Time to Lighten Up (And Tell a Cat story)

Transport to Fort Providence residential school is only the beginning of their ordeal, for the teachers believe it is their sworn duty to “kill the Indian inside.” All attempts at escape are severely punished, but Yaotl and Sascho, along with two others, will try, undertaking a journey of 900 kilometers across the Northwest Territory. Like wild geese, brave hearts together, they are homeward bound.

Find Snow Goose and other historical novels @ these sites:

http://amzn.to/2jZPtIR

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/fly-away-snow-goose-nits-it-ah-golika-xah-1

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fly-away-snow-goose-canadian-historical-brides-collection-book-8-juliet-waldron/1127581811?ean=2940158604010

*******************************************************************************************************************************

Okay, this is a cat and cat "owner" story. I'm in  need of some relief from increasingly Dystopian reality. Maybe you are too.

We recently acquired a new cat. "Willeford" (who came up with that?!) is a used cat, so, as they say about cars, he's only new to us.  He arrived from a kill shelter in a nearby county, a nondescript gray tiger, eight years old and all busted up and weak on the back end.

Yes, not only is he an elder cat, but he's also a "busted" cat. When we first got him, he couldn't even uncurl his tail. He could take zero pressure from a hand gently stroking his hips without sinking to the ground. He's gaining strength after these months of happy release from the rescue cage in which we found him. Someone may have stepped on him, as he's one of those cats who imagines his people can see in the dark. I've narrowly avoided falling over or stepping on him quite a few times in the last months.

At our house, he's been able to run up and down stairs for therapy, to leap onto beds and chairs and cat furniture for cuddling and combing. His injuries no longer preclude his jumping onto the kitchen counter to demand a faucet water drink, or, his personal favorite, a glass filled to the brim with water set beside us on a desk or table for our convenience--at least that was the original plan.

Willeford has turned mostly into William, or Willy. When he's a real sweetie, it's WILL-YUM-YUM, or just YUM, for short. Cat names often start out grandly, but, I've found, quickly morph. We once had an elegant feisty black female named "Bast-Ra" but that eventually became what our youngest child could pronounce at the time, which was "Bap."  "Bap" it remained, even after he could say Mom's fancy original.

Willy came with more than a few unusual feline behaviors we've never coped with before. For one thing, at first he was super needy. I spent the first few hours he was home, lying in bed with him where he hugged and kissed and rolled all over me, all while purring and drooling like a mad kitty. He non-stop kneaded any body part he could reach. I stayed because I didn't want to leave him in such a state, so I was just a quiet cat mom for him until his anxiety wound down.

He spent the night with me and for most nights following, though I can't say either of us got much sleep, as he spent the time crawling all over me and purring. His favorite resting place, because I am a back sleeper, was on top of my face, chest down and with his cat "elbows" digging into my neck, so that eventually my throat would close. Then I'd  choke and have to push him away. I've tried all sorts of strategies to get him to accept other more acceptable (to me) sleeping positions, but it's literally taken months to get him sufficiently relaxed in order to do so. Now, we share a pillow, though I have to be firm in order to keep enough to accommodate my skull. Even now, sometimes, he'll wrap his kitty arms around my head and then drag the rest of his body close into a wrap-around. It's like a fur "face-hugger" and the mental image is not pleasant.

Big Feet

 Almost a year in and his behavior is slowly changing. Some time in the summer, he made a decision to decamp to some spot more distant, perhaps onto the foot of the bed, or into bed with my husband whose larger frame accommodates his weight and sharp elbows better. It gives us both a breather, although I have to admit to liking the creature comfort of a cat pressed against the torso on cold nights.

We have no idea what went on with his last human, but, as Willy'd arrived at the shelter starved and "from the streets,"we came to believe that his person had died and that he'd been summarily cast out to fend for himself. No wonder all the anxiety, poor guy!

Willy remains an early to bed type of cat. That is, initially, at 7:30, he started calling and then leading us toward the stairs, clear as anything saying "Time for bed."  My husband jokingly remarked that was the time when Jeopardy(c) ended, a classic bedtime for the senior senior. (Yes, I meant to say "senior" twice.)

He likes to play, but he's rough and isn't always careful with his claws or his teeth. At first my legs and arms were covered with scratches and puncture marks too from Sorry! OOPS! I-lost-my-head-for-a-minute bites. Our other (also crazy) cat really doesn't get him at all, and she gets scared and won't play chase as he would like, so now and then he bullies her because it's the single fun feline interaction he can get.

Sometimes I wonder if we should get another younger cat which could possibly break up their negative game by the addition of a third player. Another cat might provide  a playmate for the energetic Yum. Should we do it? But as every cat mom knows, #1 there's a husband problem to be solved even before the inter-cat relationships can be solved. 

Our family has managed as many as five kitties at a time and done a decent job, but we're not getting any younger or any richer, and taking proper care of animal companions requires funds as well as love/time. We're approaching the end of the trail here, and the last thing any elder pet "owner" wants to imagine is that their beloved friends will be cast onto the street as Willeford was.




 ~~Juliet Waldron

See All my novels:

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?Query=Juliet+Waldron

https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Juliet+Waldron

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004HIX4GS

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Juliet+Waldron?_requestid=1854149

The Esteemed Right Worshipful Prioress S.R.D. meets Willeford.

The Burr-Hamilton Duel ~ A few thoughts.

http://amzn.to/1YQziX0

http://www.bookswelove.com/authors/waldron-juliet-historical-romance/

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?Query=Juliet+Waldron

https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Juliet+Waldron

We're approaching July 11, the anniversary date of the Burr-Hamilton duel. During the Revolution, these two men were much alike, young, brilliant, ambitious brothers in arms. It didn’t take long after 1792 for them to move to opposite sides of the playing field.

Aaron Burr was born into a leading Connecticut family. He was a descendant of Aaron Burr, Senior, a Presbyterian minister and second president of the College of New Jersey (Princeton). His mother, Esther Edwards, was the daughter of the famous theologian Jonathan Edwards. he like Hamilton was an orphan, but the young Burr was rigorously educated by his stern Connecticut relatives. He did not enter the College of New Jersey when he was 11, but passed the examination at the ripe old age of 13. 

Hamilton had a far more difficult time growing up. This “bastard brat of a Scot’s tinker” as John Adams would have it, was always jealous of his hard-won “honor” and of his status as "gentleman." Thin-skinned doesn’t begin to describe Alexander Hamilton. At eleven--the same age as young Aaron was applying for Princeton--he spent his days in a St. Croix warehouse, perched upon a high stool writing letters and balancing his master's accounts. He earned his daily bread and board in the sweat of his brow. 

About five o'clock Wednesday morning, July 11^th, 1804, Hamilton left town, probably from the area which is now Horatio Street in the Village and was rowed to the dueling ground. Weehawken is on the west bank of the Hudson directly across the river from the west end of what is now Forty-Second Street in Manhattan.  The passage across was near 3 miles. With a light breeze, and they arrived about 7. Burr and his second Van Ness were already on the ground and had cleared away some brush and branches to make “a fair opening.”  This was on the extreme southern point of the Palisades, 20 feet above the water, about 22 paces long and only 10 feet wide.

 On the way across the river, Hamilton told his second, Pendleton, that “he had made up his mind not to fire at Colonel Burr the first time, but to receive his fire and then fire into the air.” Pendleton argued with him, but Hamilton said “it is the effect of a religious scruple, and does not admit of reasoning. It is useless to say more on the subject, as my purpose is definitely fixed.”

The accounts of the seconds were at odds as to which man fired first. This is because the seconds had their backs to the duelists, in order to provide a certain level of deniability. Dueling was by this time illegal in both New York and New Jersey. If Hamilton threw away his shot by firing wide--as he'd proposed to do--he may have fired first. Logically, this would show Burr that he meant no harm, but, of course, it would also leave him at Burr's mercy. How Burr reacted would then be up to him. 

If Burr shot first, as Pendleton later declared, his shot would have hit Hamilton and caused him to spin about, clutch at his weapon, and discharge it harmlessly into a tree. The passage of a .54 caliber ball is not easily overlooked. Whoever shot first, we know the outcome.

“General Hamilton was this morning wounded by that wretch Burr, but we have every reason to hope he will recover.” Angelica Schuyler Church wrote to her brother, Phillip, In Albany.  It would be his duty to notify their father, the Old General Philip Schuyler, who was in failing health. Angelica went on to say:  “My sister bears with saintlike fortitude this affliction. The town is in consternation, and there exists only the expression of grief and indignation.”

Angelica Church with her eldest, Phillip

Oliver Wolcott, Jr., a close friend who attended  Hamilton's death bed at Bayard’s Mansion on the Hudson, also wrote to his own wife. "Hamilton suffers great pain – which he endures like a Hero.” He “has, of late years experienced his conviction of the truths of the Christian Religion and has desired to receive the Sacrament—but no one of the Clergy who have yet been consulted with administer it.” 

After the duel, Burr’s barge landed him and his second Van Ness at Canal Street, where, according to some sources, he simply went on to his law office as if nothing had happened. Others say he went instead to his home at Richmond Hill. This might have been wiser, because of the fame of both men, and because of the illegality of the morning's activities.

Richmond Hill

The Church’s dueling pistols—like many of the best in those days, contained hair-trigger mechanisms. Articles on the pistols have called these mechanisms “hidden” and “newly discovered,” although that speaks only to 20^th Century lack of understanding of the 18^th Century Code Duello and of the specialized weapons involved.   

In fact, Burr may have used these very pistols some years earlier in a duel with John Church, so he was more familiar with them than was Hamilton. On the narrow ledge at Weehawken, it would have been impossible to change a setting—the guns were always set up by the seconds “inspecting, setting triggers and loading”—without anyone noticing. Pendleton, Hamilton’s second, in fact, reports that he had asked whether Hamilton wished to have the hair trigger set. His friend had plainly answered “Not this time.”

The "hidden" hair trigger was made to seem like a big new discovery in a New York Magazine article, whose author insinuated that Hamilton had intended to secretly make use of it.  I will let Robert A. Hendrickson, one of Hamilton’s most passionate biographers (Author of The Rise and Fall of Alexander Hamilton) speak for his hero:

 

“Disenchanted as he was with himself, never able to rid himself of his sense of public accountability, if Hamilton had wished to survive (the duel) at all—a question ultimately unanswerable—the unlikeliest way he could have found to do so was by a secret trick that four men and all their friends, whatever their other differences, would agree was dishonorable. Worse than dishonorable.  Despicable. (And) "Honor was the subject of the morning’s exercise.”

Some years later, when questioned on the subject, Burr was quoted as saying that had his vision not been impaired by the morning mist, he would have "shot Hamilton in the heart." According to the account of the noted English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who met with Burr in England in 1808 (four years after the duel) Burr claimed to have been certain of his ability to kill Hamilton. Bentham concluded that Burr was "little better than a murderer."

But Burr had his reasons for rage. His career had been blighted by Hamilton, who had denounced Burr repeatedly, calling him an “embryo-Caesar” and “unprincipled both as a public and private man.”  

In the winter of 1800-01, during the disputed election between Jefferson and Burr, the Electors had deadlocked, throwing the election into the House of Representatives. Thirty House votes would be logged before this impasse was resolved. Hamilton worked tirelessly to block Burr from assuming the presidency by writing to his federalist friends in the House, saying that Burr “is bankrupt beyond redemption, except by the plunder of his country.  His public principles have no other spring or aim than his own aggrandizement.” 

 As we know, Jefferson was finally elected, after a group of Federalists elected to abstain from voting, sending in blank ballots. For Alexander Hamilton and many others, the choice between Jefferson and Burr must have been like choosing between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.

Thomas Jefferson

Of course, there is always acrimonious rhetoric—the self-interest games that all politicians-- both the principled and the unprincipled—play. Politicians have to do "whatever it takes to stay in the game." But unlike today’s short-sighted hacks-in-office, Hamilton wasn’t just thinking of the here and now. He had always had a vision of a mighty future for his adopted country. A top-notch administrator, he'd seen Burr party jumping and now fanning Secessionist fires in New England which he knew must be doused--by any means possible. "Indivisible" was the keystone of his dream of American greatness, and under no circumstances would he let it go.

Because Hamilton fancied himself a rationalist above all, the letters he left to be read in the event of his death show that he understood all implications of the upcoming duel. In the end, despite the claims on his heart of his wife and of his adored children and despite the creditors to whom he had become obligated while building his new home,  he would risk everything and hazard his life in order to destroy Burr and thus preserve the Union. 

That morning by the river at Weehawken, Alexander Hamilton threw his shot away and left himself at the mercy of his enemy. I'll have to quote Trelane, the super-being in the original Star Trek Squire of Gothos episode and end it here: "...your heroic Alexander Hamilton."

The Grange - and the elegant dining room 

~~Juliet Waldron

https://www.facebook.com/jwhistfic/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel

http://www.julietwaldron.com

Sources:

 Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow ISBN: 1594200092 Penguin, 2005 

The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 21 volumes, Harold C. Syrett, Ed., Columbia University, 

1987 

Founding Brothers by Joseph L. Ellis, ISBN: 9780375405440, Knopf, 2000 

The Rise & Fall of Alexander Hamilton, Vols. 1&2, by Robert A. Hendrickson, 9780884051398, Mason/Charter 1976 

The Founding Fathers, a biography of Alexander Hamilton in his own words, Vol. 1&2, ed. by Mary Jo Kline, Newsweek Publishers, 1973 

 Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, a Study in Character by Roger G. Kennedy, ISBN: 9780195140552, 2000 

Alexander Hamilton, Writings, ed. Joanne Freeman, ISBN: 9781931082044, Library of America 

The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr, by R. Kent Newmyer, ISBN: 978-1-107-60661-6. Cambridge University Press, 2012 

Ada Lovelace, a cameo in “Victoria”

Happy Belated Birthday, Dear Wolfgang!

261 years young & still delighting audiences...

http://www.bookswelove.net/authors/waldron-juliet/

*******************************************************

Ada’s cameo in “Victoria”

Like other history fans, I’ve been watching Masterpiece Theater’s latest offering, Victoria, wand marveling over the sets, costumes, as well as admiring the work of the actors. Here, in the title role, Jenna Coleman, (who I was not a great fan of during her Dr. Who days,) shows what she can do—and, let’s face it, anyone with a neck like she has deserves all the starring roles she acquire!

Much of “Victoria” is concerned with the royal family's sturm und drang. At simplest, the series is a high-minded and elegantly dressed soap opera, but it's also a wonderful entertainment for history junkies like myself. Beyond the scope of this television series, the Queen’s lengthy reign--only recently surpassed by that of her descendant, Elizabeth II—ranged from the birth of railways and wide scale industrial development, through the time of Industrial Robber Barons,  and all the way to 1901.

“Victoria” has been giving me fascinating glimpses of politicians whose doings I studied for “O” and “A” levels, figures like Victoria’s first Prime Ministers, the aristocratic, old-school Lord Melbourne, and his opposite, Sir Robert Peel, son of a wealthy industrialist. Peel, a Liberal in Tory clothing, championed modern criminal laws and policing, and even managed to pass a “radical” 3% income tax upon the rich. Although he did not do so quickly enough to have much impact on the horror of the Irish famine, he eventually repealed the protectionist, onerous-to-the-poor Corn Laws.

I was beyond delighted the other night , however, when Charles Babbage and his friend, Countess Ada Lovelace, and appeared on the scene. In “Victoria,” Lady Lovelace and Charles Babbage speak with the Queen while Babbage's complex and never completed “Difference Machine” (a forerunner of the calculator) is on display.

Ada was a rare bird in her time, an aristocratic woman who joyfully engaged with mathematics and logic. She has been credited, along with her mentor and friend, the inventor Charles Babbage, with having laid the groundwork for modern computing.  (Babbage’s scientific fame initially came from his work creating a book of Logarithm tables, a handy resource that until recently, every engineer kept close at hand.)

The Difference Machine, a calculator, hand cranked and hand-made, 

2,000 brass parts now resides in Science Museum of London. 

This too makes a brief, cameo appearance in "Victoria."

Babbage was working on an “Analytical Engine,” a machine which could do long computations mechanically, thereby removing the risk of human error. After he’d spoken before an Italian Scientific Society about his plan, one of the attendees, Luigi Menabrea, wrote a long in-depth article describing it from copious notes he’d taken. Ada enters the story when she offered to translate the article from Italian for Babbage.

Charles Babbage by Samuel Laurence (Wikipedia)

I’ll now quote Stephan Wolfram, mathematician and famed creator of Mathematica: 

   

“As something of a favor to Babbage, she (Ada) wrote an exposition of the Analytical Engine, and in doing so she developed a more abstract understanding of it than Babbage had — and got a glimpse of the incredibly powerful idea of universal computation.”*

“Ada Lovelace was the first person ever to glimpse with any clarity what has become a defining phenomenon of our technology and even our civilization: the notion of universal computation.”

As pleasurable to me as was the scene of the meeting between Ada and the Queen--as well as introducing Prince Albert into the equation (he was a patron of the sciences and all the new technologies)--well--my inner researcher/a.k.a. KILLJOY simply had to discover whether this had actually happened. That led me to Professor Wolfram’s comprehensive Wired article. Sadly, like many tantalizing scenes from historical movies, it transpired that neither Ada nor Babbage ever met Victoria or her forward-thinking husband in any sort of semi-informal, discursive social situation. 

Still, I'm grateful to the creators of "Victoria" that they gave us a warm, sympathetic glimpse of Ada, Countess of Lovelace, who has been justly elevated to be one of the 19th Century heroines of science. She's a fascinating human interest story for any little girls who are about to begin tackling math and science in elementary school.  

Who knows what Ada and Charles might have devised together had she lived-- and had been able to keep the roving interest of her polymath mentor focused on the Analytical Engine? But instead, tragically, and at what loss to science we shall never know, Ada died at 36 of ovarian cancer. Stephen Wolfram, in the article linked below, was sufficiently intrigued to speculate about what might have happened if she's survived as far into the century as her mentor Babbage. What a subject for any writer of alternate history!

Florence Nightingle, nursing pioneer and another of Ada's famous friends, wrote: “They said she could not possibly have lived so long, were it not for the tremendous vitality of the brain, that would not die.”

Ada, The "first software programmer," from iQ UK

If you are interested in learning more about Ada, check out these articles:

 iQ

https://iq.intel.co.uk/ada-lovelace-the-first-computer-programmer/

Wired(c), Untangling the Tale of Ada Lovelace by Stephen Wolfram, 12.22.15

https://www.wired.com/2015/12/untangling-the-tale-of-ada-lovelace/

The Mathematica site, for Wolfram's revolutionary mathematical "assistant":

http://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/

~~Juliet Waldron
See all my historical novels @
https:www.julietwaldron.com

http://www.bookswelove.net/authors/waldron-juliet/

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004HIX4GS

COWBOY COOKIES

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/752162

Links to all my historical novels:

http://bit.ly/2gzOvgS

We're between the Christmas holiday and New Year. Here in the northeast we’ve had our first real cold snap, with a not-so gentle reminder that it’s soon to be another year.  December crackles and shrivels like a dead leaf. 

It’s a time when ancestors are remembered, sometimes in the patterns of light reflecting from 2017’s LED decked Christmas tree, sometimes in the carp-like mouths of Byer’s carolers you got from your Mom, sometimes in the low angle from which the northern sun sends rays into our aging eyes. 

I've had my mother-in-law, Carol Waldron, in mind, along with memories of shared holidays, all fast receding into the distant past. I’ve had something of a celebration for her, in fact. This is done in two ways, both which would probably amuse her. The first, and I’ve already talked about this one, is by wearing her 1970’s coat to the gym or anywhere convention doesn't require anything more than utility.  Despite the best efforts of the beautiful people—and don’t get me wrong—I’m in awe of their skill at self-presentation—I never looked anywhere near that good on my best young day—I still claim the right to wear an old coat sometimes. (Could it be the next frontier on the road to gender equality, the right to not give a damn about appearances?)

I suggested to Chris—who has been enjoying his time in our kitchen (working on his Palmdale Punjabi dinners)-- that he, for a change, try his hand at baking a batch of his Mother’s cookies for the holiday meal. This Christmas, in our case, was minimally attended.  My husband’s brother Nick would come up from Maryland, but he too would remember--and eat too many--of Carol’s cookies. Then we’d all have a sugar-induced spell of recollection about our clan as it was long ago in those long gone days of 20th Century yesteryear.

The recipe is titled Cowboy Cookies—and I think that says as much about the probable time of origin as anything.  The brand new media television thrived on cowboy shows, and boomer kids like me were crazy about Roy Rodgers and Dale Evans.

 (Carol, Springfield, MA H.S. Valedictorian)

Mid-1950’s, when all those educated young women were expected to morph into docile homemakers, Carol, the ex-chemistry major, would bake this recipe by the gross. She did so, too, and far too often, much to the detriment of everyone's waistline, but let no one say she was not enacting "Mom."

 A friend recently tasted one of these cookies and said she thought they were the original Tollhouse© recipe. These are nothing like the now fashionable gigantic, soggy, under-baked and laden with too much everything "cookie" of today. 

Cowboy Cookies deliver a balanced mixture of dough and additive. They are thoroughly baked. Although soft and gooey upon first emergence from the oven, they get even better after cooling overnight, becoming crunchy and buttery crisp along the edges.

   

 This Christmas, Chris used what we had in the cupboard, substituting about 1/2 cup brown flour for some of the oatmeal, which we’d run out of. And of course, following our taste-buds, we had Hershey’s© Special Dark chocolate chips and local black walnuts from one of the nearby farm markets for the gussying up.  

Cowboy Cookies

Sift together:

2 cups flour

1 tsp. soda

½ tsp. baking powder

In a separate bowl , cream together:

1 cup softened butter

1 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar

Once that’s fully integrated, slowly beat in two eggs.

Next, combine dry and wet mixtures.

Finally, add 2 cups of oatmeal, a bit at a time, and then work in the (chocolate) chips, nuts of whatever kind. Drop by teaspoon onto greased/parchment cookie sheet and bake for 350 degrees for 15 minutes.  Rack or paper cool. 

(Warning: sugar shock possible with unchecked consumption.) 

Happy New Year!
~~Juliet Waldron

http://www.bookswelove.net/authors/waldron-juliet/

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004HIX4GS

https://www.facebook.com/jwhistfic/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel

Syllabub & Candy Memories

  http://amzn.to/1YQziX0  A Master Passion   ISBN: 1771456744
Alexander and his Betsy

A delicious 18th Century treat with which our Founders--and their wives--were entirely familiar.  I'm sure the Hamiltons served this at their dinner parties, especially during the spring, when the cows have freshened and the cream is at its thickest.

Here's a recipe, a variant of many to be found on the web or, yesterday, in what are now historic cookbooks. 

1/4 cup sweet white wine such as Riesling or Gewurztraminer, or, if you want it less sweet, Chablis
2 TBS Brandy (Golden Brandy gives a paler color)
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 vanilla bean seeded
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 tsp. lemon zest


4 wine glasses

In a small nonreactive bowl, mix wine, sugar, zest from lemon and the vanilla bean. Let this stand over night in the fridge.

12 hours later, remove the vanilla bean. Using another chilled bowl, take the heavy cream and  using a whisk + elbow grease or an electric mixer, whip 'till it forms soft peaks. (Take care not to over work it and turn the cream into butter.)  When the peaks form, spoon into glasses and let stand.

As the picture above, I use wine glasses (these look like Colonial Williamsburg glasses to me) filled 1/2 to 3/4 full, then covered with plastic film and stored in the fridge. After an overnight, the mixture will separate, leaving a layer of cream on top of a liquid. The longer it stands, the more separation you get. The bottom liquid will show the color of whatever wine + brandy was used. Use any brandy you like.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/mozarts-wife/id442899071?mt=11

This is a modern recipe. No fridge or plastic film in the 18th Century. They simply stood the glasses on a table, covering them with a clean cloth to keep would-be buggy diners from drowning themselves. The acidic nature of the dessert would preserve it at room temperature for some days. I've seen some 18th Century sieve gizmos which they used to lift the head of cream from the glass, then they'd serve the syllabub as a two-parter, using the wine/brandy liquid for a chaser.  (I prefer to spoon a little of both out of a wine glass, and then, child-like, slap the cream straight down on my tongue. (Many years ago I knew a little girl who turned her jelly sandwiches jelly side down each time she took a bite. I think I got the idea of eating Syllabub that way from her.) Another method was to use the cream as a topper for fresh fruit, while enjoying the liquid in a separate glass.

***

A Sugary Digression:  

In my grade school days, I lived in Skaneateles, NY, where we were snowed in for what felt like eons. Sometimes I entertained myself with a candy recipe book that had been written before World War One; it had my Grandma Liddle's name inside the front flap. 

The directions said things like: "Take a piece of butter about the size of your thumb..." (My thumb? Your thumb? All of my thumb? To the first joint?") I'd just have to guess. This was, in a way, a great cook book for a kid in a way because it made me think and also try to learn more about ingredients. I'd also ask my adults questions, something that my parents thought was mostly a good thing.

What I created sometimes worked--consistency is a hob-goblin of mine--but sometimes I'd end up with chocolate cement or--if you yanked it off the fire prematurely-- syrup. The last could be poured over ice cream, which wasn't a bad option, but let's face it, a lump of sugar + cocoa makes a great "gateway" drug for most kids. It wasn't a bad way to spend some of a snowy Sunday.
                                                              ***

Syllabub is very sweet, so something plain, like crackers or tinned biscuits or good homemade rolls may be served with it.  You'll often see plates of these items in period pictures of Syllabub parties.

The excerpt which follows is taken from Hannah Wooley's "The Queen-like Closet" recipe book, (London; 1674)

Take one Quart of cream, one Pint and an half of Wine or Sack, the Juice of two Limons with some of the Pill, and a Branch of Rosemary, sweeten it very well, then put a little of this Liquor and alittel of the Cream into a Basin and beat them till it froth, put that Froth into the Sillibub pot and so do till the Cream and Wine be done, then cover it close and set it in a cool Cellar for twelve hours, then eat it.

This lady appears to be having her arm yanked right out of her sleeve in this  

scene depicting events in Richardson's 1740 novel, "Pamela." 

I do approve of this recipe's final instruction. 


~~Juliet Waldron

See all my historical novels @

http://www.bookswelove.net/authors/waldron-juliet/

http://www.julietwaldron.com

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004HIX4GS

https://www.facebook.com/jwhistfic/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel

http://amzn.com/B0098CSH5Q