Speaking of living things in the wild, one of Rafe’s favorite dishes is mussel and onion stew. Just so you know, I’m not fond of mussels myself (I prefer clams, oysters, and crabs), but this recipe does sound good. A creamy seafood soup? Yum! The recipe is from my new favorite food site: http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/. The dish originated in “the West country” and that’s where I had Rafe grow up, so I figured that fit. Anyway, if you visit the site, you can find all sorts of recipes for English dishes and can even search the site by county. I could spend days on there, I swear!

To be honest, Regency folk weren’t baking pumpkin pies of the kind we’re used to. Pumpkin pies then were either like apple pies with roast pumpkin mixed in or pumpkins with a hole cut in them that were filled with apples, etc. and baked whole. They sound very different from what we eat now, although the spices seem similar (except I suspect none of us would put thyme, rosemary, and marjoram in our pumpkin pies). Pumpkin pie as we know it was an American dish, although it has now been incorporated into English holidays, too. I could find very few references to pumpkin pie in cookbooks of the period, although the English did use pumpkin in stews and soups. The Scottish, on the other hand, did cook pumpkin in ways similar to ours—like a custard or pudding. Perhaps that’s where we got it from—plenty of Scots emigrated to the U.S. in the early 1800’s. If you’d like to read a Scottish recipe, there’s one here for Pumpkin Pudding.

As y’all know, I occasionally base my characters—both main and secondary—on real historical figures I read about. One of those will make his first appearance in Eliza’s book. He’s a well-known French chef and a man of color who works for Elegant Occasions. I was inspired by a man I’d read about recently: James Hemings, the brother of Sally Hemings. He’s credited with introducing Americans to snow eggs and his version of mac and cheese, among other things. He learned about similar foods while training in France to be a chef, the first American to do so. He excelled to such a degree that he became chef de cuisine at the Hôtel de Langeac, Jefferson’s private residence, and the first American diplomatic embassy while he was in Paris. My character is French, not American, but he too has risen to prominence in England, as many French chefs did. He’ll also be in Verity’s book, which I’m presently plotting.

You’ll probably be wondering, when Eliza’s book comes out in late March and prawlongs are mentioned several times, what exactly are prawlongs? Basically, they’re nuts or orange flowers or lemon or orange rinds coated once or twice in caramelized sugar. Sounds yummy, right? I’m not sure why pralines came to be called prawlongs, but they did. Just see Frederick Nutt’s 1807 cookbook, The Complete Confectioner, which has several recipes (although they contain no ingredient amounts; I haven’t had much luck finding that anywhere). The prawlongs I find most interesting are the pistachio ones, since they came in two colors—red and white. Here’s the red recipe:

Accidentally His is my foodie book, if there ever was one. After all, food is Verity’s life. In the process of researching, I’ve discovered this wonderful site called The Foods of England Project, which contains 60 out-of-print historical cookbooks, and thousands of recipes and dishes, with their histories. One of the dishes I used for the book is Mussel and Onion Stew, which is Rafe’s favorite. It comes from the West Country, which is where Rafe grew up and Verity’s father still lives. I’m not fond of mussels myself (which is odd, because I like just about every other shellfish), but I stumbled across the recipe and thought it might be fun to include. And there’s Duke’s Custard at the end of the book! (Literally—it shows up in the epilogue, but I call it trifle because that’s really what it is.) Now, that’s one I’d love to try.

Potatoes have long been a staple of both English and Irish cooking. Still, I was surprised to find a Victorian-era recipe for “Fried Potatoes (French fashion)” which is what I would consider potato chips. Check out Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management (online at http://www.mrsbeeton.com). She talks about thin slices of potato fried in oil—if that’s not potato chips (or crisps, in British English), I don’t know what is. Mrs. Beeton was a Victorian lady who gathered household tips and recipes into the aforementioned book, which was published by her husband. I’d like to try the “Potato Snow” recipe. It sounds interesting (and far better than the real snow everyone has been experiencing).

Thanksgiving is coming and to me that always means good food! Specifically pie. I love pie, both the savory kind and the sweet kind, but I rarely eat it because of all the carbs. Except on Thanksgiving and Christmas, that is. My English/Irish blood (as opposed to my Cajun blood) must be showing because the English/Irish like pie, too. They eat more savory ones than we do, but you can still find sweet pie recipes in the Regency. At Christmas, it would have been mincemeat pie primarily. It’s not the favorite of Cass from Seduction on a Snowy Night, if you’ll recall, but I like it. I remember my half-Irish grandmother in St. Louis making it every year. Here’s a nice history of mincemeat pie and a period recipe. And if you’re interested in other historic foods (although mostly from the early Georgian and the Victorian periods), you can’t go wrong with Historic Food.

There’s a scene in The Bachelor where Joshua, Gwyn, and Gwyn’s mother Lydia eat ice cream at Gunter’s. The wealthy did actually eat ice cream in summer during our period, using ice either shipped in from Norway or cut and placed in their own ice houses. Gunter’s was only the most famous purveyor of ices and ice creams. But the flavors were unusual by our standards. Muscadine ice was a lemon water or white currant ice scented with elderflowers. Flowers were popular flavors—lavender, bergamot, jasmine, and orange flower, for example—but there were also burnt filbert, rye bread, parmesan cheese, and tea flavors! One of these days I’m going to try my hand at some Regency ice cream. But I’ll skip the rye bread flavor!