HFF Challenge 2: Soups and Sauces

This challenge I completed at work. There are some pretty obvious pros and cons when it comes to working on an HFF challenge when you work at a living history museum. Pros: it ups the authenticity as I'm working with a hearth or a cast iron stove and totally period correct cookware, ingredients, etc; it's freeeeeeeeee because it's all the Museum's ingredients. Cons: Because it's a living history museum, I can't exactly pull out a proper camera and snap tons of pictures of the process and everything; the dish may not turn out as well as it might if I made it at home, because although to a lot of people it may seem like my main job is "cook", it's actually "docent." Don't get me wrong, I like to have an audience and I get very sad and lonely when people don't come to visit me, but sometimes you sacrifice a great demo because you're too busy talking to visitors and whatever you're making doesn't turn out.

For the second challenge, my entry is the oyster soup from the Williamsburg Art of Cookery. It's actually a more modern compilation of 18th century receipts, but it was printed in 1938, so I'm still safely in our time-frame. Unfortunately, I can't post the receipt, as I don't have my own copy of the cook book, and I didn't actually make oyster soup.

What? How could I enter oyster soup and not have made oyster soup?

When I looked in our cupboards, I saw that I didn't have enough oysters to make the receipt properly. In that same cupboard, however, was plenty of canned salmon to use instead. So, rather than using oysters in the receipt, I simply switched in salmon.

I hashed up the salmon until it looked exactly like a large amount of cat food, seasoned it with salt, pepper, mace and cloves (the mace and cloves are extra; I never could control myself around a spice cupboard). I heated up the salmon and....waited for someone to bring me cream. I had asked a couple people to help me out with that, since for some reason the kitchen I was working in did not have any kind of milk product save cheese and butter. I ended up having to go and borrow cream from another kitchen during my lunch break. Upon my return, I mixed in the cream, added some flour, and put it back over the fire. It was a remarkably simple soup to make, really, except for the lack of cream. I put the creamy white soup in a tureen, garnished it with some lovage, boxwood, and dry parsley, and popped it under a fly screen for visitors to admire.

Challenge: Soups and Sauces
The Recipe: Oyster Soup, Williamsburg Art of Cookery
Date/Year and Region: 18th century, American colonies (collected and printed 1938)
How Did You Make It?: Followed the recipe in the book, only changing oysters to salmon and adding in mace and cloves.
Time To Complete: Once again, I don't know. It's hard to keep track of things like that when you're working during a special event.
Total Cost: $0 for me
How Successful Was It?: The only successful thing I did that day................................
How Accurate Is It?: I'm not entirely sure about that one actually, because of my major substitution, but pretty accurate I hope.

Join me next for challenge 3, Today in History!