Agatha Christie was an enthusiastic eater. It comes through in her novels, despite her spartan writing style. But it really comes through in her autobiography. Being an enthusiastic eater myself, this is what struck me, and stayed with me most, in reading it. Agatha loved to remember and relate what she ate.
What’s a fan to do? There is a restless desire in both amateur and professional Agathalogists to uncover some new angle. For example, I’ve wished that someone would write Agatha Christie, Horticulturist. (See my previous fan series on What I Learned from Agatha Christie.) Karen Pierce recently published Recipes for Murder: 66 Dishes That Celebrate the Mysteries of Agatha Christie, a close examination of the food of Agatha’s novels and recipes to accompany them.
This has inspired me to proceed with my own fan project, which I’ve been considering awhile: a series on What Agatha Ate, taking each chapter of her autobiography one by one to catalogue the mentions of food.
And of course, for each chapter, a recipe.
I thought at first I would just list off all the food items, but already in the first chapter it became clear that a little more sort and cataloguing would be in order. Plus, Agatha sometimes offered interpretive comments worth including.
So, without further ado, here is all the food she mentions in chapter one, fittingly organized and annotated.
Foodstuffs in their simple state
raspberries and green apples, “both of which I ate in large quantities”
beechnuts, “which I ate with relish”
raisins
cocoa
peach
golden plum
chocolate
sultanas
cheese
boiled sweets (But the significance is not so much the sweets as their smells in the shop, including toffee, peppermint rock, pineapple, barleysugar, and pear drops.)
Prepared foods
“my birthday cake, all sugar icing”
éclairs
juicy steak
boiled mutton
Devonshire cream on “tough cakes”
mutton with caper sauce
Foods associated with Jane, the cook at Ashfield
stone pudding (This, however, was never actually made or eaten. It’s what Jane would suggest when Mrs. Miller would ask for her ideas about a dessert. Mrs. Miller always declined with a shudder, so Agatha never did find out what a stone pudding was. Even Google doesn’t seem to know. Is this a pretend dish, like stone soup? Was Jane putting her mistress on?)
“a fragment of pastry, a freshly-made scone, or a rock cake” (Not specifically what Agatha ate, but what Jane was always eating.)
rock cakes and buns
hot jam pastry
hot rock cakes (Third mention! Agatha remarks: “Never since have I tasted rock cakes like Jane’s. They were crisp and flat and full of currants, and eaten hot they were like Heaven.” For those of you familiar with the treat only from Hagrid’s horrifying versions, they are what Americans would call drop biscuits, sweet and with dried fruit.)
Sample menu for a dinner party at Ashfield prepared by Jane:
thick or clear soup
boiled turbot
fillet of sole
sorbet
saddle of mutton
Lobster Mayonnaise
Pouding Diplomatique (A baked dish of ladyfingers or génoise cake covered with custard and flavored with candied fruits and rum.)
Charlotte Russe (A cold dessert of ladyfingers lining a filling of gelatin-reinforced custard, often flavored with raspberry, and topped with fresh fruit like strawberries.)
“then dessert” (I am utterly at a loss to imagine what “dessert” might be beyond the two preceding items.)
Nice things you’d find in the pantry at Grannie’s house:
jars of jam and preserves
dates
preserved fruits
figs
French plums in a jar
cherries
angelica
raisins
currants
butter
sugar
tea
flour
Likely to be served at Auntie-Grannie and Granny B.’s table:
an enormous joint
cherry tart and cream
vast piece of cheese
dessert (Again, this seems to be something entirely different from the cherry tart.)
Madeira cake (Served at tea. It’s basically a pound cake flavored with lemon, though as far as I can tell there is no requirement to add any actual Madeira to the batter, as I’d assumed from the name.)
Not actual food, but items you could buy for your dollhouse:
Little cardboard platters of roast chicken
eggs and bacon
a wedding cake
a leg of lamb
apples and oranges
fish
trifle
plum pudding
The winning recipe for this chapter is, alas, not stone pudding, but éclairs. And not only because I needed a good excuse to make éclairs. They also have the distinction of being the one and only food item mentioned in Agatha’s Foreword to her autobiography, as well as being one of the first mentioned in the first chapter. I think it’s safe to infer that éclairs made a huge and happy impression on little Agatha. May you be similarly delectated.
Éclairs
As you can tell from the photo, these are not super cute, highly refined, French pâtisserie-level éclairs. I figured out long ago I could never compete with the food bloggers who take online courses in food photography and devote hours to perfect lighting and professional presentation. Truth is, I like to eat more than I like to look. I can spend a lot of time making a recipe, but I can’t be bothered tarting it up at the end—I just want to devour.
This is not to put you off. My husband took one bite and said, “These are the best éclairs I’ve ever had. Ever.” And we lived in France for eight years, so he would know. You see? The old adage is right: looks aren’t everything.
Most of the measurements are in weight, which works much better for baking than volume measurements. Treat yourself to a kitchen scale if you haven’t yet. They’re cheap and you’ll never regret it.
Choux Pastry
8 oz / 1 c (235 mL) water
pinch salt
2 oz / 4 Tbsp (60 g) unsalted butter
4.5 oz (125 g) flour
3 eggs
Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C). Bring the water, salt, and butter to a boil in a pot. Take off the heat. Pour the flour in through a sieve and shake it all in. With a wooden spoon, beat well till it makes a cohesive paste. Let sit 5–10 minutes to cool off. Then, beat in the eggs, one at a time. You will initially despair that you’re just getting slime-coated clumps of batter. Keep at it; they’ll give in eventually. Once all the eggs are incorporated, keep stirring a couple more minutes to give it some oomph. Scrape into a plastic bag and snip off a tiny corner (I use a ziplock).
Spread a piece of parchment paper over a baking sheet (you can grease it instead but this is easier). Pipe éclair-shaped mounds of batter onto the sheet. Probably it will look flat and depressing, but it will puff up when it bakes. I found about 3 stripes of batter right next to each did the trick. Put in the oven for 20 minutes. If they’re wan and pale, give it another 10 minutes or so. Repeat with the rest of the batter.
As soon as the finished choux pastries come out of the oven, use a sharp knife to cut a slit along one length, to let the hot steam out—they’ll hold their shape better.
During baking time, work on the next step:
Vanilla Pastry Cream
16 oz / 2 c (475 mL) milk
1 vanilla bean
3.5 oz (100 g) sugar
5 egg yolks (freeze the whites for something else)
.7 oz (20 g) cornstarch
.7 oz (20 g) flour
pinch salt
Put milk in pot. Scrape out the tiny seeds from the vanilla bean and add to the milk, then dump the eviscerated bean in, too. Bring to a boil, then remove from heat and let sit 1 hour. Remove and discard the bean; remove and eat the clumps of “skin.” Add 50 g sugar to the milk and bring it to gentle heat.
In another bowl, whisk together the other 50 g sugar, the egg yolks, the cornstarch, the flour, and the salt. Pour in the warmed milk and whisk well, then tip it all back into the pot. Bring to a boil over medium heat, whisking steadily all the while. When it’s really nice and thick, remove from heat and let cool.
When both the pastry and the cream are done, you’re ready to make the chocolate sauce for the top.
Chocolate Sauce
50 mL water
3.5 oz (100 g) sugar
1.75 oz (50 g) unsalted butter
1.75 oz (50 g) cocoa powder
Combine the water and half of the sugar in a small pan and bring to a boil until the sugar dissolves. Turn off the heat and in the rest of the sugar, the butter, and the cocoa powder. Heat up slowly while stirring until you have a nice, thick, glossy sauce.
When you’re ready to assemble your éclairs, scrape the cooled pastry cream into another plastic bag and snip the tip. Pipe into the pastries at whatever quantity pleases you. (I like them fat and bursting, but that meant I had some leftover, unfilled, forlorn pastries. I’m pretty sure they will get eaten anyway.) Then slap on a nice slick of chocolate sauce. Voilà. Marvel at how they don’t survive even 24 hours in your home.