English Heritage among groups and chefs enticing people to try new recipes during lockdown

Her recipes are sometimes tricky and even alarming. Who has a copper turbot kettle? How do you crush chestnuts through a sieve with a pestle? Who makes macaroni cheese with no sauce?

“It is quite dry,” admitted Kathy Hipperson, a historical interpreter who plays the country house Victorian cook Avis Crocombe. “I’d say it’s not horrible, it’s different.”

Hipperson is the front person for English Heritage’s online historical cooking demonstrations, one of a number of online cookery programmes that have attracted huge interest in the last few weeks. English Heritage’s offering alone has gone from having a small dedicated following to almost 2m views since mid-March.

“People are craving something different to watch I think,” said Hipperson. “They want to take their mind off the situation and try something new. I would definitely encourage people to try the recipes.”

Food wholesalers seek help over unwanted produce Read more

English Heritage is not alone in seeing a surge in interest in online cookery demonstrations.

Nearly 5.5 million people have this week watched Oprah Winfrey on her Instagram page make spaghetti carbonara “for the first time” after she watched Jamie Oliver on YouTube.

On Thursday, Winfrey, in California, and Oliver, in Essex, teamed up for an Instagram live stream to make his Singapore-style fried rice together, a recipe made from using up scraps of veg and any bacon, sausage or frozen prawns you can find.

Many chefs, stuck in their real kitchen rather than their work one, are also taking to Instagram. Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich, the founders of Honey & Co, have started their #honeyandcoathome series from their south London home offering a flourless chocolate cake for Passover and hot cross non-denominational buns.

Massimo Bottura, the Italian multiple-Michelin award winning chef, is livestreaming his family dinner prep every night. His toasted almond and saba ice cream with a pistachio sauce is not exactly cupboard leftovers but still had more than 200,000 views.

Food historian and writer Angela Clutton will on Saturday at 1pm be cooking lamb chops and veg from her kitchen as part of a daily Instagram live series created by Borough Market in London.

“There is a lot going on and people have been just so fast in putting these things together,” she said. “It’s because food is always such a great connector, it brings people together and somehow it is still managing to do that even when we can’t actually be together. I have to say I find it incredibly reassuring.”

Crocombe was the real cook at Audley End House in Essex between 1880 and 1884, serving Lord and Lady Braybrooke and their guests. Hipperson has been playing her for more than a decade, part of a team of interpreters putting on live demonstrations in the kitchens as well as the YouTube videos which have now taken off in such a big way.

Hipperson said Crocombe had become a phenomenon in the same way people love Downton Abbey. “She was a real person, working in the kitchen, and people can relate to her … she’s not a monarch.

“I make her as I imagine she would be, quite stern but clearly loving her work. She is quite joyful to watch I think. The fact that we are cooking real historical recipes is a factor too.”

The recipes include hearty soups and ice cream made from staple ingredients. Others are a bit more of a performance.

For example, turbot à l’anglaise sees Crocombe advising us to get a scullery maid to wash and pat dry the fish. She then rubs it with half a lemon, puts it in a turbot kettle and adds water.

Once that’s on the heat, prepare a sauce with some butter, diced lobster and pounded roe and get a kitchen maid to push it through a sieve.

Hipperson admitted US audiences “really did not like” the Victorian macaroni cheese recipe which is made from pasta, cheese, breadcrumbs and butter. “You couldn’t get much further away from mac and cheese.”

Others are much more straightforward, said Hipperson, such as the queen drop biscuits, cheese seftons and, this weekend for Easter, saffron buns. “Some of them are trickier, like the apple dumplings, but they are just divine.”

Avis Crocombe is one part of a much bigger History at Home hub launched this week by English Heritage, an online resource of videos, podcasts, articles and activity sheets.

All its properties are closed but Matt Thompson, head collections curator, hopes the hub will provide distraction and comfort during the lockdown. “For me, it is a 21st-century cabinet of curiosities,” he said.

“It is all in one place and we are planning new content. It really helps, I think, to remember that there is so much more outside our own four walls, it is all still there.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Saffron buns, a historical alternative to the hot cross bun. Photograph: English Heritage

Ingredients:

Makes 10-12 buns

Flour – 250g/9 oz/2 cups

Sugar – 55g/2 oz /1⁄3 cup

Salt – a pinch

Yeast – 4g dried or 10g fresh

Milk – 90ml/3 fl oz/½ cup, slightly warmed

Eggs – 1 egg, lightly beaten

Currants – 55g

Spices/cinnamon, cloves and mace – a pinch of each

Lemon – the zest of ½ lemon

Caraway seeds – (optional) ¼ tsp

Butter – 30g/1 oz/¼ stick

Lard – 30g/1 oz/1 tbsp

Saffron – pinch, soaked for 2 hours in 2 tsp warm milk

To glaze:

1 egg

Pinch of salt

1 tbsp milk

Method:

First, make a basic bread dough. Combine the flour, sugar, salt, egg and yeast together with enough milk to make a soft, but not sticky dough. Knead for 15-20 minutes and set aside in a warm place, covered with oiled plastic wrap or in a bowl with a cloth over until it has doubled in size (roughly 2-3 hours).

Once the dough has risen, remove it and flatten it out slightly. Soak the saffron in the warm milk to get most of the colour out. You can then add add your other ingredients. Put the spices, lemon zest, lard, butter, saffron in its milk (which should now be yellow) and currants in the middle, fold it up, and knead again, folding and squeezing so that the new ingredients are well-incorporated (NB: these days you can also just put everything in a food mixer armed with a dough hook!). Cover again, and leave to double in size once more.

Lightly grease two baking sheets and shape your dough into 12 equal buns. Round them off and leave in a covered bowl for 20 minutes to double in size once again.

Whilst waiting, create a glaze with an egg, a pinch of salt, and 1 tbsp of milk. When ready, brush over each bun. Then, bake in the oven at 180c/350F for 15-20 minutes until each bun is golden brown. Serve on their own, or slathered with butter.

A YouTube video of Mrs Crocombe making the saffron buns is available.

• This article was amended on 13 April 2020 because an earlier version omitted a reference to when to add the butter in the method for the saffron buns recipe. It was further amended on 15 April to note that there is a video demonstration of the recipe available.