Cooking for the clergy

With Covid-19 raging through nearly every country in the world right now, it would probably be appropriate for me to devote a post to ‘pandemic literature’ (perhaps Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year [1722] or Albert Camus’ The Plague [1947]). However, I suspect that, if food is referenced, it is far from tasty, and I also think that, at times like this, we might need to seek solace in a different type of literature.

I make no apology for turning once again to a novel by Barbara Pym (1913-80) for this post. Her novels – comedies of manners dominated by unmarried middle-aged women, the clergy and academics – are acutely observed, and bring some much-needed laughter in this dark time.

In my previous Pym post I wrote about Crampton Hodnet published posthumously in 1984. This time I rewind to 1950, to her first published novel, Some tame gazelle.

The novel, which Pym began writing in the 1930s whilst still a student at Oxford University, revolves around two middle-aged unmarried sisters, Belinda and Harriet Bede, and their unrequited love for members of the clergy.

The younger sister, Harriet, who is outgoing and glamorous, always has her sights set on the latest curate at the village church the sisters attend When the novel opens a new curate – Edgar Donne – has just arrived on the scene, and on the first page it is noted – from Belinda’s perspective – that ‘Harriet was making her usual fuss over the new curate and was obviously prepared to be quite as silly over him as she had been over his predecessors’.

Belinda, the older sister, is more withdrawn and academic – like Pym she has studied English at university. Whilst still a student she encountered and fell in love with Henry Hoccleve, who is now married and the local Archdeacon, and has been in love with him ever since: ‘Belinda, having loved the Archdeacon when she was twenty and not having found anyone to replace him since, had naturally got into the habit of loving him…’ .

The title of the novel is taken from a poem by Thomas Haynes Bayly, a minor early 19th century poet, the quotation being one of Belinda’s favourites:

Some tame gazelle, or some gentle dove:
Something to love, oh, something to love!

The refrain sums up the sisters’ approach to men – they yearn for a ‘tame gazelle’ or ‘gentle dove’ on whom they can bestow affection. At the end of the novel Harriet’s ‘romance’ with Edgar Donne inevitably comes to nothing, but as he moves on (to a new parish with a wife on his arm), so a new curate arrives to take his place, both in the parish and in Harriet’s affections: ‘It was true that the curate on whom Harriet had lavished so much care and affection was now a married man and lost to them, but another had come in his place, so like, that they would hardly realize the difference’.

A principal way in which Harriet and Belinda lavish care and affection on these members of the clergy is through food, whether cooked by them or their maid Emily. At the beginning of the novel the sisters invite Edgar for a dinner of ‘boiled chicken smothered in white sauce’, their standard offering to new curates; at the end of the novel Harriet tells Belinda with great delight that the new curate ‘”says he is fond of boiled chicken”’.

But the sisters’ range of culinary offerings to the clergy is not confined to boiled chicken. There is duck when Edgar comes to dinner a second time, and then at a larger dinner party – where both Edgar and the Archdeacon are guests of honour – the sisters serve up ‘cold chickens with ham and tongue and various salads, followed by trifles, jellies, fruit and Stilton cheese’.

Food is also offered in a more intimate setting.  Harriet sets out one afternoon to visit Edgar bearing a basket: ‘Besides a cake and some apple jelly, she was taking some very special late plums which she had been guarding jealously for the last few weeks’.  Her jealous possessiveness over the plums foreshadows her discovery that afternoon that another woman – a certain Olivia Berridge – has been bestowing offerings on Edgar, but knitted (socks) rather than culinary ones. Olivia will become Edgar’s wife at the end of the novel and take him away from both the village and Harriet.

Belinda has a more difficult situation on her hands, since the man she loves is married. Knowing that Agatha, the Archdeacon’s wife is going away for a while, Belinda allows herself to fantasise herself supplying him with food: ‘Belinda was…wondering … whether she would have the courage to bring the Archdeacon a pot of the blackberry jelly which she herself had made a week or two ago … a cake, too, perhaps with coffee icing and filling and chopped nuts on the top, or a really rich fruit cake..’

Pym never tells the reader whether, in Agatha’s absence, Belinda makes and supplies these provisions, but even if she doesn’t, I chose to make the coffee cake, providing a comforting slice of nostalgia in these troubling times.

A CLERGYMAN’S COFFEE CAKE
Ingredients (makes 1 cake that serves 10-12):
For the sponge
225g caster sugar
225g unsalted butter, softened (remove from the fridge at least one hour before you begin cooking)
4 eggs
2 tablespoons strong black coffee
200g plain flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
For the buttercream icing
300g icing sugar
125g unsalted butter, softened
50ml strong black coffee
12 walnut halves

Method:
Grease and line two 20 cm (8 inch) shallow sandwich cake tins.
Preheat the oven to 180C / 160C / gas mark 4.
Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy and light in colour.
Add the eggs one at a time, making sure each egg is fully incorporated into the mixture before adding the next one.
Beat in the coffee.
Fold in the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda) until you have a smooth batter.
Divide the cake batter between the two tins and bake in the oven for 25 minutes (approx.) until risen and springy to the touch.
Leave to cool for a few minutes in the tins and then turn out and allow to finish cooling on a wire rack.
When the cakes are cold you can ice them. Beat together the icing sugar and butter until you have a light fluffy mixture. Add the coffee and stir in.
Use half the icing to sandwich together the two cakes and the other half to decorate the top of the cake. Then place the walnut halves around the top edge to decorate.