Outlander Snack

Pictured above are Bannock cakes and crowdie cheese made for a recent screening of The Outlander from "modernized" recipes posted on the Outlander kitchen site. I have to say that making butter from scratch is much simpler, cheese is rather fussy. There's that magic moment when you think the cream just isn't going to cooperate, and all of a sudden it goes from white cream to yellow butter with clear liquid whey left behind. I find it very curious that the cheese is the opposite - when the milk is heated and vinegar added the curds stay white but the separated whey turns a yellowish color. The Bannock cakes are like an unsweetened biscuit made with oatmeal, flour, and baking powder (baking powder was not available back then). By all accounts everyone found the snacks tasty, although I'm positive they were much easier to prepare in a modern kitchen with modern ingredients.

I'm thinking this type of soft cheese was similar to what our 17th century colonists made. In my research on Virginia colonial food I read about how the English missed the good hard cheeses of their home country and how they didn't like the local cheese available here. The crowdie cheese has a texture somewhere between cottage cheese and sour cream without a lot of flavor. I served it with some jam like a "high tea", but the recipe also suggested adding herbs to amp up the taste. The cheese spreads easily and, gosh, has a shelf life of a whole 5 days under refrigeration!