Amy Levy's 1888 novel Reuben Sachs has plenty of food references to inspire my baking to go with Dovegreyreader's post on the book itself. Leaving the many lavish fish dishes aside, there are lots of scenes in the oppressively decorated drawingrooms of the period when afternoon tea was a feature of the day.
Early on, "while sipping tea in the fading light of the September afternoon", Adelaide Sachs cuts herself "a fresh slice of the rich cake which she was devouring with nervous voracity" (a greedy girl this one, she later suffers from having taken a surfeit of muffins), so fittingly for a family of Sephardim, I've made a Sephardic Chocolate Cake from Claudia Roden's A New Book of Middle Eastern Food, and this should not harm the digestion as long it's consumed in moderation.
Later in the book, Judith Quixano visits her young brothers and hands out chocolate and burnt almonds to them, so this cake, being rich with dark chocolate and ground almonds, is quite in keeping.
Lucky Judith had her wits about her at that point because further on, when affairs of the heart mean her mind's not on the needlework in hand, she puts green silk instead of blue into the cornflowers she's stitching!
For our next Persephone books and cakes extravaganza, Lynne and I shall be reading Lettice Cooper's The New House. Join us to talk about that and eat some virtual cake on 31st. March.
