I’m going to have my dinner after which I shan’t be thinner (Jane Austen, Juvenilia)

Last night was my local Jane Austen Society’s eighth annual midwinter feast. We started off small in 2002 as a lunch for members only but, in the last few years, we have expanded it to a night event including members’ partners, resulting in some very convivial nights. We are a small group and not everyone can make the chosen date, so our numbers vary. Last night we were 13.

This year's feasters tuck into dessert

Regency Feast Main Courses

Every member brings a dish chosen from the Regency era, though not all dishes are perfectly authentic: some ingredients are hard to get, some cooking techniques are not those we use now, and sometimes we just don’t exactly know how it was done. Our main sources are the Jane Austen Centre’s online magazine and Maggie Black and Deirdre Le Faye’s The Jane Austen cookbook (which presents the recipes used by  Martha Lloyd – Jane’s closest friend and confidante after her sister, Cassandra). This year our main courses were:

• Beef and roasted vegetable ragout
• Chicken curry in the Indian manner
• Vegetable pie
• Salmagundy/Salamongundy
• Potatoes
• Salad of greens with cucumber

Regency Feast Dessert Table

We are slowly building up quite a repertoire: each year there are some old favourites and some new experiments. Our members enter wonderfully into the spirit and regularly give something new a try, and so each year some very nervous chefs arrive with their dishes – and each year their anxieties are proved unfounded as we dig into their dishes with relish. Past main meal dishes have included Fish in corbullion, Broiled salmon, Roast pork, and Beef-steak pudding. We haven’t yet quite got into goose and partridge but I reckon we will!

Desserts are usually trickier as original recipes often assume a lot that has now been lost – or require highly time consuming processes that most of us can’t quite commit to. However, many Regency enthusiasts have interpreted and translated recipes and we are gradually sussing them out. Past desserts have included Black Caps (aka Baked Apples Miss Bates – from Emma, you know! – style), Whipt Syllabub and Cranberry Jelly (first make your “isinglass jelly”). This year we were tempted by:

• Marlborough pie/Baked apple pudding
• Apple puffs
• Strawberries and cream
• Ratafia biscuits
• Rout cakes

We don’t, as you can see, go hungry – and neither are we bored as we spend a few hours talking, eating, laughing and, yes, drinking. As Jane wrote (though I have to admit that these words in this particular character’s mouth have an ironic edge):

Give me but a little cheerful company, let me have only the company of the people I love, let me only be where I like and with whom I like, and the devil take the rest, say I. (Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey)