Food for Weavers
19th May, 2008
The dishes prepared for the talk were a random selection, including Lancashire oatcakes, oatcakes with bacon or pork scratchings incorporated, cheese dishes ( for which Lancashire was, even then, well known), steamed suet puddings, a truly traditional mutton hotpot, boiled bacon hock and pease pudding, salt boiled beef, "stew" or brawn, oxtail and onions, pickles of onion and red cabbage, fruit "cheeses" - damson fig and quince, egg and bacon pie, mutton and mint pie with fruit, leek pudding, pork and fruit pie.
Paul Henshaw brewed some nettle beer for the occasion.
Sweet dishes were gingerbread oatcake, oat biscuits, fig pudding, crab apple and lavender jelly, "slow walking cake" (dried fruit pasties). These would have not been seen on the same table at the same time for a handloom weaver. The diet would have been varied by seasonal availability, co operative rotational pig killing, gluts of produce e.g. eggs, cheese, wild rabbits etc.
The talk also included a review of special foods for rites of passage; births, deaths and marriage. It is not possible to reproduce the fragile 18th Century recipes for this web page. Those shown are however almost identical (later 19th Century) and I am grateful to Mrs Susan Graham for giving me access to her family recipe books and allowing these reproductions.
Ann Ward, 2008
The Recipes
- Parsnip Wine, Self Raising Flour, Orange Wine, Black Cherry Wine
- Caramel Apples, To Clean Furniture, To Rid the House of Flies, To Cure Indigestion
- Pie Paste, Tart Paste, Sandwich Cake, Goosnargh Cakes, Gingerbread Cakes
- Boar's Head Brine, Damson Cheese, Crab Apple Jelly
- Suggestions for Decorating Cakes, Royal Icing
