Throwback Thursday: My first Regency Party

The very first of my Regency parties was a dinner I gave in honor of myself and my twenty-first birthday, and what an adventure that was! I acquired The Jane Austen Cookbook and got completely carried away delving into the Regency world, making as authentic a menu as my knowledge permitted, complete with soup, a first course, a second course, dessert and tea. It was thrilling! And complicated.

My family and friends are indulgent enough to go along with my historic reproduction fancies, and took part in the celebration and the dozen or so dishes of food with a very satisfactory enthusiasm. Some of them even dressed up with me. I am pretty blessed.

We re-decorated the house as nearly as possible to the Regency style, putting up paintings everywhere which had been painted by my talented grandmother, making silhouettes, laying out old books, putting out lace doilies and lighting candles everywhere. We even had a folding screen to cover up the TV - those come in very handy for hiding things.

I tried to do everything properly, including written invitations. Plus, I got to use my wax and seal to close them up. :)

Our dinner invitations.

It is a little daunting trying to acquire enough china, glasses and silverware for everyone and for every course, not to mention the napkins and chairs. But thanks to the collecting nature of our family and the kindness of my dear friends, I was able to collect enough bowls, salad plates, dinner plates, goblets, dinner forks, dessert forks, dessert bowls, dessert plates, soup spoons, knives, tea cups and saucers for fifteen people, and squeeze them into our dining room.

Our Regency table set for dinner.

The menu went like this:

• We began with Swiss Soup Meagre, accompanied by Regent's Punch and Lady William's Muffins.
• The first course contained a roast Turkey breast and Jaune Mange.
• Followed by Jugged Steaks with Potatoes, Vegetable Pie, and A Receipt for Pudding, accompanied by sparkling Pomegranate juice.
• Then came dessert: Ice cream, plums, tangerines, dried cranberries, toasted almonds and walnuts, with more Punch and Pomegranate juice.
• Lastly, we had tea, which included Mrs. Perrot's Pound Cake, black and herbal teas, and coffee.

Our soup course with Regent's Punch.

I could not follow each recipe exactly, especially since not all of the ingredients are available in the U.S., but nearly all of them can be made! The Jane Austen Cookbook makes these recipes very accessible, converting the original eighteenth century instructions and measurements into the sort our modern minds can understand. This book is a must-have for everyone who wants to recreate Jane Austen's world in their kitchen or on their dining table.

Every recipe was a success, too! One of our friends who came is still raving about the Vegetable Pie, and the Pound Cake recipe is one I continue use for even ordinary occasions.

The Soup is a cream-based recipe with greens, cucumbers, onions and herbs - a rather different sort of soup than 21st-century Americans are used to, but one which was enjoyed by each of us at the party, all the same. The Jaune Mange is a sort of orange-flavored gelatin poured in a mold. The pudding was fun to make because it is based on a poem written by Mrs. Austen. It's basically a bread pudding with currants, which give it a nice, subtle tartness.

If the Vicar you treat,

You must give him to eat,

A pudding to hit his affection;

And to make his repast

By the canon of taste,

Be the present receipt your direction. 

...

A Receipt for a Pudding, by Mrs. Austen 

The rest of the recipes are pretty self-expalantory. I attempted to build a pyramid with the fruit... I employed toothpicks to position the fruit, which barely worked, making my structure a bit unstable. It would have been more successful, I suppose, if I had made some sort of cone to put in the middle. But I didn't, and relied on the stability of a couple dozen round objects stacked upon each other. I wouldn't recommend this method if you want any peace of mind while watching it on the table, but I believe that it worked well enough for a first attempt. 

My attempt at a fruit pyramid...

The tea things were arranged in the "drawing room" (a.k.a. our living room), where I had wheeled in a round table (an unfamiliar object in our living room, unfortunately). After finishing dessert at the dining room table we did things properly by having the ladies withdraw into the drawing room while the men remained to talk about things like hunting and farming (or things like that). Once the men rejoined us, we gathered into three teams to play one of the Austen family's favorite parlor games. Each team is given the same group of several words, and must compose a poem that includes every one of those words. Our words were: flamingo, piano, pink, beach and twenty one (the theme of the words was about me...). I have the brilliant result of one team that I can now share:

Twenty pink flamingos standing on one leg each,

One lonely flamingo walking along the beach.

Twenty one hermit crabs dragging a piano from the sea,

The flamingos looking on with great curiosity!

One flamingo playing with intensity,

Twenty flamingos singing with great jubilee!

It was certainly entertaining hearing each of the results! So I can imagine how much fun the Austen family must have had, witty as they all were, sitting around in the evenings and laughing hysterically at each others' humorous creations. Oh, how I would love to have seen that!

A few of us young ladies graced the company with some performances on the piano, and we had a reading of one of Jane Austen's written prayers that my cousin kindly agreed to recite for us. It was night of suitably refined and edifying entertainment.

Above all other blessings Oh! God, for ourselves, and our fellow-creatures, we implore Thee to quicken our sense of thy Mercy in the redemption of the World, of the Value of that Holy Religion in which we have been brought up, that we may not, by our own neglect, throw away the salvation thou hast given us, nor be Christians only in name. Hear us Almighty God, for His sake who has redeemed us, and taught us thus to pray.

An Evening Prayer, by Jane Austen

Playing 'My Father's Favorite' :)

I opened some birthday gifts, and then it was time for tea, which meant the evening was coming to a close. But before we all completely dispersed, there were a few of us that were still up for dancing! So I turned on a YouTube video of 'Northanger Abbey' and we all attempted to imitate Henry and Catherine in the assembly rooms. My cousin and I had watched a few of the dancing scenes from the movies over and over and over again to figure out what in the world they were doing, which helped, but there are inevitably many moments of confusion and even more of laughter when a group of people are attempting to learn one of these dances... But we were having at least as much fun as it looks like Henrietta and Louisa are having during their impromptu dance in the 1995 adaptation of 'Persuasion'. :)

Our tea table.

Then it was time to return to the twenty-first century. That is never something I look forward to... Mostly because it means we have to clean up the monstrous mess in our kitchen. But it also makes me sad to leave a moment that seems closer to that amazing time in history than any moment  that I have had in my life before.

This experience definitely made me appreciate the need for household staff to smoothly pull off such an operation. What I would have given for a cook and a couple of maids! No one minded that I had to leave the room to bring in more food over and over again, causing long interruptions in between courses, and neither did I, but only because it was a new experience and we wouldn't know the difference. I'm sure Mrs. Norris would have been appalled...

Pretending to be back in time... Can I just live this way?