A Tansey for Lent
“Tansy was a bitter herb whose stalks were juiced and then mixed…with a pint or less of the juice of green wheat, spinach or anything else that is green and not strong tasted. The juice was then mixed with a pint of cream, twelve eggs, nutmeg, sugar and salt. A quantity of white bread to make it thick enough for a bread pudding was mixed in. The batter was placed in a buttered dish and put before a…fire or oven…until it was hard enough to turn out on the dish. People had been eating tansy cakes since the middle ages to purify their bodies, especially after Lent…by the 1700’s, many also ate a tansy cake at Easter in remembrance of the Jewish Passover. Religious reasoning aside, tansy was considered a vital green food for people who had spent the winger eating too much salted meat and pickled vegetables; it was a welcome harbinger of spring’s bounty."
-Food and Cooking in Victorian England: A History, Andrea Broomfield
In Hannah Glasse’s seminal work, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, she boasts an entire section titled “A Variety of Foods for Lent”. Variety (that spice of life) is the key word in this chapter, which includes instructions for everything from Eel-Soup to Soused Mackerel, Baked Apples, Barley Soup, Hasty Pudding, Pancakes and even Stewed Spinach and Eggs. Food for thought. With Lent bringing the removal of many meats and meat products from the table, the beef heavy diet of Georgian England was no doubt happy for any help that could be given. Hannah rounds out her collection with instructions “To Make A Tansey”. As we have seen, this was a sort of vegetable bread pudding, however, her recipe, surprisingly, contains no actual tansy—just “the juice of spinach to make it green”. A “mock” tansy perhaps? From looking at other period recipes, “Tansy” (or Tansey) seems to have evolved into a term for any pudding baked in the same general way. Recipes for Apple Tansy abound from the period (again, no actual tansy harmed in the making of this recipe) while William Gelleroy’s 1770, The London Cook includes no fewer than eight tansy recipes, with such tantalizing names as A Tansey, Another Tansey, A Gooseberry Tansey, Another Gooseberry Tansey, A Beef Tansey…you get the picture. And so, without further ado, Hannah Glasse’s Tansey for Lent:
Laura Boyle is the author of Cooking with Jane Austen and Friends. Andrea L. Broomfield quoted from: Food and Cooking in Victorian England: A History Praeger (April 30, 2007) 0275987086
Enjoyed this article? If you don't want to miss a beat when it comes to Jane Austen, make sure you are signed up to the Jane Austen newsletter for exclusive updates and discounts from our Online Gift Shop.
2 comments
My great grandmother grew tansy in her garden. In the nothern part of our state of Minnesota, near the Canadian border, European tansy – no doubt an escape from people’s gardens – has become so common that it is considered an undesireable alien weed damaging to native vegetation. You can see it all along the road sides and the shore of Lake Superior.
Elaine Murray
I was reading the Mayflower Quarterly, and they had a modern recipe for tansy. They say the herb is a purgative and not to use it. Is there a “safe” amount that an adult could consume without danger?
Warren Perry
Leave a comment
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.