Here’s a recipe that was apparently popular enough that it was copied almost verbatim in several 18th century cook books. It’s a recipe for fritters. A fritter, also occasionally called a fraze, was a fried pastry, like a doughnut. They were either skillet fried or deep fried. The batter could be thin or thick — more like a dough. This particular recipe was exquisitely simple, calling for only four to five ingredients.

Here is Hannah Glasse’s copy from the 1774 edition of her cookbook, The Art of Cookery.

Here is our adaptation, changing a few things up where necessary, but staying well within period-correct methods and techniques:

Hasty Fritters

Ingredients:
1 – 12oz. bottle of any Light* Ale or Hard Apple Cyder
approximately 2 cups All Purpose Flour
1/4 – 1/3 cups Zante Currants or 1 Apple (diced) or both

About 2-lbs Lard (or or other fat**, e.g., shortening or vegetable…

The Mysterious Package Company sends story experiences through the mail. Sign up, and you or your chosen recipient gets a sequence of unexplained mailings. Inside: objects that tell a story, from documents and newspaper clippings through medium-sized statuary and significant physical props. There’s a little of a sense of the magic trick about all this, too — they even describe the stages of their presentation in terms of “The Pledge”, “The Turn”, and “The Prestige”.

Having occasionally made much less ambitious, much less polished physical props to go with my games, I’m both jealous and a bit in awe of the talent going into their work. (I’ve seen a few props that they sent to a friend, but I’ve not signed up or tried a full experience myself.)

The Mysterious Package Company are now kickstarting a larger-than-usual experience called The Century Beast, a Lovecraft-meets-Vikings story about which the pitch…

Anyone who has ever visited a historic home or living history village has probably seen a fireplace fitted out with a cooking crane, perhaps with pots hanging from hooks or a trammel, but long before there were cooking cranes there was the humble lug-pole.

The lug-pole was a freshly-cut pole of green wood, sometimes called a back-bar, suspended between two ledges high up in the chimney from which hung chains, pots, kettles, and other utensils needed for meal preparation. 

A lug is a handle or projection used as a hold or support.  The chimney-side was called a lug prior to the 18^th century, thus the pole that was suspended from side to side high in the chimney was a lug-pole. 

The English sometimes called them a gallow-balke, and the hooks that hung from the pole a gallow-crooke.  These terms are also found on early estate inventories in New England. 

I’ve been making folding camp furniture.  The stools are sometime called “pea-pickers”.  They were somewhat difficult to figure out without a plan but some photos of others and experience making other furniture helped.

They’re not as easy to make as I thought they would be.  The holes must be very precise and dowels tight-fitting.  If everything isn’t square and precisely cut, the stool just doesn’t work.

This is their beauty.  They fold flat and have an integrated handle.  They can be made just about any size and out of any straight lumber.  My first one is made from scraps from around the workshop.  These later ones are from premium pine.

Seventeen pieces, twelve holes.  Stick ’em together.  Sit.  Mine are sturdy enough to use as a step stool, with some caution due to the narrow width.

A table of similar construction.  The top is about 22 x 46″.  I made…

“Few persons who carry canes or umbrellas realize that they have at hand at once an effective and, in the hands of a skilled fencer, a formidable weapon for protection against assault. Even in the hands of a novice it may be so wielded as to stand off and subsequently subdue a “gang” of roughs when no other weapon, except possibly a revolver, would avail.”

Of interest to the student of self-defense is the short 1898 treatise of Justin Bonnafous, a fencing master who taught in the Philadelphia area during the late nineteenth century. Fencing masters of this period often offered instruction in the use of the stick or cane, including formal systems of La Canne or Royal Cane, as well as other practical self-defense techniques for use against criminals or toughs in “street” scenarios. We find an example of this in New York City as early as 1827, when a fencing professor named…

“A Knightly Tournament”

In early March, 1876, a “Grand” tournament of arms was announced, to be held at the Lyceum Theater in New York City, that would involve “all kinds of weapons that are used in fencing.” The event was organized and directed by Colonel Thomas H. Monstery, a noted New York fencing master and teacher of pugilism, who had reportedly participated in more than fifty duels, and fought under twelve flags on three separate continents. By all accounts, this Assault-of-Arms would be the largest, the most interesting, and the most ethnically diverse ever held in the city. It was noted that the contestants would include Danes, Germans, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Americans, and that the tournament would embrace the following weapons:

Foil
Saber
Broadsword
Small-sword
Rapier
“Bowie knife”
“Spanish knife”
Cane
Sword-cane
Lance
Bayonet
“English single stick”
“German schlager”
“Sabre against bayonet”
“Knife against sabre”
“French quarterstaff” or “Bâton”
English…