Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
Victorian Food and Drink

This page describes food and drink that were common during the Victorian era in England, but may now be no longer commonly understood.

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              References

A
• "Abernathy biscuit": A thin, hard, dry bread.
• "Anchovy toasts": Anchovy and butter paste spread upon buttered toast. See "Patum peperium".
• "Athol brose": "Brose" is food made by pouring boiling water on oatmeal. "Athol brose" is a mixture of whiskey and honey.

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B
• "Bannock": A homemade bread.
• "Barley water": Water from mixing barley with boiled water and sugar, add lemon juice and cool for 24 hours.
• "Biffin": A variety of apple.
• "Bishop": A sweet alcoholic drink made of wine, oranges or lemons, and sugar.
• "Bubble & squeak": Leftover "Kalecannon, fried until well browned. Fried potatoes "bubble" and cabbage "squeaks".

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C
• "Caudle": A warm drink for a sick person. Often composed of warm beer, spices, eggs and sugar.
• "Chichester milk-punch" or "Milk-punch": A punch composed of milk, brandy, oranges or lemons, and sugar.
• "Cobbler's punch": Beer, spirit, sugar, and spice.
• "Collops": Thin slices of meat (for example, bacon).
• "Corned beef": Cabbage, boiled with a ferocious pig's head or salt beef (corned beef).
• "Cottage-loaf": A loaf of bread made with two lumps of dough, the smaller placed atop the larger.
• "Cottage-loaf": A loaf of bread made with two lumps of dough, the smaller placed atop the larger.
• "Cowslip Wine": A beverage made of cowslip pips, sugar, lemons, orages, and brandy.
• "Cuxton Biscuits": Similar to a scone.

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D
• "Daffy": A soothing syrup for infants (often spiked with gin to keep the little ones more manageable).
• "Damson pie": A pie made from Damson plums.
• "Damson syrup": Syrup made from sugar (from the New World slave plantations) and Damson plums.
• "Devil": The grilled and highly spiced drumstick of a turkey or goose.
• "Digester": Similar to a pressure cooker.
• "Dog's nose": A drink made of beer and gin with sugar and nutmeg, or ale and rum with sugar and nutmeg.
• "Double-diamond": A high-quality flavoured port wine.
• "Dining with Duke Humphry": To forego dinner.
• "Dry-saltery": Pickles, tinned meats, meats or fish preserved in salt.
• "Dyer's pole": The sign of a dyer's shop (a pole with clothing hung upon it).

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E
• "Egg-hot": A hot drink made of beer, beaten eggs, sugar and nutmeg.
• "Elderflower Champagne": Elderflower heads are steeped in a concentrated sugar solution so that the flavour is extracted into the sugar solution. Lemon is then added to the syrup, then the entire mixture is diluted with water. Such syrups were once commonly used, for example, using Japanese quince, the syrup mixed in tea! You won't want plain tea any longer.

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F
• "Faggots": Pork mixed with pig liver to make a "meatball". Add salt, pepper, sage.
• "Finnan Haddie": Smoked haddock, cook with milk & onions, eat with potatoes.
• "Flip": A drink made of beer mixed with spirits and sugar, then heated with a hot iron.
• "Forcemeat": Finely chopped meat or fish mixed with eggs or cereal (meatloaf or fishloaf).

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G
• "Gammon": French: Jambon. Leg of pork, cured in brine.
• "Ginger-beer": A carbonated non-alcoholic drink flavoured with ginger (ginger ale).
• "Gipsy dinner": A dinner al fresco (a picnic), the people being on a "gipsy party".
• "Glue Monge": A pun on "blancmange", a white sweet dessert of jelly-like consistency.
• "Gooseberry Vinegar": A vinegar made with gooseberries, and fermented sugar.
• "Gooseberry wine": A wine made with gooseberries, and fermented sugar.
• "Grog": Watered (diluted) rum.

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H
• "Hodgepodge": A Scottish soup made of vegetables and meat.
• "Hot and hot": Food served immediately, as cooking is completed (in rapid succession).
• "Hot pot": Meat and vegetabble stew.

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I
• "Isinglass": A very pure gelatin made from fish, such as sturgeon.

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K
• "Kalecannon": There are several alternate spellings, including calcannon, colcannon, kalkenny. The most likely eytmology is "cál" (Irish, meaning cabbage), "cannon" (Irish, meaning speckled). Potatoes mashed with butter and milk, with chopped up cabbage (or other vegetables such as carrots or turnips), eaten on Hallowe'en (All Hollowmas or All Hallows Eve, All Saints' Eve), or "summer's end" in Old Irish.
• "Kedgeree": Flaked fish (Finnan Haddie), boiled rice, eggs and butter.
• "Kent": Apple cake.
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L
• "Lemon syrup": A syrup of lemon, liquid withdrawn from the lemons by sugar.
• "Lemon Wine": A syrup of lemon, liquid withdrawn from the lemons by sugar, add isinglass.
• "Liver wing": The right wing of fowl, trussed with the liver tucked underneath.
• "London Particular": London pea soup.

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M
• "Mangel-wurzel": A beer can be made from mangel-wurzel, see ("The Practice of Cookery", 1840). Mangel-wurzel is a root vegetable in the beet family often used as animal fodder, but eaten by rural farm folk as well. In German, mangel means chard, and wurzel means root. In a mangel-wurzel hurling championship, teams of three hurled mangel-wurzels, trying to be the closest to a large leafless mangel-wurzel known as 'the Norman'.
  
  .
  What was Dickens' view of Southern American labouring people in 1848 (which likely included slaves, unless Dickens accepted the commonly held view that slaves were not people)? "The labouring people are especially well cared for and looked after." See "Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dickens Entertain at Home", p. 73, in a letter signed "Major General the Hon. C. Dickens, (Richmond, Va.)".
  
  .
  Note that this expresses not only Dickens' view concerning slavery in the American South, but also Dickens' disaffection with the views of the British anti-slavery movement.
• "Marrow bones": Fatty, but very tasty - spread on bread.
• "Milk-punch" or "Chichester milk-punch": A punch composed of milk, brandy, oranges or lemons, and sugar.

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N
• "Negus": A drink composed of wine, hot water, sugar and flavouring.
• "Night-cellar": A tavern for persons of the lowest class, open late hours, located in a cellar.
• "Night-house": A tavern that stays open all night.
• "Noggin": A quarter of a pint.
• "Norfolk Treacle tart": Similar to baked custard in a flaky crust.
• "Noyeau": A drink made by mixing Irish whiskey with bitter almonds, sweet almonds, sugar, lemon and milk.

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O
• "Off the stones": Paving stones marked the limits of a town, so "three miles off the stones" meant three miles from the edge of a town.
• "Orange Wine": A wine made from oranges and some sugar.

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P
• "Patum peperium": Anchovy relish, spread on bread (or on puff pastry, to be fancy).
• "Pennywinkle": Periwinkle.
• "Pepper Pot": Soup of meat, onion, pepper, cayenne.
• "Peri-peri": Worcestershire sauce doctored with hot red chilli peppers, black pepper and tabasco sauce. In fact, peri-peri are from Africa.
• "Pettitoes" or "Pigs' Trotters": Suckling pigs' feet used as food.
• "Polony": Partially-cooked pork sausage.
• "Pudding": Foods cooked within a crust of dough or a dumpling (need not be sweet dessert), for example, "Yorkshire pudding", or "Pease-pudding".
  
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  Various puddings and pies are mentioned in "Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dickens Entertain at Home", including:
  • "Alma Pudding",
  • "Almond Pudding",
  • "Almond Puffs",
  • "Ananas Pierrette with Kirsch",
  • "Apple Pasties" (pie),
  • "Apple Pudding" (pie),
  • "Apple Snow",
  • "Apple Tourte",
  • "Apricot Chiffon Pie",
  • "Bachelor's Pudding",
  • "Bakewell Pudding",
  • "Banana Cream Pie",
  • "Barberry Tart",
  • "Bath Pudding-Pie",
  • "Batter Pudding (baked or boiled)",
  • "Bavarois aux Fraises",
  • "Beef-steak Pudding",
  • "Bread and Butter Pudding",
  • "Bread Pudding",
  • "Cabinet Pudding" or "Chancellor's Pudding","whipped cream mixed with brandy",
  • "Canary Pudding",
  • "Caramel Custard",
  • "Christmas Mince Pie",
  • "Christmas Pudding", with "Brandy Sauce",
  • "Cold Lemon Pudding",
  • "College Pudding",
  • "Damson pie",
  • "English Apple Pie",
  • "English Summer Pudding",
  • "Eve's Pudding",
  • "Exeter Pudding",
  • "Frozen Layer Pudding",
  • "Gooseberry Pudding (baked or boiled)",
  • "Hominy or Indian Pudding",
  • "Hunter's Pudding",
  • "Jam Roll Pudding",
  • "Lemon Chiffon Pie",
  • "Lemon Wonder Pudding",
  • "Manna Kroup Pudding", (Manna Kroup is flour made of wheat and rice)
  • "Mansfield Pudding",
  • "Marrow Dumplings",
  • "Mince Pie",
  • "Monday's Pudding",
  • "Nesselrode Pie",
  • "New Zealand Pavlova",
  • "Pesche Ripine",
  • "Pigeon Pie",
  • "Plum Pudding",
  • "Pound Pudding",
  • "Prince Albert's Pudding or Good Pud",
  • "Queen's Pudding",
  • "Rice Blancmange",
  • "Richmond Maids of Honour",
  • "Roly-Poly Jam Pudding",
  • "Soufflé Pudding" with "whipped cream mixed with brandy",
  • "Spanish Pudding",
  • "Strawberries Romanoff" with "whipped cream mixed with Cointreau",
  • "Swiss Pudding",
  • "Yorkshire Tea Cakes",
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  "Jane Carlyle (wife of Thomas Carlyle) thought that Mrs. Dickens's dinner table was rather overdone with its great dishes of dessert and the vases of artificial flowers." See "Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dickens Entertain at Home", p. 82
• "Purl": Hot beer or ale with gin, sugar and ginger, sometimes with extract of wormwood (similar to absinthe).
• "Pussyfoot punch": Fruit juice punch: orange juice, lime juice, lemon, egg yolk.

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R
• "Rasberry Vinegar": Ferment raspberries with sugar.
• "Rhubard Wine": Ferment rhubarb with sugar, add isinglass and some lemon.
• "Rout-cakes": A rich party (rout) cake.

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S
• "Sally Lunn": A sweet, light tea cake.
• "Savoy Biscuits": Also known as "Ladies' Fingers".
• "Scotch Woodcock": "Patum peperium" on toast, topped with a heat thickened cream/egg yolk sauce.
• "Sherry cobbler": A variety of punch.
• "Short": A drink of undiluted alcoholic drink.
• "Shrub" or "Srub": A drink composed of orange or lemon, sugar, water, and rum. A different recipe is brandy, white wine, lemon juice with peel, and sugar.
• "Smoking Bishop": A version of baked apples.
• "Sprats": Fresh sprats dregged in flour, fried on salt in the oil from the sprats.
• "Sugar-crusted gammon": Gammon covered by sugar and baked.

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T
• "Tipsey Jam": Jam combined with sherry or brandy. Tipsey pears are stewed pear halves covered with a syrup laced with sherry.
• "Trifle": A dessert composed of cream boiled with sugar, mace and cinnamon.
• "Twelfth cake": Similar to a scone.

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W
• "Wassail": An apple punch.
• "Welsh nectar": A wine made by fermenting raisons, lemon and sugar.
• "Wine punch": White wine with soda water, oranges and lemons.

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