#historic cooking

[benjhawkins]

Behold, the worst food I cooked this summer:

DANDYFUNK

A “dessert” made by sailors from rations of molasses and hardtack and baked until “brown and bubbly”.

George Boughton tells us the processes:

“A rough canvas bag was made into which hard ship's biscuits were placed; then we hammered the bag on the windlass until the contents were converted into what we termed flour. Next we courted the cook, offering to "wash up" for him all his greasy slushy pans, … in return for which voluntary service we secured a pinch of ground ginger, and the loan of a shallow square baking pan... We emptied the contents of the canvas bag, ... mixed this with slush purloined from the tin containing the awful stuff we used for greasing down the masts...we added a little salt water until a lovely dough resulted, when it was flattened out in the baking-pan, and placed in the oven until nicely browned.”

From Seafaring, by George Boughton, 1926

It tasted like molasses-scented sand! But I suppose after weeks of salt horse and hardtack dandyfunk would really be a treat.

[libralthinking]

Babylonian Stew.

[astraedax]

Historic Cooking

Nasaump

Nasaump is a traditional Wampanoag dish that is made from dried corn, local berries, and nuts. It is boiled in water until it thickens, and is similar to a porridge or oatmeal. 1 1/2 cups grits or cornmeal* 1 cup strawberries, raspberries, blueberries or a combination of all three 1/2 crushed walnuts, hazelnuts, sunflower seeds or a combination of all three 1 quart water Maple syrup or sugar to taste (optional) Combine cornmeal, berries, crushed nuts, and the optional sweetener in a pot of water and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat to medium and cook, stirring frequently, for 15 minutes-20 mins (*cornmeal will cook faster than grits).

Samp

This recipe is the English version of Nasaump. The word samp is a simplified English version of the word nasaump.

This description comes from the 1600s book "Two Voyages to New England", by John Josselyn:

It is light of digestion, and the English make a kind of Loblolly of it to eat with Milk, which they call Sampe; they beat it in a Morter, and sift the flower out of it; the remainder they call Hominey, which they put into a Pot of two or three Gallons, with Water, and boyl it upon a gentle Fire till it be like a Hasty Puden; they put of this into Milk, and so eat it.

Modern Version

2 cups coarse corn grits 4 cups water 1 cup milk ¼ cup sugar

Bring water to a boil in large saucepan with a heavy bottom. Add the corn grits and stir. Simmer until they are soft, about 10 minutes, and the water has been absorbed. Serve with milk and sugar.

Curd Fritters

Curds are a soft cheese like cottage cheese or ricotta. These fritters are a lot like thin pancakes or crepes. This recipe is from the 1594 cookbook "The Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin" (pp. 47-48):

Take the yolks of ten Egs, and breake them in a pan, and put to them one handful Curdes and one handful of fine flower, and sttraine them all together, and make a batter, and if it be not thicke ynough, put more Curdes in it, and salt to it. Then set it on the fyre in a frying pan, with such stuffe as ye will frie them with, and when it is hot, with a ladle take part of your batter, and put of it into the panne, and let it run as smal as you can, and stir then with a sticke, and turne them with a scummer, and when they be fair and yellow fryed, take them out, and cast Sugar upon them, and serve them foorth.

Modern Version

5 eggs curds (ricotta, cottage or other soft cheese) wheat or corn flour salt cooking oil or butter sugar

Make a thin batter with the eggs and equal amounts of curds and flour. Season with salt. Heat a small amount of cooking oil in your frying pan. When the oil is hot, pour in the batter and tip the pan to make the batter spread very thin (that’s what “let it run as small as you can” in the recipe means). They should be like crepes. When brown on one side, use your knife to flip them over or slide them onto a plate and flip them over into the pan. Add more oil to the pan when needed. Serve with sugar sprinkled on the top if you wish.

Turkey Sobaheg

Sobaheg is the Wampanoag word for stew. Like most stews, this dish is easily adapted to seasonal ingredients. The ground nuts help to thicken the sobaheg. Variations of this dish are still made in Wampanoag country today.

1/2 pound dry beans (white, red, brown or spotted kidney-shaped beans) 1/2 pound white hominy corn or yellow samp or coarse grits 1 pound turkey meat (legs or breast, with bone and skin) 3 quarts cold water 1/4 pound green beans, trimmed and cut into 1 inch-lengths 1/2 pound winter squash, trimmed and cubed 1/2 cup raw sunflower seed meats, pounded to a course flour (or pounded walnuts) Dried onion and/or garlic to taste Clam juice or salt to taste (optional)

Combine dried beans, corn, turkey, seasonings and water in a large pot. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, turn down to a very low simmer, and cook for about 2 1/2 hours. Stir occasionally to be certain bottom is not sticking. When dried beans are tender, but not mushy, break up turkey meat, removing skin and bones. Add green beans and squash, and simmer very gently until they are tender.

Add sunflower or nut flour, stirring until thoroughly blended.

Boiled Bread

Boiled bread is a small patty made mostly of cornmeal with crushed nuts and berries added in. It is dropped in a pot of boiling water and when done, rises to the top. 1 quart slightly boiled water 1/2 cup cornmeal 1/2 cup corn flour 1/2 cup dried cranberries, blueberries, and/or currants 1/2 cup crushed nuts or seeds (walnuts, hazelnuts or sunflower seeds) Maple syrup or sugar to taste (optional) Combine all ingredients in large bowl and mix thoroughly. After mixing, slowly add a spoonful at a time of slightly boiled water. When the mix is thick enough to be sticky, shape round patties (about 3 inches in diameter and 1/2 inch thick). Return water to slight rolling boil and drop in 1 or 2 patties, carefully making sure they do not stick to the bottom. Remove breads when they begin to float.

Stewed Pompion

This is a delicious recipe for pumpkin, known as "pompions" to English people in the 17th century, as were all squash. It is one of the earliest written recipes from New England, from a book written by John Josselyn, a traveler to New England in the 1600's. (John Josselyn, "Two Voyages to New England").

John Josselyn called this recipe a “standing dish” suggesting that this sort of pumpkin dish was eaten everyday or even at every meal. He called it “ancient” because English housewives had cooked this recipe in New England for a long time.

The Ancient New England standing dish. But the Housewives manner is to slice them when ripe, and cut them into dice, and so fill a pot with them of two or three Gallons, and stew them upon a gentle fire a whole day, and as they sink, they fill again with fresh Pompions, not putting any liquor to them; and when it is stew'd enough, it will look like bak'd Apples; this they Dish, putting Butter to it, and a little Vinegar, (with some Spice, as Ginger) which makes it tart like an Apple, and so serve it up to be eaten with Fish or Flesh: It provokes Urine extreamly and is very windy.

Modern Version

4 cups of cooked (boiled, steamed or baked) squash, roughly mashed 3 tablespoons butter 2 to 3 teaspoons cider vinegar 1 or 2 teaspoons ground ginger 1/2 teaspoon salt

In a saucepan over medium heat, stir and heat all the ingredients together. Adjust seasonings to taste, and serve hot.

[alpaca-clouds]

How to cook in a medieval setting

Alright. As some of the people, who follow me for a longer while know... I do have opinions about cooking in historical settings. For everyone else a bit of backstory: When I was still LARPing, I would usually come to LARP as a camp cook, making somewhat historically accurate food and selling it for ingame coin. As such I know a bit about how to cook with a historical set up. And given I am getting so much into DnD and DnD stories right now, let me share a bit for those who might be interested (for example for stories and such).

🍲Cooking at Home

First things first: For the longest time in history most people did not have actual kitchens. Because actual kitchens were rather rare. Most people cooked their food over their one fireplace at home, which looked something like what you see above. There was something made of metal hanging over the fireplace. At times this was on hinges and movable, at times it was set in place. You could hang pots and kettles over it. When it came to pans, people either had a mount they would put over the fire or some kind of grid they could easily put into place there with some sourts of mounts (like the two metal thingies you can see above).

If you have a modern kitchen, you are obviously used to cook on several cooktops (for most people it is probably four of them), while in this historical you obviously only had one fire. Of course, as you can also see in the picture above, you could often put two smaller pots over the flames or put in a pan onto the fire additionally. But yes, the way we cook in modern times is very different.

Because of this a lot of people often ate stews and soups of sort. You could make those in just one pot - and often could eat from the same stew for days. In a lot of taverns the people had an "everything stew" going, which worked on the idea that everyone just brought their food leftovers, which were all put into one pot everyone would eat from.

Now, some alert readers might have also noticed something: What about bread and pastries? If you only have one fireplace and no oven, how did people make bread?

Well, there were usually three different methods for this. The most common one was communal ovens. Often people had one communal oven in a neighborhood. Especially in a village there might just be a communal oven everyone would just put their bread in to bake. (Though often this oven would only be fired up once or twice a week.)

The second version to deal with this some people used was a sort of what we today call a dutch oven. A pot made either of metal or clay with a lit you would put into the hot coals and then put bread or pastries into that, baking it like that.

There was also a version where people just baked bread in pans on the fire, rotating the bread during the baking process. At least some written accounts we have seem to imply. (Never tried this method, though. I have no idea how this might work. My camp bread was mostly done in dutch ovens or as stickbread.)

Keep in mind that the fireplace at home was very important for the people in historical times. Because it was their one source of warmth in the house.

🏕️ Cooking at Camp

Technically speaking cooking at camp is not that different - with the exception of course that you have to drag all your supplies along. And while in Baldur's Gate 3 and most other videogames you can carry around several sets of full-plate armor and several pounds of ingredients so that dear Gale can whip something up... In real life as an adventurer running around you need to make decisions on what to take along.

If you have read Lord of the Rings, you might remember how many people have criticized Sam for actually dragging all his cooking supplies along and how sad he was for not being able to cook for most of the time, because they were very limited in taking ingredients along.

So, yes, if you are an adventurer who is camping out in the open, you will probably need to do a lot of hunting and gathering to eat during your travels. You can take food for a couple of days along, but not for a lot.

A special challenge is of course, that while you can cook food for several days when you are at homes, you do not want to drag along a prepared stew for several days. So usually you will cook in smaller batches.

A lot of people who were journeying would often just take along one or two pots along.

So, what would you eat as an adventurer travelling around while trying to save the world from some evil forces? Well, it would depend on the time of the year of course. You would probably hunt yourself some food. For example hares, birds or squirrels. Mostly small things you can eat within one or two days. You do not want to drag along half a dead deer. In the warm months you might also forrage for all sorts of greens. You also can cook with many sorts of roots. Of course you can also always look into berries and other fruits you might find.

Things you might bring with you might be salt and some spices. A good thing to bring along would be herbs for tea, too, because I can tell you from experience that water you might have gotten from a river does not always taste very well - and springs with fresh water are often not accessible.

Now, other than what you can access the basic ideas of camping fires and cooking with them has not changed in the last few thousand years. While modern people camping usually have a car nearby and hence will have access to a lot of ingredients. But the general ideas of how to build a fire and put a pot over it... has not really changed.

So, yeah.

Just keep in mind that for the most part in historical settings until fairly recently, there was not much terms of proper kitchens. People cooked over an open fire and hence had to get at times ingenius about it.

[buildoblivionthenwewilltalk]

🟩⬛️ queens ⬛️🟩

[thejoyofseax]

Why We Can't Have Medieval Food

I noted in a previous post that I'd "expand on my thinking on efforts to reproduce period food and how we’re just never going to know if we have it right or not." Well, now I have 2am sleep?-never-heard-of-it insomnia, so let's go.

At the fundamental level, this is the idea that you can't step in the same river twice. You can put your foot down at the same point in space, and it'll go into water, but that's different water, and the bed of the river has inevitably changed, even a little, from the last time you did so.

Our ingredients have changed. This is not just because we can't get the fat from fat-tailed sheep in Ireland, or silphium at all anywhere, although both of those are true. But the aubergine you buy today is markedly different to the aubergine that was available even 40 years ago. You no longer need to salt aubergine slices and draw out the bitter fluids, which was necessary for pretty much all of the thing's existence before (except in those cultures that liked the bitter taste). The bitterness has been bred out of them. And the old bitter aubergine is gone. Possibly there are a few plants of it preserved in some archive garden, or a seed bank, or something, but I can't get to those.

We don't really have a good idea of the plant called worts in medieval English recipes. I mean, we know (or we're fairly sure) it was brassica oleracea. But that one species has cultivars as distinct as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, Savoy cabbage, kohlrabi, and gai lan (list swiped from Wikipedia). And even within "cabbage" or "kale", you have literally dozens of varieties. If you plant the seeds from a brassica, unless you've been moderately careful with pollination, you won't get the same plant as the seeds are from. You can crossbreed brassicas just by planting them near each other and letting them flower. And of course there is no way to determine what varietal any medieval village had, a very high likelihood that it was different to the village next door, and an exceedingly high chance that that varietal no longer exists. Further, it only ever existed for a few tens of years - before it went on cross-breeding into something different. So our access to medieval worts (or indeed, cabbage, kale, etc) is just non-existant.

Some other species within the brassica genus are as varied. Brassica rapa includes oilseed rape, field mustard, turnip, Chinese cabbage, and pak choi.

We have an off-chance, as it happens, of getting almost the same kind of apple as some medieval varieties, because apples can only be reproduced for orchard use by grafting, which is essentially cloning. Identification through paintings, DNA analysis, and archaeobotany sometimes let us pin down exactly which apple was there. But the conditions under which we grow those apples are probably not the same as the medieval orchard. Were they thinned? When were they harvested? How were they stored? And apples are pretty much the best case.

Medieval wheat was practically a different plant. It was far pickier about where it would grow, and frequently produced 2-4 grains per stalk. A really good year had 6-8. In modern conditions, any wheat variety with less than 30 grains per stalk would be considered a flop.

Meats are worse. Selective breeding in the last century has absolutely and completely changed every single species of livestock, and if you follow that back another five centuries, some of them would be almost unrecognisable. Even our heritage breeds are mostly only about 200 years old.

Cheese, well. Cheese is dependent on very specific bacteria, and there are plenty of conditions where the resulting cheese is different depending on whether it was stored at the back or front of the cave. Yogurts, quarks, skyrs, etc, are also live cultures, and almost certainly vary massively. (I have a theory about British cheese here, too, which I'll expand on in a future post)

So, even before you go near the different cooking conditions (wood, burnables like camel and cow dung, smoke, the material and condition of cooking pots), we just can't say with any reliability that the food we're making now is anything like medieval people produced from the same recipe. We can't even say that with much reliability over a century.

Under very controlled conditions, you could make an argument for very specific dishes. If you track down a wild mountain sheep in Afghanistan, and use water from a local spring, and salt from some local salt mine, then you can make a case that you can produce something fairly close to the original ma wa milh, the water-and-salt stew that forms the most basic dish in Arabic cookery. But once you start introducing domestic livestock, vegetables, or even water from newer wells, you're now adrift.

It is possible that some dishes taste exactly the same, by coincidence. But we can't determine that. We can't compare the taste of a dish from five years ago, let alone five hundred, because we're only just getting to a state where we can "record" a taste accurately. Otherwise it's memory and chance.

We've got to be at peace with this. We can put in the best efforts we can, and produce things that are, in spirit, like the medieval dishes we're reading about. But that's as good as it gets.

[poppy-metal]

need prince!art making love to his arranged marriage wife and the coupling has to have at least one witness or two and those witnesses are tashi and patrick. tashi, who's arts childhood love and who he thought he'd always marry, but she didn't have the proper status - and patrick who's arts best friend and a rake, an important member of society, and the three of them are already entwined with eachother. you were a new part - a part of the equation none of them accounted for - but it's the only way art can make himself go through with it. he can't have tashi and patrick hating him, he needs to know they still love him, he needs them guiding him on how to be a good husband to you and make love to you.

and you're just a navie little princess - virginal and innocent on your wedding night. confused by the close relationship art seems to have with his two witnesses - embarrassed at how involved they seem to be - but wet nonetheless, because tashi is so knowledgeable of a woman's body - knows exactly where to tell art to touch you to get your body ready to take him inside you. and patricks intense presence has your whole body flushing, his hot gaze on your husbands body and on yours and his filthy words - it isn't how you expected your wedding night to go. but you think you're glad it happened this way.

[the-golden-vanity]

Born to be Hanged by Keith Thomson, is, without a doubt, the "dudes rock"-ingest book I've read all year. An account of one of the most ambitious raids of the Golden Age of Piracy taken primarily from the diaries of six men who participated in the voyage, it was a nice change of pace from the tales of shipwreck and tragedy I often gravitate towards. I'd like to read more books like this (well-informed and engaging accounts of the Golden Age of Piracy), so if you have any recommendations, please let me know!

In celebration of finishing the book, I also made a sweet avocado dish described by one of the book's protagonists, the seafaring naturalist William Dampier, in his accounts of his voyages around the world. Tasting History with Max Miller describes this as an early form of guacamole, but it's got a much more dessert-y flavor profile. This one's definitely getting added to my regular cooking rotation.

[petermorwood]

Wow-Wow Sauce

For @redwineand12gaugeshells... :->

In fact that bottled sauce (and nervousnigels) no longer exists, and in any case its principal ingredients of (squints) horseradish and mustard are way off base.

Wow Wow sauce was meant to go with boiled beef, and since a major ingredient was the meat's broth *, it was more like a pan gravy made at the end of cooking, than something intended to go into / come out of a jar in the preserves cupboard.

* 1817 was well before stock / bouillon cubes, however "portable soup" was a Known Thing and could be a possible alternative. The recipe is specific about using fresh broth, but here's how to make portable soup, because You Never Know.

Real Wow Wow sauce had no hyphen, no sulphur, no saltpetre and definitely no grated wahoonie, though some "real" ingredients of the Discworld version - mangoes, figs, asafoetida, anchovy - suggest Terry was taking inspiration from labels in his own kitchen, such as those on HP Sauce, Worcestershire Sauce and Yorkshire Relish.

*****

Dr Kitchiner's "The Cook's Oracle" is available online from Gutenberg (the 1833 American adaptation) as well as a PDF of the 1822 UK Third edition from Internet Archive.

Here's his recipe - whose title, for extra interest, includes the original name for what became "Bully Beef":

The good doctor's "pickled cucumbers" would have been vinegared like cornichons or gherkins, not brined like dill pickles. In addition, pickled walnuts are easier to find than they used to be; even the Tesco supermarket chain carries them...

...as well as mushroom ketchup.

You'd probably still need to make the other herb vinegars and the shallot wine (based on dry sherry), but those are easy, just a matter of steeping the herbs in the liquid for a week or so then straining off and bottling the flavoured fluid.

Another useful ingredient for period cooking is anchovy sauce, which is less, er, emphatic than full-on anchovy essence. You could always scale up if you like the taste.

This also has the advantage of being a pleasant - if you like fishiness - sauce in its own right; try a teaspoonful in a tablespoonful of EV olive oil then tossed with hot pasta. Yum...!

This one's from the same company as the mushroom ketchup and the packing clearly emphasises their "period-ness" (is that a word?) The anchovy sauce is a bit harder to find, but well worth tracking down.

*****

Finally, here's a Youtube short of Wow Wow sauce being made and sampled. It looks entirely acceptable, like a cross between a thin chutney and a thick sauce, and would be, to use Dr Kitchiner's own word, "piquante".

As a side-note, that by-play with tinned corned beef was a bit pointless, since its texture and flavour are both utterly unlike beef that's been slowly, gently boiled (simmered, TBH) with halved onions, carrots, root veggies etc.

Use shin or silverside; the magic tenderiser for those cheap cuts is Time (or a pressure cooker) - though you can also add a sprig or two of Thyme if you want...

[heycarrots]

There’s been a lot of discourse about the nature of James and Miranda’s relationship. There’s even been a lot of discussion on my podcast about it. One thing I want to make clear is that my podcast is a platform for discussion on all points of view. I’m not going to agree, 100%, with everything that’s said, but it makes the views of my guests no less valid. There’s no right or wrong, here, because this is art and therefore, it is subject to interpretation.

My intent, however, is to attempt to get as close to the original intent of the actors as possible because we look at a show or a film or a play as going through several layers of distillation. Each level purifies the intended narrative leaving its truest essence.

When we make a reduction sauce using an alcohol of some kind, let’s say a red wine, the heat applied to it burns off things we don’t need for flavor. You’re never going to get drunk off of red wine reduction because there’s almost no alcohol left in it. That all gets burned off, leaving only the flavor components, which is what we wanted all along, anyway. We want that extra element that enriches the flavor of the steak, by adding nuance.

So let’s take apart that meal.

We start with the birth of the idea. The story kicks around in an author’s head, trying to get out, growing bigger and more persistent until it outgrows the confines of the mental box inspiration is stored in and has to be let out. That idea, that’s the cow.

The author raises that idea, feeds it, watches it grow, and then, ultimately slaughters it. That sounds awful, but once you have that idea pulsing, growing, evolving and then finally commit the final draft on paper, it is a kind of death. The life of the story comes to an end and it becomes memorialized in a mausoleum. Readers will come to visit, spend time with it, lay down flowers, cherish it, and mourn its passing.

The next level is adaptation. That’s the steak. There are many ways you can slice the story, large roasts encompassing the whole story or a smaller, hyper-focused character study fillet mignon.

A writers room gets hold of the cow and carves it up. They choose what gets cooked and what gets tossed. A GREAT group of writers saves the bones. They take in the entire supporting structure of the piece and while the whole story may not make it onto the screen, they will have slow roasted the bones for a stock. When you watch a show like Black Sails, where themes are introduced that won’t fully be explained or explored until several seasons later, that’s what that is. It is the stock being used to flavor the whole dish. You’ve distilled the entire cow to its purest essence and so every scene, every line of dialogue, every acting choice, encompasses the entirety of the story. A line from episode one is defined by knowledge of the finale and in regard to dialogue, defined by an actors’ knowledge of a character’s backstory. There are many writers rooms who are creating the bones of the story as they go, which means they aren’t starting with a rich stock. You can’t trace back character motivations or choices to begin with because those motivations changed throughout production.

Black Sails, again, isn’t one of those shows. Steinberg and Levine came into the writers room with their stock pot full and sloshing, spilling story everywhere. The richness of the details they were laying can make season one a bit hard to consume unless you are ready for a story on that level. Viewers need to come to the table with some bread to sop up all those character details because we WILL need them later.

Over the course of finalizing scripts and blocking out episodes, the steak is cooked. Like any great steak, this story is medium rare. More juice comes out with every bite. It’s what makes the show infinitely rewatchable. It continues to cook on the plate, but because it wasn’t overdone, it never dries out.

When the actors get ahold of it, that’s the reduction sauce we were talking about. That sauce provides nuance and flavor. That’s the emotion. A line of dialogue on a page is just ink. It’s nothing until it’s spoken aloud. And like any bit of language in this world, it’s subject to interpretation. In this case, it’s the actor who does the interpreting.

I spoke on the podcast about the art of subtext and how huge a role it plays in Black Sails. One example we used is Jane Eyre. It’s one of the most frequently adapted novels in the English language and with each adaptation, we get a new version of our characters. The most volatile and subject to change is Rochester. There are MANY versions of Rochester that I find appalling (including the original beast in the book), but each actor has formed him into something else, based on their performance. Toby Stephens takes Rochester and turns him into a silly tragic romantic, broken many times over by a society he never really fits into, despite the status of his birth. He connects with Ruth Wilson’s Jane because she fully and happily inhabits that space on the fringes that Rochester thinks he needs to climb out of. Jane takes his hand on the outside of the wall, turns him away from the guarded palace and shows him the wild world that was at his back this whole time.

This is what Toby Stephens, Luke Arnold, Louise Barnes, Zethu Dlomo, and really all the actors for whom their subtextual choices make them reflect like prisms, have done with their performances.

In the final distillation, character motivations and emotions are finalized by the actor. Writers can pontificate, the source material lies dead in its lovely tomb, but stories live and breathe by their storytellers.

What we’re left with is Toby’s face telling the world how deeply Flint loves Silver. Every single choice tells this story.

We’re left with Luke showing us how much Silver is repressing in his feelings for Flint. Luke’s face shows us an incredible depth of feeling and a door slamming shut.

We’re left with the incredible intimacy between James and Miranda, which speaks of a decade of shared physical intimacy. There’s an openness, a freeness to it until the moment in episode 3 when Miranda learns that James has found the Urca and is leaving soon to pursue it. She gives some of it away when she says “I thought I’d have you all to myself”. She is mourning the loss of intimacy that she only gets in short windows of time. They aren’t strained because James isn’t attracted to her, but because he’s rarely there. She has him for a few days at a time before he’s off on another hunt. The coldness starts from the moment he tells her he’s leaving in a few days because I believe she thinks he won’t be coming back, that this is the hunt he won’t survive and she’ll finally have lost both James and Thomas. From the moment Richard Guthrie darkens her door, she’s looking for a way to weaponize him and get them out. For her, it’s a race against the clock and she’s willing to sacrifice a bit of her relationship with James in the present to secure happiness for them in the future.

This is also why James still has sex with her before leaving, even though he’s furious for her reading Meditations to Richard. This is how they connect. They connected through physical intimacy in the flashbacks, as well. Him stroking her thumb in the carriage before the kiss. Tactile contact to seal their understanding of each other. Miranda bracing her hands on his chest during important moments in the Hamilton’s home, something she also does to Thomas, to show physical connection, physical intimacy. Miranda thrives on physical touch.

To think that, for 10 years, James is lying there like an object for Miranda to use, is, to me, short sighted. To think that James doesn’t love Miranda outside of a group, is also ignoring the fact that, 10 years on, James will not leave on a hunt (angry as they both are) without physically connecting with her, trying so hard to reach beyond his anger and the wound freshly opened from sight of that book he’s chosen not to look at for probably the better part of those 10 years. The way his hands hover over her back after she comes and he desperately wants to be with her in that moment, like the best of their moments, but he just can’t, speaks to the depth of his love for her.

So many fans of the show point to this sad sex scene as one of the most important character moments for James and Miranda, but I consistently come to the opposite conclusions about WHY it’s important and what we learn from it, because I’m taking my cues from the actor’s choices, not the director or the writers. On the page, in plain ink, he hates having sex with her. Toby and Louise show us, however, that they are trying to recapture a thing that is fleeting, reaching out to each other to patch up an old wound from which the scab has been picked off, leaving it seeping and raw.

From Toby’s performance, regardless of the words he uses years later to describe it, we see not a character who “loves men” or a character who “loves women”, but a character who LOVES. I don’t see Flint defining that love in terms of boxes and parameters. He’s a character who must be coaxed out, but then loves without reason, without a safety net, as he proves with his love of Silver. As was also referenced by a guest on the podcast, he places a sword in Silver’s hand and says “do it”.

Anyway, this post got away from me and took several turns, but the love between James and Miranda being dismissed by so many in the fandom has been bugging me for a while and I just needed to emotionally vomit on tumblr.

[heavenlymorals]

The Camp Girls: A Pedestal of Morality

Warning: This post contains the exploration of period-typical attitudes that can border on sexism, as well as spoilers for RDR2.

RDR2 is a game, that for the most part, values its historical setting in the sense that the setting actually matters to the story and the characters. The characters are not only reacting to the historical attitudes, but they are a part of it as well. Of course, Red Dead 2 is a bit more tame in some aspects of 1899 America, especially compared to RDR1, which makes SURE to remind you of the prejudices of 1911 America.

For this post, however, I want to talk about more domestic attitudes that were a part of the gang- to be more specific, I want to talk about the Cult of Domesticity or the Cult of Womanhood and how that idea relates back to Dutch's gang.

The Cult of Domesticity or the Cult of Womanhood was an idea that was popularized in the 19th century by the Victorian middle class that spread to America and explained, encouraged, and pushed specific gender roles and cultural ideas to the masses. As the name probably explained, this idea was pushed onto mainly women. There were two main aspects of it- the private sphere and the harbinger of morality.

The Private Sphere had everything to do with a woman's role in the house- hence the private sphere. The Private Sphere had everything to do with housekeeping, childrearing, being a good host, and overall creating a safe haven for the men in their lives. While the men had to deal with the public sphere, which was business, work, protection, etc., women took charge of the private sphere.

The morality aspect of it is about how women were expected to bring morals to the house. Men were expected to hold women in high regard and women provided sectors of emotional safety and humanity to men, as well as providing children with a moral code and instill them with manners.

This excerpt from usahistory.org explains it better than I can: "A TRUE MAN was concerned about success and moving up the social ladder. He was aggressive, competitive, and rational, and channeled all of his time and energy into his work. A TRUE WOMAN, on the other hand, was virtuous. Her four chief characteristics were piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. She was the great civilizer who created order in the home in return for her husband's protection, financial security, and social status."

Of course, men perpetuated this idea, but a lot of women also supported this model of living, believing it to be the way it should be. Writers like Sarah Hale published magazines that explained what should be the behaviors of a proper lady. Women's magazines like Godey's Lady's Book sold 150,000 copies in a year. Catherine Beecher was an advocate for bringing the women's sphere to the classroom in order to instill a proper moral code into their students.

But why does this matter? I mean, the camp girls aren't exactly the moral standard of womanhood in the 1800s. Mary Beth is a thief. Karen is a scam artist. Tilly ran with gangs and murdered a man. Abigail was an ex-prostitute and a thief. Grimshaw was probably all of those things combined at one point or another.

Well, you could argue that because they live unconventional lives, morality was a bit greyer, but overall, the women of the camp still, in one way or another, adhered to this idea regarding the cult of domesticity.

The private sphere and the public sphere definitely existed in the gang, which is why there were so few missions with the camp girls. The girls were mostly resigned to the "house" or to the camp. They worked to make the camp a livable place for the men who gave them protection and financial security.

It is a common sight seeing Tilly washing clothes, or Mary Beth and Karen sewing something, or Abigail wiping down tables, same as Grimshaw. There are all very domestic roles- while in camp, the women are almost always working, except for Molly and Sadie, while the men are almost always lounging around- typical of the 1800s home.

The girls mention this as well through interactions.

Tilly mentions how much she hates washing and mending the men's laundry and how she wishes the men could do their own laundry.

Karen tells Grimshaw to shut up because Grimshaw isn't the one feeding her, so she won't take her bullying.

Abigail screams how the men aren't being men because they couldn't protect Jack from being kidnapped. She also critiques Dutch's philosophy because it doesn't feed them.

Mary Beth is yelled at for not working in the camp as she should by Grimshaw.

There are more examples of this, but we will be here all day if I have to go through all of them.

Grimshaw is kinda obvious. The girls have to work to please this fierce dragon, who is always working. Arthur mentions in the entering Valentine mission whether or not Miss Grimshaw could spare them, showing how the general priority of the girls in the camp is domestic work.

We also know that the girls doing men's work is generally rare due to this one interaction with Karen- "Not so long ago, I was a damsel in distress. Now they got me protecting the men."

The now implies that this isn't a normal routine and that protecting the men is not something that she usually has to do.

So that was just the domestic aspect of it, but there is also the morality part of it.

I think the biggest representation of this is the mini-therapy sessions with the girls, telling you to be better and offering advice to what might make Arthur a better man, with Arthur being more comfortable opening up to them BECAUSE they are women and because he expects their morality to keep them from using such information to hurt him, which is something he has to be careful with when it comes to the men in the camp. But there are more representations of this.

There is Abigail begging John to put his old ways behind and to be a better man, a real man. There is Hosea speaking about Bessie, talking about how while she is in heaven, he will be looking up at her from hell, implying that Bessie had the moral compass that Hosea did not (the interaction also probably destroys the fandom's interpretation of Bessie and Annabelle being very active members in the gang, when that is most likely not the case). Even Mary, though not a camp girl, still acts like a moral harbinger to Arthur, telling him to be a better man and stop being an outlaw.

John has a line in Undead Nightmare that is a complete reference to this thought process: "Abigail, teach the boy right from wrong."

So what am I getting at here? What is the point of all of this? It seems like I am just going off on old historical attitudes, but what does this ultimately mean?

What it means is that Dutch allows women into the gang in order to dignify his ambitions.

Dutch likes to differentiate himself from the other gangs that still roamed in America. While the other gangs stole and robbed for fortune, Dutch robbed for his romantic ideals and to be a western Robinhood. While the other gangs had many men, Dutch had a few strong men whom he knew personally and trusted. While the other gangs targeted innocents, Dutch's gang targeted only those whom they saw as committing the sin of avarice.

Dutch wants to see himself as morally superior to other gangs and other criminals, so what better way to do it than allowing women into the gang? Women who suffered great misfortune in their life and had no other place to go. With women being a pedestal of morality back in that time, Dutch having women in his camp as a way to differentiate himself from other gangs- a way to show people that he is better than them.

Every other gang encountered in the game has no women.

"We are what we are. A bunch of desperados on the run. But with the women, a change of clothes, we're a choir, or a gang of pilgrims, or something."

See, that one line from Guarma from Dutch basically explains the whole concept. Without the women, they are desperate criminals, clinging onto nothing, but with the women, they become virtuous by association. But someone like Micah doesn't care about this virtue or morality because he explains that he would rather just be a criminal and run with a few strong men, which is what he does in the end.

The concept of the private sphere and the public sphere of the camp can also show that Dutch wants to dignify his gang by giving it a sense of civilization to make it truly like a home or family.

What an interesting idea, don't you think?

[the-merry-otter]

Making boar stew on a campfire

- Barossa medieval fair -

[clove-pinks]

A bit of Summer of 1812 Encampment on the River Raisin Battlefield National Park! There was a lot of field cooking (and even laundry boiling in a pot). The man wearing a shako was portraying a U.S. Army Sergeant dealing with the state militias, and he was a very entertaining character at he yelled at the ragtag assortment of Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky volunteers.

[blueshistorysims]

March 1934

Montgomery couldn’t remember the last time he felt this free, sighing lazily.

The woman’s voice, the one stroking his hair, laughed. “Don’t fall asleep on me now.”

“How can I when I am yer arms?”

She giggled.

“Besides,” he whispered, “this is a dream. Canna sleep in a dream.”

Edeline smiled. “If it is a dream, then it is a good one.”

“I wish I could stay here forever.”

She laughed again as he heard the cries of a baby.

He sat up, confused. “I hear a bairn.”

Edeline scoffed, and when he turned to face her, she was holding a baby girl with his red hair and blue eyes. “Well, I would hope so, considering Maggie is sitting right with us.”

“Maggie?”

“Our daughter, darling. You’re acting quite strange, you know.” She looked around, unfazed by his shocked expression. “Bernie! Come here!”

“Bernie? But-but-” He cut himself off the moment a boy of around fourteen ran toward the blanket, his face a mix of his and Edeline’s.

“Yes, Mum?”

“I think your father has some sort of temporary amnesia.”

Bernie turned to Montgomery. “Ya alright, Da?” He had a faint Scottish accent. 

The Scotsman stood up, looking back and forth. “This-this isn’t real. Yer not real. It’s only a dream.”

“Of course it’s not real, Montgomery,” a voice he recognized well replied, and he turned to see Samira with Miranda in her lap. “It’s only a dream.”

He panted heavily, trying to force himself awake.

He closed his eyes tightly until everything was black, but when he opened them, he found himself surrounded by darkness, and in front of him, his two dead wives, dressed like a cabaret act in a giant v-shaped glass in their favorite colors, red and green.

“Do you remember?” Samira asked. “The cabaret shows we used to go to in London? The girls dressed like this, didn’t they?”

Edeline smiled like a shark as the pair posed seductively. “We never went to shows like this when we were together. You only told me you had loved men when you proposed. Were you ashamed of your proclivities? That I, a sheltered English girl, could not understand the decadence of it all?”

He swallowed, equally disturbed and transfixed. “No, I-It’s not that. It weren’t like that. I… were ashamed of meself, wanted to lock that part of meself away from ya, from… everythin’.”

The women were suddenly embracing one another, still making intense eye contact. 

“I wonder if you would have left me if I had lived and you still had met Samira. You loved her passionately… until she died in your arms.”

Samira finally turned her head, gazing at Edeline with an emotion Montgomery didn’t recognize. “I always stared at her photographs. She was beautiful. Pale, blonde, thin… I’d wonder what I’d do if I ever met her.” She caressed the blonde woman’s face. “Do you think she would love me the way you did? Would she let me kiss her lips?” She whispered before kissing her gently.

Montgomery watched, entranced as his wives ravished one another with a creeping feeling of dread falling upon him as if he was privy to something he was not meant to see. 

Samira looked up from her neck, her dark brown eyes twinkling with malice. “How do you would tell her? Tell Edeline that you fell in love with her brother, and he doesn’t love you. That the only reason you have yet to take your life is because of some foolish wish that he will return those feelings, and you won’t be alone anymore—someone to hold you in your sleep and whisper soothing words when you have nightmares of your dead. All you have is your daughter. Our daughter.”

He opened his mouth and found he could not speak. He felt faint, his vision blurring, bleeding into color, and Montgomery found himself in his bedroom, held by Edeline as Samira watched with the same enigmatic expression from before.

“Hush now, Edeline whispered, “it shall be over soon. I have you in my arms.”

“But it’s not real.”

“It could be,” Samira mused. “Do you wish it?”

He did not answer, letting his two wives touch and kiss him as he closed his eyes. Perhaps he could enjoy it, enjoy them, even if he knew he was in some sort of dream or nightmare or somewhere in between. He felt their touch on his body and wondered how he’d managed five years of no romantic love. But then perhaps he hadn’t, thinking his quitting of everything that mattered to him, staying shut up in a house owned by a duke and duchess, who were supposed to be everything he opposed about the class system, but instead, he was hopelessly in love with one and cared too deeply for the other. 

The touch suddenly stopped, and he opened his eyes, his vision perfect for once, to see Edeline and Samira staring at him from the foot of his bed, looking exactly as they did when they perished. Blood covered Edeline’s chest and mouth, staining her olive green nightgown she loved so dearly as the blood from Samira’s navy skirt and legs dripped onto the floor. Overwhelming guilt racked his body as they stared with lifeless eyes, boring into his soul.

“It is funny your face was the last one we ever saw,” Edeline muttered.

“Do you want it to be real?” Samira asked again. 

“No-I dinna ken—aye,” he finally confessed.

He gasped awake, finding himself in his bedroom once more, the morning rays pouring in from the window. He was awake. The dream was over. But it was not a consolation, he quickly realized as tears welled up in his eyes, and he fell back into his bed, beginning to sob.

By the time Miranda, still in her nightgown, wandered into his room, looking for her father, Montgomery was completely unaware of anything else other than his hammering heart and aching cries. Miranda watched him, too shocked to do anything else.

[twrambling]

Puerto Rico x Ireland

very quick doodle.

Version where Ireland has no freckles and a fun fact (excuses as to why I ship them)

Did you know that a Puerto Rican man,

Pedro Albizu Campos

(this man)

helped with the Irish constitution?

Here's the wiki article that talks about him:

[alexanderpearce]

you guys have to try this recipe from 1788 it's fucking insanely good you don't even need any kind of stock the onions are that flavourful (from the english art of cookery by richard briggs)