The Other Mitford
Page 19
EGG MOUSSE
8 hard-boiled eggs
¼pt water
1 tbsp tomato ketchup
1 tbsp Worcester sauce
3 tbsp double cream
Salt and pepper
1 tbsp aspic powder melted in the 1/4pt of water
Method:
Pass yolks of eggs through sieve; add ketchup and Worcester sauce, salt, pepper and half the aspic. Chop whites and add to the mixture. Finally, add cream. Mix well. Turn into soufflé dish and put in fridge. When set pour over the remainder of aspic. Decorate and leave to set.
This recipe was found in the cookery book of Pam’s great friend Margaret Budd, but it bears all the hallmarks of Pam’s imaginative cooking, like the addition of tomato ketchup and Worcester sauce for extra flavour. It is probably the recipe she used – much expanded – soon after she and Derek moved to Ireland and she told Debo that she couldn’t come to see her at Lismore Castle that day because she was making egg mousse for sixty people at the Tullamaine point-to-point. And there is no doubt that the eggs would have come from her own hens.
POT-AU-FEU
4lb forequarter flank of beef or silverside, or 2lb of each
A piece of knuckle of veal weighing about 2lb including bone, if available
A beef marrow bone sawn into short lengths
Chicken giblets or 6oz of ox liver in one piece
4 large leeks
4 large carrots
2 large onions
1 very small turnip
Small piece of parsnip
1 stalk of celery with its leaves
Bouquet garni (2 bay leaves, 2–3 sprigs parsley and thyme)
1 tbsp coarse salt
8pt water
Method:
Put the beef, veal and giblets into a large cooking pot and pour over the water. Bring to a simmer extremely slowly and keep skimming off the scum until it turns to a thin white foam which will disperse of its own accord. Add the vegetables, the bouquet and the salt. Put the lid on the pot, but tilt it gently so that steam can escape, and simmer very, very gently for 3½ hours. Add the marrow bone, tied up in greaseproof paper, and the liver and cook for another hour. Serve the beef with potatoes, freshly prepared vegetables and gravy made from the stock and keep the rest of the stock and the vegetables cooked in it for soup (perhaps Head Soup, see Chapter 16: Home Economics). Alternatively, the beef is delicious served cold with salad and baked potatoes or some of Lady Redesdale’s bread.
This recipe owes a lot to one of Elizabeth David’s in her book French Provincial Cooking, but Pam adapted it for her own use and would sometimes use brisket instead of flank for the main meat. She would also use the simmering oven of her Rayburn cooker instead of simmering the meat on the hotplate which gives an even better flavour. When making the soup Elizabeth David suggests that the marrow bone be extracted and spread on French bread baked golden in the oven. I think Lady Redesdale’s bread, toasted, would be even nicer.
Plates
Family group in 1912. Left to right: Nancy, David, Tom, Diana, Sydney and Pam – with dogs. (Copyright the Mitford Archive 2011)
The family with animals c. 1915. Left to right: Nancy, Tom, Diana, Unity (on pony), Sydney and Pam. (Copyright the Mitford Archive 2011)
The family continues to grow: Nancy, Pam, Tom, Diana, Unity and Jessica c. 1918. Pam is standing awkwardly on her right leg which had been affected by polio. (Copyright the Mitford Archive 2011)
Astall in 1922 when the family was complete. Pam is sat between Tom and David. (Copyright the Mitford Archive 2011)
Jessica, Nancy, Diana, Unity and Pam in 1935. (Copyright the Mitford Archive 2011)
1967. Debo, Nancy, Pam, Diana and Debo’s eldest daughter Emma at the wedding party of Debo’s son Peregrine, known as Stoker, now the Duke of Devonshire. (Copyright the Mitford Archive 2011)
Pam (third from right) enjoying the Chatsworth Game Fair in the 1980s with her close friend Margaret Budd (on her left). The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire are on the left of the picture. (Photograph courtesy of William Cooper and the executors of Margaret Budd’s estate)
Animal lover Pam in conversation with a dog at the home of a friend in the 1980s. (Photograph courtesy of William Cooper and the executors of Margaret Budd’s estate)
Pam’s gravestone in Swinbrook churchyard. The inscription reads ‘a valiant heart’. (Photograph by Christopher Fear)
Woodfield House at Caudle Green in Gloucestershire where Pam spent a contented old age. (Photograph by Christopher Fear)
The ‘secret door’ into Pam’s vegetable garden at Woodfield House. It was designed and made for her by Philip St Pier. (Photograph by Christopher Fear)
Swinbrook church which the Mitford family attended as children and where most of them are buried. Tom’s name appears on the war memorial. (Photograph by Christopher Fear)
Asthall Manor, the house which the Mitford family really loved and hated leaving. (Photograph by Christopher Fear)
Pam in a rather serious moment, sitting beside her pale blue Rayburn in her kitchen at Woodfield House. The cabbage is real, the pig’s head, in this instance, is a china one. (Photograph courtesy of William Cooper)
Pamela in the early 1930s. In terms of looks she was a close rival to her sister Diana. (Copyright the Mitford Archive 2011)
Copyright
First published in 2012
The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG
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This ebook edition first published in 2012
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© Diana Alexander, 2012
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