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    Tilneys, Weasels, and All Things Jane >> The Chawton Round Table >> Message started by: Lydia on 11/07/01 at 17:03:22

Title: Regency diets
Post by: Lydia on 11/05/01 at 18:47:17

Ok, first off, I hope this is the right forum for this question. Can anybody put me on the right path for real foods people ate? I want to know if upper class folk ate gingerbread and drank hot chocolate. My library has no information even remotely helpful on this matter. :disappointed

Title: Sounds like somebody's writing a fanfic!
Post by: TheHighPriestess on 11/05/01 at 18:16:12

Yes, to both. Hot chocolate was drunk at breakfast only, though, I believe...coffee gradually replaced it. And they just called it "chocolate," not "hot chocolate." I know they had gingerbread but probably it was more like real bread and less like a cookie; can't say for sure, though.

I can definitely give you a quote from Jane Austen to support the chocolate:

Quote:

The General, between his cocoa and his newspaper, had luckily no leisure for noticing her;

NA, Vol II, Ch X (25), just after Catherine receives the letter from her brother detailing his breakup with Isabella. Though Jane uses the word "cocoa." Georgette Heyer uses "chocolate." I dare say the two are interchangeable; but I've never seen "hot chocolate," referring to the drink. Hope this helps!

Title: Re: Regency diets
Post by: Lydia on 11/05/01 at 20:02:26

Great, thanks. I guess I assumed cocoa actually referred to hard chocolate, though why that assumption, I can't remember. Would the gingerbread have been a meal thing or an afternoon passed around w/ the coffee and brandy kind of thing? Yep, I'm trying my hand at Regency fiction; it's so much fun to read, I wanted to try writing it, too. I'm hoping actually, to get a full-length novel done, set in the period.

One more question--I actually tried to post this one earlier, but my computer said 'error; my isp had posted in the last 15 seconds (I don't know what that means, but I'm pretty sure [i][/i] didn't do it). Anyway, the shopping scene in Emma made me wonder--would the upperclass have paid 'on the spot' or would they have put purchases 'on credit' or 'on a tab'?

Title: Ran a tab
Post by: TheHighPriestess on 11/05/01 at 21:56:45

I don't think they carried money around, much...although small purchases, I dare say, got paid as-you-go, also younger people. Remember that Lydia Bennet couldn't pay for the luncheon she was treating her sisters to because she bought an ugly hat. The Bennets weren't exactly what I'd call upper-class, though...not aristocracy, anyway. And btw, the tradesmen usually got paid last. Debts of honour (gambling debts) were expected to be settled within a day or two, but if you were waiting for a tow from River Tick (a nod to The Divine Georgette), the tradesmen could be put off. Read Vanity Fair, the chapter entitled "How To Live On Nothing A Year" for details.

If you are going to seriously write Regency stories, you should invest in a few good reference books. Maggie Lane has a book called Jane Austen and Food that might be helpful. Didn't you post that you got hold of a copy of The Regency Companion a while back? That's a decent little book, though most of it seems to have been gleaned from reading novels, not so much from hard evidence.

Title: Re: Regency diets
Post by: Lydia on 11/06/01 at 00:48:47

Yes, I get the Regency Companion from my library's ILL every once in a while; I like its section on the different colours for women's clothes and there are interesting bits about social contemporaries. I have Daniel Pool's book, but it, and my one other book, which name I can't remember at the moment, are nice, but spend too much time on the Victorian period, with which the Regency is combined--they don't delve deep enough into the minute customs of everyday life, diet, dialogue even (minus the cliches, of course). I rather thought the scene with Lydia Bennet just showed her thoughtlessness rather than social custom, but JA didn't miss anything, did she? It always makes me laugh, though--we mean to treat you but you'll have to pay. :lol

Title: Re: Regency diets
Post by: Lydia on 11/06/01 at 01:22:15

Meant to say thanks for the Maggie Lane title; I've got her book on JA places, but had no idea she'd done this one. :kay

Title: Re: Regency diets
Post by: Cyberlibrarian on 11/06/01 at 11:45:54

Maggie Lane has a bunch of books out. Her "Jane Austen's World" is good too.

Title: Re: Regency diets
Post by: Dianastamp on 11/06/01 at 18:18:55

I have a cookbook called "Tea with the Bennets", by Margaret Vaughan, who owns King John's Hunting Lodge, a marvelous tea shop/inn in Lacock Village where P & P was filmed.

She has something called Ginger Curls in her book, all sorts of cakes, Cornish Fairings, which are similar to American-style gingerbread cookies (had 'em one Christmas at a buffet in Cornwall), Hunter's Nuts (ginger cookie balls), lots of ginger all around! If Margaret did her homework correctly (and I'm sure she did!), gingerbread wouldn't be amiss.

Diana

Title: Keep in mind, though...
Post by: TheHighPriestess on 11/06/01 at 20:03:06

They didn't have "tea" then, as a separate meal, the way the English do today. That was a Victorian thing. It came about as a reaction to the later and later times for dining...the later one dined, the more fashionable it was, but they didn't really eat lunch, so they needed something to tide them over till dinner at nine o'clock. Thus was born High Tea in the late afternoon. I get the impression from most of the books I read that breakfast was eaten around ten o'clock (though Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney both rise at eightish--though by the time they dressed and went down to eat it could easily have been between nine and ten).

In Jane Austen you see references to invitations to "drink tea." This was after dinner; it was an invitation to come to someone's house, but don't expect dinner. ;) I think they served tea, sometimes coffee as well, and cakes and cookies and things...there are references to muffins in JA, but probably more like an English muffin than the big cakey things. Also there's a reference to eating toast at that time in Sanditon, IIRC. In NA, Mrs. Morland "hurries the tea table" for Catherine when she arrives home unexpectedly...I dare say the Morlands, being country folk, had already dined. They dined early, around three or four o'clock (which, in the winter, was around sundown). In town or in more fashionable families, dinner could be at seven or later. At Northanger Abbey, you will recall, dinner was served promptly at five, and woe betide the heroine who was slow in dressing. ;)

Supper was something of an optional meal, and I think consisted of tea and muffins and toast and snacky types of things; more of a nosh than a real meal. Maybe there would be some cold meat if someone was really hungry. Or if Mr. Woodhouse was present, some nice thin gruel. ;)

They might eat a snack in the early afternoon, called luncheon or more usually nuncheon (a corruption of "noonshine"). In one of Georgette Heyer's books, False Colours, which takes place around 1817, one of the characters expects a full nuncheon of several courses each day. (For the GH fans--that's Sir Bonamy Ripple, who you will remember is inordinately fond of his vittles. ;)) I got the impression that such a meal, however, was quite unusual.

Don't ask me where I read all this stuff. I pick it up all over the place!

Title: Re: Regency diets
Post by: Lydia on 11/07/01 at 17:03:22

Jane Austen's England is the one I've got. I will look out Tea with the Bennets; it looks like good research and fun eats (and what better way to know what a character likes than to eat?). Wow, Mags, you amaze me. Thanks for the help. :)

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