18th Century Feasting

The feast is behind me, and in the end I believe it was questionable as a source of knowledge about the 18th century, but a roaring triumph as an enjoyable oddity.

The menu:

Breads

Oaten 'Schulbrot' and Kastenbrötchen, from the bakery

French Bread, homemade

Wiggs Seed Cakes, homemade, sugary and with caraway seeds

Dutch/Lower Rhenish honey cake

served with Butter and Apricot marmalade

Drinks

Switchel

(drink of water, honey, powdered ginger and apple cider vinegar)

Sparkling mineral water

Apple juice

Rhenish white wine

Pale beer

Hefeweizen beer

Tea

Coffee

Accompaniment

Toasted American pecan nuts

Grapes, red and green

Purple plums

Apples

Apple chips

Dried apple rings, store-bought and homemade

Clementine

Walnuts, in the shell

Main Course

Roast Chicken with Bread Stuffing and marjoram, thyme and rosemary sauce

Rice, steamed

Lettuce and Spinach Salad with vinaigrette

Baked pumpkin, Rondini and Hokkaido

Cornbread, homemade

Dessert

Pfeffernüsse

Spekulatius

Nürnberger Lebkuchen

Dominosteine

(German Christmas delicacies)

The wiggs seed cakes and the cornbread were too dry, although the former tasted delicious in my opinion, so I will have to introspect about what went wrong. I did notice that the homemade yeasty 'barm' foamed up nicely, probably indicating an active yeast culture, after all my doughs had been made; this partly explains the seed cakes, perhaps. I had read a warning that 'cornmeal' in American Revolution times was a wetter product than the store-bought polenta we have now. At least Mama, kindly, remarked that 'the colour looked good'! By the end of the day, in any case, I was so happily replete that I felt great reluctance to speak of food any more.