Picture of Hannah Woolley Recipe Book

 

Bisket Cakes Old Elizabethan
Dessert Recipe

  • Ingredients for Bisket Cakes - an Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe
  • Cooking method for Bisket Cakes
  • Free Bisket Cakes  - Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe

Picture of Hannah Woolley Recipe Book

 

Bisket Cakes Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe

To make the best Bisket-Cakes
Take four new laid Eggs, leave out two of the Whites, beat them very well, then put in two spoonfuls of Rose-water, and, beat them very well together, then put in a pound of double refin'd Sugar beaten and searced, and beat them together one hour, then put to them one pound of fine Flour, and still beat them together a good while; then put them upon Plates rubbed over with Butter

 
 
 

 Set the Bisket Cakes into the Oven as fast as you can, and have care you do not bake them too much.

Bisket Cakes Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe
The above Old dessert recipe for Bisket Cakes is written in totally different way to today's recipe books.

  • There were no lists of ingredients - these were included as part of the text
  • Food and ingredient measurements were extremely basic - quantities were not often specified.
  • Temperature control was difficult and therefore not specified.
 
  • Cooking times were vague - and left to the cook to decide.
  • It was assumed that the reader would already have some knowledge of cooking

The History of the Recipe Book

  • Some of the language might be referred to as 'Olde English'
  • The art of cooking and the recipe was passed verbally from one generation to the next
  • The first printed book ever to be published in English was in 1474.
  • Most Elizabethan women were unable to read.
  • The idea of a Recipe Book was an entirely new concept
  • The first Recipe Books to be printed in England which included many old Elizabethan and Medieval recipes were called:

    • 1545 - 'A Propre new booke of Cokery'
    • 1588 - 'The Good Huswifes Handmaid for Cookerie in her kitchen'
    • 1596 - 'The Good Hyswife's Jewell'
    • 1610 'Mrs. Sarah Longe her Receipt Booke'

Bisket Cakes Old Elizabethan Recipe

The above Old recipe is taken from the book by Hannah Woolley (1622-1675) printed at the White Lion in Duck-Lane, near West-Smithfield, London in 1672 and entitled:

The Queen-like Closet
OR
RICH CABINET
Scored with all manner of
RARE RECEIPTS
FOR
Preserving, Candying and Cookery

 

Bisket Cakes Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe

  • Ingredients for Bisket Cakes - an Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe
  • Cooking method for Bisket Cakes
  • Free Bisket Cakes  - Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe
  • Have fun reading this Bisket Cakes old dessert recipe
  • What food people ate during the Renaissance era
  • The cooking instructions used
  • The different types of food used in old dessert recipes

 
 

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Bisket Cakes Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe

 

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