Potato

19th December 2021

(opening music)

Liz: Hello and welcome to Bread and Thread, a podcast about food and domestic history. I’m Liz

Hazel: And I’m Hazel. We are two friends who studied archaeology together and love making things, and talking about the history of baking things, and we normally like to start by talking about what we have been making or baking, so what have you been up to?

Liz I made a lot of progress on the Mothra part of my Mothra vs Godzilla cross stitch

Hazel Amazing

Liz Because when you have a special interest, and then you do a craft related to it, you just kind of sit there for hours and do it

Hazel (laughs)

Liz I’ve done one wing, and the body and the head, and honestly about half of the other wing at this point

Hazel It is taking form

Liz It is! She actually looks like Mothra now

Hazel Yes! That is excellent, and I enjoy it

Liz I will probably have finished the Mothra bit by the time this episode goes out

Hazel Cool

Liz That will be viewable on my instagram, I’m sure

Hazel You should share Mothra with everybody

Liz I simply love her

Hazel (laughs)

Liz So what have you been up to?

Hazel I am getting ready to go and make gingerbread after we finish recording, actually

Liz Ooh nice

Hazel Yeah. It’s getting towards that time of year, although you can eat gingerbread any time of year. I’m not your boss

Liz (laughs)

Hazel But (laughs) I tend to make it about this time of year, and tomorrow is our last day on campus, everyone together, so I was gonna make gingerbread to take in as a thing for my project group

Liz Aww, that’s really nice

Hazel It is, isn’t it? I am an A+ human

Liz Yes you are

Hazel And everyone should be friends with me

Liz The thing is, it’s true

Hazel Depending on the quality of my gingerbread, I don’t know, it might be terrible

Liz (laughs)

Hazel In which case I would let you off for not being my best friend. But it’s gonna be fun. I love making gingerbread ‘cause you get to melt the golden syrup and the sugar together, and it’s gloopy and delicious. Also the smell of the spices, and it’s just so time, you know, it’s so wintertime

Liz No, I know what you mean. I always make sticky toffee pudding in December, and only in December, and it’s a very similar feeling

Hazel (laughs) So yeah, I’m looking forward to that, and I have fun cutter shapes, so yeah. Right, so shall we go on to the…I was gonna make a joke, but I’m not sure if it would reveal the topic of the episode

Liz It’s ok if you want to reveal it

Hazel Do you want to get into the meat and potatoes of this episode?

Liz I do. So yeah, when this episode goes up, the 19th of December 2021, is the 20th anniversary of the theatrical release of Fellowship of the Ring

Hazel My goodness

Liz And I feel a deep spiritual connection to hobbits

Hazel Can relate

Liz So this is a very important date for me

Hazel I just…I mean, it is, of course, a joyous day, but also it’s been 20 years

Liz Yeah, it’s the same year that my sister was born, so I’ve been feeling it since her birthday

Hazel Oh wow

Liz But yeah, I’m gonna talk about potatoes

Hazel Excellent! I also have something hobbit-related for local larder but

Liz I am very excited

Hazel We will get to that later. Tell me about potatoes

Liz So I think the first question to answer is, what is taters, precious?

Hazel What is taters, ey?

Liz So they are the tubers, which is big starchy masses that grow on the root of the Solanum tuberosum plant

Hazel Ooh, that’s a good name

Liz Yeah, so the wild species probably originated in Peru

Hazel Mmm

Liz And we think that it was probably domesticated in either Peru or Bolivia, around 8-5000 years BCE

Hazel Oh wow

Liz Although the first…yeah that’s…people do genome things to work out when different mutations happened, and I don’t understand it, but it’s very cool

Hazel Yeah, that’s an old tuber

Liz Yeah, ancient potato

Hazel (laughs)

Liz But the first physical evidence we have is from the Chiripa people

Hazel Ok

Liz In Ancón Peru, about 2500 years BCE, so we know that it was domesticated by then, and we have, actually, depictions from Altiplano, which is also in Peru, on vessels, like paintings on jars and things, of potato plants

Hazel Wow

Liz And we have potato-shaped ceramics

Hazel That is cool. I wanna see an ancient potato-shaped ornament

Liz Allow me to send you a picture

Hazel Yes please. (gasps) I love it. I don’t know what that is for, but I love it

Liz I also do not know what it is, but yeah, I will tweet that picture. That’ll probably be the clue for this episode

Hazel That would be a good idea

Liz So yeah, it seems to have been the primary source of carbohydrates

Hazel Mm-hmm

Liz In, again, Bolivia, northern Peru, and similar to today you’d have it boiled, mashed, stick it in a stew

Hazel (laughs)

Liz But also things like toqosh, which is a fermented potato pulp

Hazel Ok

Liz And chuño, which is naturally freeze-dried potatoes. So you leave them out to freeze and thaw and freeze and thaw

Hazel Uh-huh

Liz Just with the weather, and that forces the water out of them, so they dry and shrivel up, but they’re still edible for years, and they still have all of their nutrients, and you can store them ‘cause they get really small

Hazel Ok, that is incredible

Liz And yeah, like I say, it seems to have been a staple for a lot of pre-colonisation South America, especially the Inca Empire

Hazel Most cultures seem to have a main carbohydrate, right?

Liz Yeah, and in South America you get, a lot of the time it’s maize, but when you can’t get maize to grow it seems to be potato

Hazel Ok

Liz And that’s gonna be a theme in the history of the potato

Hazel (laughs)

Liz But they’re also found in Patagonia, in the, basically the southernmost limit of where we have archaeological evidence for pre-colonisation agriculture in South America, we have potatoes, so it seems like potatoes were just incredibly important for South America as a whole

Hazel Mm-hmm

Liz And then, as you might expect, they make their way to Europe with Spanish sailors

Hazel So, I’ve heard the story about potatoes being taken to the court of Queen Elizabeth I, and her trying to eat a potato raw, and going like “ah, this is terrible.” Is that true?

Liz I haven’t been able to find any reliable sources for that

Hazel Mm-hmm

Liz It does seem though that in general people were reluctant to eat them, despite, you know, having seen native South Americans eating them

Hazel Ok

Liz Yeah there’s a theory that it was because they are related to deadly nightshade, which also put people off eating tomatoes for a very long time, because it’s all the same family

Hazel Really? Ok, I did not know that, that is very cool

Liz But they did quite quickly become a working class food, so obviously some people were willing to eat them

Hazel (laughs)

Liz There’s mentions of Basque fishermen using them in the 16th century

Hazel What, to catch fish?

Liz No, as onboard food

Hazel Oh, ok, unrelated to them being fishermen

Liz They just happened to be fishermen that needed

Hazel (laughs)

Liz Food that will last in, basically, a cupboard for a long time

Hazel That makes more sense

Liz And I mean, as anyone that’s found one sad potato in the back of the cupboard

Hazel Aww

Liz Will testify it’s, you know, it’s not that bad

Hazel It’s fine. You scrape off the eyes, you eat the potato

Liz Yeah. Yeah, so they seem to have got to Spain around 1570, in terms of people actually eating them, but there’s also…yeah, they seem to have spread pretty quickly, because there is evidence of them being exported from the Canary Islands to Antwerp, in the Netherlands, in 1567

Hazel Wow

Liz So it seems that people were basically, they went and got them from South America, and then they went and did some colonialism in other places, they took the potatoes with them as an easy source of food. And there seems to be people (laughing) gifting them

Hazel (laughs)

Liz People gifting them to each other

Hazel That’s very Stardew Valley

Liz Yeah, especially potato flowers

Hazel Aww

Liz Although Phillip II of Spain apparently sent potatoes to the Pope

Hazel Ok. I can’t decide if that’s a compliment or not

Liz I mean, apparently it was a compliment

Hazel Are the top parts of the potato mildly poisonous, or did I make that up

Liz No, they are, ‘cause, again, it’s related to deadly nightshade

Hazel Yeah, yeah. Ok (laughs). Actually, to be honest, if someone gave me a potato as a present, I would be pretty happy, especially if they carved a heart into it or something

Liz There is a company that will send you, yeah, you can pay them to send someone a potato with something written on it in sharpie

Hazel Ok, couldn’t you just do that yourself for free

Liz Oh, you absolutely could, but you know

Hazel I guess if you don’t happen to have a potato lying around

Liz But yeah, potato plants, if you leave them long enough, do produce a toxic fruit

Hazel Ok

Liz Which contains a class of poison called glycoalkaloids

Hazel Ooh

Liz Which, yeah, are found in other plants in the same family

Hazel Mm-hmm

Liz And it seems that wild potatoes contain higher concentrations, and then that was gradually bred out

Hazel Oh no

Liz This is leaping forward a bit, but it’s relevant. So, a potato cultivar was released to the market in 1967, called the lenape, and was then withdrawn in 1970, when they realised that it contained high levels of glycoalkaloids

Hazel Oh no!

Liz So now new cultivars have to be tested for glycoalkaloids, and have to stay below a certain threshold

Hazel Worrying

Liz I’m glad there’s now a legal limit to how poisonous the potatoes can be

Hazel You mean before it was just a free for all? Technically it was legal to poison someone with a potato?

Liz Well it seems more that people didn’t realise they could be breeding the poison back in

Hazel (laughs)

Liz Which is fun

Hazel Yeah, definitely

Liz So yeah, potatoes spread very quickly as a food for the working class, grown by, or rather spread by, richer as like “and then you poor people can go and eat that”, because it was a lot easier to grow than grains. Obviously our staple carbohydrates in Europe are grains

Hazel Yep. And takes a lot less processing, I guess

Liz Yeah. Produces enough food for ten people per acre of potato plants which, you’re never going to get that with something like wheat

Hazel Mmm

Liz And you can also live almost exclusively on potatoes

Hazel Oh right!

Liz As anyone who’s read or seen The Martian may already be aware of

Hazel I have not read or seen The Martian, what happens in The Martian? Does he live on potatoes?

Liz He gets stranded on Mars and lives on potatoes

Hazel (laughs) I know there’s probably a lot more dramatic stuff to it than that, but I would watch a film about, is it Ben Affleck?

Liz Matt Damon

Hazel Ok, Matt Damon, I get them confused. I would watch a film about Matt Damon sitting on Mars eating potatoes for two hours

Liz Honestly, The Martian is very funny. But yeah, it was especially popular during the Little Ice Age, because it was a lot easier to cultivate when it was cold. So, I don’t know if you’ve heard, there’s a completely apocryphal but very fun story about Frederick II of Prussia and potatoes

Hazel Ok

Liz So was very much for big population increases, more villages, clearing woodland for farmland, all that stuff

Hazel Uh-huh

Liz And between 1746 and 1768 he put out 15 different orders for different regions of Prussia where all of the farmers had to start growing potatoes

Hazel Ok

Liz Because it would increase the food supply of the country

Hazel That seems unwise. I mean, when you haven’t necessarily tested how well this is gonna adapt to your country’s growing system

Liz Well yes, he was very for monoculture and things like that

Hazel Mmm

Liz But I do think, we’re talking almost 200 years after their introduction to Europe, we

Hazel Mm-hmm

Liz I think he was pretty certain that they would grow

Hazel Ok. How’d it go?

Liz But the story goes that the farmers rejected it, and so he said “actually, potatoes are only for royalty” and set guards on the potato fields, who were instructed to look the other way, and then the potatoes got poached and growing potatoes actually spread. Completely apocryphal

Hazel Ok

Liz And he’s also not the only person that story was told about

Hazel (laughs)

Liz But the story started spreading around, especially on tumblr and reddit, a couple of years ago

Hazel Right. Ah, is it one of those today-I-learned kind of things?

Liz Yeah. But he was very pro-potato, he is known as The Potato King, because his theory was “if we grow more potatoes to feed the peasants, we can reserve grain for the military, and we can be all expansionist”, because that’s what European countries do

Hazel Ok, that is extremely European 18th-19th century

Liz Yeah

Hazel That’s a mood. I mean, not a particularly relatable mood, but it’s a mood

Liz And then similar things, similar ideas pop up in especially places like Ireland and Scotland

Hazel Mm-hmm

Liz And we will do a separate episode on what happened in Ireland with potatoes, because it merits a whole episode of its own, quite frankly

Hazel Yeah, no, I think that deserves a bit more of an in-depth discussion

Liz But yeah, I wanna talk about the spread of potatoes in France, because there was a scientist in, again, the 18th century, named Antoine-Augustin Parmentier

Hazel That rings a bell. Can’t remember why

Liz I mean, he’s a very big name. He established the first mandatory smallpox vaccination campaign

Hazel Ok

Liz Under Napoleon. He worked on extraction of sugar from sugar beets, studied refrigeration, which, this is the 18th century

Hazel Wow

Liz So that’s pretty cool

Hazel Ok

Liz But he was also, he was a food scientist, and he was one of the first people to actually study the nutritional value of potatoes

Hazel Right

Liz So he established that potatoes contain pretty much all, close to all of the vitamins and minerals that you need, and basically scientifically proved what a lot of people already knew, that you can basically just live on potatoes if you need to. Not a fun diet

Hazel (laughs)

Liz But it’ll keep you going

Hazel I mean, it’s an odd thing, considering they don’t look that nutritious. It just looks like just fluffy white carb, right?

Liz Mmm

Hazel But, yeah, secret nutrition

Liz Yeah, a lot of potato containing dishes ended up named after Parmentier. There’s hachis Parmentier, which is another name for shepherd’s pie, salade Parmentier, which is potato salad, purée Parmentier, which you can probably guess is mashed potato

Hazel (laughs) I’m going to start using all these though, because they make me sound a lot fancier, turning up at a barbecue like “this isn’t potato salad. What do you think I am, a peasant? This is salade Parmentier

Liz (laughs) Brandade de morue Parmentier, is one that actually sounds quite nice. It’s salt cod and olive oil

Hazel Ooh

Liz In mashed potato

Hazel Oh. Ok

Liz I kind of want to try that, I’ll be honest

Hazel Yeah

Liz Apparently it’s quite common to dunk bread in it

Hazel Huh

Liz Or serve it with potatoes, which I quite like. I feel like Parmentier would approve

Hazel Yeah

Liz Yeah, in the 1770s he wrote an essay about how potatoes were the best substitute for flour

Hazel I guess, yeah, potato flour is a thing, isn’t it

Liz It absolutely is

Hazel But does he mean potatoes as in just the potatoes, not processed into flour?

Liz Yeah, just potatoes in general, where there to be a wheat shortage

Hazel Ok

Liz Which there wasn’t at the time, but there was later

Hazel Ah, yes. Ok. Actually, I have made a cake with potato instead of flour. It was for a gluten…a person with celiac, who couldn’t eat gluten. It was a lemon cake, very nice, very moist

Liz Yeah, I’ve heard of chocolate cake with mashed potato in it as a gluten-free thing as well

Hazel Ok

Liz Not potato flour, just full-on mashed potato in there

Hazel Yeah, that’s how I made the lemon cake, it was mashed potato and then all the other things

Liz I imagine it contributes a nice level of moisture

Hazel Yeah, definitely. It was quite heavy, not a nice sponge texture, but it was still definitely cakey

Liz But yeah, so he became interested in potatoes, actually, after being imprisoned by the Prussian army

Hazel Oh

Liz During the Seven Years’ War

Hazel Ok

Liz ‘Cause, as I said, in Prussia it was food for peasants, whereas in France it was basically hog feed

Hazel Mm-hmm

Liz And he got interested in them. (chuckles) Although interestingly the cultivation of the potato was illegal in France at the time that he wrote this essay

Hazel Sorry, what?

Liz Because they were thought to cause leprosy

Hazel (laughs)

Liz Because 18th century science!

Hazel (laughs) Ok! So how come people got leprosy before the potato was introduced to Europe?

Liz Well, multiple things can cause leprosy. You know, being struck down by God, sloth, weird smells

Hazel Hey, don’t be mean to sloths

Liz But he was apparently known for publicity stunts to promote the potato

Hazel (laughs)

Liz He gave Marie Antoinette a bouquet of potato blossoms

Hazel That’s charming. I hope she didn’t get too close to them

Liz Well Marie Antoinette was very into the abstract concept of agriculture

Hazel Mm-hmm

Liz She was a hashtag cottagecore queen

Hazel I have heard that, yeah

Liz But yeah, and the story about Frederick the Great also exists about Parmentier, about posting armed guards on his potato fields

Hazel Ah, of course

Liz So that people would steal the potatoes

Hazel (laughs) ‘Cause you wouldn’t steal the potatoes if they were just unguarded, right? That’s clearly not very valuable

Liz Exactly. Like I said, potatoes did help during the famines of the Little Ice Age

Hazel Oh!

Liz ‘Cause, as I said, they were just easier than wheat and barley to grow in these cold conditions

Hazel Mm-hmm

Liz Then the 1840s arrive

Hazel Yes

Liz And we get the European Potato Failure, where basically all of the potato crops failed to some extend

Hazel Oof. So was that due to some kind of disease, plant disease?

Liz Yes. Called the potato blight

Hazel Mmm

Liz Which is a kind of mould that grows on potatoes

Hazel Ok, so what’s the theory? Was it that it was spread across on the winds or something, or from contaminated potatoes? How did it get around?

Liz Yeah, basically because you’d grow…’cause most potatoes are basically clones, because you take one from one plants, you plant it, and then it grows more potatoes, they were all vulnerable to this mould when it hit, and it just spread around

Hazel I see. I mean, that sounds extremely not good for people who were relying on potatoes

Liz Yeah, the 1840s were actually known as The Hungry 40s, because of the potato blight

Hazel Does that have anything to do with the series of revolutions that went on across Europe?

Liz The Revolutions of 1848?

Hazel Ah, yes those

Liz The next part of my notes, yes

Hazel ‘Cause I knew about that, but I had no idea that it was anything to do with the potato blight

Liz Yeah, there’s a theory that, because at this point most peasants were relying on potatoes to some extent

Hazel Mm-hmm

Liz And then all the potatoes failed

Hazel Mm-hmm

Liz And then everyone was hungry, and when everyone is hungry, they tend to revolt

Hazel Let me guess, the governments didn’t do very much about everyone being hungry

Liz Not about people being hungry, although some social change did pop up. So, I just want to read out the list of places which had 1848 revolutions or rebellions.

Hazel Ok

Liz Italy, France, Germany, Denmark, Hungary, Sweden, Switzerland, Poland, Romania, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, some part of Britain, Lithuania, the Isle of Mann

Hazel (laughs)

Liz Large swathes of Latin America. But some of these revolts did lead to long-lasting consequences. In Hungary it’s credited with the freeing of the serfs

Hazel Oh wow

Liz It’s largely credited with helping towards the unification of Italy and Germany

Hazel Ok

Liz The formation of the Second French Republic

Hazel Ok

Liz All of this stuff…obviously a lot of it was in the works anyway, but it was the spark in the powder keg for a lot of stuff

Hazel Yeah, that sounds like it would set things off

Liz Yeah, it’s known as The Springtime of Nations, apparently

Hazel Ooh

Liz 1848, ‘cause, yeah it was basically pretty much all of Europe, and several other places, just going “you know what? We’re hungry, and we hate rich people, let’s do something about it”

Hazel Uh-huh, that is where a lot of change seems to come from

Liz Well yeah. Mass mortality events do seem to lead to a lot of social change, hint hint

Hazel Mm-hmm

Liz I should mention, just ‘cause it’s the only continent I haven’t mentioned yet, potatoes did spread to Asia and Australasia, obviously, partly through colonialism in places like Australia and New Zealand, and partly through trade. Population growth during the Qing dynasty made it quite popular because, again, you can feed a lot of people with potatoes

Hazel Mm-hmm. There are some varieties of potato-like plants that are native to Asia, ‘cause my mum grows this, I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s a Himalayan small, lemony potato thing?

Liz Yeah, and there’s taro as well, which shows up a lot in Indonesian, and Japanese especially, food, which is a purple sweet potato type thing

Hazel Yeah, I’ve seen, I’ve unfortunately, as yet, never eaten any, but I’ve seen pictures of amazing sweets made with taro

Liz I’ve had taro pudding

Hazel How was it?

Liz I wasn’t a fan, to be honest

Hazel Mm-hmm

Liz But I tried it, and that’s the important thing, because it’s good to try new things

Hazel Definitely

Liz I see why people like it, but I don’t like it

Hazel I think a lot of things are just a taste that, if you grow up with it, you love it, but otherwise it takes a bit of acquiring

Liz Mmm. So yeah, I’m gonna end there I think, and I think you said next episode you’ll go more in-depth on the Hungry 40s and specifically the Irish potato famine?

Hazel Yeah, I will tackle that one

Liz But in the mean time, it’s time for local larder

Hazel It is, and I’m gonna keep on the hobbit theme, and talk a little bit about seed cake

Liz Ooh

Hazel Yes. Which, as far as I’ve been able to make out, is quite a traditional British thing. The seed in question is normally caraway seeds, which, of course, are used in lots of different places around the world, but

Liz It’s like Goosnargh cakes

Hazel Yes, even Lancashire (laughs) but

Liz Even the unsophisticated wilds of Lancashire, yes

Hazel (laughs) The wild, backwards, remote places of Lancashire

(both laugh)

Hazel But seed cake as a thing is quite a traditional British food, so yeah, very local larder. Now, seed cake is mentioned in The Hobbit, quite near the beginning of The Hobbit, actually, in An Unexpected Party, when the dwarves all come to Bilbo’s house, and they’re eating all his food, and Balin gets there, and he asks for some seed cake, and, yeah, asks if Bilbo has any seed cake, and Bilbo says “lots”. “Bilbo found himself answering, to his surprise, and he found himself, too, scuttling off to the cellar to fill a pint beer mug, and then to the pantry to fetch two beautiful round seed cakes, which he had baked that afternoon for his after-supper morsel”, which definitely should be a thing more, I think, having an after-supper morsel

Liz Hobbits do life right

Hazel So, Bilbo Baggins is a baker of seed-cake, which is a sort of fairly dense cake containing, usually, caraway seeds, which give it a sort of anise-y type flavour, but there is some controversy over the seed. I’ve seen a few recipes that say it doesn’t really matter what seed you use, as long as it’s some kind of anise/caraway/cardamom type of thing, but some of them are like “it’s got to be caraway otherwise it isn’t a seed cake, it’s just a cake with seeds in it”

(both laugh)

Liz People get so passionate about food, it’s beautiful

Hazel I know, it’s wonderful, humans are great. But the cake in this form doesn’t seem to be the original version of it. As far as I can tell, it seems like the cake goes back quite a long way. There’s cakes that are described, that sound like this kind of thing, in mediaeval sources

Liz Mm-hmm

Hazel But we don’t have any recipes until the 17th century. So, there’s one in Gervase Markham’s English Huswife, and there’s actually two in The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, by Hannah Glasse, which I like because she has a recipe for cheap seedcake, and a rich seedcake

Liz I like that

Hazel Yeah, it covers all your bases, but they’re very much different ends of the spectrum, there’s no in between

Liz (laughs)

Hazel The cheap seed cake is, sounds like more a bready, a bready scone-type thing? There’s no eggs in it, and it’s leavened with yeast, so yeah, kind of a little bit more bready, really

Liz Mm-hmm

Hazel But it has caraway seeds in, she says to put caraway seeds in just before it goes in the oven, and the rich seed cake, or “the nun’s cake”, uses 35 eggs and 4 pounds of butter

Liz Slightly different

Hazel And 6 ounces of caraway seeds

Liz Is there an explanation for why this is a nun’s cake?

Hazel No, there isn’t, it just says

(both laugh)

Hazel Feeding a lot of nuns I guess

Liz This is the cake for nuns, obviously

Hazel Obviously. This is what you feed nuns

(both laugh)

Hazel And she also says you can put cinnamon and ambergris in it, which, I’m not exactly sure what ambergris is, do you know?

Liz Yes, we’ve had…it has come up before

Hazel Ok

Liz Yeah, so it’s a waxy substance produced by the digestive system of the sperm whale

Hazel Ok, that is not what I was expecting

Liz Often used it perfumes

Hazel That’s not what I was expecting it to be

Liz No, it’s a weird thing. We have records of one of the Charles’s, I don’t remember which one, eating it with eggs

Hazel Why?

Liz Rich people

Hazel (laughs) I can’t think of any reason. I can’t think of a reason that would taste or smell nice

Liz Apparently it doesn’t smell nice

Hazel What?! People really will buy things just because they’re expensive

Liz Yeah, ambergris is on the master list, so we will cover it eventually

Hazel Ok, that’s good, I would like to know more, and why

Liz (laughs)

Hazel Yeah, so she also says in this recipe, you put the caraway seeds in, “beating it up all the time for two hours together.” Two hours!

Liz Mrs Glasse

Hazel Why?

Liz That sounds painful

Hazel That does. I don’t understand how you’re doing this unless you’ve got ten servants and they’re all taking turns. Maybe you pass it round the nuns, I don’t know

Liz It’s entirely possible that was the plan

Hazel Yeah. And it takes three hours in the oven as well, but I guess if it’s ye olden days and your oven’s just on all day anyway, that doesn’t matter. Yeah, so that is our 17th century, or rather, with Hannah Glasse, 18th century, seed cake, and then it becomes, going into the Victorian period, a bit more traditionally cakey, more like a tea loaf, I guess, because all of the older sources seem to describe it as a round cake, like in The Hobbit, and then most of the ones I’ve seen from modern recipes are loaf shaped, so I don’t know when that happened. I guess if it’s a loaf shape you can cut off slices more easily or put butter in it if you want to

Liz Yeah

Hazel But it seems like in the more traditional farmhouse-y seedcake was still a bit smaller, round, so maybe that’s where the hobbit seedcakes being round came from

Liz Yeah, I mean it makes sense that Bilbo would just make individual serving ones rather than a big loaf

Hazel It does, it does

Liz ‘Cause he lives alone

Hazel It does, although, I dunno, if you’re baking cake anyway, might make sense. But then seedcake is known for keeping a little bit longer than other cakes

Liz Yeah, I guess you have to slice into it, it’s not gonna last as long

Hazel Mmm. Yeah, and it’s a little bit denser and moister, it’s not nice and fluffy like a sponge, that doesn’t last as long, so it’s a good farmhouse staple, really, and I think it was a part of a lot of people’s childhoods in the 20th century, which is why it appears in these things

Liz Makes sense

Hazel It’s kind of a comfort food type thing, but normally, continuously flavoured with caraway seeds, I find, although according to a recipe I found, that claims to take inspiration from The English Huswif, and another cookbook, you can also use anise, coriander, cardamom, or caraway, or something that puts a nice flavour in it, although I’m not sure about coriander seed cake?

Liz Yeah that seems like a very different flavour to the others

Hazel Yeah, that seems like the advice is just “put flavour in”, doesn’t matter what flavour, put sugar and flavour

Liz Yeah. I feel like fennel might work, ‘cause you that in Goosnargh cakes sometimes, which are normally a caraway

Hazel Yeah, it sounds it’s a nutty-type flavour, possibly. Yeah, oh, and as you have just reminded me, a cake does not necessarily mean a cake-cake when you’re thinking historically. So, the early round cakes could be the kind of things that you would bake on a bakestone, or on the hearth, or something much more scone-y, or more biscuity like a Goosnargh cake or, pretty much, I think, milage varies depending on what you have to bake it with

Liz Yeah, I feel like for a long time cake just meant handheld carbohydrate

Hazel Yeah, and you could have savoury cakes, as well, right

Liz Yeah. I mean, a small bread, like a breadroll, one of the regional names for that is a barmcake, or a breadcake

Hazel Uh-huh. So yeah, that is the small but storied history of the seedcake, and I have to say, it does make me think comforting things, possibly because of its association with The Hobbit, but I think I also associate it with traditional tea-time

Liz Mmm. You have just made me want Goosnargh cakes

Hazel Although seedcake and ale, apparently, was popular in bygone days, as well, so

Liz I mean that’s just more carbs, isn’t it

Hazel Yeah

Liz Keep ya going

Hazel I mean yeah, that’ll keep you warm, but I think cakes and ale was something that you might have in a pub, so

Liz Oh we should definitely bring that back

Hazel Absolutely

Liz Little plate of seedcakes on the bar instead of a bowl of nuts

Hazel But yeah, I will link a seedcake recipe to the twitter when this episode in case anyone feels like making one for themselves. I can recommend it, they are tasty, and it will make you feel like a hobbit

Liz Can you send that to me as well please?

Hazel Yes

Liz So yeah, thank you for listening. If you have an episode suggestion or wanna say hi, or anything like that, you can email breadandthreadpodcast @ gmail.com

Hazel You can also find us on twitter at breadandthread for any retweets of things that we find interesting or related to food history, things that we have been doing, and teasers for upcoming episodes, as well as pictures of things we talk about on the podcast

Liz And if you want to support us, help us buy caraway seeds

Hazel Oh I have so many caraway seeds, I ordered them from the wholefoodsonline website

Liz Oh no

Hazel Yeah, I didn’t realise how much it would be. I don’t need to buy any right now, but I’m sure we could find other things to spend the money on

Liz Although I am a little bit jealous of the amount of caraway seeds you have now. But yeah, we have a patreon, patreon.com/breadandthread, where you can get access to a discord server where we chat about things that we’re making and baking, and about the episodes. There are monthly patreon recipes, available to £5 or above level patrons, and if you join at the £10 or above level, we will make an episode about anything you like

Hazel We have a youtube channel, breadandthread, where you can find youtube versions of our podcast episodes, and we also have a tumblr, where we reblog things that are interesting to us, and do we have anything else?

Liz I believe that’s it

Hazel Ok

Liz Yeah, so thank you for listening, and we will see you next time

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