Wickham Place is the London home of Lord and Lady Southgate, their children and staff. Located in fashionable Belgravia it is a fine Georgian terrace house.
Today we are below stairs in the Wickham Place kitchen. The Wickham Place kitchens are situated on the ground floor of Wickham Place, adjoining the Butler’s Pantry. It is dominated by big black leaded range, and next to it stands a heavy dark wood dresser that has been there for as long as anyone can remember. In the middle of the kitchen stands Cook’s preserve, the pine deal table on which she does most of her preparation for both the meals served to the family upstairs and those for the downstairs staff.
Today Mrs. Bradley, fondly known as Cook by most of the Wickham Place family and staff, has been given instructions by Lady Southgate to come up with a splendid dinner with very little notice. She had to go and visit the local grocers in person, yet there is still part of the servant’s dinner* to prepare, and she cannot do both, and this leaves her with a decision to make.
“Agnes! Agnes!” Mrs. Bradly calls to her scullery maid who is standing over the sink, a place she is often found to be in the kitchen. “Have you finished scouring those pots yet, Agnes?”
“Oh, yes Mrs. Bradley!” Agnes enthuses, indicating to the gleaming copper pot in her careworn hands that she has just dried. “They’s all set to go back into their place on the dresser!”
“’They are’, is what you mean to say my girl!” she corrects her. “No lady of distinction is going to hire a cook who can’t speak the Queen’s English properly.”
“Oh, yes Mrs. Bradley. They are all set to go back into their place on the dresser.”
“That’s better.” Mrs. Bradley replies, satisfied. “Well come over here then girl. I have a job for you.”
“Yes, Mrs. Bradley!” Agnes scuttles across the flagstone floor, her skirts rusting and her shoes clattering in her haste. It is only at that moment that she realises that Mrs. Bradley is dressed to go out, wearing a thick black coat and an impressive felt picture hat covered in black feathers. Her reticule** hangs about the wrist of her black leather glove clad ring hand. “You’re all dressed up, Mrs. Bradley!” Agnes observes, her mouth falling open in surprise.”
“Oh for goodness sake, you silly girl!” Mrs. Bradley scolds. “There’s no need to gawk at me like that! It’s not like you’ve never seen me dressed to go out on an errand before. Close your mouth at once, or you might just swallow a fly!”
“Yes, Mrs, Bradley!” Agnes shuts her mouth immediately, gulping self-consciously.
“Now, before I set you this task, I need to make sure you’ve been listening to me Agnes.” Mrs. Bradley says, giving the young girl a serious look. “I need to know I can trust you not to be a silly goose and muck it up.”
“Oh, you can trust me, Mrs. Bradley.” Agnes nods emphatically.
“Hmmm…” the older woman ponders, a doubtful look clouding her face and deepening the wrinkles in her forehead as her lips purse. “I do wonder…”
“For certain, you can trust me Mrs. Bradley. Honest!”
“Well, I certainly hope so, because I need your help, Agnes. Let’s see if you’ve been listening.”
“I listen to everything you say, Mrs. Bradley.”
“I should think you do, my girl.” the older woman remarks loftily. “Now, can you tell me how to bake a lemon cake?”
Agnes stands silently for a moment and thinks, her eyes cast to the ceiling above. “Can I refer to the notebook you gave me to write recipes in.”
“You may, Agnes!”
The scullery maid scuttles over to the dresser and pulls open a drawer where she keeps her precious notebook and stubs of pencils. She returns to stand before the cook and flicks through her book. Mrs. Bradley’s face twitches as she glances up at the old clock hanging on the wall. Time is wasting. Time she doesn’t have. She huffs impatiently, but her anxiety falls on deaf ears as Agnes concentrates on finding the recipe that Mrs. Bradley has recited to her a number of times.
“Here it is!” Agnes says in triumph. “Two cups of good flour, one and three quarter ounces of butter, two large eggs, the juice and grated peel of two to three lemons, a cup of sugar and two thirds of a cup of milk, with an extra half a cup of sugar for dressing the cake.”
“Good! Good, Agnes!” Mrs. Bradley replies, pleasantly surprised at the correct measurements recited by her sometimes scatterbrained scullery maid. “Keep going.”
“Oh, yes Mrs. Bradley.” Agnes replies, looking back down to her little notebook, her blushing face screwing up in concentration. “Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl, keeping back a quarter of the lemon juice and the extra sugar to dress the cake. Mix thoroughly until all the ingredients are well combined, then pour mixture into a greased springform tin. Place in a moderate oven for three quarters of an hour to an hour when the top should be golden brown, the cake firm, yet springy to the touch, and a skewer comes out cleanly from its centre. Mix retained juice and sugar in a cup, then pour over the top of the cooked cake. Return to the oven for ten minutes. Remove the cooked cake and allow to cool. Remove cake from the springform and allow to fully cool on a rack. Serve with cream.”
“Excellent my girl!”
“Do I pass, Mrs. Bradley?” Agnes asks anxiously.
“You do, my girl, with flying colours.” the older woman affirms with a smile.
“So can I help you, Mrs. Bradley.”
“You can, Agnes.” Mrs. Bradley beams. “Her Ladyship,” She casts her eyes heavenwards. “Needs me to whip up a feast for a dinner party tonight, with next to no warning I might add, and I don’t have enough ingredients. So, I need to go to Mr. Willson’s the grocers. Servants’ dinner is partially ready with a nice beef and suet pie in the oven, but I’ll need you to make the dessert whilst I’m out.”
“Oh, yes Mrs. Bradley.” Agnes says excitedly. “What shall I make?”
“What… what should you make?” Mrs, Bradley splutters in astonishment. “Good heavens girl! What recipe did I just get you to recite?”
“Lemon cake, Mrs. Bradley.”
The cook’s eyes turn heavenwards again before she continues, trying with all her might not to lose her temper at her scullery maid, “Then that’s what you should make. Do you think you can do that? Make the lemon cake for servants’ dinner dessert? Before I come back?”
“Oh! Oh yes, Mrs. Bradley!” Agnes enthuses.
“Then off you go, girl!” the older woman shoos her with flapping hands. “Quickly!”
“Yes, Mrs. Bradley.” Agnes scuttles about the kitchen, gathering the ingredients to make the cake.
Mrs, Bradley walks across the kitchen to the door leading to the alleyway entrance used by the servants and tradespeople who frequent Wickham Place. As her fingers curl around the brass doorknob, worn smooth by many hands turning it over the years, the older woman takes one final look back across the kitchen. Agnes has laid out all the ingredients for the lemon cake and now stands at the deal table before the kitchen range looking very satisfied with herself, and to Mrs. Bradley’s surprise, remarkably confident. Her usual trembling kowtow has been replaced with a proud stance with shoulders back and her heard held high. Mrs. Bradley releases as satisfied sigh, shakes her head slightly and slips out through the door.
*Servants dinner was actually their midday meal. It was the largest meal in a servants’ day, usually involving simple courses with meat and vegetables followed by a pudding of some kind, with a lighter meal of tea and bread with jams or cheese later in the evening. This allowed to cook to prepare the grander upstairs meals for the evening without having to worry about serving a hot servants’ dinner as well.
**A reticule also known as a ridicule or indispensable, was a type of small handbag or purse, typically having a drawstring and decorated with embroidery or beading, similar to a modern evening bag, used mainly from 1795 to before the Great War.
This year the Flickr Friends Melbourne Group have decided to have a monthly challenge which is submitted on the 5th of every month. This month’s theme for the 5th of August is “in the pantry”, chosen by Laszlo. This was a great challenge, and I wanted to show the ingredients, easily accessible from the pantry, for a French Lemon Cake recipe that was given to my Great Grandmother by her cook, Eadie, when she left service in the 1960s. Eadie gave my Great Grandmother a small hand written book of recipes that were easy, failsafe and made with easily accessible ingredients, as my Grandmother had never had to cook a meal in her life. What Eadie didn’t know was that my Great Grandmother just hired another cook and never made a single recipe from the book. It was passed to my Grandmother (who also didn’t cook), and for some reason it bypassed my mother (who does cook) and came to me. The way the recipe is recited in the story by Agnes is the way it is written in the book. To illustrate the ingredients from the pantry for the recipe, I decided to use my miniatures collection.
This tableau is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood like the ladderback chair in the background. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
On the chopping board in the centre of the picture you will see two lemons, a knife and a citrus juicer. The lemons are vintage 1:12 artisan pieces that have come from Kathleen Knight’s Dollhouse Shop in England. The attention to detail on these is amazing! You will see the stubs in the skin were the stalk once attached them to the tree, but even more amazing is that, if you look very closely, you will see the rough pitting that you find in the skins of real lemons! The kitchen knife with its inlaid handle and sharpened blade comes from English miniatures specialist Doreen Jeffries Small Wonders Miniature store. The metal citrus juicer comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The onions hanging net to the range in the background also come from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures.
Cook’s yellow stoneware mixing bowl and wooden spoon to the right of the chopping board I have had since I was a teenager. I bought it from a high street doll house miniature specialist. Also from the same shop is the mixing bowl containing eggs and the whisk. You can even see the egg yolks in the bowl. All these items are 1:12 artisan miniatures with amazing attention to detail so they match the life size equivalent.
To the right of the bowl, and to the far left of the picture, stand two of Cook's Cornishware cannisters. A Cornishware bowl of eggs also stands in the foreground. Cornishware is a striped kitchenware brand trademarked to and manufactured by T.G. Green & Co Ltd. Originally introduced in the 1920s and manufactured in Church Gresley, Derbyshire, it was a huge success for the company and in the succeeding 30 years it was exported around the world. The company ceased production in June 2007 when the factory closed under the ownership of parent company, The Tableshop Group. The range was revived in 2009 after T.G. Green was bought by a trio of British investors.
The Art Nouveau silver cup to the left of the chopping board is a dolls’ house miniature from Germany. Made in the first decade of the Twentieth Century it is a beautiful work of art as a stand alone item, and is remarkably heavy for its size.
Behind Cook’s Art Nouveau measuring cup stands a bag of Dry Fork Four. The Dry Fork Milling Company was based in Dry Fork Virginia. They were well known for producing cornmeal. They were still producing cornmeal and flour into the 1950s. Today, part of the old mill buildings are used as a reception centre.
The pat of butter in the glass bowl standing to the right of the white bowl of eggs waiting to be whisked has been made in England by hand by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination.
To the right of the butter stands a miniature Blue Calico milk jug. Traditional dark blue Burleigh Calico made in Staffordshire, England by Burgess & Leigh since 1851. It was inspired by Nineteenth Century indigo fabrics. Blue Calico is still made today, and still uses the traditional print transfer process, which makes each piece unique.
The copper kettles on the range and the copperware in the dresser in the background are all made of real copper and come from various miniature stockists in England and America. Cook’s floral teapots, one resting on the range and the other on her dresser in the background, I acquired from a specialist high street tea shop when I was a teenager. I have five of them and each one is a different shape and has a different design. I love them, and what I also love is that over time they have developed their own crazing in the glaze, which I think adds a nice touch of authenticity.
The large kitchen range in the background is a 1:12 miniature replica of the coal fed Phoenix Kitchen Range. A mid-Victorian model, it has hinged opening doors, hanging bars above the stove and a little bass hot water tap (used in the days before plumbed hot water).