Dundurn National Historic Site
610 York Blvd L8R 3H1 Hamilton, ON, Canada

MacNab's rooms in Dundurn Castle have been undergoing restoration. Watch this video on the Hamilton Civic Museums YouTube channel to learn more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf5DKtDvanQ

Dundurn Castle wishes you a Joyous Twelfth Night! This beautiful Twelfth Night cake was made by Janet and Julia to be put on display during our Christmas evening tours. Isn’t it stunning? In Western Christianity, Twelfth Night is celebrated tonight, January 5th, the night before Epiphany, which is when the visit of the three wise men is commemorated, and the last day of the Christmas season. The types of Twelfth Night cake varied between countries, from almond pastry to sweet...- breads. In 19th century England, Twelfth Night cakes were traditionally a dense fruit cake decorated with gum paste icing (an early version of fondant icing), which was pressed into intricately carved wooden moulds. These cakes could be entirely white, or could feature a coloured cake icing, contrasting with white decorations. These moulded decorations were often gilded and the cake was traditionally topped with a crown made of sugar or gum paste. If icing a Twelfth Night cake was outside of your skills, these cakes could also be purchased from Confectioner Shops. The crown or crowns on top of the cake symbolize the three kings as well as the King and Queen of the evening’s festivities. A dried bean and pea were hidden inside the cake and the guests that found it would be crowned the King (bean) and Queen (pea) of the night. The King and Queen were in charge of the games and revelry and making sure that all the guests enjoyed themselves for the night. See more

For the MacNabs of Dundurn, Hogmanay, or Scottish New Years, would likely have been the bigger winter celebration. The most popular Hogmanay tradition is the First Footer - the first person to enter the home after midnight who brings good luck with them. Your visitor should bring food, fuel, and spirits, and ideally be a tall, dark, male stranger. The rest of the evening would be filled with singing, dancing, food and drink. Traditionally, this would be the evening to exchan...ge gifts and celebrate over the largest feast. Eventually Christmas grew to be a much larger celebration, but Hogmanay lives on for many Scottish families today. #DundurnCastle #Hogmanay

Happy New Year! Harpist Ruth Sutherland played brilliantly for us this holiday season. Please enjoy her version of Auld Lang Syne to welcome in the new year.

These jolly and jiggly jellies were made by two of Dundurn Castle’s Cooks, Fiona and Janet. Give them an online round of applause! Jellies were a labour-intensive dish to concoct, beginning with the long and stinky process of boiling animal bones and tissues to make gelatin. Serving elaborate jellies to your guests was a sign of wealth because their creation was a lengthy and finicky process for servants. Powdered gelatin became commercially available in the 1840s and in 1897, a cough-syrup maker from the Rochester, New York area filed a patent for...you guessed it: Jell-O.

https://www.youtube.com/ch/UC_tNXXMcfOFH6W5ElEsvkdw/videos This video comes to you straight from Dundurn Castle’s historic kitchen, where you’ll learn some helpful tips for preparing a Plum Pudding. Fiona and Andrea show us how to assemble the ingredients, prepare the pudding cloth and boil the pudding. Expect a dramatic ending where they set the pudding on fire! If you would like to try making Plum Pudding this year, it just so happens that the December recipe for the #Dun...durnRecipeChallenge is Plum Pudding and you’ll find the recipe in our post from December 8. Be sure to snap some photos, share them on Instagram or Facebook and add the hashtag #DundurnRecipeChallenge so everyone can see how it turned out. Check out and subscribe to the Hamilton Civic Museums YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/ch/UC_tNXXMcfOFH6W5ElEsvkdw/videos for more videos from Dundurn Castle and from all the Museums operated by the City of Hamilton.

What’s in a name? Part 3 Brown Betty, the Dessert It is often difficult to pinpoint the exact origins of recipes or food names and many words or recipes take on different meanings within a new context.... The use of Brown Betty as a racially-coded food name is apparent in North American references such as The Yale Literary Magazine in 1864. It recommended that rowing teams sacrifice tea, coffee, pies and brown Betty from their diet, which is likely the spiced brandy and ale, wassail-type cocktail in Oxford Night Caps (see previous post). The spelling in this American reference has Betty capitalized and brown in lower-case, suggesting that brown describes Betty’s physical appearance or skin colour. A decade later, in the 1873 cookbook Common Sense in the Household (New York), Brown Betty is an apple dessert. An identical recipe in the Original Picayune Creole Cookbook from New Orleans in 1901 called it Mulatto’s Pudding (Mulatto is a racial classification to refer to people of mixed white and black ancestry). In The Canadian Home Cookbook (1877) the same recipe is called Apple and Bread Crumb Pudding. There is a long history of using food names as racial slurs. Language could take on colonial prejudices where brown refers to skin colour. But research also shows how Brown Betty describes the colour of the dark clay of a teapot, or the recipes’ ingredients and techniques like brown sugar or the browning of the breadcrumbs. Language from a culinary perspective challenges us to consider all the historical influences. A Brown Betty teapot, cocktail, dessert and nursery rhyme character indicates the prominent use of the expression and allows for its eventual race-based use. Regardless, Brown Betty has earned its rightful place as a tasty apple dessert. The November recipe for the #DundurnRecipeChallenge is from the World War I era: Brown Betty, an apple dessert featuring breadcrumbs, butter, sugar and spice. Have a look at our post from a week ago to find the recipe and try making Brown Betty yourself.

What’s in a name? Part 2 Brown Betty, the Cocktail Brown Betty, an apple dessert featuring breadcrumbs, butter, sugar and spice, is our November recipe for the #DundurnRecipeChallenge. Look back at our post from a week ago for the recipe to make and eat Brown Betty yourself. ... Brown Betty is also the name of an alcoholic beverage. The earliest mention of a Brown Betty drink recipe that we could find is in the 1827 book Oxford Night Caps, which featured recipes for drinks served at Oxford University. Similar to a wassail bowl, this cocktail is a combination of brown sugar, water, lemon, cloves, cinnamon, brandy and ale. The finishing touch is to add a couple of slices of toasted bread with nutmeg and cinnamon grated on top. Brown Betty could be served iced in the summer and warm in the winter. At the beginning of the recipe, the author of Oxford Night Caps sheds some light on the possible identity of Betty: it is said to have derived its name from the fair sex...who invariably recommended the mixture so named as a never failing panacea (a cure all). This traditional nursery rhyme could have also played a part in naming Brown Betty the cocktail: Little brown Betty lived at the Golden Can, Where she brew’d good ale for gentlemen; And gentlemen came every day, Till little brown Betty she hopt away. The name Brown Betty could also refer to Brown Betty Teapots (have a look at yesterday’s post) or Brown Betty the apple dessert (more on that tomorrow). Pictured: The Smoking Room at Dundurn Castle

Here’s a selection of our favourite picks for the Hamiltonian or Dundurn fan on your shopping list! The Castle Shop is open for in-person shopping only, Tuesday to Sunday, 12-4pm. Pictured here: T. H. & B. T shirt Mountie Insulated Travel Mug... Vintage Hamilton Postcards Maple Syrup Canada Pennant Dundurn Christmas Ornament Dundurn Winter Scene Mug Lincoln Alexander’s Biography Dundurn Garden’s Luffa Dundurn Delights Cookbook The Diary of Sophia MacNab Clan MacNab Scarf Maple Leaf Patch See more

Looking for a cozy musical experience from the comfort of your own Castle? This evening, Friday, December 11, our Drawing Room will be filled with music as the talented Ruth Sutherland plays traditional carols and Celtic tunes on her harp. Tune in via Facebook Live from 6:40 - 7:00 PM to enjoy some holiday cheer! #HamOnt #HamiltonMusic #ScantilyPlaid

Orange Gingerbread and Wassail are favourite Christmas recipes at Dundurn Castle. We shared them prior to our Virtual Christmas Tour this year and some of you have let us know that you made them in advance and savoured these treats when you watched the tour live. By request, we are sharing the recipes again so you can make them anytime during your celebrations. Have a look down below or in the images for the historic and modern recipes. We are so pleased that so many of y...ou took the time to make our Virtual Christmas Tour a part of your Christmas festivities! If you haven’t watched it yet, you can find the recording here on our Dundurn National Historic Site Facebook page. Just scroll down until you reach November 28 and you can watch it anytime. Wassail The Spicy wassail, besides being sweetened, was also augmented by the addition of a toast and apples, stuck full of cloves; the liquor might be wine, cider or ale, and was served smoking hot. - The Holidays, N.B. Warren, N.Y. 1868 ...grate a nutmeg and some ginger into it, add four glasses of sherry... a couple or three slices of lemon... - Oxford Night Caps, R Cooke, London, 1827 Modern Interpretation: Bake some whole apples in a hot oven until soft. In a large pot over medium heat, combine apple cider (sweetened with sugar if desired), lemon or orange rind, whole cloves, ginger and nutmeg or other spices to taste. Float the roasted apples in the cider, and serve hot...(optional: sherry to taste) Orange Gingerbread Two pounds and a quarter fine flour, a pound and three quarters molasses, twelve ounces of sugar, three ounces undried orange peel chopped fine, one ounce each of ginger and allspice, melt twelve ounces of butter, mix the whole together, lay it by for twelve hours, roll it out with as little flour as possible, cut it in pieces three inches wide, mark them in the form of checkers with the back of a knife, rub them over with a yelk of an egg, beat with a teacup of milk, when done wash them again with the egg. - The Cook Not Mad. Kingston, Ontario, 1831 Modern Interpretation: 4 cups flour 1 cup molasses 1 cups sugar 3 Tbsp. orange peel 1 Tbsp. ginger 1 tsp. allspice 1 cups butter (melted) Combine all the ingredients together. Roll out the dough to desired thickness. Cut into 3 inch squares or you can roll the dough into 1 inch balls and place them on a cookies sheet. Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes. Caution: Molasses recipes can scorch quickly and should be watched carefully. Optional: brush with an egg wash.

What’s in a name? Part 1 Brown Betty, the Teapot The name Brown Betty could refer to a few items in the culinary world: Apple Brown Betty dessert, Brown Betty teapots, and Brown Betty the cocktail. The November recipe for the #DundurnRecipeChallenge is a Brown Betty dessert recipe from the First World War era, so have a look at our post from last week for the recipe to try making it in your kitchen. ... Originating in England in the mid-18th Century, the British Brown Betty teapot design was based on redware Yixing teapots fabricated in China, mostly for Europeans, who typically wanted to brew more tea at once. Brown Betties were first fabricated in Stoke-on-Trent because of the red clay that was found in the area, which was able to retain heat for longer than other clays. The round body was ideal for gently unfurling tea leaves, resulting in a flavourful tea, and the brown Rockingham glaze allowed the teapots to retain their beauty over time without being stained. As for the teapot name, Brown very likely came from the red clay and brown glaze typical of this tea pot, but the reason why this tea pot is called Betty is unknown. One suggestion is that it referred to the popularity of the name Elizabeth or Betty at the time, meaning that it would also be a common name for a servant who would be serving tea. In the picture: this Brown Betty teapot from the staff kitchen in the offices of Dundurn Castle.