by Sylvia Kent
Eat Leekes in March and ramsons in May
And all the year after physicians may play.
(Aubrey, 1847)
This held true for Mrs Elizabeth Halley of East Ham, who rarely had a cold due to eating many forms of onion. Bulbs of ramsons (similar to garlic) were dug up when they first sprouted in spring, washed and dried, then packed into a widemouthed jar with dark brown sugar poured over them. The whole was stored in a pantry until the winter, when colds and influenza made life difficult.
Saffron is perhaps the most famous of culinary Essex plants. In times past, the fields of Saffron Walden were awash with the purple hue of the saffron crocus in flower. The flowers were harvested in October, before the petals were completely opened. The orange stigmas, the only part of the flower used, were separated and dried on racks over slow fires – 20-30,000 flowers would produce about 1lb of saffron. The flowers would be crushed and pounded into cakes. The purple petals covered the ground like massive blankets but the villagers knew that cultivation of the saffron would provide wealth and security for their families.
There is an interesting tale about how the first saffron corm was smuggled out of the Middle East by a pilgrim during the fourteenth century. He cleverly hid it in the hollow section of his staff. The lush arable land of Essex, known for the cultivation of barley and corn, was now host to a new and more lucrative market, a tenth of which would be given to the clergy of Walden, who made sure there was a tax on all saffron grown outside the abbey boundaries. Although no longer grown in the town, the saffron crocus is depicted on the walls of the Sun Inn as a testament to the lucrative influence of the flower in the history of the town.
Samphire is a delicious wild plant, with an ancient and fascinating history, steeped in folklore. Gathering the rock variety from cliffs was often a full-time, hazardous occupation for many families during medieval times. Intrepid samphire-gatherers often fell to their deaths, a fact mentioned by Shakespeare in King Lear:
A saffron crocus.
Saffron Walden pargetting.
Half way down hangs one who gathers samphire – a dreadful trade.
But in Essex, samphire is harvested safely from the salt marshes along many places on the Essex coastline, particularly around Maldon and Goldhanger, in early summer.
Around 1370, the Countess of Hainault sent her daughter, Queen Philippa, wife of Edward III, a manuscript which set forth the virtues of rosemary:
Samphire.
The leves leyde under the heade whanne a man slepes, it doth away evell spirites and suffereth not to dreme fowle dremes ne to be afeade.
Game
In Tudor times, when forest land covered much of the county, Essex was a favourite hunting ground for many English monarchs, from William the Conqueror to Queen Anne. In A Taste of Essex, Lynn Pewsey wrote:
The ancient forests of Essex provided large quantities of game for the royal hunt, and until a couple of centuries ago, every monarch followed the chase in Essex. Though the penalties for poaching were severe, venison could be caught legally at certain times of the year; citizens of London were permitted to hunt in Epping Forest on one day a year, and from the time of Henry III, an extra day at Easter was allowed. The aristocracy had no such restriction, and by the end of the 16th century there were a hundred deer parks in Essex and Kent alone.
After the hunt, the choicest cuts of meat were sent to the lord’s kitchens for consumption by his family and guests. The less desirable entrails or ‘humbles’ (sometimes known as umbles) were given to the huntsmen and servants by way of payment.
The servants of Sir William Petre at Ingatestone Hall certainly appreciated the taste of umble pie. Records kept at the hall show that on Christmas Day 1551, when local people and tenants from the estate joined Lord Petre’s staff for dinner, two ‘umble pasties’ were among the dishes brought to the table. Umble pie was a mixture of heart, liver, kidney and tougher pieces of deer, with a pastry top. The expression ‘eating humble pie’, meaning to accept humiliation, probably arose from this medieval dining custom of feeding the lower orders. Samuel Pepys mentions the dish in his diary on 5 July 1662.
In centuries past, the term ‘Essex calf’ was a humorous term given not to a piece of beef, but as a nickname for anyone who came from Essex. The term was coined by Aphra Behn (1640-1689), an amazing woman for her times, who wrote Restoration comedies and was recruited by Charles II to act as a spy in Antwerp during the Dutch wars. ‘Essex lions’ was another nickname but this time it was given to Essex cattle when they arrived in the London markets, as they were of such sturdy stock.
Beef is still a favourite Sunday joint in Essex and we have an intriguing legend as to how the name ‘beef sirloin’ was created. With Epping Forest so close to London’s seat of power, for centuries English monarchs enjoyed hunting there. After a very successful day’s hunting in the forest, King James I returned to Friday Hill House at Chingford and was in high spirits. A wonderful banquet awaited him and as he caught sight of the splendid beef joint in the centre of the table, he declared that it deserved a title. Raising his sword in mock solemnity, James dubbed the meat ‘Sir Loin of Beef. Arise Sir Loin’. Thereafter, the oak banquet table was carefully preserved and bore a brass plate with the inscription: ‘All lovers of roast beef will like to be informed that on this table a loin was knighted by King James I on his return from hunting in Epping Forest.’ However, this story is also claimed by Chingford’s Pimp Hall, Epping’s Copped Hall and the Spotted Dog Inn at Upton, West Ham, as well as other manor houses in other parts of England.
Ingatestone Hall.
Bird Lore
Olivier de Serres, in his book on agriculture and husbandry published in 1600, wrote:
No man need ever have an ill-provisioned house if there be but attached to it a dovecot, a warren and a fishpond. Herein meat may be found as readily at hand as if it were stored in a larder. Certainly a vast pigeon pie is a most useful standing dish in a country house for members of the family.
In Essex, culinary references to the pigeon in early medieval times show that it was not only a delicacy but made a regular appearance on the menu at court and in monasteries, as well as at farmers’ tables. A fourteenth-century cookery book gives a recipe for stewed pigeons: ‘Take peions and stop them with garlec pylled and gode hebres.’ At that time, the birds were often roasted on spits and carefully sewn up at each end to prevent the much-prized gravy from escaping.
From all accounts, wild birds were plentiful. Country dwellers living among wildlife in the not too distant past have always sought to keep ‘pest’ species under a degree of control. Rooks, magpies, starlings, plovers, blackbirds and dunlin, even tiny sparrows, were once shot or netted, usually by young boys, and used for pies and puddings. In Essex, and probably in surrounding counties, there was the old festival day celebrated on 12 May – for rook shooting. The backbone of the rook had to be removed or the meat would have an unpleasant taste.
An old dovecote.
With the introduction, from 1954, of parliamentary legislation covering the protection of birds, certain wild birds cannot now be killed unless they are proved to be a nuisance to crops:
Sing a song of sixpence, a pocketful of rye
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
The Essex Pig
In the last few centuries, in the days before mass-produced food, Essex cottagers and many farm workers were able to provide for themselves. Although most of them were tied to their employers, who owned the land on which they farmed, they appear to have been self-sufficient, using their food reserve wisely. Nothing was wasted.
The family pig was important and was considered an insurance against the forthcoming winter. So it was looked after carefully throughout the year, growing fat on potatoes and greens grown in the plot behind the cottage. In the autumn, it was turned loose in neighbouring woodland to root out acorns, windfall fruit and grain left in the fields after harvest. This is an ancient custom known as pannage and existed in pl
aces around England; it continued in Epping Forest until the twentieth century. When the weather turned cold and winter approached, the pig was usually so fat that it had trouble walking and it was time for the killing:
And he that can rear up a pig in his house
Hath cheaper his bacon and sweeter his souse [salted meat].
Old almanacs suggest the traditional time for pig killing was around Hallontide, 11 November, so that there would be bacon, brawn and soused meat for Christmas. An Essex rhyme goes:
At Michaelmas safely go stie up thy boar
Lest straying abrode, you see him no more;
The sooner the better for Hallontide nie;
And better he brawneth if hard he do lie.
Many superstitious beliefs were attached to this auspicious event. For example, it was believed unlucky to look the pig in the eye when slaughtering it. Killing the pig was a messy business but it was essential, as the family that could not kill its pig would very likely starve. Every part of the pig was used: the flitches of bacon were carefully salted and smoked, hams were carefully hung high in the rafters, and the head, trotters, offal, blade bones and spare ribs were all used. Sausages, faggots, black pudding and brawn (sometimes known as ‘head cheese’) were made and the pig’s lard was rendered down and stored for the coming months. Everything was consumed – except the pig’s squeal.
The famous Essex pig.
Arthur Young, in his General View of the Agriculture of Essex (1813), described the ‘Essex half black’ breed at Felix Hall, Kelvedon, owned by Charles Western MP, as ‘the finest breed of hogs that I have seen in Essex, and indeed equal, if not superior to any elsewhere to be found’. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, agriculture still occupied about twice as many Essex households as all other industries put together. Western’s championing of farming interests is believed to have helped him win elevation to the House of Lords in 1833.
Our world-famous breed, the Essex pig, almost passed into extinction during the 1960s but was saved by just one Essex-based farmer. The Essex pig is now classed as a rare breed and there are only fifty left worldwide. Great efforts on the part of the young farmer Jimmy Doherty at Pannington Hall Farm are being made to increase his herd of fifteen pure Essex pigs.
Our Daily Bread
Ceres, the goddess of corn and harvests, was worshipped by the Romans and it is from her name that we derive our English word ‘cereal’. She was believed to watch over the growth of corn and the harvest. In Ancient Rome, the festival of Cerealia, lasting for eight days, was once celebrated every April. It is believed that sacrifices were made to Ceres by the pagan population.
There is much superstition surrounding bread, still the staple nourishment of most Essex communities. The county has always been a fertile, agricultural one, with plentiful supplies of wheat and grain. Primitive man probably discovered that pounding coarse meal or grain, adding water and baking the resulting dough near an open fire created the first bread. Essex has long been the breadbasket of England, with its combination of rich soil and ideal farming conditions, growing grain right on the doorstep of the London markets. Lynn Pewsey, in A Taste of Essex, wrote:
Breadmaking, of course, began in prehistoric times when grain was pounded together between two stones, moistened, formed into a dough and shaped and baked on very hot, flat stones, pulled from the fire. Later, it became apparent that if they were placed in an oven the heat could be conserved better and more bread made. These first ovens were fuelled by wood and that method of using wood, or more particularly brushwood, to fire the ovens has endured to modern times in Essex. Many older houses in the countryside have a lean-to at the rear or an outbuilding known as the ‘back’us’ (bake-house) where a fortnight’s bread was baked at one go; the dough was kneaded in a kneading trough, which, when not in use, was used to store the flour.
Strange-sounding gadgets were used in bread-making. A bush fork was an instrument like a horseshoe on the end of a long iron rod, which was used to push the faggots (or tids) into the oven. A rastler was an elm pole used to pack the firewood into the oven.
Being the staple nourishment of many Essex farming folk, whose living also depended on successful corn harvests, bread has attracted many religious and pagan superstitions along the way, particularly within church rituals and folklore narratives. The ‘host’ or consecrated bread of the Eucharist is crucial to this important service. Many people consider it unlucky to throw away even stale bread, believing that if they do, they are destined to go hungry. To throw bread into the fire is said to be feeding the Devil. Corn gods once figured highly among pagan divinities worshipped by rural communities. Marking loaves with a cross during bread-making was an old Essex custom that continued well into the twentieth century. Some said it was to stop the Devil sitting on it.
Watermills to grind the grain for bread were mentioned in the Domesday Book, and there is much folklore connected with both the water and the grinding of corn and wheat. Before the Romans invaded, the native Britons used querns – large, flat circular stones – for grinding corn by hand. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, virtually every village in Essex boasted its own windmill. There are still twenty-two windmills to be seen in the county, thanks to the many hardworking windmill preservation societies.
Surely one of the most magical moments in baking legend was Louis Pasteur’s discovery of the wonders of yeast fermentation and how to make heavy dough rise to be light and digestible. No one until then knew exactly why the dough miraculously rose, seemingly by itself. Most people accepted it was just a spontaneous phenomenon rather than the simplicity of allowing micro-organisms of the fungi spores a chance to multiply. Another fortunate moment in food folklore must have been when a cook took an odd piece of dough, rounded and flattened it and maybe added fruit or honey, and the teacake made its debut into gastronomic folklore history.
The Essex huffer (or huffkin) is made from a 2lb piece of bread dough, which is flattened and cut into eight triangular pieces. The name is almost certainly derived from ‘huff’, a puff of wind, which is descriptive of its lightness. Older residents of North Essex, around Berden, Henham and Manuden, remember huffers and there is evidence that bakers in Barking and Dagenham’s Old Village produced them in the early years of the twentieth century. Huffers are best split and eaten with butter.
In Clavering and surrounding villages, crickneys (also known as scrap buns or scritling cakes) were popular during Victorian times. They were small rolls made with pork fat and spice, and had a golden appearance. Pads or paddles were fat little loaves with very crusty bottoms, due to being cooked on the oven base. These loaves could be found in the Hanningfields area and around Chelmsford. Dannicks were a kind of Essex bread baked in some of the larger houses and small bakers around the Colchester area; they are now just a memory. Wholemeal flour was used in the recipe, and therefore they were a much denser, heavier bread. Legend tells us that the name derives from the Danes’ arrival on the shores of England in the early eleventh century.
Magical Salt
Essential to human life, salt had a vital place in the country kitchen, the dairy and the medicine chest, as well as in the fishing industry, where, in the days before refrigeration, it preserved the catch. Much superstition is linked with salt, that precious commodity which has, since Celtic times, been extracted from seawater along the Essex coast. Lynn Pewsey, in A Taste of Essex, wrote:
The remains of this industry can be seen in the form of the Red Hills that dot the shoreline still. These Red Hills were the sites of salt extraction; seawater was boiled in large earthenware tanks until the salt crystallised. Over many years the crystallising sites built up with earth and burnt debris to form mounds of reddish soil. Coastal salt extraction in Essex continued in Saxon and medieval times; the Domesday Book recorded 52 ‘salt pans’ in Essex. With the exception of one at Wanstead, these were all concentrated in the Tendring Hundred and along the north coast of the Blackwater. There were likely to have been many m
ore unrecorded, particularly in the Dengie and Rochford Hundreds. Some place-names also record the salt-making industry, such as Salcott, which means ‘the place where salt is stored’.
The discovery of salt, vital to the maintenance of life in its almost magical properties of food preservation, has been highly valued for many centuries. Roman soldiers and workers were often paid in salt – a salarium, from where we get the word ‘salary’. The most commonly observed superstition concerning salt in modern times is the assumption that evil spirits are roused when salt is accidentally spilt – in some areas it is said that a tear will be shed for every grain scattered. The tossing of a pinch of the spilt salt over the left shoulder is regarded as an antidote to any ill luck, in the belief that it will drive away the Devil. Salt is reputed to have considerable power as a protective against evil influences. A little salt held in the palm of a woman giving birth is said to be of great benefit to mother and child. One superstition in the kitchen is that too much salt in the food is sometimes interpreted as a sign that the cook is in love.
The tradition of crystallising salt from seawater continues at the famous Maldon Crystal Salt Co., founded in 1882 on the site of a twelfth-century salt extraction works. This salt has a huge and successful market worldwide.
Sweetmeats
Colchester became well known for its local delicacy, candied eryngo, a sweetmeat which is made from the roots of the sea holly, Eryngium maritimum. This once grew in abundance along the Essex coast. Robert Buxton, a Colchester apothecary, established the eryngo trade, which became very successful in the seventeenth century. The candied sweetmeats – sometimes referred to as kissing comfits, as they were believed to have aphrodisiac properties – were presented to visiting royalty in Colchester. The most famous occasion was when, in August 1761, Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburgh-Strelitz was entertained in Colchester en route from Harwich to marry George III. The event was reported by the London Gazette: