It is very simple to enter: All you need to do is go to the foot of this post, “like” it and leave a comment declaring your favourite Christmastime dessert.
I will select one person at random on 2 December at 7pm GMT. That’s your deadline. Good luck!
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In my book Knead to Know: A History of Baking, I made sure that there was a full chapter focussing on griddlecakes: food baked on hearthstones, bakestones and iron griddles. Of course, when writing the chapter, I took much inspiration from Jane Grigson’s baking recipes in English Food. I was surprised by the great variety. These days the English barely think beyond the crêpe.
It’s been a while since I posted a recipe for a griddlecake, and I have had this one, for singin’ hinnies, waiting in the wings for a while. These little cakes are a rather forgotten speciality of Northumberland. I first made these for the Neil Cooks Grigson project in its very early days and I didn’t do a great job of interpreting Jane’s recipe.[1] I have improved greatly since then. The real prompt to get this recipe out there was my conversation with Sophie Grigson, Jane’s daughter, for a recent episode of The British Food History Podcast all about Jane’s work. The topic of singin’ hinnies cropped up because Jane’s entry for it in English Food is particularly evocative. Listen to the episode here:
These griddlecakes, enriched with lard and butter and sweetened only by dried fruit, were eaten by all, and were especially at children’s parties where tuppeny and thruppenny pieces were hidden inside.[2] These once ubiquitous cakes were, for many families, sadly the ‘substitutes for the birthday cake [they] could not afford.’ The word ‘hinnie’ is a dialect one for honey, a term of endearment, and the ‘singin’’ refers to the comforting sizzle of the butter and lard from the cooking griddlecakes, although Jane does point out that ‘the singin’ hinnies made less of a song for many people as they could not afford the full complement of butter and lard.’[3]
I have found other mentions of singin’ hinnies elsewhere but recipes and descriptions are very vague. I did find two nineteenth-century descriptions that really emphasised their importance at the dinner tables of miners – Northumberland being very much a colliery county. The job required very calorific food, so these griddlecakes served an important function. One stated that ‘miner’s food consisted of plum pudding, roast beef and “singing hinnies”.’[4] Another, written by J.G. Kohl, a German travel writer, informs us that ‘[the colliers] even have dishes and cakes of their own; and among these I was particularly told of their “singing hinnies”, a kind of cake that owes its epithet “singing” to the custom of serving it hissing hot upon the table…They are very buttery, and must never be absent on a holiday from the table of a genuine pitman.’[5]
Jane reckons they are the second-best British griddlecake; for her, Welsh cakes take the top spot.
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Recipe
I give you my interpretation of Jane’s recipe with more precise ingredients and method. I have found all other recipes to be either too vague in the amount of liquid that should be added, or, when specific, far too dry. I do hope you find this recipe clear; I know it must work because the hinnies sing loud and true as they cook on the griddle.
A proper singin’ hinnie should be made with equal amounts of butter and lard. If you are vegetarian, avoid using shortening such as Trex, instead go posh and use all butter.
Makes 24 to 28 griddlecakes
500 g plain flour, plus extra for rolling
1 tsp baking powder
¾ tsp salt
125 g lard, diced
125 g butter, diced
180 g dried mixed fruit
220-240 ml milk
Extra lard for frying
Extra butter for buttering the insides of the singin’ hinnies
Mix the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl, then rub in the lard and butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, then add the dried fruit and mix again.
Make a well in the centre, add most of the milk and mix to make a nice soft dough – it’s a good idea to use the old-fashioned method of combining everything using a cutting motion with a butter knife; that way you ensure the liquid is combined with the other ingredients without overworking the gluten in the flour. Add the remaining milk should there be any dry patches.
Lightly flour your worktop and knead the dough briefly so that it becomes nice and smooth. Let it rest as you get your bakestone, griddle or pan ready.
Place the bakestone on a medium heat and allow to get to a good heat; because there is no sugar in the mixture, the cakes don’t burn easily.
As you wait for it to heat up, roll the dough on a lightly floured surface to a thickness of around ¾ centimetre and cut out rounds. I used a 7-centimetre cutter, but 6- or 8-centimetre cutters will be fine. You might find it easier to cut them out if you dip your cutter in flour and tap away any excess. Reroll the pastry and cut out more.
Take a small piece of lard, quickly rub it over the surface of the bakestone and cook your first batch: mine took 5 to 6 minutes on each side to achieve a nice golden brown colour on the outside and a fluffy interior (I sacrificed one to check inside). Split each one with a knife and add a small pat of butter, close and keep them warm in the oven on a serving plate as you cook the rest.
Serve warm with your favourite toppings. I went with good old golden syrup (and an extra knob of butter).
I am very pleased to announce that I have a new book out next month. It’s called Knead to Know: A History of Baking, published by Icon Books and out in the shops on 12 September 2024.
Notice it’s A history, not THE history of baking. I’ve taken what I think are the most important parts, or thing I have found the most interesting with respect to the history of this huge sprawling subject. I’ve broken it up into five broad chapters: Griddlecakes & Pancakes; Biscuits & Cakes; Bread; Pies & Puddings; and Patisserie. Really, I could have written a whole chapter on each of these subjects!
It’s in a different format to my previous books in that the chapters are broken up into short pieces, the length of a blog post. This means that you can dip in and out of it like a coffee table book, or read it cover to cover.
It’s not a recipe book, but there are lots of baking tips and rules of thumb. Of course, recipes for many of the foods that crop up in the book you can find on this blog, and I’ll be adding more as the year goes on, so keep a look out.
It is available to preorder from your favourite bookseller.
There are several upcoming events: online and in-person talks, plus festival appearances, details of which can be found on the Upcoming Events tab of the blog.
I spent the first half of 2024 working on two food history books (news of those coming very soon) which meant the poor old blog barely got a look in: with all of that research and writing I was doing all day everyday, I couldn’t bring myself to do even more. I did want to carry on producing material though, so I kept The British Food History Podcast going, and I’m very glad I did, first because it was a chance to talk to actual people, but also because in this most recent eighth season, I produced some of the best episodes so far.
However, one thing I didn’t do is tell you about it! So, if you don’t subscribe to the podcast on your favourite app, or aren’t a £3 monthly subscriber, you might have missed it. My sincere apologies if you have, I have left Spotify links to the first three episodes of season 7 below: 18th Century Female Cookery Writers with The Delicious Legacy Podcast, Christmas Special 2023: Mince Pies (they’re not just for Christmas, by the way) and Apples & Orchards with Joanna Crosby:
Other topics included chocolate, spices, medieval table manners, the Scottish salt industry and food waste.
The British Food History Podcast will return in 4 weeks’ time.
This is only half of my podcast news though because I started a second with fellow food historians Sam Bilton and Alessandra Pino. It’s called A is for Apple: An Encyclopaedia of Food & Drink. The premise is a simple one: each season we take a letter, and we present and discuss a topic each. There is usually a theme e.g. fruit, vegetables aromatics. There has also been a listener’s choice episode. Topics have included apples (obvs.), adulteration, alewives, asparagus, avocados and Agas.
Listen to the pilot episode here:
Season A has finished and season B will start in the autumn.
You can find both podcasts on all podcast apps, so please make sure you follow them – that way you won’t miss an episode.
Over and out. xxx
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Hello there everyone! Just a very quick post with some slightly belated good news. My biography of Elizabeth Raffald, Before Mrs Beeton: Elizabeth Raffald, England’s Most Influential Housekeeper won the Best Book category at this year’s Guild of Food Writer’s Awards. I’m still rather bowled over about it, I must say, and certainly wasn’t expecting to win, despite winning the Best First Book award last year, in fact with the Raffald book, I thought it (superficially) niche in the big and varied world of food writing.
The evening was such good fun, the awards ceremony itself hosted by Leyla Kazim. Other notable award wins from the point of view of history were the Lifetime Achievement Award for DamePrue Leith (with special appearance from Sandi Toksvig!) and the Newcomer award which went to Scots food historian Peter Gilchrist. I shall be trying my best to get him on the podcast at some point this year.
Anyway, off I pop to write a proper post for you all. xxx
Selection of photographs from the evening (photos: Martin Behrman, Behrman Media)
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I have to admit something: I have never made proper puff pastry. If a recipe calls for it, I buy some or make rough puff pastry instead, and I tell myself that I have neither the time nor the space to go ‘full-puff’. The truth, I think, is that I don’t have the inclination, otherwise I would have got around to it by now. Modern puff pastry is made by rolling out a rectangle of dough, then sitting atop it a square of butter, thoroughly beaten flat with a rolling pin. The dough is folded around the butter, the dough and butter are then rolled out, rotated 90 degrees, folded, then rested and chilled. This single ‘turn’ is repeated six more times to produce a laminated pastry dough containing 729 layers of butter.
Rough puff pastry, on the other hand, is not made with a single layer of folded butter, instead very cold diced or grated butter is used, a non-continuous layer of butter means that those great sheets of crispy pastry are not made, hence rough puff, or flaky, pastry. The process of making it is similar to puff, except there are fewer turns, though it still needs to be rested in the fridge between them. My method (see below) is much easier than this, however.
The differences and semantics break down if we hit the historical cookbooks because at one point all ‘puff pastes’ were what we would call ‘rough puff’ today. There are many stories and theories regarding who invented puff pastry and when, and they are either apocryphal or impossible to confirm. When it comes to British cookery books, the earliest example I can find is the late Tudor classic The Good Houswifes Jewel by Thomas Dawson (1596). Here, a dough made from flour, water, egg yolks and some rubbed-in butter, is rolled out, peppered with diced butter, folded and rolled. More butter is added after each turn. This basic method seems to remain the same for the next two-and-a-half centuries: Sarah Harrison (1751), Elizabeth Raffald (1769) and Eliza Acton (1845) all have puff pastry recipes just like it.[1] The first time I find a puff pastry recipe that uses a single layer of bashed-out butter is in Alexis Soyer’s classic A Shilling Cookery for the People (1855 edition).
Sarah Harrison’s 1751 recipe for Puff Paste: it would be considered rough puff today.
I admit that my search was not a comprehensive one, but I think it’s safe to say that in recipes older than c.1850 if puff pastry is asked for, what we should be making is a rough puff.
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Recipe
My recipe is based on a Jane Grigson’s for Quick, Foolproof Puff or Flaky Pastry, from her book English Food,[2] which is, in turn, adapted from a recipe by New York pastry chef Nicholas Malgieri. I’m not sure if it is foolproof, but it is by far the easiest method I know. The reason for this is that the cubes of very cold butter are mixed into the dough. As you roll and fold, you can see the cubes of butter eventually turn into large, flat discs within the dough. Very satisfying. Mixing the butter into the dough itself also means that the butter is evenly distributed and doesn’t end up leaching out of the sides.
I have given instructions to make this dough by hand, but you can use a machine. However, you must mix the ingredients very slowly and add liquid in a steady stream, so the lumps of butter don’t turn into breadcrumbs.
This type of rough puff pastry doesn’t need to be rested between rolling and folding unless it is very hot where you are, then you may need to pop it in the fridge for 15 minutes or so between turns.
This pastry only needs two ‘turns’ before it is ready for rolling and use, however, if you want a pastry that is just flaky, then do a third turn before rolling it out for use.
250 g strong white flour, plus extra for dusting
½ tsp salt
250 g very cold, unsalted butter, cut into 1 cm dice (approx.)
Juice of half a lemon
Water (see recipe)
Mix the flour and salt and add the butter, squashing the pieces between your thumb and forefinger, without rubbing them in or breaking them up.
Next, place a jug on a weighing scale add the juice from the lemon and then top up to a weight of 125 grams.
Stir in most of the liquid to form a ball of dough, using the remainder to pour on any dry-looking patches of flour.
Bring the dough together into a single mass and place on a well-floured worktop. It will look a right mess, but do not worry, it will neaten up in the rolling and folding stage.
Shape it into an approximate rectangle, then use a rolling pin to roll it into a large rectangle around 30 cm wide and 20 cm deep. Ensure you keep your work surface well-floured because the dough is quite sticky at first.
Now fold the sides into the centre of the rectangle and then fold it in half, so it looks a little like a book. Allow it to rest for 2 minutes.
Turn it 90 degrees clockwise and then roll it out again, roll it out thin enough to flatten the cubes of butter.
Fold up and roll out one more time, before wrapping in cling film and allowing it to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes, and roll out as required.
After the first turn the pastry looks a little untidyThe pads of flattened butter are obvious on the second rolling-outThe pastry is much neater and smoother after the second turn
Notes:
[1] i.e., Harrison, S. (1751) The House-keeper’s Pocket-book And Compleat Family Cook. 5th edn. R. Ware; Raffald, E. (1769) The Experienced English Housekeeper. First Edit. J. Harrop; Acton, E. (1845) Modern Cookery For Private Families. Quadrille.
[2] This is the third edition: Grigson, J. (1992) English Food. Third Edit. Penguin.
Well hello! Sorry for the long quiet spell, I have been hard at work writing not one, but two books. The manuscripts have been handed in and the usual service can resume. I did keep the podcast going though, so if you’ve not heard the new episodes, listen below:
The books are about baking and puddings, and I’ll tell you more about them later in the year. As I was researching and writing them, I realised that there are recipes I have been meaning to write for you, but, for one reason or another, I have never got around to. Well, I aim to rectify this over the next few months. Top of my pile is the very delicious Chelsea bun, my favourite of the sticky bun tribe.
I recently asked Twitter[1] which was better, cinnamon or Chelsea buns. In my hubris, I expected the Chelsea bun to win easily. It did not, and the main reason it wasn’t picked was that folk didn’t know what one was. Well, today I give you my recipe which I have been working on and I think perfected (I hope you agree).
For those not in the know, a Chelsea bun is a coil of enriched dough filled with butter, sugar and dried fruit. They are batch-cooked together so as they grow, they touch, filling the tin, producing buns that are soft on the sides, gooey at the bottom and brown on the top. They are finished with a sticky glaze and adorned with crunchy sugar. Decadent deliciousness. Jane Grigson wrote that they are ‘[t]he best of all the buns, on account of their buttery melting sweetness, and the fun of uncoiling them as you eat them.’[2]
They were first made at the Bun House in Chelsea at the start of the 18th century, the earliest mention of them cropping up in the 1710s.[3] The buns fell out of favour sometime in the early 20th century and are hard to track down, so if you want to try one, you’ll have to make it.[4]
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Recipe
The dough for these buns is sticky and difficult to knead, and I would advise using the dough hook attachment on a stand mixer. Hand-kneading is perfectly possible, it’s just a messy business.
Enriched doughs take longer to prove, so if there is somewhere warm to prove your dough, so much the better.
Makes 12 buns
For the bun dough:
500g strong white flour
5g/1tsp instant yeast
10g/2 level tsp salt
60g sugar (caster or brown)
90g softened butter
250ml warm milk, or half-milk-half-water
1 beaten egg
For the filling:
60g melted butter
90g sugar (caster or brown)
90g raisins and/or currants
40g candied peel
Egg wash
For the glaze:
50ml water
50g caster sugar
Crushed lump sugar (optional)
Make the dough using a stand mixer, if possible: first, mix all of the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Next, make a well in the centre and add the butter, liquid and egg. Mix to combine the ingredients and then knead with a dough hook on a slow-medium speed for around 10 minutes until smooth and the stickiness of the mixture has much reduced. Lightly oil another bowl (and your hands) and turn out the dough, tightening it up into a ball. Cover and prove until at least double in size. I proved mine at room temperature and it took 90 minutes.
As you wait, line a 24 x 34 cm deep-side tray with greaseproof paper, fixing it in place with dots of oil or butter.
Fix the side closest to you by pressing and spreading the doughy edge to the worktop.
When doubled in size, roll or press out the dough out on a lightly-floured surface – it’s still sticky so make sure you reapply flour to your worktop regularly – until you make a rectangle measuring approximately 40 x 60 cm, the dough with its long side facing you. Have patience and try to make the dough of even thickness.
Now apply the filling: lavishly brush the dough with the melted butter, go right up to the back edge, but leave a 1-cm gap on the side edges and 2-cm on the edge facing you.
Next, sprinkle the sugar evenly, then the dried fruit and candied peel.
Now the fun bit: fold the further edge over and start to roll up the dough by lifting and stretching gently before rolling, keeping the coil tight. It is easiest to do this in sections. Keep going until the dough is almost rolled up, then lightly brush the facing edge with a little water.
Using a sharp knife, cut off the two ends[5] – I like a serrated knife for this job – then cut the dough into 9 or 12 pieces. If the knife presses the edges a bit and flattens the coils, don’t worry, they can be easily reshaped by hand.
Arrange your buns in your prepared tin, leaving a good and even gap between them. Cover and allow to prove again: for me, this took 60 minutes.
When they are almost proved, preheat your oven to 200°C. When ready, brush each bun with beaten egg. Slide into the oven and bake for 25 to 3- minutes if baking 12 buns. It’s worth investigating them to check they have baked all the way through.
When they come out of the oven, sit them on a cooling rack in their tin.
Make the glaze by mixing the sugar and water in a pan over a medium heat. Stir to dissolve, increase the heat and bring to a boil, and let it bubble away for 30 seconds. Take off the heat and brush the buns: be lavish. It might take a couple of coats to use up all the glaze. If you like, sprinkle with crushed lump sugar.
Happy New Year everyone! I’m only a little worse for wear after a night out in the bustling metropolis that is Levenshulme, South Manchester. Going out didn’t mean I negated on cooking up my annual New Year’s Eve pudding though: this year it was plum pudding (it is still Christmas remember!) which did a great job of lining my stomach. The recipe was of course the one I picked up last year, courtesy of Sam Bilton’s Great Aunt Eliza.
Well what a year it has been with regard to my writing: I wrote a few articles for Country Life (you can read them on my Media page), and my second book Before Mrs Beeton – a biography of food innovator and entrepreneur Elizabeth Raffald – came out in March and it seems to have gone down well. The big news was my previous book, A Dark History of Sugar, won the Best First Book Award at the Guild of Food Writer’s Awards 2023; little old me! Completely unexpected, but very pleased as I’m sure you can imagine.
The blog has continued to do well, receiving more views in 2023 than in any other year, and the podcast has gone from strength to strength; according to Spotify, my listenership has increased by 125%.
I wouldn’t have been able to do all of this without you all reading and commenting, listening and downloading. It is you who spurn me on to keep on making more content, so thank you all very, very much.
A special shout out too to everyone who supported the blogs and podcast financially by treating me to a virtual coffee or pint, or by becoming a £3 monthly subscriber. It’s becoming increasingly more expensive just to have podcasts and blogs these days, so I really appreciate it.
If you like the blogs and podcast I produce and would to start a £3 monthly subscription, or would like to treat me to virtual coffee or pint: follow this link for more information.Thank you.
Some of the foods I cooked up for the blogs this year (L to R: Lincolnshire chine, wigs, Elizabeth Raffald’s flummery, malt loaf, roast venison and 18th century mince pies)
The other blog, Neil Cooks Grigson, has very much slowed down as I inch toward the completion of the project, and I only managed to cook one recipe for it. It was a good one though: #446 Lincolnshire Chine. It was the last recipe in the Cured Meat section of the book, so I wrote a little review of it. Many recipes from this section made it into both my personal and professional repertoires.
Just a handful of my podcast guests of 2024 (L to R: Charlie Taverner, Louise Middleton, Brigitte Webster, Kevin Geddes, Marc Meltonville and Jane Steward)
There were some great podcast episodes published too: 19 in all, the most I have made in a single year, taking the number of episodes up to 49! The most popular episode was 18th Century Dining with Ivan Day. Other favourites included London’s Street Food Sellers with Charlie Taverner, Invalid Cookery with Lindsay Middleton, Tavern Cookery with Marc Meltonville and Tudor Cooking and Cuisine with Brigitte Webster. I also collaborated with Sam Bilton of the Comfortably Hungry podcast about tripe. Season 7 kicked off in December with an episode about mince pies and another collaboration this time with Thomas Ntinas of the Delicious Legacy podcast about 18th-century women cookery book writers.
18th Century Dining with Ivan Day was the most popular episode of the podcast in 2023.
So, that’s the look back, and now it is time to look forward to the new year and to what it will bring. New podcast episodes are being lined up and the next episode will be out on 5 January (all things being well). I have two book deadlines this year, so I shall tell you about those as and when I can, and I will – of course – be continuing to write posts for the blogs (though January and February may be a little sparse – those deadlines are looming!)
I hope you have a great rest of Christmas. Remember it doesn’t finish until the 5th of January, so keep eating, drinking and making merry up to then, and beyond.
Merry Christmas everyone! It’s time for my annual boozy Christmas drink, and this year’s is so good, you can even give it to the kids; if you take Mrs Beeton’s advice (I advise against it, but what do I know). It is called negus; the ingredients are simple, and you are almost guaranteed to have them this time of year: wine, sugar, citrus fruit, spices. Easy.
Its origin lies with the English officer class of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, who got into the very sensible habit of watering down their wine to avoid getting too drunk of an evening. They still wanted something to drink though. It is named after Colonel Francis Negus (1660-1732), ‘a well-connected gentleman’, who, aside from being a noted member of the officer class, was also an MP, and a talented horse rider and hunter, so-much-so he was given the position of Master of the Horse and Warden of Windsor Forest. Quite the chap it would seem. The earliest description known comes in the form of a handwritten note in a 1725 edition of Tacitus’s works. It said: ‘After a morning’s walk, half a pint of white wine, made and hot and sweetened a little, is recond very good. – Col. Negus, a gentn. of tast, advises it, I have heard say.’[3] Initially it was a heated mixture of white wine and water, sugar and then some citrus juice, sometimes lemons, or sweet or Seville oranges, and it hasn’t really changed that much.
Its low alcohol made it especially good for the infirm or chronically ill. One Dr William Buchan in his 1797 book, prescribes claret negus for those with ‘Slow or Nervous Fever’, what we would call depression today.[4] In the book Oxford Nightcaps (1827), the author tells us that a doctor friend of his, a certain Doctor Willich, thinks ‘Negus is one of the innocent and wholesome species of drink especially if Seville oranges be added’. He also recommends lemons, cinnamon, cloves and all-spice. And calves’ foot jelly, which was thought very nourishing to those who couldn’t digest anything too rich or challenging.
Mr Fezziwig’s Ball as depicted by John Leech
Into the mid-19th century, negus settled down as a drink to be enjoyed by everyone, the wine most often used now being port (a drink which had been made popular since the Napoleonic Wars). It is mentioned in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843). When the Ghost of Christmas Past takes Scrooge to show him the wonderful parties put on by his old boss, the kind and caring, Mr Fezziwig: ‘There were dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer.’[5] What a sight they would have been!
Isabella Beeton’s considered negus a children’s drink
So inoffensive was negus that it became a popular drink with kids, with Mrs Beeton informing us in 1861 that ‘[a]s this beverage is more usually drunk at children’s parties than at any other, the wine need not be very old or expensive for the purpose.’ Her proportions are 1 pint of port to every quart of water, plus a quarter of a pound of sugar, zest and juice of one lemon and some grated nutmeg. She adds: ‘Allow 1 pint of wine, with the ingredients in proportion, for a party of 9 or 10 children.’[6]
It’s essentially a weak version of my favourite hot-booze drink,smoking bishop, but child-friendly. Hm. I suppose it’s one way to get them to sleep on Christmas Eve night!
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The recipe
Use whatever wine you prefer and your favourite citrus fruit. I went with port and a clementine and added some nutmeg and cinnamon. I must say it was very drinkable.
I’ve metricated the volumes, but the rule of thumb here is 1 part wine to 2 parts water, and you can sweeten the mixture to your taste.
Makes 1.3 litres:
400 ml wine (port, claret or white wine)
Zest and juice of 1 citrus fruit (lemon, sweet orange, Seville orange, clementine, etc)
Spices: ¼ freshly grated nutmeg, a snapped cinnamon stick, a teaspoon of cracked allspice berries or bruised cloves; choose your favourites.
800 ml boiling water
100 to 120 g caster sugar.
Heat the wine slowly with the zest and juice of your chosen fruit, and the spices until scalding hot (but not boiling). Add the hot water, then add sugar to taste. Pass through a sieve into a punch bowl or jug. To serve, ladle into beakers or cups.
One final note before I go: in Jerry Thomas and Christian Shultz’s How to Mix Drinks (1862), there is a very interesting-sounding soda negus recipe. The wine is warmed up with sugar and spices, then left to cool, then soda is added before serving.[7] Worth a try I think!
Notes
[1] Purl was an ale that had been infused with wormwood. Sounds full-on. Potential future Christmas booze post.
[2] Anon. (1776) The Free-Mason’s Calendar: or, an Almanac for the Year of Christ 1776.
[3] Wondrich, D. (2021) The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails. Edited by D. Wondrich and N. Rothbaum. Oxford University Press.
[4] Buchan, W. (1797) Domestic Medicine, Or, A Treatise on the Prevention and Cure of Diseases, by Regimen and Simple Medicines. Edited by I. Cathrall. Richard Folwell.
[5] Dickens, C. (2010) A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings. Penguin Classics.
[6] Beeton, I. (1861) The Book of Household Management. Lightning Source.
[7] Thomas, J. and Schultz, C. (1862) How to Mix Drinks, Or, The Bon-vivant’s Companion. Dick & Fitzgerald.
British Food: A History 