Sunday, October 30, 2022

Candies of old Salem - Gibralter & Black Jack

Salem Gibralters, created early 1800s, still sold today. Hawthorne wrote about them - rock hard, white and wrapped in white paper. Black Jacks were a deliberately burnt mixture of maple syrup, butter, brown sugar and molasses.

Sunday, October 23, 2022

The hard life of bakers in Victorian London

Starting at 11pm to make the dough, nap on flour sack over the kneading board (on the trough). wake at 2am, start kneeding and forming the dough then bake loaves in oven. When all that was done (in extreme heat), the bakers had to change clothes and go out on the street to sell the bread.

Sunday, October 9, 2022

Muffin Man in Philadelphia 1850


October 15 was the traditional start to selling muffins on the streets of London (past post and the small bell HERE). This image and the writer's memories of buying from the muffin-man in the afternoon is from City Cries.

Saturday, October 1, 2022

Dog wheel for butter churn

Dog powered wheels are different enough that I have written about turnspits HERE and treadmill to churn butter HERE. This excerpt shows the mechanism of the tread-wheel.