausages, kidney and bacon, chops, etc., were all beautifully and easily cooked between the wires of a double grid which possessed a tin tray underneath to gather the ‘drips,’ and hooks on top to attach to the bars. There were hooks on both sides and a handle on top by which the contraption could be easily turned completely round when one side was sufficiently cooked; the double grid was kept together and the food kept in its place by means of a strong, wire band which was fixed on the handle side and slipped over the other.
[This is worth mentioning because it required less attention and gave better results than a frying-pan, and we are apt to think the twentieth century takes the palm for labour-saving! It is also worth noting because a correspondent writes ‘my mother used to say “good cooking in England went out when closed kitchen ranges and stoves were introduced and generally adopted”.’—ED.]
The Small Game or Dutch Oven
From William III and Mary’s Days
This can be used most successfully for breakfast dishes as well as for small game, chops, etc., for luncheon or supper dishes in any room that possesses an open gas fire. There are small makes of electric grills also, with which it can be used, and it is ideal for a wood fire made on a stone hearth, or in the open air — its height merely requiring adjustment by standing it on bricks or stones (or on a tin turned upside down).
Frying
Good frying is in fact boiling in fat, and the frying-pan should be perfectly flat with a thick bottom, 12 inches long, 9 inches broad, with perpendicular sides and must be half-filled with fat. Before using make sure that the pan is quite clean, rub a little fat over it and then make it warm and wipe it out with a clean cloth.—WILLIAM KITCHINER.
1. Never use any oil, butter, lard, or dripping but what is clean, fresh, and free from salt. Anything dirty spoils the look; anything bad-tasted or stale spoils the flavour, and salt prevents its browning.
2. Dripping, if clean and fresh is almost as good as anything: it may be easily clarified.
[N.B.—The top fat off the liquor in which bacon or ham has been boiled, if clarified, is good for shallow fat frying.—ED.]
3. The fat must be quite hot: that is to say it must have done hissing; if the fat is not hot enough, you cannot fry fish either a good colour, or firm and crisp. To be quite certain, throw a little bit of bread into the pan; if it fries crisp the fat is ready; if it burns the bread it is too hot.
4. [Remember that each cutlet or piece of fish, etc., you put in the piping-hot fat cools it, and pause a moment between each piece to allow the fat time to recover its proper heat. After the fried food is taken out of the pan it should be well drained on a piece of paper or, better still, soft muslin, and kept crisp in the oven ready for dishing up.—ED.]
5. Oatmeal is a very satisfactory, and an extremely economical, substitute for bread-crumbs.
6. The fat can be used three or four times if it has not burned; but it must be poured through a fine hair sieve into a clean basin; if you do not find it enough, simply add each time a little more to it. Fat in which fish has been fried must not be used for another purpose.
Frying with a Thermometer
The guesswork is taken out of frying if a thermometer made for this purpose be used. These, which came to us from America (in 1924), are now made in England by Short & Mason, the famous makers of aneroids (and other delicate instruments), Walthamstow, Essex, England, or Taylor Instrument Company, Rochester, N.Y., U.S.A. A cookery-book of frying temperatures is supplied with the thermometers.
Different foods require to be fried at different temperatures. These thermometers have been tested in the Experiment Kitchen of the English Folk Cookery Association and found perfectly satisfactory.
Frying in a very little Fat
This is very useful and corresponds to the French sauter. Only a very little fat is put in the pan and made hot according to the requirements of the food to be cooked; these should be stated in the recipes.
Broiling and Grilling
1. Keep the gridiron quite clean between the bars, and bright on top; when it is hot wipe it well with a linen cloth; just before you use it, rub the bars with a piece of clean mutton fat to prevent the meat being marked by the gridiron.
2. Let all the bars of the gridiron be hot through, but yet not burning hot upon the surface; this is the perfect condition for the gridiron.
3. Upright gridirons which can be used in front of the fire are best, as they can be used at any fire without fear of smoke; and the gravy is preserved in the trough under them.—WILLIAM KITCHINER.
[Electric grillers, especially electric table grillers are most satisfactory: Tested in the E.F.C.A. Experiment Kitchen.—ED.]
Bacon Olives
The Fanny Calder School of Cookery, Liverpool,