By Camille Elliot/Camy Tang
The best part about writing Regency novels is researching the food.
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| AI-generated image of an actual 1810 bonbonnière and the cover of the March 1809 issue of The Repository of Arts ladies’ magazine |
I had just written the passage below in my Christian Regency suspense novel, Lady Wynwood’s Spies, Volume 7: Spinster:
My hero, Barron, returns home after a garden party. He’d been sitting beside and conversing attentively with other eligible young women when Lena—the woman he actually wants—arrived looking unexpectedly beautiful and was immediately surrounded by male admirers.
Worse, instead of responding to Lena the way he wished he had, he froze, barely complimented her, and then allowed himself to be drawn into another lady’s conversation.
Barron found his sister in the drawing room before dinner. He flung himself in a chair and pronounced, “I do believe I felt like a man caught cheating on his wife.”
Tabitha looked up in surprise from the ladies’ journal she was reading—a publication only just come from London. “I feel very sorry for your wife. Perhaps she might forgive you if you come to her with remorse and bonbons?”
“Are you requesting bonbons in an unsubtle manner?”
“I am never unsubtle. I am the picture of subtlety.” She sighed. “Bonbons would go marvelously with this ladies’ journal.”
“I suppose I could send to town for some,” he grumbled.
Tabitha smiled with all the satisfaction of a fat tabby cat who had successfully stolen a fish. “Now, what is this about your imaginary wife?”
I did some research to double-check that there were indeed bonbons in Regency England, and I discovered that they were not chocolate truffles.
The word is from the French—literally “good-good”—but in the late 1700s, most knew them as sweet, expensive confections. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, author Fanny Burney first used the term in print in 1796.
In The Complete Confectioner by Hannah Glasse and Maria Wilson in 1800, they were called “bomboons”:
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| Bonbon (or Bomboon) recipe from The Complete Confectioner by Hannah Glasse and Maria Wilson, 1800 |
To Make Nut Bomboons.
Take a pound of Spanish nuts, and boil them in an iron pan ; when they are well boiled, rub off their skin with a napkin; if some stick too hard, pare it off with a knife; take a tin grater and grate your nuts very tine on a sheet of paper; then take a pound of powdered sugar to a pound of nuts, put it in a pan over a slow fire; when your sugar is all melted in stirring it perpetually with a wooden spoon, put your nuts in and work them well till all is well mixed, and pour it upon a tin plate; take a wooden rolling-pin to spread it, which you must be very quick in doing, for it cools very fast; and when it is cold cut it into what form you please; you must take care the sugar should not be too much melted, for it is very apt to soften when the nuts arejoined to it.
The “Spanish nuts” are hazelnuts/filberts, which sounds delicious to me. It would turn into a firm hazelnut praline or nut brittle, but with finely grated nuts rather than left whole. It wouldn’t be like our modern hard candy, however, but a bit more crumbly because of the 1:1 nut to sugar ratio.
In the same cookbook, the bamboons could also be flavored with lemon or orange zest, coffee, or orange water.
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| March 1809 issue of The Repository of Arts ladies’ magazine |
I also found this delightful paragraph about bonbons in the ladies’ magazine, The Repository of arts, literature, commerce, manufactures, fashions and politics for March, 1809 by R. Ackermann, pages 145-146:
Bonbons were in ancient times in France an allowed medium of bribing judges and people of rank, of whom a favour was solicited. This practice was carried so far, that Louis IX. by a decree, forbade judges to take more than ten sous worth of bonbons in a week ; and Philip the Fair limited the quantity to as much as they could use in their housekeeping in a day. Soon afterwards these sweetmeats were converted into money, and a M. de Tournon, instead of ten boxes of bonbons, paid ten gold francs.
Like my character Tabitha above, I would most certainly be willing to be bribed with bonbons.
In a diary entry in September 1816, Lady Shelley also mentioned the physician bribing Princess Esterhazy with bonbons:
The family physician, Capellini, tells the Princess what she is to eat ; and presents her daily with a dose of quinine, which, after many grimaces, and with plenty of bonbons, she contrives to swallow.
Here is the first printed mention of bonbons in the novel Camilla, by Fanny Burney, published in 1796:
Miss Margland, perceiving what she regarded as a fair vacancy, made up to the spot, and saying, ‘Sir, by your leave,’ was preparing to take possession of the place, when the gentleman, as if without seeing her, dropt suddenly into it himself, and, pouring a profusion of eau suave upon his handkerchief, exclaimed: ‘What a vastly bad room this is for dancing!’
Camilla, concluding herself addressed, turned round to him; but, seeing he was sniffing up the eau suave, without looking at her, imagined he meant to speak to Miss Margland.
Miss Margland was of the same opinion, and, with some pique at his seizing thus her intended seat, rather sharply answered: ‘Yes, sir, and it’s a vast bad room for not dancing; for if every body would dance that ought, there would be accommodation sufficient for other people.’
‘Incomparably well observed!’ cried he, collecting some bonbons from a bonboniere, and swallowing one after another with great rapidity: ‘But won’t you sit down? You must be enormously tired. Let me supplicate you to sit down.’
Like the gentleman, I now feel the need to stuff my face with some bonbons, although mine will likely be the chocolate variety. Alas for the gluttonous fellow above, those will not be created until the 1840s.
About the Author
Camy Tang writes Christian historical and contemporary romance filled with intrigue, adventure, and faith. Under the pen name Camille Elliot, she writes the Christian Regency romantic suspense series Lady Wynwood’s Spies, set in 1811 London where secrets, espionage, and slow-burn romance unfold against the glittering backdrop of high society.
If you’d like to meet Barron and Lena and see how their story begins, you can read the opening chapters of Lady Wynwood’s Spies, Volume 7: Spinster for free on my blog. Although Spinster is part of an ongoing series, Volume 7 opens in a new setting with a largely new cast of characters, so you can sample the opening without knowing everything that came before.
New to the series and prefer to begin at the beginning? Lady Wynwood’s Spies starts with Archer. Read the first few chapters on my blog.
References:
The Complete Confectioner by Hannah Glasse and Maria Wilson, 1800
The Repository of arts, literature, commerce, manufactures, fashions and politics for March, 1809 by R. Ackermann
The Diary of Frances, Lady Shelley, 1787-1817, edited by her grandson, Richard Edgcumbe (published in 1912)
Camilla, by Fanny Burney, 1796
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