Oxfordshire Cake
Tudor Food RecipeOxfordshire Cake Recipe | To make the best Oxfordshire Cake
To make a very Good Great Oxford-shire Cake. Take a peck of flower by weight, and dry it a little, & a pound and a halfe of Sugar, one ounce of Cinamon, half an ounce of Nutmegs, a quarter of an ounce of Mace and Cloves, a good spoonfull of Salt, beat your Salt and Spice very fine, and searce it, and mix it with your flower and Sugar; then take three pound of butter and work it in the flower, it will take three hours working; then take a quart of Ale-yeast, two quarts of Cream, half a pint of Sack, six grains of Amber-greece dissolved in it, halfe a pint of Rosewater, sixteen Eggs, eight of the Whites, mix these with the flower, and knead them well together, then let it lie warm by your fire till your Oven be hot, which must be little hotter then for manchet; when you make it ready for your Oven, put to your Cake six pound of Currans, two pound of Raisins, of the Sun stoned and minced, so make up your Cake, and set it in your oven stopped close; it wil take three houres a baking; when baked, take it out and frost it over with the white of an Egge and Rosewater, well beat together, and strew fine Sugar upon it, and then set it again into the Oven, that it may Ice. |
Oxfordshire Cake Tudor Food Recipe
The above Tudor recipe for Oxfordshire Cake is written in totally different fashion to modern recipe books! - There were no lists of ingredients in Tudor recipes - these were included as part of the text
- Ingredient measurements were extremely basic during the Tudors era and quantities were not often specified!
- Temperature control was difficult and therefore not specified - this was left to the cook
- Cooking times were also vague and left to the cook
- It was assumed that the person reading the recipe would already have some knowledge of cooking
The History of the Recipe Book - Some of the language might be referred to as 'Olde English'
- The art of cooking and the recipe was passed verbally from one generation to the next
- The first printed book ever to be published in English was in 1474!
- Many Tudor women were unable to read
- The idea of a Recipe Book was an entirely new concept in the renaissance period of the Tudors
- The first Recipe Books to be printed in England which included many old Tudor and Medieval recipes were called:
- 1545 - 'A Propre new booke of Cokery'
- 1588 - 'The Good Huswifes Handmaid for Cookerie in her kitchen'
- 1596 - 'The Good Hyswife's Jewell'
- 1610 'Mrs. Sarah Longe her Receipt Booke'
Oxfordshire Cake Recipe
The above Old recipe is taken from the book entitled: The Compleat Cook
Expertly Prescribing The Most Ready Wayes, Whether Italian, Spanish Or French, For Dressing Of Flesh And Fish, Ordering Of Sauces Or Making Of Pastry
Author: Anonymous
Printed by E.B. for Nath. Brook , at the Angel in Cornhill , 1658 Oxfordshire Cake Recipe
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