Don't know if you saw it last night Red, but a Victorian Christmas on BBC2 was really interesting (and thankfully very little to do with Xmas) - they hand made 10000 bricks using the old brick kiln on the estate & also using the old clamp method. They also restored a Blacksmith's forge (using the bricks).
Think you'll get it on iPlayer.
Rod. I absolutely loved the 'Victorian' and 'Edwardian' series of programmes.
My all time favourite was The Victorian Kitchen, which ran in tandem with The Victorian Garden. Basically.it was this old girl with a young lass as a helper, together they showed us how the meals were prepared for a big house during Victorian times.
Cooking was a full time job, the girl got up at about 4am to clean and light the range, and the head cook (The old girl) would be up at about 5 am to make a start on the breakfast that she would be serving maybe 3 hours later.
Breakfast would include everything from freshly baked bread and scones to bacon, sausage & black pudding. There would be kippers, buttered mushrooms, jams, marmalades etc, all prepared fresh every morning.
While all this was going on, the making of a lavish lunch were drawn together, and things set in motion in readiness for dinner.
Every dish was described in detail, and if, for instance, something included leeks, we would cut to the walled garden and the head gardener would show us how the leeks had been grown. This in turn might involve an explanation about which type of soil was best for leeks, or how the fertiliser was obtained. The head gardener had spent his entire working life, man and boy, working within the confines of those walls. He knew every plant intimately, and spoke with such enthusiasm. I just hung on his every word.
I remember some dishes in particular. One was for pressed cold meat for sandwiches. The old girl cooked several different joints, and then rolled one inside the other, the resulting mass was then put in to a square mould and a weight was placed on the top. Every few hours for several days, the weight were checked and adjusted, and slowly the meat was transformed into a tightly packed, oblong piece of deliciousness, which, when carved, fitted perfectly between two slices of bread. It was mesmerising.
Another dish was the ice-cream bombe. They went to such a palaver to make it back then, selecting fruit from the garden, milking the cows, separating the cream etc, but the real magic was the ice. They cut in the winter from frozen lakes and stored it underground, insulated in straw.
They didn't use the lake ice directly in the ice-cream, they put the mixture to be frozen into a container and surrounded it with ice. Then, (as far as I can remember) they poured salt on to it which caused a chemical reaction. As the lake ice melted, it drew all the heat from the ice-cream mixture and left that frozen instead.
programmes like these are what telly was made for. I will certainly be watching 'Victorian Christmas' on iplayer.
Thanks Rod.
Author