Summer Banquet Hop! Enter to Win!

Summer Banquet Hop! Join me and thirty other historical novelists for a bounty of food-related posts and chances to win prizes!

I'm giving away two prizes: a copy of The Darling Strumpet, released in mass-market paperback on June 4, with a teaser chapter of Venus in Winter, or a copy of Venus in Winter, my novel based on the first forty years of the eventful life of the Tudor dynast Bess of Hardwick, coming July 2!

Enter by leaving a comment on this post. Get extra entries by following me on Twitter https://twitter.com/GillianBagwell and/or for liking my Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/gillianbagwell

The Darling Strumpet

“An absolute triumph as a debut novel . . . [It] is an absolutely brilliant addition to the historical fiction genre and might be the best novel on Nell Gwynn ever . . . Nell would have applauded in approval and probably done a little jig to celebrate her tribute.” — Pittsburgh Historical Fiction Examiner

Venus in Winter

“A wonderful portrait of one of Elizabethan England’s most fascinating—and most long-lived—women. A great read, rich with detail and story.”—Diana Gabaldon, author of the bestselling Outlander series

Nell Gwynn, the subject of my novel The Darling Strumpet, was born in the slums of London in the area of Covent Garden. At the age of thirteen, she was hired as an orange seller at the newly-built Theatre Royal in Bridges Street, which opened on May 7, 1663. The present Theatre Royal on Drury Lane is the third building on the same site.

Oranges were a delicacy, and sold for sixpence, as much as the cheapest seats in the theatre. Nell’s witty banter and likeable sex appeal got her noticed, and soon she was the lover and protégé of Charles Hart, one of the leading actors and shareholders of the King’s Company. She probably made her debut in Thomas Killigrew’s comedy Tomaso, in a small part as a saucy wench. Nell rapidly became a favorite of London audiences, and she and Hart appeared in a series of “gay couple” comedies featuring battling lovers, making them the Myrna Loy and William Powell of the Restoration theatre.

Here’s a delightful seventeenth-century recipe featuring oranges:

Orange Butter

Good with plain cookies, on ice cream, etc. From  A Taste of History: 10,000 Years of Food in Britain, which took the recipe from The Savile Recipe Book, 1683, quoted in The Gentlewoman’s Kitchen.

¼ pint (150 ml) fresh orange juice, and thinly peeled zest of the oranges

¼ point (150 ml) white wine
6 egg yolks
2 T. (30 ml) sugar
Soak the zest in the orange juice and white wine for 30 minutes to enrich the flavor, then remove. Beat the eggs yolks and sugar and add to the orange juice. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and stir continuously over a low heat until thick and creamy, but do not allow to bring to a boil. Allow the butter to cool and serve with wafers as a rich full-flavored fruit dip.

The original recipe:
R. a quarter of a Pint of cleared juice of Oranges, a quarter of a Pint of white wine, pare the Peel of your Oranges thinne, steep itt in the juice & white-wine halfe an hour, then put in when you have taken out the pill a little fine Sugar, to take away the sharpnesse. Then beat the yolks of six eggs very well, & put them into the liquor, & sett them over the fire, & keep itt continually stirring till you find it almost as thick as Butter then throw it about the dish or bason, & let itt stand all night, in the morning take itt off lightlie with a spoon, & serve itt as other Butter.

For more on my books and events, please visit my website, www.gillianbagwell.com!

Be sure to visit the blogs of the other authors participating in the Summer Banquet Hop! Hop Participants

1. Random Bits of Fascination (Maria Grace)
2. Pillings Writing Corner (David Pilling)
3. Anna Belfrage
4. Debra Brown
5. Lauren Gilbert
6. Gillian Bagwell
7. Julie K. Rose
8. Donna Russo Morin
9. Regina Jeffers
10. Shauna Roberts
11. Tinney S. Heath
12. Grace Elliot
13. Diane Scott Lewis
14. Ginger Myrick
15. Helen Hollick
16. Heather Domin
17. Margaret Skea
18. Yves Fey
19. JL Oakley
20. Shannon Winslow
21. Evangeline Holland
22. Cora Lee
23. Laura Purcell
24. P. O. Dixon
25. E.M. Powell
26. Sharon Lathan
27. Sally Smith O'Rourke
28. Allison Bruning
29. Violet Bedford
30. Sue Millard
31. Kim Rendfeld