Victorian recipe of Apricot Cake

Apricot Cake

• Half a tin of apricots
• Quarter pint of apricot juice
• Four ounces of rich short pastry
• Five ounces of sugar
• Whites of three eggs
• A little almond essence

Method; Roll the pastry into a round the size of a dinner plate, roll scraps of pastry into strips to form edging. Wet the edges of the pastry and form a lip with the strips. Place on a flat baking tin, make two or three incisions with a fork in the centre of the round of pastry to keep it flat and bake until a light brown. Whip the eggs to a stiff paste and sweeten with two ounces of sugar and almond essence. Using a force bag add plenty of the stiff paste around the whole circle to produce a high edge then dust with sugar; return to the oven until it is lightly brown. In tandem with the above place a quarter pint of apricot juice with three ounces of sugar into a saucepan; boil gently until it sets, test by dropping a little from a spoon onto a plate. When both the pastry and the syrup had cooled arrange the apricots and pour over the syrup

Victorian cooking and kitchens

Victorian cooking

In the Victorian Era, like today, ladies magazines were popular, and like today, readers sent in their favorite recipies.   

Godey's Lady's Book, the most popular woman's magazine in the nineeenth century, was published in America in some form for sixty eight years, from 1830 to 1898.  

In the Victorian era, most foods were kept by smoking, pickling, or kept in cool basements or suspended in the well. 

It was not unusual in rural houses to see the rafters hung with legs of beef, mutton, and hams.  The meats were hung inside the chimneys to perserve them by smoking.