School caterers have taken a step back in time to have a go at making heritage recipes from Warwickshire’s historical records.Staff from Warwickshire-based Educaterers - who have been busy provid...
School caterers have taken a step back in time to have a go at making heritage recipes from Warwickshire’s historical records.
Staff from Warwickshire-based Educaterers - who have been busy providing school meals to vulnerable children, the children of key workers and those year groups that have now returned to school - have been cooking up historical recipes from the Warwickshire County Record Office collections in their spare time.
Following the huge interest generated by the posting of Educaterers’ school lunch recipes on social media by Warwickshire County Council during lockdown, Heritage & Culture Warwickshire are sharing an interesting selection of heritage recipes from the county’s archives.
Development Manager, Philippa Dadswell, has been the first Educaterers employee to attempt the recipes, following an 18th Century recipe found in the records of the Wise family, who owned Warwick Priory, to make almond cheesecakes.
With older recipes, just reading them can prove difficult, as the language and terminology used can be markedly different with unfamiliar spellings – and some very elaborate handwriting.
Philippa said: “I tried to follow the recipe as closely as possible and not to cheat too much, sticking mainly to the original methods. I had to guestimate some of the amounts of ingredients where the recipe didn’t specify them. Improvisation was the key!
“But when cooked, the cheesecakes were delicious; they were so light and fluffy, and the currants that the recipe suggested using added a different texture.”
With an increasing number of people enjoying cooking at home, Warwickshire County Council’s Heritage and Culture service are sharing a different heritage recipe a week via the council’s social media channels.
In addition to the 18th Century almond cheesecake recipe, other recipes that are being shared via social media include a ‘creame with aples’ ~ not dissimilar to an apple and custard tart ~ from the 17th/18th Century, chocolate fruit fudge from the 20th Century, a ‘cucumber catchup’ from the 19th/20th Century attributed to Mrs Bunny of Baginton, a seed cake, taffaty tarts and apple pasties.
The recipes are also available on the ‘Our Warwickshire’ website (www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk), where the Heritage and Culture team have shared their own experiences of tackling the recipes (prior to Covid-19) ~ including trying to get to grips with strange quantities like pecks and gills and, in many cases, no quantities whatsoever!
Managing Director of Educaterers, Terry Tredget, said: “For our staff, cooking isn’t just a day job, it is their passion, so I am not surprised that our employees have volunteered to take on the challenge of cooking the heritage recipes.
“It’s really interesting for them to compare the ingredients and methodologies from centuries gone by with the modern, healthy and nutritious recipes that we use to prepare our school meals.”
Councillor Heather Timms, Warwickshire County Council’s Portfolio Holder for Environment and Heritage & Culture, said:
“These heritage recipes provide a fascinating insight into Warwickshire’s culinary history and demonstrate the range of historical records and information that is preserved in the Warwickshire County Record Office archives and that the public can access on the ‘Our Warwickshire’ website.”
For those wanting to try out the recipes at home, you may find they are a little unusual for modern day tastes. Some of the ingredients may be beyond our modern palettes and you may find it difficult to adapt old-time techniques with today’s cooking tools and equipment.
But, as demonstrated by Philippa from Educaterers, it is an interesting process and gives a fascinating insight into the culinary history of Warwickshire.
You can read about Philippa’s experience cooking the almond cheesecakes, complete with photos of the process and the finished result, on the Educaterers website at: https://educaterers.co.uk/news
If you want to try making the heritage recipes yourself at home, follow the ‘Our Warwickshire’ Twitter account @OurWarwickshire and Warwickshire County Council Twitter account @warwickshire_cc and look out for the weekly recipe posts with the hashtags #homecooking and #HeritageRecipe.
You can also visit the ‘Our Warwickshire’ website at https://www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk/content/article/heritage-recipes-with-a-warwickshire-twist to read about how the Heritage & Culture team got on with the ‘Heritage Cooking Challenge’.
The ‘Our Warwickshire’ website contains thousands of archive photos, stories, memories and maps documenting the history, heritage and natural environment of Warwickshire, which have been uploaded by local people, museums and archives.
When schools are fully open, Educaterers serve up over 120,000 nutritious tasty meals a week in over 200 schools and colleges in Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Birmingham and Oxfordshire. For more information on Educaterers, visit www.educaterers.co.uk.