An Expected Party: A Tea for 22 September by Lindariel

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How to Throw a Hobbity Party

A few years ago, a treasured fellow Tolkien geek and I decided to hold an all-day tea on Bilbo's and Frodo's Birthday in order to view (and celebrate and rag on) all six of the Jackson films. We laid down some parameters, most of them concerning people's food restrictions. Then I did a lot of research on Hobbit foodways using the text of the third edition (1966) of The Hobbit, the common text of the several copies in my collection. This menu was the result. It hasn't proved possible to observe The Birthday in this formal a fashion every single year, but we do what we can. It is a perfect way to bring Tolkien's world into one's own family, however that family is defined.

 

Canonical Hobbit Foodways

Three great Hobbit feasts are mentioned in the Ring cycle: An Unexpected Party, the Long-Expected Party, and the Hundred-Weight Feast. The passages about the Long-Expected Party and the Hundred-Weight Feast do not mention any specific foods, while the first chapter of The Hobbit, "An Unexpected Party," gives more specific information about prepared foods in Middle-Earth than pretty much all the other Tolkien sources combined. Bilbo's larder coughed up a huge variety of prepared foods for the thirteen hungry dwarves (and one wizard)! We used it as our source for planning an abundance of Middle-Earth food we expected to eat while watching Tolkien movies, and then we added mushrooms. No Hobbit-feast is complete without mushrooms.

  • Beverages at Bilbo's Unexpected Party start with tea, of course, but also include beer, ale, porter, coffee, and red wine.
  • Sweet foods include many cakes, seed-cake, buttered scones, raspberry jam, apple tart, and biscuits.
  • Savory foods comprise mince pies, cheese, pork pie, salad, boiled eggs, cold chicken, and pickles.1

 

Research and the Pickle Problem

I took as my starting assumption the idea that Bilbo's taste in food reflected Tolkien's own, which led me to look at historic late nineteenth and early twentieth century cooking as formative for his generation. Most of the foods were pretty obvious, but one or two of them called for research.

The "cold chicken and pickles" puzzled me for a while, and I sought more information from the earliest versions of the text. John Rateliff's great The History of the Hobbit taught me something interesting here. The original Bladorthin manuscript of the story has a slightly different list of foods and drinks, including a reference to "tomatoes" instead of "pickles." "Tomatoes" stood through the first two editions of The Hobbit.2 But in 1960 Tolkien undertook to write a revision of The Hobbit. Although most of the changes he planned while writing "the 1960 Hobbit" never made it into a revised edition of The Hobbit, one thing definitely did: in the 1966 third edition, Tolkien changed tomatoes to pickles.3 While I was all for going with the Original Intent of the Framer and having some kind of tomatoes, my co-conspirator really wanted to try Branston Original Pickle (since 1922), so we decided on that.

 

Our Menu

This menu was planned to be an all-day open house for four constant viewers and several people who dropped in as their schedules permitted. We had at least six drop-ins, some of whom stayed many hours to help us eat up the bounty.

We started the morning with an English style breakfast of eggs, bacon (turkey in this case), fried mushrooms, heirloom tomatoes, and white toast triangles with coffee. We inserted the tomatoes into the breakfast menu just to cover all our bases.

We originally planned to bake some cream scones; the English tea traditionalist in the group made up the dry mix and brought all the ingredients along to put together at the party. But when we found ourselves well and truly in the kitchen fray the cream scones got punted on account of workspace and oven space considerations.

For savory foods we had a cold roast chicken, a loaf of artisan rye from the nearby bakery, an assortment of mostly English cheeses, butter, and a jar of that Branston English pickle. We wound up opting for tea sandwiches of sliced cold chicken and pickle on the rye bread -- prepared by the aforementioned English tea traditionalist who insisted that all the crusts be cut off. They were excellent with red wine. The pickle was reasonably well received, especially when eaten with mild goat cheese. We left out the canonical barley beverages entirely, not because we had any objection to any of them but because we were a smaller group than fifteen and really did not require that many choices of beverage.

Where this party really shone, though, was the sweets: mince pies, seed-cake, and many tea cakes, which we ate with big pots of Yorkshire Gold tea. For condiments we offered lemon curd, raspberry jam, and a jar of Devon double cream.

 

Recipes

Seed-Cake

One of my strongest memories of Bilbo on the cusp of his adventure is the way he had been looking forward to those "two beautiful round seed-cakes,"4 so I paid special attention to working out that recipe. Late Victorian and Edwardian seed-cake recipes are epitomized by "A Very Good Seed-Cake," one of the seed-cake recipes from the most famous English cookbook of the age, Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management by Isabella Mary Beeton. I'm pretty sure this Victorian recipe is the closest thing to the traditional English seed-cake Tolkien would have been thinking about when he was writing The Hobbit in the 1930s.

The recipe is basically a pound cake with less sugar than the usual, spiked with booze and quite a lot of caraway seeds.

A VERY GOOD SEED-CAKE
1776. [This is a recipe number, not a date.] INGREDIENTS - 1 lb. of butter, 6 eggs, 3/4 lb. of sifted sugar, pounded mace and grated nutmeg to taste, 1 lb. of flour, 3/4 oz. of caraway seeds, 1 wineglassful of brandy.
Mode. - Beat the butter to a cream; dredge in the flour; add the sugar, mace, nutmeg, and caraway seeds, and mix these ingredients well together. Whisk the eggs, stir to them the brandy, and beat the cake again for 10 minutes. Put it into a tin lined with buttered paper, and bake it from 1-1/2 to 2 hours. This cake would be equally nice made with currants, and omitting the caraway seeds.
Time - 1-1/2 to 2 hours.
Average cost, 2s. 6d.
Seasonable at any time.5

Instead of making one large one, we opted to make three smaller ones. That way, if some of us happened not to like the cake (on account of the large proportion of caraway seeds) or if we for some other reason did not eat up the whole cake on the Birthday, it would freeze or divide up easier. We wound up reducing the caraway seeds based largely on expense and access, although it still had quite a lot more caraway in it than any food any of us had ever eaten before. But we all loved it and plowed through quite a lot of it. In years when we don't pull off an entire Birthday Tea, I make this as a sort of Bilbo's Birthday Cake.

Here is a more modern-looking take on the recipe for people who are not comfortable working from older cookbooks. It follows Mrs. Beeton's process, which is a little different from the making of modern pound cake. That was my preference as a historic cooking geek, but it needn't be yours if you already know how to make pound cake a different way. But for best results, it should definitely be made a day ahead of time.

  • one pound/450g butter
  • one pound/450g flour
  • 3/4 pound/350g sugar, superfine or caster if you can get it
  • 6 large eggs
  • 3/4 ounce/21g caraway seeds; but we use 5g, about a teaspoon and a half
  • 7/8 cup/200ml brandy or rich sherry (I use Malmsey)
  • ground mace to taste (I use a pinch)
  • grated nutmeg to taste (I use about 1/2 teaspoon because I love nutmeg)
  • optional: 1-2 ounces/30-50 grams of currants, chopped candied citron peel, or chopped raisins

Preheat the oven to 325F/170C/gasmark 3. Prepare three round 8" layer cake pans in whatever way you're comfortable. I grease and line the bottoms with waxed paper.

Cream the butter and sugar. Sift in the flour, then sprinkle on the mace, nutmeg, and caraway seeds before you stir it. Dump in any optional fruit at this point too. Now stir until it's mixed completely, but do not beat yet.

Whisk the eggs with the booze. Add them to the bowl and beat for three minutes (longer if you're beating by hand). The batter should be very smooth.

Pour into the prepared pans. I like to thwap the bottom of each filled pan gently against the counter before they go into the oven: it settles out any unruly air pockets and gives the cakes a more consistent texture. Bake for about 50 minutes, until they test done. They should be golden brown and firm.

Remove from oven and cool 10 minutes on a rack. Remove from pans and let cool completely. Wrap or keep in a well-covered round tin until serving time.

They will be firm and a little chewy, especially if you added fruit. Good served in small wedges to nibble on between more structured meals.

 

Mince Pies

When I was little my mother would make mince pie. It's very much a special, holiday, comfort food memory to me. When we started the party plans, I hadn't had it in decades, partly because the commercial brands of mincemeat contain ingredients I do not eat and because the family I married into does not have mince pie as a tradition. We decided to make individual pies, and it was a great pleasure and comfort to establish this tradition with my immediate family, all of whom now love these vegetarian mince pies!

This dish has to be started a few days ahead, but the work is easy. You start by making David Lebovitz's Quick Mincemeat recipe.6  Let it sit at least two days for better flavor; longer will definitely not hurt it. Or if you have access to home-preserved or prefer commercial mincemeat, then by all means use that. Remember that mincemeat recipes are very forgiving and substitution is the seed of creativity.

Then on baking day peel and mince a couple of large tart apples and one large pear. Mix well with one cup of your mince pie concentrate and set aside to ripen until you're ready to bake.

Preheat the oven to 375F/190C/gasmark 5.

Make enough pastry for a double crust fruit pie. Grease a muffin tin of 12 cups, line them with half the pastry, and fill the pies with the mincemeat.

Roll out the rest of the pastry and cut out covers for the pies with a cookie cutter. Round will make traditional tiny pies, but shapes -- star, flower, or anything else that fits -- are really charming. Place the tops on the pies. If you've opted for complete coverings, prick each one so the steam can escape.

Bake until crust is golden brown, about 20 minutes.

Let cool in the tin five or ten minutes, then remove them carefully to a wire rack to continue cooling. Serve warm or room temperature with optional whipped or clotted cream.

 

Many Cakes

After long thinking, I decided that the cakes so frequently mentioned at the Unexpected Party probably meant tea cakes: smallish, flattish sweet bread products split and toasted at the fire. We didn't have a working fireplace so we split several at a time and toasted them lightly under the broiler.

I started with (and doubled) a recipe I found at the BBC.7

The first time I made these I omitted the mixed spice (because at the time I didn't know what it was), substituting half as much ginger powder. Currently I use a mix of cinnamon, ginger, mace, and cardamom, and I roast saffron and add it to the milk before it heats. Somehow, saffron strikes me as a very hobbity condiment.  For the dried fruit, I use citron peel, dried cherries, and golden raisins.

The recipe says it makes 6 cakes, which is 12 huge ones if you double the recipe. We usually make 18 and have leftovers which freeze nicely and are still very tasty six months later. But if you made 24 smaller cakes with it you might see more of them disappear at once because it's not such a commitment to eat a whole one if it's small.

 

Refining the Menu

There is an English grocery store across the Bay from us, in San Francisco. Knowing we could rely on that for some of the items that we as Americans are less familiar with helped a lot. A friend went there and picked us up the clotted cream, the Branston pickle, the tea, and some English shortbreads to serve as biscuits.

One of these years I aspire to try my hand at making the clotted cream. Shortbread is no problem to make at home; we didn't make it ourselves that first year due more or less to lack of time and organizational mojo. I should like to find a biscuit recipe that feels appropriate instead of relying on shortbread.

Branston pickle needs to be purchased. While not every locality can support an English grocery store, one can find Branston pickle in the imported foods section of some of the larger grocery stores I've been in on both sides of the US, and it can also be ordered off the Internet. The subject of which pickles, if any, are more appropriate than Branston is definitely a fruitful area for more research.

Last year we restored the cream scones to the menu, to general rejoicing. I would like to understand the history of "mixed spice" better, in order to make more Tolkien-appropriate tea cakes. In addition to reading the earliest food list from the Bladorthin manuscript, this past year I have also been doing a great deal more research about the foods the hobbits encounter in their travels. I expect to incorporate some of that into our next formal Birthday Tea, especially the part about one dwarf calling for (presumably hard) cider; I'd definitely rather have that than red wine or beer. There should also be salad, just on sound nutritional principles, but of what type?

And last but not least, the likely-impossible task: I want to investigate whether there is any indication what kind of tea the Professor preferred.

I happen to be a historic food geek:  I like to research and cook from old recipes, from Mesopotamian and Roman to medieval Persian and Egyptian, from Renaissance Spanish and Indian to mid-twentieth century Boomer cuisine.  Trying to work out what Tolkien thought Hobbits would enjoy eating is an ongoing puzzle, the solving of which appeals to me personally.  But the real fun of a Hobbit tea is to be found in the sharing of food, drink, and fellowship.  Make your menu what sings to you!8

Chapter End Notes

1. The Hobbit, Third ["Revised"] Edition, "An Unexpected Party"

2. John Rateliff, The History of The Hobbit, 2 vols (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007), Vol. 1, 43, note 11.

3. Rateliff, History of The Hobbit, Vol. II, 784, note 18. Rateliff concludes Tolkien may have made this change because he knew tomatoes would not be available that early in the season.

4. The Hobbit, Third ["Revised"] Edition, "An Unexpected Party"

5. Mrs. Beeton's book was first published in 1861 and went through several editions over several decades. If you're interested in that period's cooking and domestic science, you can find it for sale in reprints, as a used book, or free on the Internet.

6.  Quick Mincemeat Recipe

7.  Spiced Teacakes recipe

8.  Except for the mushrooms.  Evidently even us mushroom-haters have to include mushrooms at a Hobbit feast!

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