The Taste of Britain. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

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СКАЧАТЬ light yeast cake is a speciality of the spa town of Bath. There are several theories as to its origin. An early reference in a Bath guidebook of 1780 is to ‘a spungy hot roll’. In 1798, they were again said to be hot rolls, ‘not long ago in vogue in Bath’. Hot bread was much loved at Bath breakfasts (see Bath buns, above). In 1827 there was an account of how Sally Lunns were named after the girl who cried them for sale (‘about thirty years ago’). She and her recipe were adopted and commercialized (OED).

      There is a charming but probably apocryphal legend that a Huguenot refugee called Solange Luyon, a name corrupted to Sally Lunn, first made the cakes famous. A building, dating originally from the fifteenth century, is supposed to be the place where she worked. It still houses a restaurant and shop baking Sally Lunns. Bath historian Trevor Fawcett observes that no documentation has ever been produced to support this story.

      A completely different hare was started by Eliza Acton (1845). She described her recipe for a ‘solimemne’ as a ‘rich French breakfast cake or Sally Lunn’. Hartley (1954) produced other uses of the word solimemne, variously spelled, and suggests it is a corruption of the French soleil lune, sun and moon. In fact, solimemne is a misspelling of solilem or solimeme which is the name of an enriched brioche from Alsace. The distinguishing feature of solimemes (Larousse, 1938) is that they are split horizontally soon after baking, soaked with melted butter which is absorbed by the dough, then reassembled. Whether they made the transition from Alsace to Bath is not known, but maybe the Huguenot has a place. An alternative proposal is that Sally Lunns were discovered by a French chef when travelling in the West Country - Carême is suggested - and he exported the idea to his homeland, where the name was completely garbled into solimeme. All this is speculation.

      The main characteristics, a light richness derived from a high proportion of eggs and cream or butter in the dough, are consistent through the years. Some recipes are lightly spiced or flavoured with lemon peel. However, Maria Eliza Rundell (1807), herself a resident of Bath, likens a plain but light roll to a Sally Lunn. It is split, whilst still warm, into 2 or 3 horizontal slices and spread with butter or clotted cream, then reassembled for immediate consumption. If more than 24 hours old, the cake is usually toasted before eating.

      TECHNIQUE:

      The recipe used by the Sally Lunn shop is a trade secret. Other versions are published, for example by David (1978). It calls for flour, cream and eggs in the proportions 2:1:1 and is flavoured with lemon peel.

      REGION OF PRODUCTION:

      SOUTH WEST ENGLAND, BATH (SOMERSET).

      Cider (West Country)

      DESCRIPTION:

      PALE GOLD-YELLOW TO THE EYE; SOME MAY BE CLOUDY, BUT MUCH PRODUCED COMMERCIALLY IS USUALLY CLARIFIED. FERMENTED UNTIL DRY, WEST-COUNTRY CIDER IS ROBUST AND ASTRINGENT WITH PERFUMED APPLE OVERTONES. TYPICALLY 6 PER CENT ALCOHOL BY VOLUME.

      HISTORY:

      Although it must remain uncertain, it does appear that the Anglo-Saxon word beor refers to an alcoholic apple-based beverage. In Norman-French dialect, the word bère for cider survives to this day. Whether cider existed in early England or not, it is thought the art was stimulated by contacts with Normandy after the Conquest, and that cider-making was at first strongest in the South-Eastern counties of Sussex and Kent (Davies, 1993). But there are also many early references to cider in the West Country, including from the 1100s in Gloucestershire and the 1200s in Devon.

      Cider from western Britain is distinguished by the use of apples specifically grown for cider-making. This practice has been current for at least 400 years. During the seventeenth century cider became a gentleman’s drink, equated with wine. In Herefordshire, much attention was paid to cider apples and methods. Advances at this time included greater selection of apples, refinement of storage and crushing techniques, and the invention of glass bottles strong enough to withstand a secondary fermentation. Celia Fiennes, travelling through Britain in the late seventeenth century, noted the good quality of Hereford cider.

      In the eighteenth century cider sank on the social scale: there was increased competition from imported wine; middlemen sold inferior weak brews; and an epidemic of lead poisoning attracted opprobrium (French, 1982). Competition from wine may have been the most influential and long-lasting cause of cider’s drop in standing. Cider became a drink associated with the labouring poor; the quality was uneven and the flavour sharp. The juice was mixed with water, giving ‘ciderkin’ with an alcohol content comparable to that of small beer, a servants’ drink. It was this, not the fine ciders of the seventeenth century, that survived. In the late nineteenth century, there was renewed interest. Businesses that are still important today were established. Cider apples were classified according to acidity and tannin content into sweet, bittersweet, and bittersharp. Hereford and Worcester were known for cider made from bittersharps, Devon was known for sweet ciders and Somerset for ciders made from bitter-sweets (Morgan, 1993). Some of the larger cider-makers established their own orchards.

      Advances in knowledge of fermentation, plus expanding urban markets, benefited small factory-based cider-makers but farm production diminished after 1930. English cider generally developed into a consistent, uniform product in which alcoholic strength was considered important (although western cider is generally less strong than that made on the eastern side of the country) and the process was standardized with added yeast cultures.

      Since the 1970s, distinct trends have emerged: new planting of orchards of cider apples to better supply the industry; a renewed interest in on-farm cider-making and methods of production. For instance, ciders from single varieties such as Kingston Black, Yarlington Mill, Dabinett, Sweet Coppin and Brown’s Apple are now available.

      Scrumpy is a name colloquially applied to farmhouse ciders which have been produced by traditional methods, but it has no fixed definition and is frowned upon by cider-lovers.Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire ciders have Protected Designations of Origin (PDO).

      TECHNIQUE:

      Ciders vary between makers and harvests, as do wines. Methods of production are at heart identical; it is variations in soils, micro-climate and fruit varieties which most affect the flavour. As yet, little systematic attempt to classify these has been made in respect of cider, and the necessary vocabulary is underdeveloped in English.

      The hallowed routine followed for making farmhouse cider began with the harvest. The apples were either allowed to fall naturally or were shaken off the tree with a long pole; then they were taken into an apple loft and allowed to mellow. The stored apples of different varieties were blended. They were crushed in a horse-driven stone wheel-mill or, at the end of the nineteenth century, in a powered rotary press. Sometimes the crushed apple pulp (pomace) was left to stand to allow flavour to develop. It would then be pressed. It was placed in 4-6cm layers on hairs, or thick horsehair cloths which were folded over to envelop the pulp, and then built up into a cheese consisting of about 10 filled cloths. Pressure was applied from above by screwing a plate down on to the cheese. In Devon and Dorset, barley straw was used in place of the hairs, but this is no longer practised. As the juice flowed from the press, it was poured into barrels, loosely stoppered, and left to work under the action of naturally present yeasts. Once fermentation had ceased, the cider was racked off the spent yeast.

      Modern production follows the same sequence but with refinements. The fruit may be dislodged and harvested mechanically. It is blended, picked over and cleaned before mechanical crushing. Hydraulically operated presses, with layers of fruit packed in polypropylene СКАЧАТЬ