Tag Archives: Yorkshire

22/03/2025 · 11:48 am

Yorkshire Teacakes

A hospitable Yorkshire housewife would consider her tea table was barely spread if it were not liberally supplied with these delicious cakes, constant relays of which should be served steaming hot.

Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery (1883)[1]

A split and toasted fruit teacake, liberally spread with melting salted butter is one of life’s simple pleasures. For those of you who are not already in the know, a Yorkshire teacake is a round, slightly flattened, enriched, soft breadcake usually containing a little sugar, spice, dried fruit, and candied peel. There was a time when England had scores of regional fruited or enriched bread cakes and loaves, but they have largely gone by the wayside. Others that spring to mind are Bath buns, Wiltshire lardy cakes and Lincolnshire plum bread.[2] These types of cakes and breads are much more appreciated in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, or so it seems. The Yorkshire teacake has escaped its regional roots, so much so that it has lost its Yorkshire identifier and is simply called a teacake by most people.

Just-baked teacakes with plenty of salted butter

Yorkshire teacakes can be traced back to the opening decades of the 18th century when they were called ‘Yorkshire Cakes’. They will have been very expensive because they are enriched with eggs, butter, milk, and plenty of sugar and dried fruits.[3] By the 1880s, they are called Yorkshire teacakes.[4]

Working-class families enjoyed them too, but there was invariably less fruit, just a touch of sugar, half-and-half milk and water, no eggs and lard instead of butter. I like this more austere version, though I do go will all milk (full fat, of course) and much prefer lard to often over rich butter. Looking through recipes, the amount of lard varies greatly from a knob to over five ounces per pound of flour.

It’s very important that the teacakes are nice and soft. To achieve this, heed this excellent advice from Florence White:

Immediately after taking from the oven, rub over with buttered paper, and cover with a light, clean blanket; this gives a soft skin.[5]

When they are freshly baked they are lovely eaten untoasted, but any older than that and they must be split and toasted (or if you want to go hardcore Yorkshire, strong Cheddar cheese[6]).

It occurred to me that I hadn’t baked a batch of teacakes for a good few years, and I was thereafter craving them, so I baked a batch. They are so worth making at home and I give you my recipe, should you fancy having a go yourself.

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Recipe

This is quite a sticky dough and I would recommend making this in a stand mixer with a dough hook, but they can be made without one; just be prepared to be very sticky in the first 10 minutes of kneading. If you prefer plain teacakes, omit the fruit and spice and add half the sugar.

Makes 8 teacakes:

500 g strong plain flour, plus extra for kneading and shaping

30 g caster sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp instant yeast

½ tsp mixed spice or ½ a grated nutmeg

80 g softened lard or butter, or a mixture

300 ml warm milk or half-and-half milk and water

Around 2 tbs vegetable or sunflower oil

80 g mixed dried fruit

30 g candied peel (optional)

Extra milk for brushing

Add the flour, sugar, salt, yeast and spices to a mixing bowl, make a well in the centre and add the softened fat, then tip in the warm liquid. Using a kneading hook, mix the ingredients on a slow speed until everything has combined, then turn up the speed a notch or two and knead for about 10 minutes until smooth – it won’t be very elastic because of the lashings of lard.

If you want to do this by hand, mix the ingredients with a wooden spoon. When thoroughly mixed, leave it to stand for 15 minutes or so; this gives the flour to absorb some of the liquid making for easier hand kneading. Knead on a lightly floured surface for around 15 minutes.

Brush a clean mixing bowl with the vegetable oil, gather up the floppy dough as best as you can (oil your hands, it makes this bit much easier), tuck it into a ball and pop it in the oiled bowl. Cover with a tea towel or cling film until it has doubled in size. This will take a while; even sat close to the radiator, my dough took over two hours.

Now take two baking sheets and line them with greaseproof paper and set aside.

Tip the dough onto a floured worktop and press out into a square, add the fruit and knead it into the dough. You do this step in the oiled bowl if you like. When everything is reasonably equally distributed, cut the dough into 8 equal-sized pieces. Using just a very little flour roll the pieces of dough into tight balls, then roll them out into circles with a floured rolling pin so they are 4 to 5 cm thick. Sit them on your baking sheets as you make them.

When you’ve done all 8, cover them with tea towels or place a container over them so they can prove again. In my experience the second proving takes about half the time of the first. As they prove turn your oven to 200°C fan (or equivalent). If you have a steam setting on your oven, use it. If you don’t, place a roasting tin in the bottom of the oven to heat up, and when you put your teacakes in the oven, tip some water into the now very hot tin and close the door.

Before and after the second proving

When they have doubled in size, brush them with milk and pop them in the oven. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown. Test whether they are ready by tapping the base of one: it should sound hollow.

Remove the teacakes from the oven and immediately throw a double layer of tea towels over them to keep them soft as they cool.

Notes:

[1] Cassell (1883) Cassell’s dictionary of cookery. Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co.

[2] Check out Elizabeth David’s classic English Bread and Yeast Cookery (1977) for several other examples.

[3] David, E. (1977) English Bread and Yeast Cookery. Grub Street; Mason, L. and Brown, C. (1999) The Taste of Britain. Devon: Harper Press.

[4] Cassell (1883)

[5] White, F. (1932) Good Things in England. Persephone.

[6] Brears, P. (2014) Traditional Food in Yorkshire. Prospect Books.

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26/05/2023 · 1:08 pm

Dock Pudding

The good thing about being a lover of British puddings is that there is an almost infinite number to cook and try. All of the pudding recipes I have posted on the blog thus far have all been of the sweet variety, and they have all been fairly well known, but this year I am going to try and write some posts and recipes for savoury or obscure ones. First up is dock pudding which happens to tick both of those boxes. This pudding is one I have been meaning to cook for years, but I’ve only gotten around to it until now.

Dock pudding used to be very popular in Yorkshire, especially in the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire. The dock in question isn’t the common dock (the one you rub on nettle stings) but a particular species that goes under several names including bistort, passion dock and sweet dock, its Latin name is Polygonum bistorta.[1] It can be distinguished from the common dock by its yellowish spear-shaped leaves. The leaves are collected when young, alongside tender nettle tops, there is a recipe for it in Alexis Soyer’s classic 19th century work A Shilling Cookery For the People, where it is made with a mix of two-thirds passion dock, and one-third nettles.[2] These were supplemented or replaced with whatever greens were around: sorrel, raspberry leaves, chives, spinach, etc, the choice changing with the season. These are washed, sliced and cooked with onion or leek and oatmeal to make a very dark green porridge, which is fried in dollops in bacon fat, lard or beef dripping.[3] It has been likened to Welsh laverbread in colour and flavour, in that you will either love it or hate it.[4] It sometimes goes by the name herb pudding, which makes sense seeing as docks are only eaten in the springtime when they are tender. It is mixed with more oatmeal and water, tied in a cloth and boiled, cooled and fried in slices.

My patch of Passion dock

Technically, then, I could have used any green leaves, but I really wanted to make it with Passion dock; so called because it is found growing during Passion Week, the last week of Lent.[5] It was an extremely important food, the first fresh green vegetable after a winter of eating only pickled vegetables and salted meats. Many people were showing signs of scurvy by early spring, so few fresh vegetables were eaten. Dock is also said to be an excellent blood cleanser and good for the skin too, being a preventative of spots and pimples.[6]

Dock pudding was especially popular in the Victorian era, but was considered a famine food in the 20th century.[7] Very few people eat it now, but there is an outlier because the West Yorkshire town of Mytholmroyd has held the World Dock Pudding Championships every May since 1971.[8] I’m going to try my best to go next year.

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I found a patch of Passion dock growing in the Cheshire town of Lymm last year, but they were far too old and tough to pick, but I remembered this year. Oddly, I couldn’t find any nettles, but I did spot some sorrel and some wild garlic. I was in a bit of a rush, and didn’t have enough to make the very green sort of pudding, but I didn’t want to boil one (to save on fuel), so tried a common trick of cooking it in a saucepan, pouring and setting it in a tub so I could slice and fry it. This method is sometimes used for other savoury puddings such as black pudding or mealy pudding.

Makes 8 to 10 slices of pudding:

100 g trimmed, young leaves of any amount of the following: passion dock, nettles, spinach, sorrel or any other edible greens you like

1 leek or onion, sliced thinly

80 g oatmeal (not rolled oats)

1 tsp salt

Freshly ground black pepper

400 ml water

A smidge of flavourless oil such as sunflower or groundnut

8 rashers of streaky bacon

30 g lard or dripping, or 2 tbs of your favourite frying fat or oil

Your pudding needs to be cooked, cooled and set the day before you want to eat it (or several days before if you like). To do this, shred the leaves and add them to a pan with the leek or onion, oatmeal, salt, pepper and water. Bring to a simmer, stirring so that it doesn’t form lumps.

Cook for around 20 minutes and all of the vegetables are soft, then take off the heat. Now take a tub of around 1 litre capacity and brush with the oil. Pour the pudding into the tub, cover, cool and then refrigerate.

When you want to cook your pudding, first fry the bacon in your chosen frying fat or oil over a medium heat until very crisp. As they cook, prepare the pudding: turn out onto a board and cut even slices between 1 and 1.5 cm thick. It’s best to use a serrated knife for this task.

Remove the bacon rashers and keep warm as you fry the pudding slices: turn up the heat to medium-high and pop in the slices. It’s a bit like making bubble and squeak in that you need to wait and allow them to build up a good, crisp fried layer before you disturb them: a good 5 minutes. Turn over with a spatula and fry the other side for a further 4 or 5 minutes.

When ready, serve up with the bacon and whatever other breakfast things you like. I went with fried eggs.

Notes:

[1] Brears, P. (2014) Traditional Food in Yorkshire. Prospect Books.

[2] Soyer, A. A Shilling Cookery for the People: Embracing an Entirely New System of Plain Cookery and Domestic Economy. (Geo. Routledge & Co., 1855).

[3] Davidson, A. (1999) The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford University Press.

[4] Mason, L. and Brown, C. (1999) The Taste of Britain. Devon: Harper Press.

[5] If you want to know more about the food of Passion Week, listen to this episode of the podcast:

[6] Davidson (1999); Brears (2014)

[7] Brears (2014)

[8] Davidson (1999)

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18/10/2022 · 1:27 pm

My Best Yorkshire Pudding Recipe

Carrying on from my conversation about Yorkshire pudding with Elaine Lemm on the podcast recently, I thought I should toss my hat into the ring with my own recipe.

This post complements the episode ‘Yorkshire Pudding with Elaine Lemm’ on The British Food History Podcast:

This is a simple affair, and after some rigorous recipe testing, using fewer eggs or different mixtures of milk and water, as well as different receptacles in which to cook the batter, I think it is both excellent and fool proof. It goes by the tried-and-tested equal ratio method: i.e. equal volumes of plain flour, milk and eggs, plus a good pinch of salt, and animal fat (in my case, lard).

The pudding takes around 40 minutes to cook, the perfect amount of time to rest your roast meat before carving and serving.

In the podcast episode Elaine and I came to the conclusion that anything made in a muffin tin, isn’t really a proper Yorkshire pudding. Indeed, the consensus on my Special Postbag Edition of the podcast, cooking the batter in a tray achieves the best proportion of crispy, crunchy bits on the fringes and nice puddingy softness in the base. Listen to that episode here:

Have something to add to the debate? Please get in contact or leave a comment at the end of this post, I’m sure I shall be revisiting the subject in future postbag episodes.

A large pudding has both softness and crunch

Cooking in a dish that is good and thick is important for a good rise: you need something that will heat up in the oven, but also retain it when the cool batter is poured in. Don’t go for anything flimsy here: a really thick metal tin, or even better, an earthenware dish: it’s thickness and its property of retaining heat creates a pud with a fantastic rise: I got such a good one it almost hit the grill elements in my oven when put on the middle shelf! I give the dimensions of my dish in the recipe, but don’t worry if yours is slightly different; puddings like this are very forgiving with respect to dish size.

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Make the batter a few hours (minimum one) before you want to cook it.

Serves 6 to 8 if eaten with a roast dinner:

¾ cup (180 ml) plain flour

A good three-finger pinch of sea salt

¾ cup (180 ml) eggs

¾ cup (180 ml) milk, full fat, if possible

30 g lard, dripping or goose or duck fat

Put the flour and salt in a bowl, make a well in the centre and pour your eggs inside the well. Use a whisk to combine the eggs and flour, starting in the well, gradually mixing the flour into the eggs. This prevents lumps forming.

Once the flour and eggs are mixed, add the milk, whisking slowly at first, until it is fully mixed in, then give it a good thrashing for 30 seconds or so. Leave, covered, at room temperature until you want to cook it. If you like, pour the whole lot into a jug, for easier handling later.

When you are ready to cook your pudding, preheat the oven to 200°C.

Place the fat in your tin or dish – I used an earthenware dish of dimension 20 x 28 cm, with steeply sloping sides – and place on the centre shelf of your oven. Give the dish and fat plenty of time to get fully hot: I leave it in there for a good 25 minutes.

Now give the batter a final good whisking, quickly (but carefully) open the oven door, pull the shelf of the oven out slightly so that you can pour in the batter. The batter should sizzle and frill up in the fat.

Quickly push the shelf back into place and close the door. Do not open the door until 25 minutes have elapsed.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, depending upon how dark you like your risen crispy edges.

Remove and slice into squares, serving it up with your roast dinner.

A pudding of high proportions

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09/03/2022 · 4:29 pm

Cheese and Leek (or Onion) Pie

Hello! I’m back after two-month hiatus. Did you miss me?

It’s British Pie Week this week so I thought I’d post a recipe for a favourite of mine. The trouble is, I have many favourites, so I came up with a list of four and let Twitter decide. I was very glad to see my favourite won.

Later, I saw the cheese and leek/onion pie was tenth in the top ten favourite UK pies, receiving just 1% of the vote!* Shocking. I think there may be a north-south divide effect at work there; back in the days of my market stall and restaurant, cheese and leek pie was by far the favourite.

The cheese and onion pie or pasty used to be a very important food for the working classes of Northern England, especially Yorkshire and Lancashire: it’s easy to make and the ingredients are cheap compared to meaty fillings. It’s the pie equivalent of the Welsh Rabbit/Rarebit.

The simplest of fillings were made of cooked onion, thinly-sliced raw potato, or cold mashed potato, and grated cheese. On the fancier side, a thick white sauce is used instead of mash. For my recipe I am going somewhere in between to hopefully enjoy the best of both worlds. I use onion and leek interchangeably because either (or both) can be used: I make leek pies as I’m intolerant to onion.

As for the cheese, use a mature kind that melts easily: Cheddar, Lancashire, Double Gloucester etc. The pastry should be a simple shortcrust made with half butter, half lard, but all butter is good too.

Serve the pie with mashed potatoes or chips, with peas and gravy as is traditional, but this pie eats very well just warm with a dressed green salad and some good old salad cream.

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Makes one large pie to serve 6 people (or 4 greedy ones who always have seconds)

For the filling:

50 g butter

1 leek, trimmed and sliced, but with the green left on; or 2 medium onions, peeled and sliced

350 g (approx.) potatoes, peeled and diced (about 2 medium-sized ones)

Salt and pepper

1 tbs plain flour

1 tsp English mustard powder

275 ml hot milk

150 g grated cheese

Pinch Cayenne pepper (optional)

2 tbs double cream

For the pastry:

400 g plain flour

200g salted butter, or 100 g each butter and lard (or shortening)

120 ml water or milk

Egg wash

Start with the filling. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the leek or onion and potatoes, season with half a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper. Cook over a medium heat until the leek or onion melts right down. Do this slowly, turning down the heat if necessary – you don’t want to fry them, though a pale golden brown colour is fine.

Stir in the flour and mustard and cook for a minute before mixing half of the milk. When the milk combines with the flour to make a smooth sauce, add the remainder of the milk and combine again.

Simmer gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then remove from the heat and stir in the cheese. Mix in the Cayenne pepper. Check the seasoning and add more salt and pepper. It’s a good idea to slightly over season the filling to make up for the comparatively bland shortcrust pastry. Finally stir in the cream and allow to cool completely. I usually make my cooked fillings a day or two ahead of time.

Now make the pastry. Rub the fat(s) into the flour. If you are using unsalted butter, add half a teaspoon of salt. If you are making pastry by hand, unless you have forearms like Popeye, use fats that are at room temperature. If using a mixer, use the flat beater and use cold fats straight from the fridge. Either way, once it resembles breadcrumbs add the water a couple of tablespoons at a time until you have a soft but not sticky dough. Knead very briefly, wrap in cling film and leave it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.

After resting, take around a third of the dough and roll out on a lightly floured worktop. I used an 18 cm cake tin because I like deep-filled pies, but a shallow pie dish or flan ring of around 25 cm would work too. Roll out a third of the pastry into a circle. Leave the pastry to rest again for a minute or so before laying it in the tin. Be careful to press the pastry into the corners without stretching it: lift it in carefully. If using a deep dish as I have it’s helpful to fold the pastry into quarters, placing it in the dish or tin and then unfolding it.

Roll out the remainder of the pastry to make a lid. Cut a steam hole in the centre and set aside.

Spoon in the pie filling, but don’t fill it too much – it does expand as it cooks. Now brush the edges with egg wash (I use an egg, or egg yolk, beaten with half a teaspoon of salt). Glue the lid in place, pressing the lid down well.

Trim the excess pastry with a sharp knife and then crimp the edges or use a fork to seal the lid. Paint with more egg wash, and if you like add a bit more black pepper. Place in the fridge to set the pastry.

Preheat your oven to 220°C and pop a baking tray on the centre shelf.

(If you have any left-over pastry and filling, make a pasty with it (see here for my Cornish pasty recipe) and bake it with the pie, or freeze it. Both pastry and filling freeze well separately.)

Take the pie out of the fridge and place in the oven on the hot baking tray (this prevents a soggy bottom from developing) and bake for 45 minutes, turning down the heat to 180°C when the pastry is a nice golden brown.

*The poll appeared in the Metro back in 2017: https://metro.co.uk/2017/03/09/the-most-loved-pies-around-the-uk-may-divide-the-nation-6498584/

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09/02/2014 · 7:21 pm

Yorkshire Curd Tart

Ah, Yorkshire. God’s Own Country and my home county (well, it’s 3 counties technically, but let’s not worry about that now). There are many delicious regional recipes to be found there, but this must be the best: Yorkshire curd tart. For some very strange reason it hasn’t really ever made its way out of Yorkshire. Essentially it is a baked cheesecake – something that Britain isn’t considered famous for, yet if you delve into the old cook books, you’ll find loads of recipes for them. The cheese in question here is, of course, curd cheese which is sweetened with sugar, and mixed with currants, allspice and sometimes rosewater.

2014-01-19 16.02.32

Now a few guiding words on the making of a curd tart: no matter what you read, and I want to be very clear on this, cottage cheese cannot be used. It must be curd cheese which is very different in taste and texture to cottage cheese. These days it is difficult to get your hands on it, but it is very easy to make yourself, as you’ll see below. Also, the only spice to be used must be ground allspice (or clove-pepper as it used to be called in Yorkshire). Not cinnamon, not nutmeg, and certainly not mixed spice. Another misconception is that lemon curd is spread on the pastry base of the tart. Well it’s not, Mr Michelin Guide. Lastly, and as already mentioned, it’s a kind of cheesecake, and not some kind of custard tart as some people seem to think (Mr Paul Hollywood, I’m looking at you).

Ok. Good. Glad we got those issues out of the way.

Curd tarts were traditionally made around Whitsuntide from left-over curds from the cheese-making process and seem to originate in the early-to-mid 17th century. Most families kept their own cow in those days. For those of you that don’t know (and who does?), Whitsuntide derives from the words White Sunday which is our name for Pentecost, which, if my memory serves me correctly, is the seventh Sunday after Easter. The important thing is that there’s a Bank Holiday the next day and a whole week off for half term for the schoolkids.

In dairy farms with several cows, special curd tarts would be made after the cows had calved, using the cows’ colostrum to make the curd for the tarts. Colostrum is the milk produced straight after a mammal gives birth. It is particularly rich in nutrients and fat, and is yellowish in colour. I’ve always thought of this as a bit mean of the dairy farmer’s wife, but then again, she’d also have to tuck into umbilical cord pie the next day, so I suppose it evens out.

To Make Curd Cheese

It’s really easy to make your own curd cheese. All you need is some gold top Channel Island milk, some rennet, salt, and some muslin or other cloth to drain the whey from the curds; I have used an old pillowcase in the past with much success.

Rennet is an enzyme that curdles milk. In the old days a piece of a freshly-slaughtered male calf’s stomach lining would have been popped into the milk (as still occurs in the production of some non-vegetarian cheeses). These days with the magic of science, we can produce it from bacterial culture.

This recipe makes around 750g curd cheese.

In a saucepan, warm a litre of Channel Island milk to 37⁰C, also termed ‘blood-heat’. Use a thermometer if you like. Pour the milk into a dish or bowl and stir in half a teaspoon of salt and your rennet. Follow the instructions on the bottle to see how much to add, as different brands vary. Stir it in, along with half a teaspoon of salt.

2014-01-18 20.14.10

Leave the milk to stand for 10 or 15 minutes. Upon your return, you’ll see that the milk had gone all wobbly and can be easily – and satisfyingly – broken into curds.

2014-01-18 20.30.58

Scald your straining cloth with water straight from the kettle, spread it out over a bowl so the edges hang over, and then pour in your curds and whey. Tie up the cloth with string and hang up the cheese above the bowl to strain for 4 or 5 hours. Hey presto! You have made curd cheese. It keeps for several days covered in the fridge.

2014-01-19 10.58.25

To Make a Yorkshire Curd Tart

Here’s the recipe I use which is based on the one that appears in Jane Grigson’s English Food. It makes enough filling for one 10 inch diameter tart tin, though you can make several small ones if you prefer. The recipe only requires 250g of cheese, so if you’re making your own, you might want to adjust the quantities in the recipe above, or just make three tarts.

The tart is not overly sweet and has a lovely soft centre and a golden brown colour.

125g salted butter

60g caster sugar

250g curd cheese

125g raisins

pinch of salt

2 eggs, beaten

¼ to ½ tsp ground allspice

1 tsp rosewater (optional).

blind-baked 10 inch shortcrust pastry shell (made or bought)

First of all, cream together the butter and sugar well, then mix in the cheese, raisins, salt and eggs. Season to taste with the allspice and rosewater.

2014-01-19 15.34.58

Pour the filling into the pastry shell and bake for 25 to 30 minutes at 220⁰C. Cool on a rack.

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01/04/2012 · 10:52 am

The Treacle Mines of England

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Recently I wrote a post on the history and invention of golden syrup and black treacle in the 19th and 20th centuries. Prior to the mass production and refining of sugar cane in the West Indies, the only way to get hold of treacle was to mine ‘natural molasses’ in treacle mines. As far as I know treacle is the only mined foodstuff though I could be wrong there (I often am).

Natural treacle is very viscous

Treacle mines are rare and appear in just five regions of England: Yorkshire, Lancashire, Kent, the West Country, with the most significant mine being in Wymsey, Cumbria. Having a treacle mine in your town was a huge benefit to the inhabitants. The folk living in these areas were particularly healthy, especially the miners themselves. It was noted by William Cobbet in 1816 when visiting the Cumbrian village:

This place I found to be a fair and healthy place, the women and children well fed and happy. Most menfolk were at work upon the Land but that evening in the excellent Crown and Thorns Inn I was surpassingly surprised to see many men brown of hue. On enquiry I determined that these were miners of Treacle and what a jolly crew they turned out to be. That night I repaired to my bed thanking our maker that there was at least one happy parish in the land.

Black unrefined treacle forms from fossilised beds of sugar cane rather like oil or peat and has a tendancy to seep and rise to the surface of the ground. This run-off is useless, but what makes the regions mentioned above unique is that the treacle is surrounded by a layer of non-porous rock that keeps it contained.

Treacle mining goes back to pre-Roman times, in fact there was a healthy trade between England and Rome via Roman-occupied Gaul. In fact it was the main reason why the Romans wanted to conquer the unbearably cold and harsh British Isles. Why else would they want to take over an island that was inhabitable to them?  A floor mosaic from AD 77 was unearthed depicting treacle mining and refining.

Demand was so high, that any new sites had to be kept secret. The site of the mine in Pudsey (my home town, nestled between Leeds and Bradford in West Yorkshire) is so closely-guarded that only a very few individuals know the location and those that are told have to have been born and bred within the boundaries of Pudsey.  The site of the famous abbey at Kirkstall was chosen by the monks that built it because it was thought a tributary ran from the Pudsey mines through Kirkstall. Unfortunately it seems they were wrong – no treacle had ever been found there.

Pudsey Parish Church

There has been no significant treacle mining in Britain since the nineteenth century because industry had made sugar and its by-products cheap and accessible. However, it was on its last-legs already; most of the mines were completely dry and no new sites were found. The last working mine eventually closed in the 1930s during the Great Depression. There are no plans to excavate any of mines and it is a shame; it would be great if we could draw attention to this almost forgotten part of our food history.

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17/03/2012 · 5:53 pm

The Rhubarb Triangle

It is just about the end of the short British forced rhubarb season, and it is always a treat to see it nestled, glowing pink in a crate at the marketstalls, and it is always sad to see it disappear, as I think it is one of the most wonderful vegetables.

In Britain, the long thin bright pink stalks are grown in an area called the Rhubarb Triangle, also known as the Wakefield triangle, a nine mile square area of land contained by Leeds, Morley and Wakefield in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Here, the rhubarb is grown in large, heated, low-ceilinged sheds in complete darkness. Because the plants want sunlight, they are forced stretch and grow long and thin in the vain hope of catching some of the Sun’s rays. Hence it is called forced rhubarb. It is also called Champagne rhubarb by some. The rhubarb never gets to attain the green colour like normal field or garden rhubarb has; I think the biological term is chlorosed. It also never gets the chance to develop the very astringent sourness too, but it does still has the wonderful rhubarb flavour. The plants grow so quickly in their desperation to find light that you can actually hear them pop and crack as they stretch and grow. I imagine that it is pretty scary in those dark, dank sheds harvesting the rhubarb by candlelight.

So what is special about West Yorkshire when it comes to growing rhubarb? Apparently, it is the unique mix of soil and climate. I know that that might sound rather trite, but I think in this case it might actually be true; Wakefield is the only place in the UK where one can successfully grow liquorice and the reason for that is because of its soil. Yorkshire-produced Forced Rhubarb has been given Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status by the European Commission’s Protected Food Name scheme, just like Stilton Cheese, and famously not like Cornish pasties. That said the forced rhubarb I got was from Mexico.

It wasn’t until the discovery that rhubarb could be forced in the 1840s that the vegetable caught on as a ‘fruit’ in crumbles, pies &c. (it isn’t a true fruit as there are no seeds). Before then, like many plants, it was grown for medicinal purposes. It was such a revered drug for treating gut, lung and liver disorders that it was worth thrice the price of opium! It was first introduced into Europe by Marco Polo from Asia during the thirteenth century, and was first grown in Britain in the mid-seventeenth century.

Okay, that’s enough waffle, it is recipe time. Rhubarb is great for desserts and jams, and it is also great with fish, particularly oily fish. There are many recipes that I could add to the post, but the best has to be…

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Rhubarb Crumble

This is my favourite way of eating rhubarb: tart fruit, sweet crunchy topping and loads of proper custard (link here for a recipe for that). I like to include some ginger in my crumble, they are a classic combination. Here I use it twice, ground ginger in the topping, and preserved ginger in with the gently stewed fruit. Orange zest and juice also work well as an alternative.

Ingredients

10 sticks of rhubarb, forced if possible

2 knobs of preserved ginger, chopped, plus one tbs of the syrup

4 tbs caster sugar

4 oz butter

4 oz Demerara sugar, or half caster sugar and half soft dark brown sugar

6 oz plain flour

2 oz oats

1 tsp ground ginger

Slice the rhubarb sticks into one inch lengths. If buying forced rhubarb, there should be no need for peeling, but older, field grown sticks might need it. Place the rhubarb and caster sugar in a saucepan with the ginger and syrup, plus a couple of tablespoons of water. Cover, and simmer gently until the rhubarb is tender, about 10 minutes. Try not to stir the rhubarb too much, as it easily breaks up. If there is a lot of liquid, take the lid off and let it simmer away a little. Add more sugar if necessary; field-grown rhubarb may need more. Cool.

Meanwhile, make the crumble topping by rubbing the butter into the flour, using fingers, mixer or processor. Stir in the flour, oats and ginger.

Pour the rhubarb into a pie dish, or baking dish and pile on the crumble topping. I like loads of topping, but if there is too much for you, freeze the remainder for future crumbles.

Bake at 160⁰C for 45 minutes. Serve with custard, cream or vanilla (or even better, ginger) ice cream.

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04/11/2011 · 8:48 pm

Yorkshire Parkin

God, I love Yorkshire parkin. If you are not familiar with it, it’s a strongly-spiced sticky gingerbread-cum-cake flavoured with treacle and dark brown sugar that is traditionally eaten on Guy Fawkes Night (the fifth of November, aka Bonfire Night) and for me, it is what makes that day complete. It seems like it should be a recipe that has always been, but the earliest mention of it I can find from a primary source in my research is from 1842; a certain Richard Oastler wrote a letter to Sir Thomas Thornhill (who would later become the High Sherrif of Suffolk and a Tory MP) telling him that  he’d recieved one on the 1st day of March from Mrs John Leach of Huddersfield.  The recipe does go back a little further than that though; most likely created some time during the Industrial Revolution by working-class folk as oats and treacle were important elements of the diet in those times. The word parkin was a popular surname in Yorkshire and means Peter. There are other parkins – such as Lancashire parkin – but it doesn’t contain oats and is not, in my very biased opinion, as good because of it.

Making this cake, really brought memories of Bonfire Night as a child growing up in Yorkshire and I must admit, I did have a massive pang of homesickness. Fireworks and bonfires are all well and good, but for me it is always about the food.

This cake has to be eaten to be believed; it will instantly make you feel a million times better if you are feeling down, now that the clocks have gone back. It has to be eaten with a piping hot cup of tea in one hand, preferable in front of a roaring bonfire. Failing that, a roaring fire inside with the dog.

The ingredients are very important here – any non-Brits may not be aware of two of the key ingedients: black treacle and golden syrup. Black treacle is essentially molasses so you can easily substitute there. However, many recipes that ask for golden syrup suggest using corn syrup as an alternative. Please, please, please do not do that. They are incomparable, find a shop with a British ‘aisle’ and get the real thing. Accept no substitute. The history of Lyle’s Golden Syrup is an interesting one and I shall tackle that in another post soon, along with some more golden syrup-based recipes. The recipe calls for weights of treacle and syrup – the best way to do this without creating a nighmarish sticky mess of a kitchen, is to place your saucepan onto the weighing scales, tare them, and then add the syrup and treacle directly.

One last thing… almost as important as the ingredients, is the aging of the parkin. No matter how tempting it may be, do not eat the parkin on the day you have made it. It needs to be kept in an airtight box or tin for at least three days. The cake needs a bit of time for the flavours and stickiness to develop.

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Ingredients:

225 g butter

110 g soft dark sugar

60 g black treacle (or molasses)

200 g golden syrup

140 g medium oatmeal (often sold sold as quick-oats)

200 g self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

4 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp mixed spice

2 large eggs, beaten

2 tbs milk

Preheat the oven to 140⁰C (275⁰F) and lightly grease a square (21 x 21 cm) 7 x 7 inch cake tin. In a saucepan, melt together the butter, brown sugar, black treacle and golden syrup. It is important to do this on a medium-low heat, you don’t the sugars to boil, just to meld together.

Whilst they are melding, stir all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and when the syrup mixture is ready, tip it in. Use a wooden spoon to beat the wet ingredients into the dry. Now incorporate the eggs – do this bit-by-bit, or you run the risk of curdling the mixture. Lastly, slacken the mixture with the milk and pour the whole lot into your cake tin.

Cook for 1 hour and 30 minutes and cool it in the tin. Once cool, keep the parkin in an air-tight cake tin or tub and keep for at least three days before cutting into squares.

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