• References
• Do you have any experience with these recipes? Would you be willing to try them? Tell me in the comments.

Pi Day (as in the number 3.14) is truly the geekiest of holidays. But in a family of engineers, it seems required to at least make note of it.

This year, since we are also in the midst of the season of Lent, I thought it would be interesting to look as some recipes that might have been made for Lent during the Regency Era. Though without meat, they look like they would have been the basis for hearty meals.

This first on caught my eye since it includes what we would call cottage cheese as well as spinach. It sounds very much like a savory cheese cake. The currents and instructions to sweeten it to taste throw me a little.

Cheese Curd Florentine.

TAKE a pound of almonds, put them in boiling water, take off the skins, and beat them in a mortar, with a little rose water to keep them from oiling; break two pounds of cheese curd well with your hands, put it to the almonds, and beat them well together, wash and pick half a pound of currants clean and put in; stew a little spinach, squeeze it dry between two plates, chop it fine, and sweeten it to your palate, grate in half a nutmeg, and mix it well together; lay a thin puff-paste at the bottom of the dish, and a thick one round the rim, and put in the ingredients; roll out some puff-paste, and cut it out in slips as thick as a goose’s quill, put it across and across, to make it look like checquers, sprinkle a little powder sugar over it, and bake it half an hour. (Briggs, 1798)

For those of you who, like me, have never heard of skirret, down the research rabbit hole we go! Skirret is a minor root vegetable crop. The plant is very resistant to cold, pests and diseases. It is said to taste like a mix of carrot and potato and used similarly to potatoes and parsnips.

Skirret Pie.

TAKE two or three pounds of skirret-roots, wash them clean, and boil them till they are tender, peel and slice them; lay a thin paste round the rim and sides of your dish, put in the skirrets to half a pint of cream or new milk, beat up one egg well with a little nutmeg, beaten mace, and salt, and pour in as much as the dish will hold; put on a thin puff-paste, and bake it half an hour. You may put in six yolks of hard eggs if you like it. (Briggs, 1798)

This final recipe grabbed me because it includes lettuce, one of those things we generally don’t think about cooking today. I admit it had me wondering!

An Herb Pie for Lent. 

Take an equal quantity of spinach, lettuce, leeks, beets, and parsley, about a handful of each; boil them, and chop them small. Have ready boiled in a cloth, a quart of groats, with two or three onions among them; put them and the herbs into a frying-pan, with a pretty large quantity of salt, a pound of butter, and some apples cut thin; stew them a few minutes over the fire, fill your dish or raised crust with it; bake it an hour, and serve it up. (Perkins, 1790)

References

Briggs, Richard. The New Art of Cookery; According to the Present Practice: Being a Complete Guide to All Housekeepers, on a Plan Entirely New; Consisting of Thirty-eight Chapters. … With Bills of Fare for Every Month in the Year, Neatly and Correctly Printed. Philadelphia:: Printed for H. & P. Rice, and Sold by J. Rice and Baltimore., 1798.

Perkins, John. Every Woman Her Own Housekeeper; Of, the Ladies’ Library. London. 1790

Do you have any experience with these recipes? Would you be willing to try them? Tell me in the comments.