Tea at the St. Francis

The St. Francis Hotel in 1904 

Imagine going for a luxurious afternoon tea at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco in the early 1900s. It was built in 1904, two years before the great earthquake, and expanded in 1913. It is still there today at the corner of Powell and Geary Streets, serving the wealthy, the famous and those, like us, who just would really like some delightful refreshments.

I have a vintage St. Francis menu right in front of me, reprinted in a 1910 book called Fellows' Menu Maker (a treasury of old menus) - and I must tell you that this is exactly where I'd like to go on a hot May afternoon like this.

Loganberries

So what shall we have for our tea? There is tea, coffee or hot chocolate on offer, but perhaps since it is getting on to summer now, you might prefer some real fruit softdrinks. The St. Francis had all sorts of lovely cool fruit drinks in their Tea Room, including Red or White Grape Juice Cobbler and iced Loganberry Lemonade (mix lemonade and loganberry juice to make this drink, not surprisingly). Along with the drinks, we can have sandwiches filled with chicken, ham or lettuce (no cucumber on the 1910 menu).  And we will also want little cakes like chocolate eclairs and Napoleons, and petits fours.

Delicious honey 

Or perhaps an ice cream sundae would be best, since it is so very hot outside! The St. Francis understood this and offered a variety of cool ice cream treats in their circa 1910 Tea Room. Their special St. Francis Sundae had vanilla ice cream, roseleaf jam and cream; and the Fedora was a mixture of chocolate ice cream, praline and whipped cream.

Chocolate sundae 

The roseleaf jam served at the St. Francis was and is a Middle Eastern treat, which you can easily make at home if you have access to organic, pesticide-free rose petals (the jam is actually made from petals, not the leaves of the rose). The recipe proportions are from Sarah Garland's The Complete Book of Herbs and Spices (1979 edition, p. 211). Just cut off the white ends off of 1 lb (12 cups) organic, washed rose petals. Simmer them in water to cover and add a cup white sugar, 2/3 cup of delicious honey and the juice of 2 lemons. Cook until the mixture is thick.

It wouldn't be hard to recreate this sort of lovely tea at home - roseleaf jam and all. But to really recreate the Tea Room ambiance, make sure you use the finest ingredients. Chocolate ice cream, or chocolate cakes, will taste best if you use the best ingredients, like fine quality organic chocolate. You can find every kind of ingredient you need for cooking amazing things even if you don't live in a city with specialty stores - just go online and check out comparison shopping sites and any number of online gourmet shops, where you can put all the money you might have spent going to San Francisco in 1910 (time machines aren't cheap!) on some classically delicious ingredients.

[All images from Wikimedia Commons.]

A Curious Little Cake

A beach on Rarotonga 

Rarotonga is the largest of the Cook Islands, which are near New Zealand. Most of the Cook Islanders live on Rarotonga. But as far as I know, they do not eat these little balls of cake stuffed with marmalade. Nor did they invent them. And - well, I just have no idea why these Victorian-era confections are called Raratongas - spelled with two a's, not an a and an o.

Mrs. Bliss ("of Boston") tells us how to make them in her 1850 masterpiece, The Practical Cook Book, which (she boasts) "Contain[s] Upward of One Thousand Receipts." However, she gives no explanation for what she calls things, or why. Or whether she was entranced by the Cook Islands (they are, indeed, very beautiful). Perhaps the vanilla bean has something to do with it? They do, in fact, grow vanilla there. That's all I've got, except, of course, for the recipe:

RARTONGAS

Louisa May Alcott would appreciate some cake

Boil a stick of vanilla in half a pint of water. Rub to a cream six ounces of butter and two ounces of fine white sugar, to which add a pinch of salt and three table-spoonfuls of sifted dlour; then pour on the boiling water (in which the vanilla was boiled) and stir the whole mixture until it is cold; when it is cold, stir in seven eggs, one after the other; mix the whole well together, bake it in small balls, sprinkle them with white sugar grains; when baked, open the balls and fill them with marmalade [p. 192, 1850 edition].

This recipe is repeated word for word - plagiarized, to put it bluntly - by J. Thompson Gill in 1881 in The Complete Bread, Cake and Cracker Baker (p. 170, here).

And on an unrelated note, I really hope that this is the same "magnetic" Mrs. Bliss of Boston who ministered to Louisa May Alcott in 1863 and cured her of backache by "holding her hands and reading her with closed eyes." [Quoted in The Journals of Louisa May Alcott, ed. Madeleine B. Stern, p. 123, see here]. If so, I hope that she also brought dear Louisa May some Raratongas.

Frangelico: A Winning Hazelnut Liqueur

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Frangelico for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

 

Frangelico is a variety of hazelnut liqueur, or noisette as it is sometimes called, made in the Piedmont in northern Italy. Supposedly, it was named either for a hermit called Fra (Brother) Angelico or for a Renaissance painter of the same name.

 

First produced in the 1980s, Frangelico is known both for its smooth and delicious taste and for the unique bottle it comes in - in the shape of a friar, complete with a rope belt. Wild hazelnuts from the Piedmont, as well as other local ingredients, go into the making of Frangelico. The crushed toasted nuts are infused in an alcohol-water mixture to make hazelnut distillate; cocoa and vanilla essences are added, and the whole is mixed with alcohol, sugar and water, filtered, and aged in vats for several weeks. During this time it evolves into a smooth golden liqueur, perfect for after-dinner sipping or as an ingredient in mixed drinks and desserts. It is lovely in coffee, and is especially good as a flavoring in cheesecake.

 

The beautiful Piedmont, home of Frangelico

If you are over 21 years old and in the United States*, you can participate in Frangelico's "Watch the Pitch on AMC" Sweepstakes. If you enter, you will have a daily chance to win a $100 gift card from VISA, which is really great. And if you also watch the pitch and answer a few questions you'll have a chance to win $3000. Also great, right? Here's how to get in on this: you can enter through the Frangelico Facebook Page or through the Frangelico Contest Page. 

 

Please note that this Sweepstakes is in no way sponsored, endorsed, administered by or associated with Facebook. By participating, you agree that you are providing your information to Campari America and their Sweepstakes Administrator and not to Facebook. And all this is subject to the full Official Rules, of course.

 

That's it - you don't have to buy anything; and purchases don't influence your chances of winning whatsoever. The contest begins on May 16 at 12am PT (Pacific Time) and ends on May 28th at 11:59 PT - so do visit Frangelico online and enter their Sweepstakes today!

 

*Excepting residents of AL, CA, IN, OK, ME, MD, MI, MT, NJ, NC, OR or UT or where prohibited by law - sorry 'bout that!