18th century cooking with Jas Townsend & Son

[Ithaca Gunner]

Okay, this guy sells 18th century stuff, you name it, he sells it. He also has a cooking show, and that's the interest today.

Most of these recipes are simple enough, and good! I've made the Onion Soup, Baked Beans, succotash, and Beef Roast following the instructions in the videos. All came out very good, the beef roast...exceptional! I'll just give a few links and if you like, you can always click on more that interest you. Have a great meal like Mr. Franklin enjoyed!

https://youtu.be/DFEcAVT0fec 18th century onion soup.

https://youtu.be/i0foHjPVbP4 How to make an earthen oven.

https://youtu.be/amtDSfYcSXI 18th century succotash

https://youtu.be/0DRkQ8S1Kwk 18th century Beef roast

https://youtu.be/IN03MUqeUa4 18th century Scotch eggs.

There's also bread, cookie, cake, and pie recipes, all you have to do is follow the you tube links.

[Boaz]

Interesting ! Watched a few videos , might try the onion soup . Thank you !

[Sean357]

This guy has some excellent recipes, haven't tried any yet but planning on it. Especially the baked beans. Also already set on a spot for an earthen oven in the yard.

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[DerekP Houston]

That looks right up my alley, thanks for sharing!

[Ithaca Gunner]

Boaz, made the onion soup and it is good!

[MaryB]

Basically how I do a beef roast in the oven in the house! Low and slow cooking is becoming a lost art in this must have it right now society.

[Blackwater]

Amen, Mary. I think it's mostly due to our penchant for scurrying hither and yon, so we're not home long enough to do much low and slow stuff. And that's OUR loss! My Mom's beef roast was a super hit with everyone who was ever served it. Took a friend from college home with me once, and she warmed some of it up that was leftover (always better the next day!), and when we left, my friend asked me, "Wow! When can we come back and eat with your mother again?" Though everything she cooked was excruciatingly great, I think that was her #1 "signature dish." And she'd make it regularly just because she liked it, knew everyone else did, and maybe for a few kudos, because they always followed whenever she served it.

She had a rare talent for taking whatever was on hand and making a feast of it! Stay-at-home Moms have a certain value that make them a very special blessing to their whole family and community. Many don't have the option, but those who do are true "pearls of great price."

[Ithaca Gunner]

A double Amen to MaryB and Blackwater! The one utensil we're lacking here is a big Dutch oven and bean pot, which I do plan to rectify soon. The molasses bean recipe is very similar to what we already use...just need to make more of them at a time! I haven't tried them with Maple syrup yet, but may do a small batch soon.

There's a bunch of interesting recipes on the Townsend site and cooking season is just around the corner!

[DerekP Houston]

I love my dutch oven :D use it for almost everything, wish I had a large one than #8. I have a bottle of molasses I use while camping for bannock bread over the fire, for some reason tastes better when its cooked there.

[Char-Gar]

Yes, low and slow is the name of the game for cooking. However, you can tell, the fellow is not from the South. Southern/Texas folks, cook the roast until it falls apart. I cook a roast in cast iron (in the oven) for three hours at 350 and then turn it down to 300 for a couple more hours. A roast to be eaten at 6-7 pm is started just after noon.

I use a cast iron deep lidded chicken fryer, that I bought in 1962. If I am cooking roast for a small army, I have a Le Cruset "goose pot", which I call "potzilla", as it will just fit in a standard oven. It is enamel over cast iron. I can put three of four roasts in this at one time.

[DerekP Houston]

Indeed Char-Gar, the roast should be fall apart tender =). I've already cracked the enamel on one of those coated pans so I'll save my pennies for the real deal. Probably shouldn't have tried frying in it, but thought it would be fine.

[MaryB]

I use my ceramic coated cast iron dutch oven for roasts, or my granite ware roasting pan. The granite ware is a lot lighter and easier to handle but hard to get a decent sear on the roast in it.

[Col4570]

A nice piece of Topside,Salt and Peppered,cooked in Lard in a Meat Dish,surrounded by Roast Potatoes,served with Yorkshire Pudding,Broccolli and Carrots all with Brown Gravy poured over,Horse Radish Sauce,on the side ready for each Fork of Meat.We have this most Sundays for Lunch,invariably our daughter will turn up to join us,sometimes accompanied by our 3 Grandsons (Big Blokes) if they are in the locality.I have usualy been down the Shooting Range earlier.By late afternoon due to the combination of Fresh air and the food I am amost comatose.Thats after I have washed the Pots.Oh Lord that grass needs cutting again.

[Mk42gunner]

I've made a few of his recipes, one that turned out really well was the asparagus ragout, which starts about halfway through this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8R-w0uhNGU

I made a half size batch and it was plenty for my mom and I, (I go to town and check on her and usually cook supper every day). Since my asparagus doesn't grow in nice even commercial sizes, I eyeballed the quantity.

It is a welcome difference from steamed or fried asparagus during the season.

Robert

[Ithaca Gunner]

Lovely kitchen he has there. Locally there's a stone farm house built in 1803 with the original kitchen preserved, very similar to the one in the videos. Now that I've learned some of the ways of 18th century cooking maybe I'll dig out my book, "Six Centuries Of English Cooking" and try some even older recipes.

[Blackwater]

It's always interesting, and sometimes very, very rewarding, to see who cooks and what and how they do it in a remote camp, like some deer camps. Some relatives of mine used to hunt squirrel and deer on a large oxbow island at the river, and it'd be a long weekend's affair, replete with comraderie, good hunts and good eats. One of my cousins got chosen to do the cooking one day, and he had never really done a lot of cooking, but that's how they did things - kind'a like throwing a kid who couldn't swim in the swimming hole and MAKING them learn. But he was a thoughtful guy, and knew enough to know that a good stew was the way to go for one as inexperienced as he was. So he put in some squirrels and boiled them really good, then removed all the bones, put them in the big pot and again covered the meat with water (straight from the river back in that day!), added potatoes, carrots, onions and some garlic, salt and peppered it to taste, going slowly and adding very guardedly as it slow cooked, and the whole crew praised his meal so highly that he got assigned to kitchen duty unless he demanded an afternoon's or morning's hunt! You had to watch those boys. They'd take advantage of you if you let them, and when it came to the cooking, they were all gourmets, and would hornswaggle the better cooks into service unless they absolutely refused. Good cookin' will do that to a bunch of guys in the deep woods!

"Primitive cooking" is an art all unto itself, but gee golly wow can it ever more be GREAT! And even the mediocre stuff is always greatly appreciated at the end of a long day when you're so hungry you could eat corn shucks! Cooks have always, through all time, been very appreciated and often sought out. In the restaurant business, you can usually tell when they have a new cook in the kitchen. It's the same everywhere, and good restaurants take VERY good care of their cooks! They're the ones that more than anyone else there, make or break the business.

[Eddie17]

Really interesting, thanks for sharing!��