I am very pleased to announce that my second book, a biography of the 18th century cookery writer, entrepreneur and Manchester legend Elizabeth Raffald will be published in the UK on 28 February 2023. It is called Before Mrs Beeton: Elizabeth Raffald, England’s Most Influential Housekeeper and is published by Pen & Sword History. North American readers: I’m afraid you’ll after wait until 28 April before you can get your hands on a copy. Rest of world: please check with your favourite bookshop.
Detail of a map of Elizabeth Raffald’s Manchester
Before I tell you more about the book, I thought I’d let you know that if you pre-order via Pen & Sword’s website (so there’s not long left) you can get 20% off the cover price. The book is, of course, available from other booksellers. I will be selling some copies too, which of course will be signed by Yours Truly.
I’ll be posting all sorts about Elizabeth and 18th century food throughout March on the blog and on social media, so if you don’t follow me already on social media, now is the time to do so. I am @neilbuttery on Twitter, dr_neil_buttery on Instagram and my Facebook discussion group can be viewed here.
The book has a recipe section: this is ‘A Hunting Pudding’ from The Experienced English Housekeeper (1769)
The book charts Elizabeth’s many achievements and life events, the best known being the publication of her influential cookery book The Experienced English Housekeeper in 1769 – but there are many, many others. Her life was a dramatic one: starting life in domestic service, she rose to fame and fortune and transformed Manchester’s business community, before a tumultuous fall. Her book outlived her, but its popularity had a great rise and fall too.
I discovered Elizabeth via Jane Grigson, and it is these two food writers who have been my biggest, and most constant inspiration through 15 years of researching and cooking British food, and I am so happy to be the one to write Elizabeth’s biography.
The very passage in English Food by Jane Grigson that introduced me to Elizabeth Raffald
Mrs Beeton’s name is in the title for a variety of reasons, the main one of which being that it is Elizabeth – a full century before Beeton and her book – who defined what we think of today as traditional British food, not Isabella Beeton, yet it is Beeton who is placed on that pedestal.
To find out more about the book, listen to this recent podcast about Elizabeth, her life, and more about why Mrs Beeton has a lot to answer for!
A couple weeks ago I was invited by the iconic British condiment company, Sarson’s, to have a look around their factory and see the process of vinegar-making. They contacted me as they had noticed my little blog and thought I might be interested in seeing what they do because they make vinegar in the traditional way; and we’re all about tradition here at British Food: A History.
The word vinegar comes from the French words vin meaning wine of course, and aigre meaning sour or sharp, so when we talk about British malt vinegar, it’s actually a bit of a misnomer. What is in your bottle of Sarson’s used to be called alegar: sour ale! I think the word should be brought back (I’ll pop a note through to Mr and Mr Sarson).
Vinegar – aka ethanoic or acetic acid – is produced when specialist bacteria called acetobacteria metabolise normally deadly alcohol (ethanol) and harness energy from it. It takes a real specialist to use this killer chemical as a food source. Vinegar is, of course, an excellent preservative itself.
It is thought that vinegar and alcohol fermentation were discovered and refined in tandem, and the earliest example of vinegar-making goes right back to the ancient Babylonians who were brewing it from their beer and wine in 4000 BC! The ancient Romans refined methods somewhat, using wooden barrels to age and develop flavour.
The rear of the original London factory (Southwark Local Studies Library)
There are there are many types of vinegar, but malt vinegar, which is made from barley, is uniquely British, although these days it does travel a bit. Barley was a very important crop in Britain as it was grown to eat, but also to make ale. The average person in mediaeval England would drink around a litre of ale a day and it was the main source of calories for many (and much safer to drink than the water). Our love of ale meant there was plenty spare knocking about to transform into alegar. Sarson’s are the only company still making it in the traditional way and they have been producing it since 1794.
Before I had even arrived, I was greeted a delicious sweet and sour malt smell, and when the taxi pulled up outside the Manchester factory I was greeted again by the lovely folk who run the place. I donned my lab coat, safety glasses, hard hat and beard snood, and looking altogether pretty damn sexy I headed over the see the initial steps in the process.
I had always assumed that when malt vinegar was made, ale would be bought in and then fermented, but this is not the case! Sarson’s do the whole process from start to finish, including making the ale itself. It is truly made from scratch.
Barley grains
The first step is to lightly mill the barley so that the grains can crack open. It is then soaked in spring water and heated up in mash tuns: huge metal vats that constantly stir the barley and the water is collected. This process of mashing extracts the sugars.
Swishing away the sweetwort
I was allowed a little taste of the sugary liquid – or sweetwort – and couldn’t believe how sweet and delicious it was (when I got home, I looked in a few old books and found that home-made barley water was produced in essentially the same way).
The cooled sweetwort now enters the first round of fermentation: yeast is added so it can get to work anaerobically turning sugar into alcohol. This six-day process produces a barley ale that is a whopping 9.5% alcohol.
Now the alcohol can be converted into vinegar in the second round of fermentation. It was this part of the process that I found to be truly amazing: I assumed that to make a product and attain perfect consistency between batches, Sarson’s would have to seed the ale with a mother (or mother-of-vinegar to give her full title, a of plug acetobacteria) that had been carefully selected over years or even decades, to produce a unique strain (wine and beer makers do this with their yeasts). What Sarson’s actually do is simply add the shavings of the bark from the larch tree, which naturally harbours a community of acetobacteria species. This all happens in wooden tubs called acetifiers and it takes seven days for the larch bacteria to do their magic.
The huge physics-defying oak barrels!
For the last stage, the vinegar is stored in huge 40 000 litre barrels – some 100 years old – to be standardised to the correct strength (5% ethanoic acid).
Standardising the final product
The vinegar is heated up to kill the bacteria and it is piped through to the very noisy and exciting bottling room. I loved watching the bottles rattling around on the conveyor belts. It was as though I had literally stepped through the arch window on Playschool!
Then, to top it all off, they handed me my very own personalised bottle of malt vinegar!
Many thanks to Sarson’s for asking me to come to their place and let me be a nosey parker for an afternoon – I will certainly be paying the malt vinegar I put on my fish and chips in even higher regard from now on!
Next post, I’ll write a little bit about how we use – and used vinegar in the home.
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I do apologise so very much for being tardy with British Food: A History, I have been crazily busy since my move from St Louis, Missouri (US of A) back to Levenshulme, Manchester (UK of A).
However I have not been lazy and I have exciting news; I have started up a food business! It is in its very early stages, but I have had more success already than I hoped. The business is called The Buttery (I couldn’t waste a surname like mine!) and it sells traditional British foods; some classics and some long-forgotten. I have built up such a list of amazing recipes over the years with my two blogs, I thought I should share the wealth and give the business a whirl. So over the last few months I have been designing logos, coming up with menus and working out how the hell I’m going to do this! Needless to say it has taken over my life.
Aside from selling some good proper food, I want the business to be community-based in two different ways: firstly I want to support local businesses and promote the excellent produce that is practically on our own door-step; secondly, I want to offer cookery lessons to the surrounding community, not fancy cooking but basic skills like bread and stock making. If I can get a community grant from the government I’ll be able to do the lessons for free too.
However all of this is in the future, so to start off I am doing the local artisan markets in South Manchester. My first one was in Levenshulme last Saturday and it was a complete success. If you live in Manchester, keep your eye out for me in the local markets.
The food that I am making fit into four broad categories and many of them appear either on this blog or Neil Cooks Grigson: Savouries, Desserts, Teatime and Preserves & Pickles.
Click on The Buttery: Menu to find a pdf of my market menu. If you have any special requests or anything blindingly obvious I have missed out, do let me know!
Now that I have had my first market – and it was nerve-wracking on the day – I promise to add posts much more often. Also, I’ll keep you posted with any further developments.
British Food: A History 