This post was inspired by Anthony Trollope's Chronicles of Barshetshire (1855-1867). To my shame, I knew nothing about this prolific English writer, a clerk at the British postal services who also lived in Ireland, or his satire of English clergymen until I watched the onscreen adaptation of volumes 1 & 2 (The Warden and The Barchester Towers). Being so fond of history, I'm fond of period dramas and this 1982 TV series, with Donald Pleasence, Nigel Hawthorne, Geraldine McEwan, Susan Hampshire and the wonderful Alan Rickman, was probably the best I've ever seen. Much of what goes on in The Chronicles of Barchester goes on in dining rooms and sitting rooms, where people have their everyday meals, afternoon tea & snacks, as well as formal dinners.
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| Map of Anthony Trollope's fictional county of Barsetshire - George Frederick Muendel, 1925 |
Apart
from Vanity Fair, in which Thackeray, gourmet and bon-viveur
himself, talks about food with just as much enthusiasm as he discusses the heroine, 19th century English writers -including female authors- mention edible
stuff only in passing. This is both positive and negative. It's positive
because they leave readers much to compensate for in their imagination and that's exactly what I did with Anthony Trollope's novels.
In the online version of the Chronicles of Barsetshire, the Warden and his daughter are seen nibbling on cakes. However, the post is dedicated to 'Italian creams' from Elizabeth Acton's Modern Cookery (1845) because of the 'young Stanhopes' who lived for seven years in Italy so their father would recover from a persisting cough: Bertie, the good-for-nothing heir who likes cracking jokes, and his sisters Charlotte and Madeline who enjoy all things Italian. The latter is the estranged wife of an Italian scoundrel and the cleverest of all. Because she cannot walk, Signora Neroni passes the day in her armchair -receiving visitors like Obadiah Slope (Alan Rickman's character & victim of her pranks) and offering them sweets.
These are very quickly and easily made, by mixing with good cream a sufficient proportion of the sweetened juice of fresh fruit, or of well-made fruit jelly or jam, to flavour it: a few drops of prepared cochineal may be added to deepen the colour when it is required for any particular purpose. A quarter-pint of strawberry or of raspberry jelly will fully flavor a pint of cream: a very little lemon-juice improves almost all compositions of this sort. When jam is used it must first be gradually mixed with the cream, and then worked through a sieve, to take out the seed or skin of the fruit. All fresh juice for this purpose, must, of course, be cold; that of strawberries is best obtained by crushing the fruit and strewing sugar over it. Peaches, pine-apple, apricots, or nectarines, may be simmered for a few minutes in a little syrup, and this, drained well from them, will serve extremely well to mix with the cream when it has become thoroughly cold: the lemon-juice should be added to all of these. When the ingredients are well blended, lightly whisk or mill them to a froth; take this off with a skimmer as it rises, and lay it upon a fine sieve reversed, to drain, or if it is to be served in glasses, fill them with it at once.
Elizabeth Acton, Modern Cookery, in all its branches, Philadelphia 1845, page 446
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