A Day of Historic Baking

Honestly, have you ever seen a simpler, lovelier baked good than this lemon cake? The recipe was adapted at Fort York from John Farley's 1800 The London Art of Cookery. It's flavoured with rosewater and lemon, made to rise solely with egg whites, and baked in a great kettle in the coals of the open hearth. I must say, it was every bit as delicious as it looked, and was only one of a great number of baked goods that emerged today from the historic kitchen that was once used to prepare dinner for the officers' mess at the fort

The fire was lit in the wood-fired brick oven at 9:05 this morning, and burned (if I understand correctly) about 15 small logs to embers before it was ready, somewhere around 1 p.m., for us to start loading it with baking. I had the fun of helping to shovel the embers out into a bucket before the ashes were swept out with a wet broom.

While the oven was hot enough for baking, it cooked a couple of dishes of apples, a quince tart and a great many gingerbread cookies. Half a dozen "York cakes" (smallish currant loaves) had to be evacuated to a modern oven at the end of the day, as there was not enough heat left to finish them properly. One has to think twice before opening the oven when you've already burnt up a small tree to heat it, and every opening of the door diminishes the temperature within.

Here, one of the experienced cooks puts the lid on a quince tart made with apples, lemon and cinnamon in a crust that contained four egg yolks and more rosewater.

Isn't it lovely?

Here's my squadron of gingerbread soldiers. I went with the old-school approach and grated the nutmeg and ginger by hand (much as one might do today in any case). Apparently some of these pieces of functional kitchen equipment are more than 100 years old.

While we were cooking, a sleepy wasp appeared. Likely he had been hibernating somewhere in the walls, but was awakened by the heat of the oven and the open hearth.

While all the baking was underway, the experienced cooks baked a chicken in a reflecting pan on the open hearth and arranged a couple of salads artfully with a garnish of boiled eggs. They went down a treat with the baked apples, prepared with apricot jam and wine, along with some of the baked treats. And no, that couldn't possibly be a wristwatch.