A Dish Of Wamphray

This recipe comes from an English household manuscript dated roughly between the 1660s and 1680s, a time when English country kitchens were experimenting with both local ingredients and new culinary techniques. The dish itself—named after Wamphray, a parish in southwestern Scotland—exemplifies early modern British tastes for warm, creamy fruit dishes and demonstrates the use of eggs and cream to thicken and enrich desserts. It's a lively glimpse into the mix of practicality and indulgence that defined noble and aspirant middle-class cooking in the post-Restoration era.

In its original context, this dish would have been prepared using a cast-iron or brass saucepan placed over an open hearth or fire. The fruits were likely picked fresh, and water fetched from a well or spring. Butter was churned in-house, and eggs collected daily. Beating the eggs would have been done with a simple wooden whisk or spoon, and the mixing accomplished with wooden or pewter spoons. Dishes for serving were often ceramic or pewter, and a small mortar and pestle might have been used to grind cinnamon.