Dorothea Repps’
manuscript recipe Book, written in 1703, can be found at the Wellcome Library.[1]
I was
interested to see that her manuscript includes a recipe for Welsh Cakes.
Take halfe a
peck of fine white flower and Dry it in your Oven, put to it halfe a pound of fine
powder sugar, and a little salt, 3 grated Nuttmegs, mingle it together, and put
in a pound and a quarter of Currants washed picked and dried in a Cloath,
mingle them with flower and make it into a paste with 4 yolks of Eggs, 6
spoonfuls of Ale yest, 2 pound and a half of new Butter melted, When your paste
is made cover it and sett it by ye fire, halfe an hour after divide it into 3
pieces, mould them and Rowle them out, and lay them one on the Top of ye other.
Lay between them Raisons of the Sunne stoned; garnish the Topp and sides as you
please with the same paste. An hour and a halfe will bake it.
The recipe appears
at first to be very similar to that for modern Welsh Cakes, a mixture of flour,
butter, eggs, sugar and dried fruit with a little spice. However, a modern
welsh cake is made by combining the dried goods with cold butter and egg to
form a pastry before rolling out into small rounds and baking on an open griddle.
Rather, Repps’ method of baking is more akin to that used for a traditional Bara
Brith, a spiced fruit loaf baked slowly in a low oven.
A modern baker
might not be familiar with the peck weight which has
been in use since the early fourteenth century, when it was introduced as a measure
for flour. An eighteenth-century guide to weights and measures states that a bushel of flour weighs 56 lbs and, as
there are 4 pecks in a bushel, the half-peck of flour required for this recipe
would be equivalent to 7 lbs dry weight.[2]
Whereas a modern recipe
for a fruit loaf might be based on 1 lb (half a kilo) of flour, Repps recipe would
result in very large loaf.
The need to dry the flour
first would come as a result of damp conditions in the pantry.
Who will be the
first person to send me a post saying that they have tried this recipe, though possible
using reduced measures?
[2] The London adviser and guide: containing every
instruction and information useful and necessary to persons living in London,
and coming to reside there, by the Rev. Dr. John Trusler (1735-1820).
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