Biscuits from the Archives- Historical recipe testing: Gingerbread from the De Budé fonds

From the collection of the Royal Archives
© Elizabeth II

A recent term essay for one of my classes brought me into contact with the archived papers of General Jacob de Budé, the Swiss-born aide-de-camp (among other things) to King George III of Britain during the late 18th century. I had never heard about him before, but upon further research he appears to have had his share of importance in the court; it is likely that he was a figure of some note within the private Royal intelligence network during the 1770's and 80's.[1] He furthermore appears several times in the archive itself in other collections, and, more famously, features in the memoirs of Fanny Burney- although what she has to say about him is not always particularly flattering.[2]

 Although the actual papers are housed in the Windsor archives of the Royal Trust collection in England, much of the de Bude fonds has *thankfully* been digitised and is available to access freely on the Georgian Papers Online website (this is how I accessed them). Most of the papers in the collection are not recipes; there is plenty of correspondence, as well as account bills, orders, and, among other things, two variations on instructions for a card game, detailed eighteenth century plans for a water closet -for the Duke of York, if you're curious- and a neat selection of poetry transcriptions (and A LOT more. It was fun and exciting.). The fonds is a very multilingual one, featuring French, English, German and Italian in the writings. Amid the wealth of papers, there is a compilation of looseleaf manuscript recipes. Each recipe is written in a different hand, and it is possible that De Budé collected them from friends and acquaintances; the only recipe with named writers in the collection, catalogued separately from the others, comes from another army General and his wife. The recipes likely date between the 1770's and his death in 1818. The collection contains a range of recipes for a variety of dishes as well as medicines and remedies for both humans and horses. The one I present to you today is, thankfully, fully intended for human consumption!
 
You can read the original here, on page 6/ sheet 5

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[Transcription]

Ginger Bread Nutts

1 Pound of Treacle

1 Pound of sugar

1 Pound of butter

2 1/2 Pounds of Flour

1 ounce of Carraway Seeds

1 ounce of Corriander Seeds

1/2 ounce of Cinnamon

1/2 ounce of Cloves

1/2 ounce of Ginger

The spices must be pounded & sifted, & then minced to a paste of a proper thickness; & when made into nutts, baked in a slow oven.

[End of transcription]

I started by mixing the sugar and molasses together. Which was basically every sugar-related dream come true, mixing sugar and sugggaaaarrr!! It became a gooey sticky mix which was fascinating to look at but... a bit difficult to continue stirring. I then mixed in the butter. An entire package of it, which is quite a lot. I probably should have creamed the butter and sugar together and then mixed in the molasses, because that would have been a lot easier. But I didn't.

I then got to the spices, but decided to use Wonderful Modern Technology™ and grind the spices in a coffee grinder instead of actually pounding them. The spices produced an interesting/surprising/extremely pungent mixture which improved as they blended together. I unfortunately forgot to sift them, but it came out pretty well anyway.

I then combined the spices with the flour, and put the solid mixture into the molasses/sugar/butter mixture, mixing it until it formed a sticky, very gingerbread-like dough.

Now here's when the trouble started... As it's written, this recipe has too much butter and too little flour (at least, this is how it comes out with my modern store-bought versions of the ingredients). When I tried cooking them in the oven, they were a MESS. They completely melted and turned into an unappetising caramel-y disaster. Not biscuits. Just something else, don't even ask. I went back to the rest of the mixture and added flour until it was just about double the original quantity; thankfully this mixture makes a huge amount of dough, so most of it hadn't even been cooked yet.

 

To put the dough into the oven, I rolled it into tiny round forms, like a nut (heck I figured the name must come from somewhere). They melted a bit in the oven and became these adorable round cookie shapes, so I think that may well have been the intention in the recipe. I did not actually realise until after cooking them that to this day ginger-nut is a synonym for gingersnap. They did indeed come out very much like buttery gingersnaps, so I'd say in this regard the experiment was successful, even though the recipe's original ratios were slightly off when made up with my ingredients.

The recipe made up an enormous quantity (I think I had well over 50 biscuits in the batch..). They lasted well and retained their flavour in an excellent way though stored in a well sealed container... even a month later they still tasted delightful!

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[1] Ambuske, Jim. "The Admiral and the Aide-de-Camp: The Revolutionary War Correspondence of Sir Samuel Hood and Jacob de Bude", Georgian Papers Online. https://georgianpapers.com/2017/05/03/the-admiral-and-the-aide-de-camp/

[2] Upon first meeting him on July 31st, 1786, Burney comments "I do not quite know what to say of General [de] Bude; except that his person is tall and showy, and his manners and appearance are fashionable. But he has a sneer in his smile that looks sarcastic, and a distance in his manners that seems haughty." (The Diary and Memoirs of Madame d'Arblay volume 1: 1778-1787)