On the second day of the “Remember the Ladies” 18th Century weekend,
at the Old Barracks Museum in Trenton, NJ, I participated in a baking class
wherein three dishes were made: Gingerbread Nuts; Naples Biscuit; and
Rusks. The receipts (recipes) we used were taken from Colonial Burlington
Cookery, a recently published manuscript cookbook kept by 18th Century
New Jerseyean Polly Burling, which was edited/transcribed by Sue Huesken
and Mercy Ingraham.
Mercy Ingraham
I joined the group making Naples Biscuits, hoping to do just
that, make Naples Biscuits. However, an alternative dish was
included with the receipt, and so, well, somehow, we ended up
making Queen Cakes, and NOT Naples Biscuits. The exact same
receipt was used, but with the addition of a pound of butter.
Actually, the original is the other way ’round. We made
the actual receipt and NOT the alternative.
Confused? Sorry. Read on.
The original receipt:
Queen Cake–Naples Biscuit made the same way only
Butter omittedBeat ten eggs,
one Pound of Butter
one Pound of Sugar,
1 Pound
of Flour
1 Glass of Brandy,
a little Cinnamon,
mace and Nutmeg
and a little
rose water.
Left: Queen Cakes; Upper Left: Rusk; Right: Gingerbread
We used the following modern adaptation:
8 large eggs
2 cups sugar
4 cups flour
1/2 cup brandy
1/4 cup rose water
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground mace
1 teaspoon grated nutmeg
Next, we had to decide
when to add the butter.
Should it first be creamed
with the sugar, as with other
cakes? Or should it be mixed
in with the flour, as with
a pastry? Should it be solid or melted? The consensus was to treat it like any cake,
and so we creamed the butter (solid) and the sugar. The resulting mixture seemed
a bit liquid-y, much like a cake batter. So, although it didn’t seem to help much,
a few extra scoops of flour were mixed in to thicken it.
It was at this point that a little lightbulb went on above my head. AHA!
A pound of sugar, a pound of flour, a pound (approx.) of eggs, and now
we’ve added a pound of butter? Good golly, it’s a Pound Cake! No wonder
it was so cake-batter-like. And if we’d had a cake tin of some sort, we
could’ve made just that. However, we were supposed to make Queen Cakes,
as in individual cookie-like servings, so we dropped small spoonfuls of batter
onto a tin baking sheet. Everything was then placed in the brick bake oven.
So, now we know. Naples Biscuit is just Pound Cake, but without the butter.
Learn something new every day!
Later, when everything was baking, I discovered that most of the others
in my group also wanted to make Naples Biscuit and not Queen Cakes.
Ahhh, well…too late now. We’ll just have to do it on our own time!
Hmmm. Wonder how I can work it in to a Fireside Feasts session?!
Pretty cool post. I just found your blog and wanted to say
that I have really liked browsing your posts. Any way
I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you post again soon!
Nice blog, and nice job of exploring the receipt. You’ve got a LOT of great info and links – thanks!!!
But… don’t see a reprint permission for the adaptation of Polly Burling’s receipt, which is copyrighted.
Colonial Burlington Cookery is a little gem, and it’d be great to see info on how people can get purchase a copy and support the work of food historians!
Explored some more – and found the cookbook list and links, some of which I hope to add to my own library. Hope more, lots more folks interested in historical foodways find this very, very nice blog. Pics are excellent, wealth of great info, will be keeping up with your entries!
Dear Carolina,
I know this post is a year old, but I was there with you last year at Trenton Barracks. Just today I made naples biscuits, without the butter, and have decided that they were probably better with the butter! They are good, but I don’t like how they look. So I am going to try making another batch in the morning because I would like to try to bake them Italian style. After consulting with my Italian mother in law, I plan to bake the batter in a log for the first baking, then cut them in slices and rebake them. They will turn out more like biscotti this way. Or I suppose I could shape them long and thin like a lady finger. I’ll let you know how they turn out.
Have you tried experimenting with any of Polly’s recipes since “Remember the Ladies” weekend?
Hi Michele, No I’ve not done much experimenting with Polly’s receipts.
I have made Naples Biscuits several times, tho,
using a receipt that Clarissa Dillon gave me. She also made some for Deb’s Symposium using three different receipts. There was the one she’d given me, one by John Nott (?) and then another that I can’t remember. Wasn’t Polly’s. It’s interesting how it seems every receipt is slightly different from the next. Rusks are baked twice, I believe. Doesn’t biscotti mean twice-baked?
Biscotti does mean twice baked. I have finished baking for this morning and this is what I found. I do not like the recipe as interpreted in the book, so this is what I tried:
First Batch: From the research I found on line, Naples biscuits may be synonomous with ladyfingers. So I used the receipt as you posted above but I combined the ingrediants in this manner…I beat the egg yolks with half of the sugar, then added the rosewater, then sifted the flour on top with the spices. In a separate bowl I whipped the egg whites, half the sugar and the brandy till stiff. This mixture I folded into the first. Then I dropped the dough in long lines, rather than balls and they look like homemade lady fingers and baked at 35O F . They look better and taste very good!
Second Batch: I tried to make them more like biscotti, so this time I added the butter. First I creamed the butter and sugar together, then added the eggs well beaten. Add rosewater and brandy, mix in dry ingrediants. I did have to add 1 cup more of flour, I think their chickens made smaller eggs. Then I baked it in a log shape at 375 F, let cool completely, cut in half inch slices and rebaked at 325 F. These came out absolutely delicious!
Sincerely, Michele