From Country Kitchen May 2009

Finally, I meet someone who really should be a National Treasure, retired auctioneer Neil Lanham, custodian of all things East Anglian. Neil has spent 40 years recording the voices of Suffolk, the songs and the stories, especially his mother Ruby's stories. He collected 600 fragments of songs and stories and produced an archive of CDs and DVDs that preserve forever the old Suffolk. Neil travels throughout the county, and sometimes beyond, telling stories of his mother's life and the agricultural depression. He is a strong defender of the oral tradition: "Stories were not told for entertainment, but for a reason, they passed on wisdom." says Neil, adding: "People sang to keep the horses happy. The County is about its people, everything comes from people. Nothing comes from a book, it comes from people first."

Many of Neil's memories are based on the food they ate when he was a boy. "When I went to my grandparents, it was like the remains of the Mediaeval period," he says, "no electricity or water in the house. Everything was made in the house, when they killed a pig they ate everything; they treated the lard down, they ate the chitterlings. They never had fancy things like cornflakes. For breakfast we had half a pig's trotter, or 'kettle broth', old dry bread cut into cubes, hot water put on it, strained off, with a knob of butter, and pepper and salt, that was lovely. Or you had milk and sugar on it, my uncle used to call this 'Ferret's Sop', that was what he gave to his ferrets!"

Handwritten - from the past Neil fetches a copy of his book 'There's A Story My Mother Told. ' "It's all in the book," he says, before proudly shows me Grandmother Emily's handwritten collection of recipes. "She put everyone's name down next to their recipe. From the name she'd know how good the recipe was."

Neil's favourites were the Suffolk hams hanging from the ceiling, some a year old. "Home-cured, the recipe handed down, must have gone back to the Romans! There's no other taste like this in any other county, Suffolk sweet-cured ham. They were hung at Michaelmas, 11 th October in Suffolk, because we go by the Gregorian Calendar, and the ham wouldn't be eaten till 'haysel' time in the spring." I agree, modern hams aren't hung at all, people don't know what real ham tastes like. But the Gregorian Calendar' Neil chuckles, "Well, I'm an old Suffolk boy, a yokel. This shows how behind the times we are in Suffolk, but we preserve our traditions"

Felixstowe tart recipe

A recipe from Emily Pettit's handwritten recipe book, shown to me by her grandson Neil Lanham. Neil says that his mum, Ruby, used to laugh about Mrs. Beeton's cookery book; Ruby couldn't just go to a shop and buy ingredients, as money was tight in the 1920s' Suffolk countryside. The recipe is credited to Kate Warren which meant Ruby knew that it would be good. They ate well, real country food, and nothing was wasted.

110g (4oz) cornflour 110g (4oz) plain flour

1 tsp of baking powder

1 tbsp of caster sugar 75g (30z) butter

1 egg, beaten

Approx. 2 tbsp milk Raspberry jam (the best)

Topping

1 egg white, beaten 2 tbsp caster sugar

Sift the flours and the baking powder into a large bowl, add the sugar and rub in the butter. Add the egg and milk and mix together until you have a dough.
Then on a cold surface, roll out the dough to about the size of a dinner plate.
Emily's recipe calls for a dinner plate as the cooking dish, so if you're following this authentically, you'll need an enamel plate or some sort of oven-proof plate! Grease the plate and lay on the pastry. The edges should be slightly thicker, and crimp the edges with your thumb. Prick the centre of the dough with a fork. Emily baked the pastry until it was 'biscuit brown' in a hot oven, 220°C (425°F, gas 7). Remove and allow to cool, then fill with the raspberry jam. Beat the white of egg with the two tablespoons of sugar until stiff 'like snow'. Then swirl this over the jam, and scatter with a little more sugar. Return to a cool oven to set.

From the book by Neil Lanham 'There's a Story That My Mother Told'

Just inside the backdoor, on the right-hand side, was the dairy and then beyond that on the right-hand side was this little game cellar, and on the left was the big kitchen where we all used to eat. In the dairy either side there were long deal trestles where there were big skimming pans that they'd put the milk in and then they'd fleet the cream off. Mother used to keep the cream and once a week she would make butter with it in the churn. These big shallow pans were about 3ft. across.  The new ones were enamel, but her mother's were the old ones that were earthenware.  She would also use them all for curing hams. At the end of the room were two great big wooden safes with wire grilles on. Underneath there were always earthenware pickling troughs. In one she'd be pickling eggs to eat during the winter, when the hens weren't laying.  They used to pickle them in some stuff called 'waterglass' but you couldn't use that pot any more, because that used to put fur round the inside. You could only use it for eggs again. Once she'd put these eggs in this waterglass you couldn't boil them and eat them like fresh eggs, you could only use them for cooking. Eggs were most expensive then. We used to laugh about Mrs. Beeton's Cookery Book that said take so many eggs, because you just couldn't afford them then.  Eggs were really expensive, and so was a chicken. A chicken was a lot of money, that was more money then than that is now.  We used to eat all of it. Mum would put the chicken legs in boiling water, scald them and skin the scales off them and use them to make gravy with the giblets.

She used to buy a brisket or flank of beef, a whole one at a time, and put it in pickling bowls. It would keep it there for a month or two, and then she'd just cut a piece off
when we wanted it. It would be pickled in brine and then she just used to cook it so that we could have boiled beef and carrots. Things like refrigerators were unheard of but they had their own ways of keeping things. She also used to pickle ox-tongue and we always had one ready at Christmas to eat with a cured ham that she'd boil specially.

When we killed a pig, that used to be brought into the back kitchen and laid on a pig bench.  That was sliced right through in two halves and almost everything would be saved and eaten. The head and parts of the body would be cut up and made into brawn and sausages. Then there was the chitterlings. There were lovely fried. That's the pig's intestine but they had to be cleaned in salt water and turned a number of times. All the pig fat would be 'tried' down. They'd try it down into lard for cooking with, in a great big pan by heating it all up and Mother used to take the crispy bits that were left out of there and mix them with some currants in a pastry and make some nice little cakes. We called 'em rock cakes, they were very rich. Pig lard was not for dripping - it was for cooking with and pastry. Dripping generally comes from cooking a joint of beef, where you save all the fat and then you can have that for breakfast on toast with some pepper and salt. We also used to have what we called 'kettle broth'.  This was bread with hot water on it, strained off and then mixed with a bit of butter or dripping, pepper and salt or you could have milk on it and sugar instead as a milk sop, or ferret sop as Tickles named it.  You might have half a cold pig's trotter for breakfast and you'd peel the skin off and pick out the bits of meat in between.  Things like cornflakes and those manufactured things we never ever had.

If milk went sour Mother would drain it in muslin and she'd put currants in it sometimes to eat as a cream cheese.  I still have Mother's recipe book.  She didn't put everything in it as most things were carried in her head.  Absolutely nothing came out of a printed book.  Everything that she wrote in her recipe book she always wrote down the name of the person she got it from, she knew the source then, and how good that was.  She wouldn't ever have used a recipe like out of Mrs Beaton's book.

Mother's home cured hams were renowned everywhere and they'd all ask for her recipe, but she wouldn't give it away.  A chef we knew was doing a very special dinner in the war years in London and he kept coming up and plaguing Mother for one of her hams.  Eventually she let him have one.  After the dinner Lord Iveagh sought out the chef.  He went round afterwards to find the chef to see if he could buy some 'cause he said that was the best he'd ever tasted.  Hers was different from others.  It was made with stout, again we always had Wards oatmeal stout.  They used to get the pigs as big as possible, about 15 or 16 score live weight. They only have them at little more half that weight now.  Years before they used to have them even bigger - sometimes 20 score hogs. Then they would cut the hams on the round across the top which made the ham bigger, not square like they do today. The first thing mother did when she got'em was rub saltpetre round the joint at the top, cos if they went bad they always went bad round that joint, so you had to rub that well in right the way round the joint.  After pickling she used to hang these hams up to drip and when dry.  They would be put in a pillowcase and hung over the top of the kitchen table - the big scrubbed deal table that used to be in the middle of the kitchen.  There was about a dozen or more hooks specially for hams and bacon. I've seen 5 or 6 hams hang up there, also sides of bacon and cured chaps.  They'd hang there for a year.  If you had'em before six months they were called a green ham and they weren't really ready.   They were ideally cured at Michaelmas, which is the eleventh of October in Suffolk, to be eaten after haysel or the following Lady day.  She got her secrets from her mother, Fanny Warren.  That was her recipe.

She used to cook everything on the old iron Tortoise stove in the kitchen and I can see that frying pan now sizzling on the iron hake that dropped down in front and the smell of her bacon and sausages - well there was nothing like it.  They made lovely brawn too.  I suppose we were lucky having so much milk.  We used to feed the skimmed milk to the pigs, and mother's butter was sought after as well.  We always had Red Poll cows and their milk was very rich.  You'd have to scald the churn out thoroughly first, and then keep winding, until you felt the butter come.  That was an arm aching old job. With the cream she'd make horseradish sauce by just getting horseradish out of the verges and washing then grating it up and mixing with vinegar, cream, salt and pepper and a little mustard. Salad dressing the same.   She was also renowned for her Christmas puddings, they'd keep over a year as well, we've eat them two years old - they seemed to taste even better. That was her mother's recipe again. We didn't used to have 'em just at Christmas, we'd have 'em for birthdays, and they always slipped a little silver three penny piece in a piece of greaseproof paper, as that was lucky if you got it. She used to boil several at a time in the outside copper.  And, oh, her mince pies, they were good!  She always made them when it was getting towards Christmas in case anyone came in you could offer them a mince pie and a glass of sherry.  Another thing that everyone liked was her shortbread. That recipe came from Sue Cady, she was the baker's wife down in Boxford.  Mr Cady used to bake bread in the morning and in the afternoon she used to bake cakes in the oven as that was still hot. Mother gave up baking bread when she could get it from Mr Cady, who used to come round with it. Sue Cady's shortcakes were reckoned the best.  They sold them for a penny halfpenny each.

Shortcakes (Sue Cady):

Sue Cady was the baker in Boxford and was renowned for her cakes and shortcake.

Into 1lb self raising flour rub
6oz lard (or lard and butter) and make into pastry with milk
Roll out pastry and work into it
¼lb of sugar
2oz currants.  Rollout and cut into shapes

Easter morning when we came down to breakfast mother always had boiled eggs already for us with painted faces on.

Dad would have cold pork and cold parsnips, or greens or brussel sprouts with vinegar on for his supper, and he used to insist on eating his pudding in the old fashioned way.  That was a boiled batter pudding not like the Yorkshire ones that rise up.  That was boiled, steamed in the water, and then he'd have that with the gravy on first and the main meal to follow.  That's the real old way.