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Book of Household Management
- Year
- 1861
- Era
- 19th century
- Origin
- England · Europe
- Language
- English
- Category
- English 19th C
Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, first issued in volume form in 1861 after serialisation in The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, became the defining domestic manual of Victorian England. Combining over a thousand recipes with guidance on servants, etiquette, household accounts, and home medicine, it codified middle-class domestic practice for generations. The 1861 first edition remains the great prize for collectors, while later nineteenth-century reissues circulate widely at modest prices.
Cooking from this book
Christmas Plum-Pudding (Very Good)
Mrs Beeton's classic Victorian Christmas pudding, made days ahead and re-boiled before serving, traditionally brought to the table flaming with brandy and crowned with holly. The suet may be replaced with vegetable suet for a modern adaptation.
Ingredients: 1½ lb. of raisins, ½ lb. of currants, ½ lb. of mixed peel, ¾ lb. of bread crumbs, ¾ lb. of suet, 8 eggs, 1 wineglassful of brandy.
Mode: Stone and cut the raisins in halves, but do not chop them; wash, pick, and dry the currants, and mince the suet finely; cut the candied peel into thin slices, and grate down the bread into fine crumbs. When all these dry ingredients are prepared, mix them well together; then moisten the mixture with the eggs, which should be well beaten, and the brandy; stir well, that everything may be very thoroughly blended, and press the pudding into a buttered mould; tie it down tightly with a floured cloth, and boil for 5 or 6 hours. It may be boiled in a cloth without a mould, and will require the same time allowed for cooking. As Christmas puddings are usually made a few days before they are required for table, when the pudding is taken out of the pot, hang it up immediately, and put a plate or saucer underneath to catch the water that may drain from it. The day it is to be eaten, plunge it into boiling water, and keep it boiling for at least 2 hours; then turn it out of the mould, and serve with brandy-sauce. On Christmas-day a sprig of holly is usually placed in the middle of the pudding, and about a wineglassful of brandy poured round it, which, at the moment of serving, is lighted, and the pudding thus brought to table encircled in flame.
Time: 5 or 6 hours the first time of boiling; 2 hours the day it is to be served.
Average cost: 4s.
Sufficient for a quart mould for 7 or 8 persons.
Seasonable on the 25th of December, and on various festive occasions till March.
Reproduced from the public-domain text via Project Gutenberg. Spelling lightly modernised; the headnote is editorial.
Soyer's Recipe for Forcemeat or Quenelles for Turtle Soup
Alexis Soyer's celebrated quenelles, designed to garnish the grand Victorian turtle soup that was the height of mid-century dinner-party fashion. The mixture is delicately seasoned and poached as small dumplings to float in the finished soup.
Ingredients: ½ lb. of lean veal, ¼ lb. of beef-suet, 1 oz. of bacon, 1 small teaspoonful of minced parsley, ½ ditto of chopped onion, 1 saltspoonful of salt, the same of pepper, mace, and nutmeg, all in powder, the yolks of 2 eggs and the whites of 3.
Mode: Chop the veal, suet, and bacon, and pound them well in a mortar; add to these the seasoning, herbs, and spices, as above, and when the whole is thoroughly blended, put in the well-beaten eggs, and again pound well, until the ingredients are perfectly smooth. Try a small piece in some boiling water; if too dry, add the yolk of another egg, and, if too moist, a little fine bread-crumbs. Roll out the forcemeat into balls about the size of a nutmeg, and drop them into boiling water; let them simmer gently for a few minutes, when take them up and put them into the tureen of turtle soup.
Sufficient for a large tureen of soup.
Reproduced from the public-domain text via Project Gutenberg. Spelling lightly modernised; the headnote is editorial.
