Eating between the Lines

You might have noticed, my avid readers, that the Authoress of this Blog has revealed a fair amount of cynicism when it comes to the 21st century feasibility of adopting an 18th century work-house diet.  At least it doesn't sound like very much fun.  But everything, I fear, is relative, and I don't want to demonize the workhouse overseers as a bunch of hypocritical cheapskate skallywags straight out of a Dickens novel.  

The New Poor Law of 1834 stipulated that every workhouse must have a bill of fare, but in the 18th century this wasn't required.  There was usually a diet table of some sorts, but this doesn't mean that it was always rigidly adhered to.  I've run across a bunch of announcements that the poor would, on certain days, be dining on things like "beans and bacon" and "mackarel ... as they master shall think convenient."  At one workhouse, I found out that a baronet was shelling out twenty pounds a year during the 1720s to ensure that the poor had roast beef for dinner every Sunday.

Economy was certainly a key element in the provision of the workhouse diet, and there were, at times, painful cutbacks –– my heart nearly broke, gentle readers, when in 1769 a cheaper and substantially less tasty-sounding broth was substituted for pudding at one workhouse on account of the latter's expense –– but overseers wanted the food to be more than just palatable, and often sent provisions back if the basics didn’t measure up to standards.

When in Rome...
(Rachel's Organic 'Divine Rice' Pudding)
And for the record, my friends, it "answered well"

When a vendor offered one London workhouse four different kinds of rice at different prices in 1796, the overseers opted for the second most expensive kind, deeming that the cheapest kind, "did not answer so well ... as to make rice milk."  And they only went with this upscale East India rice after whipping up some rice milk using the free sample, serving it up for dinner, and then informing the committee that, yes, indeed, the “poor were satisfied therewith."


We can't underestimate the centrality of the “bang” in contemporaries' desire to get their bang for the buck.

Fun with Spoon Victuals in 1736

The other day, I posted a Bill of Fare designed for the workhouse at St. Martin in the Fields.  And while this might end up telling us something important about the gastronomical life of an 18th century urban pauper, one thing remains unanswered.  How do we know how all these sundry puddings and porridges dishes tasted?

A Workhouse Plan
Notice separate dining halls for men and women

I couldn't find any recipes from the existing workhouse records of St. Martin of the Fields, but today, I dug up a couple receipts in the overseers' minutes from a neighboring workhouse.  And considering that many of these 18th century workhouses seemed to spy on each other on a semi-regular basis (hoping to devise new ways of keep their poor alive and working on the cheap) I think it's very likely that there was a lot of recipe poaching going on too.

The following were recorded in 1736. 

'Milk Porridge' (Breakfast 5 days a week): "That to every gallon of milk there be two gallons of water and and a proportionable quantity of salt and half a pint of oatmeal."

Pease Porridge (Dinner on Mondays) "That the every gallon of liquor there be put one pint and a half of pease and that a hock of bacon of about six pounds be boil’d in the whole quantity of porridge to give it a savory taste.”

Plumb Pudding- (Dinner on Saturdays) "That to make sixteen plumb puddings there be such 15 lb suet, 15 lb raisins and 18 quarts of milk, two bushels and one peck of flower, three quarters of a pound of rice and one pound of salt.  Each of the puddings to be divided for men and women into sixteen parts and for boys and girls into twenty four parts."

But which one to choose, my voracious readers?!  Regrettably, I haven't yet had the chance to whip up any of these historic "spoon victuals" for myself.  However, I've attempted to approximate the experience of an 18th century pauper during my lunch break by sampling as many soupy porridge-like dishes as I can (all found within five minutes of an archive, of course).

The Runner Up: Unidentified Hungarian Goulash
(Consumed at Westminster City Archives, 4.00)

The Winner: Spinach Agnoshi
 (Consumed at LMA Archives, 4.50)

Down and Out with a side of Water Gruel

To my esteemed and learned Readers,

I would be hardly the first Londonite Blogger to describe to you the loathsome scenes of Pillage and Violence that hath for the past several Days flash'd upon the Publick's TV screens around the Earth, as a motley horde of Jilts and Sponges hath cruelly pillaged the City of London, shattering windows, looting shops, and setting fire to the Streets.  And knowing that the Readers of this Blog most likely had more important things on their Minds (and being herself glued to the BBC anyways) it is on this account that the Authoress hath neglecteth her Pen.

And for those readers who knew that the Authoress had been residing in Hackney, rest assured that I had fled these previous Lodgings shortly before the Riots began, (having already realized that Kingsland Road offered nothing but a Path to Vice and Iniquity) and hath found refuge in a far more agreeable quarter of the West End.  Blessed Readers, the affair is over.  The Lady of Quality lives.

Yet just as the local bus performs its same course, whether it be empty or not, the Authoress methodically continues her investigation of the Common Diet at the Westminster City archives, combing though parish records in hopes of finding out about what was being eaten in workhouses.

Find below a Bill of Fare from the workhouse at St Martin in the Fields (est 1725).  This one was recorded in 1774:

I would much rather have eaten at the Foundling's Hospital (check out their Bill of Fare) than have to stomach this stuff.  Sorry to say, but I don't think the fact that the water gruel was sweetened with "sugar and spice" would have rendered it much tastier.  Does this Bill of Fare represent simply the cheapest food the overseers could find?  I wonder if features of this dietary –– the alternation of specific meals on certain days, the ad-hoc nature of supper (bread always served with some kind of dairy) –– reflect the overseers' perceptions of the pauper's palate?

I couldn't find too much about the meal from the workhouse rules, but from what I gather, it was a pretty bare-bones existence:

"The master take care that every person in health be kept to work ... from Lady Day to Michaelmas from 6 o'clock in the morning till six at night, and from Michaelmas to Lady Day from 8 o'clock to 4 ... and that they be allowed one hours time for breakfasting, and one hour for dinner, and that they leave of work an hour sooner on Saturdays."

Wonder if there were any complaints?