Nelson & His World

There has been a bit of correspondence in my newspaper recently about an item of confectionery called a "Nelson Slice" - invoking all sorts of nostalgia, pleasant childhood memories etc.

I assumed it was named after the town of Nelson.

But somebody has now said:



Anyone here care to confirm or deny!!??

MB

Mark,

I can't 'confirm' it, but it sounds like it tastes good - and in that case, I wouldn't 'deny' a second slice!

Here's one recipe that I just picked up.

8 ozs white bread,remove crusts
1/2 pint milk
4 ozs currants,raisins
2 ozs mixed peel finely chopped
2 ozs suet
2 ozs demerera sugar
1 t 2 level teaspoons mixed spice
1 egg beaten
Soak bread in milk for about 12 an hour and beatout lumps
Add dried fruit,peel,suet,sugar and spice
Mix well add the egg and a little extra milk if required.
Put between 2 layers of pastry.
Bake in oven at 180 eg C(350F)Mark 4 for 1/2 to 2 hours
sprinkle with sugar before serving
The peel may be replaced by an extra 2 ozs dried fruit,if you prefer.

The shops round here sell something which is called simply "bread pudding" (not bread and butter pudding) and sounds quite similar - though not with the layers of pastry.

Could be that it is just called Nelson Slice (or Nelson Square) in certain parts of the country. I did see Portsmouth mentioned on one website so there could be some truth in the naval association.

And yes Kester, definitely got me drooling at the thought of a nice substantial slice!!

MB

Mark:

here is a link to a recipe for Nelson Slice, from the Norfolk Cookbook, (scroll down a bit). Sounds like yours but with the addition of rum! There seems to be a longstanding association of the delicacy with Nelson-the-Man as opposed to Nelson-the-Town!

http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Food-and ... 67160.html

Sounds better than ship's biscuits!

Anna's link refers to 'Nelson('s) Pudding' so perhaps we should move on to Nelson's Balls, mentioned by Matthew Henry Barker in 'Greenwich Hospital' (p 183) and also mentioned along with other goodies in 'The Itinerant Confectioner' (top of second page).

But beware - In a precursor to the Sudan 1 food scare, an experiment in 1825 showed that: 'One pennyworth of red balls, called Nelson or Waterloo balls, yielded on analysis 30 grains of an indissoluble matter, resembling red lead, which, on being fused with a blowpipe, produced 84 grains of lead in a metallic state!': http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YXFB ... q=&f=false

Enjoy

Well, I had to look further into that! No on-line recipe, but I've come across a book, (just ordered from Amazon Market place for £0.01p - honest) called 'Sweets: a history of Temptation,' which mentions such delights, in addition to Nelson's Balls, as Wellington's Pillars and Bonaparte Ribs. Sugar addiction is a long-established English vice (amongst others!) An ambassador in Elizabethan times noted the terrible state of English teeth.

As a sideline, another digression: having been brought up in the Socialist Republic of South East Lancashire (Labour majority 36,000) I was solemnly assured, aged about 5, by John Parr, who lived next door but one, that Uncle Joe's Mint Balls (remember them?) http://www.uncle-joes.com/ were a gift from Joe Stalin to the children of Lancashire in gratitude for British help in WW2. I was about 13 before I discovered they were made in Wigan.

I've just received my copy of Tim Richardson's book 'Sweets: a history of temptation.' It promises to be an enthralling read, amusing but also instructive and impeccably researched.

Yes, Nelson's balls appear, only one of many patriotically-named sweets , a custom that continued until the end of the 19th century. In addition to the Bonaparte's Ribs and Wellington Pillars (flavoured with ginger) I mentioned above, there were Alma Drops and Sebastopol Balls during the Crimean War, and Buller's Bullets, Kruger's Favourites, Khaki Toffee and Transvaal Toffee in the Boer War, not to mention Gibraltar Rock (also ginger-flavoured.)

Richardson also quotes 'the only recipe I have seen for the popular patriotic boiled sweets known as Nelson's Buttons.' This appeared in 'The New Whole Art of Confectionary' [sic] (1837) by Edward Mackenzie. The sweets were 'large drops made of egg-whites, sugar and peppermint and coloured rose or pink - probably a gory reference to the hero's bloodied coat at the battle of Trafalgar.'

On a darker note, he observes that the slave trade resulted in cheap sugar so that confectionery was no longer a delicacy exclusively for consumption by the rich but a pleasure available to the masses. This love affair with sugar, he observes drily, 'ensured that the opposition to the slave trade was not consumer- led'.

The book is published by Bantam and is available on Amazon Marketplace for less than a penny! Cheaper than a sherbet dab!

So how would that work Anna?

Would the sugar dissolve in the egg white?

And how would you make them into the little "buttons"? I am imagining they would have looked something like pink mint imperials!!??

Having grown up in East Anglia where sugar beet is a fairly major crop - this got me wondering exactly when sugar from beet started to encroach on the traditional market of sugar derived from sugar cane.

The following info. from Wikipedia makes interesting reading.



MB

Nelson's Buttons sound just like peppermint creams under a different name - like most girls, I enjoyed making these with my Granny. Yes, you just beat the egg whites a little, add some icing sugar, (and pink colouring for Nelson's Buttons), beat the mixture a bit more, knead it, let it rest, then roll it into little balls and flatten them into 'buttons', then let them rest overnight to 'firm up'. You can dip them in melted chocolate if you like - then you'll have chocolate peppermint creams.

Re: sugar beet. Tim Richardson mentions Delassert - (anagram of 'le dessert' he observes!) and informs us that Napoleon was so overcome when Delassert presented him with a sugar beet loaf when he visited his new factory in Passy, near Paris, in 1812, that he immediately invested the astonished owner with the Legion of Honour!

Here is the story of the first appearance of Nelson's Ballsas told by a naval chaplain teaching in Nelson's old school.

His recipe is sugar, treacle, et alia ejusdem generis!

I think to some extent the opposition to the Slave trade WAS consumer led. Many ladies gave up sugar to make the point, or boycotted sugar which used slave labour. There were even sugar bowls with the appropriate message on them. I remember seeing an example at the Trade and Empire Museum in Bristol.

On a lighter note I am a great fan of bread pudding and it is always cut into squares in my establishment. I am in future going to refer to it as Trafalgar Squares.

Many thanks for the information about the consumer opposition to the slave trade. Maybe the opponents were a minority, since the confectionery trade flourished at this time. This raises another question: many of the chocolate and confectionery firms were run by Quakers - the chocolate firms of Fry, Cadbury and Rowntree were all Quaker-owned - who were resolute in their opposition to the slave trade. As early as 1727, a gathering of Friends condemned it as 'not a commendable nor allowed practice, and is therefore censured by this meeting'; but they must have bought vast quantities of sugar to make their sweets and chocolates. Were there other sources, apart from the colonies where slave labour was used on plantations?

In my household too, henceforth, Bread Pudding shall be known as Trafalgar Squares.

Tony's post of the naval chaplain's memoir revealed that Nelson's Balls, as well as being named in honour of the hero, were actually enjoyed by him, and came by their name on that account. Did Our Hero have a sweet tooth? I recall him mentioning in a letter to Emma that he had acquired a particularly delicious honey: 'the smell is wonderful....' All those missing teeth.........

I have just encountered another sweetmeat with a Nelson connection. A friend received a Fortnum & Mason's food hamper for his recent birthday and passed to me one of the goodies therein - a jar of Pale Navy Orange Marmalade, laced with RUM, no less, which was first produced to mark the 200th anniversary of Trafalgar in 2005.

(For overseas readers, Fortnum & Mason is a very grand and elegant emporium in London's Piccadilly, which was founded in the early 18th century. Sir William and Lady Hamilton's house was at 23 Piccadilly, so one might say it was their corner shop. Fortnum's supplied goods to officers during the Napoleonic Wars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortnum_&_Mason

Prices reflect the grandeur: the actress, Mrs Patrick Campbell, is said to have approached one of the tail-coated staff with the words:'Young man, here is five shillings.' 'Oh, madam, may I ask why?' 'Because I have just trodden on a grape.')