I always love getting to ‘dress the set’ as it were of my books with bits and bobs from the era. Food is often one of those bits; the sights and smells and tastes of a place are so evocative, aren’t they? So I often find myself in a deep dive looking for what my characters would have been eating and what it would smell and taste like. In my last book, one of my … Continue reading →
Making drinking chocolate in the regency era was a time consuming, labor intensive process, beyond the means of many, particularly if started from dried cacao nibs. Because anything induced by chocolate MUST be a good idea, its time for another chocolate-induced dive down the research rabbit hole! Just to refresh your memory a bit, during the regency era, there were three particular luxury drinks: tea, coffee and chocolate. (I talked about tea recently, you can … Continue reading →
Black butter was another traditional Christmastide treat. Jane Austen mentioned black butter in a letter to her sister. One might infer that she liked it on the whole, but was rather unimpressed with this particular batch of it. December 27, 1808:The widgeon (a kind of duck) and the preserved ginger were as delicious as one could wish. But as to our black butter, do not decoy anybody to Southampton by such a lure, for it … Continue reading →
I have often said the more things change the more they stay the same. Perusing period cookbooks brings this to mind all the time. Between just finishing up to Christmas novella, where the Christmas feast features prominently and getting ready for Thanksgiving ourselves, I’ve had my nose in a number of cookbooks, both historical and modern, and came across this gem recently. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the modern Tur-duck-en, a turkey … Continue reading →
On more than one occasion I’ve had a well-meaning reader point out to me a ‘typo’ that wasn’t. I’ll be the first to admit, my typing is less than perfect and typos get by me sometimes. But every once in awhile, I actually typed a weird looking word right. The word in question is a weird one indeed. It looks like a modern word we use, sort of sounds like that word, seems like it … Continue reading →
