An Orange Pudding

It's been a while since I've made a historical recipe so here's a very rich, but also very delicious orange pudding from a 17th century recipe book in the Gell family archive. 'An Orange Pudding' from a 17th century recipe book, reference D258/32/15/1. There were two orange pudding recipes on the page: An Orange PuddingTake …

British Pudding Day

November 9th is British Pudding Day, which gives you the perfect excuse (if any excuse is needed) to indulge in arguably the best course of any meal. I would say that the most famous Derbyshire pudding, and definitely one of my favourites, is Bakewell Pudding but I wanted to try something new. So I looked …

Bonfire, treason and…Thor Cakes

Bonfire night will soon be here and is a perfect excuse to try another Derbyshire recipe. So I looked in one of my favourite books - Derbyshire Cookery by Janet Arthur - and very soon spotted a recipe for Thor cakes, named after the God of thunder. Very apt for 5th November. Looking at the …

Anyone for tennis….. cake?

Amongst the books in our Local Studies collection is the 'Derbyshire Federation of Women's Institutes recipe book', dated 1954. This was donated to the library over twenty years ago and it's certainly not the prettiest book in our collection. The cover is a bit tatty, the pages are stained and there are handwritten notes throughout, …

Pudding for tea

Whenever I delve into the collection of Derbyshire recipe books in our Local Studies Library, my sweet tooth usually dictates what I decide to make - there are so many delicious cakes and biscuits to choose from. But with the warmer weather I fancied a light meal for my tea. So, avoiding the many sweet …

Derby’s culinary link to the Coronation celebrations

A lemon and amaretti trifle has been announced as the official pudding for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee after winning the competition to find a new dessert. Delicious no doubt, but did you know that Derby has its own, more savoury culinary connection to Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation? Constance Fletcher was born in Derby in 1886 …

February Twitter Digest

Welcome to the Twitter Digest for February. This February was LBGT+ History month. You can read one family historian's discovery of her uncle's gender identity change in 1924. Our Local Studies holds several books about LGBT+ pioneer Edward Carpenter. Born in 1844, he was ahead of his time, being a campaigner for the environment, recycling, …

Christmas Roses

In amongst all of my traditional Christmas baking I wanted to try something a bit different. So I had a look through some of the recipe books in our Local Studies collection. I soon found a book published in 1976, 'Recipes from the Peak District' by Peter Grayson, which looked promising. I was immediately intrigued …

Gingerbread

In the spirit of the festive season I decided to try baking Mrs. Rotherham's gingerbread, from the 1830s recipe book of Clara Palmer-Morewood of Alfreton Hall. This was my first attempt at a historic recipe from our archives so excitement and expectation was high. On first glance at the recipe it seemed relatively straight-forward – …

The Original Bakewell Pudding recipe?

Ask most people to name a dessert from Bakewell and they’ll say Bakewell tart. Now Bakewell tart is delicious - if you’ve never tasted it, it consists of flaked almonds, frangipane, jam and shortcrust pastry - but it’s readily available in every British supermarket so it doesn’t feel like a local speciality anymore. If you …