At a Sicilian Coffee House.

I have been hoarding today’s little gem for some time. The wait has been worth it, for there is always some extra value when the story can begin with the intriguing phrase ‘On This Day.’

The bill of fare of a coffeehouse in Palermo on this day in 1806 was considered interesting enough to be described in The Times some months later.

In the Coffeehouse of M.Francis Geraci in Centorinara’s street num. 98, at Palermo, a Company of four people served with three dishes of meat and poultry eight dishes of sausage, cheese, olives, fruits, greens, &c. for desert, bread, and two bottles of wine, will pay six dollars.

If the people were more than the said four, every person exceeding that number will pay one dollar.

A company of four people served with six dishes of Meat & poultry, sixteen dishes of sausage, cheese, olives &c, for deserts, bread, two bottles of wine, a dish of sweet-meats, ice, and coffee, will pay two dollars.

If the company would have more things than the above-mentioned, they will pay according to the following prices.

Lionell-wine, Port-wine, Canaries-wine, Malaga-wine &c half a Dollar for every bottle.

Moscato-wine & Mulvassi-wine (these are sweet wines) two shillings a bottle.

A large Cup of Cofee with milk & sugar, six pence.

A little cup of coffee with sugar, one penny.

A Glass of ice of any kind six pence.

Biscuits half a penny each.

A Dish of sausage one Shilling.

A Bottle of Rosolio of Pugioli, of several kinds, half a Dollar.

A small bottle of Rosolio of the same Geraci one shilling.

Those people then, which will have a dinner as before has been mentioned, must advise the said Geraci at least one hour before, in order that he could dress it, & they must leave some money, in order that in case, they should miss their engagement, the said money will remain to Geraci to amend for the loss he will suffer for the dinner left him.

                    Palermo, Sicily, Sept. 10, 1806

Italian Biscuit.
Beat the whites of nine eggs to a froth, then put in the yolks and beat them; add a pound and a half of fine sugar, beaten and sifted, and a pound and a half of fine flour, putting in a little at a time, till it is all in; beat it well for an hour, drop it on wafer paper, with a few caraway comfits on the top; shake a little sugar over it, and bake it in a quick oven; for if it is slow, they will run.
Every Woman Her Own House-keeper: or, the ladies’ library … by John Perkins,

(Note – In 1806, the instruction to ‘beat it all well for an hour’ meant ‘beat by hand’!)

If you are keen to know more about Sicilian food, I can do no better than refer you to my friend Marisa's blog, All Things Sicilian and More.

Quotation for the Day.

A tavola non si invecchia (You don't age while seated for a meal.)
Italian proverb.

Snags and Bangers.

I had a mind today to find out why sausages are called ‘bangers’ (in England) and ‘snags’ (in Australia). The story of ‘bangers’ turns out not to be terribly interesting, so someone needs to invent a good myth pretty soon. It is assumed that ‘banger’ relates to the noise made by a bursting sausage, and the nick-name dates to the first or second decade of the twentieth century.

As for the word ‘snag’, the first reference to it use for ‘sausage’ given by the Oxford English Dictionary is in 1941, which seems very recent to me. There appear to be no theories for this usage of the word, so I have been forced to invent some myself this very day.

The word ‘snag’ can also mean:

- ‘a short protuberance or knob’, usually one left after pruning (perhaps indicating the shape of a sausage?),
- an underwater tree branch or similar, which acts as a hazard to fishermen and sailors (perhaps suggesting the rather risky, hidden contents of the sausage)
- an obstacle or impediment (to good nutrition?)
- the common snail, in the old Sussex dialect, a slug in the West Kent dialect, and a snake in other dialects. I strongly suspect this has no connection to sausages, but place it here to excite your suggestions.
- ‘A Sensitive New Age Guy’. Perhaps SNAGS eschew snags?
- and, apparently, according to one not-very-reliable-looking source, it can also be a dialect word for 'a morsel, a light meal' (the source does not specify which dialect). Which might possibly be relevant, if you believe that sausages constitute a ‘light’ meal.

The lack of conclusions did not prevent me from rediscovering ‘the sausage roll’, which has certainly not featured in this blog before. Sausage rolls are almost as important to the nutrition status of the Average Australian as are meat pies, so they are deserving of some comment.

The sausage roll seems to have come onto the world scene around about the time of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in London’s Crystal Palace (in 1851). I am sure that sausage rolls existed before that date - although I have found very little to support that opinion - but it is certain that a total of 28, 046 were consumed by visitors to the exhibition during the five and a half months of its life. If I had ninety-nine lives I could possibly remove a number of things from my ‘to research more fully list’, but my definitive history of the sausage roll ends right here. Over to one of you to complete it, if you will.

The recipe for today is, of course, for sausage rolls, and it comes from one of my favourite Victorian era cookbooks - Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery, published in the 1870’s.


Sausage Rolls.
Take half a sausage cut lengthwise for each roll. Enclose the half in pastry six inches square and an eighth of an inch thick. Pinch the edges securely, and then bake the roll on a baking sheet in a well-heated oven. They may be served hot or cold. Or take equal weights of cold dressed chicken and tongue, or cold roast veal and ham. Mince the meat finely, and season well with salt, cayenne, and powdered sweet herbs. The latter may be omitted if liked. Press the mince together, and enclose it in puff paste, or good pastry that is large enough to contain it. Bake in a well-heated oven. These rolls are especially adapted for pic-nic parties. Time to bake, half an hour for fresh meat, fifteen minutes for cooked meat.

Quotation for the Day.

A highbrow is the kind of person who looks at a sausage and thinks of Picasso.
Sir A.P. Herbert

Sauces Galore.

I thought it might be interesting to look briefly at some of the ‘traditional’ sauces served with certain foods, and see how many have stood the test of time. It was tempting to go back as far as possible, but I decided on the seventeenth century as the recipes and ideas seem more accessible to many of us.

An interesting book called Panzoologicomineralogia, or, a Compleat History of Animals and Minerals … published in Oxford in 1661 gives us an interesting perspective. In the chapter on animals the author includes their use as meats, even going so far as to tell which sauces were considered appropriate for each. The specific choices were in accordance with the prevailing medical opinion of the day, which was still largely rooted in the ancient humoral theory.

As for Sawces therefore, they are either hot, serving, if the stomach want appetite, by reason of cold and raw humours furring it, and dulling the sense of feeling in its orifices, &c; are made of dill, fennel, mints, organy, parsly, dried gilliflowers, galingal, mustard seed, garlick, onions, leekes, juniper-berries, sage, time, vervain, betony, salt, cinamon, ginger, mace, cloves, nutmegs, pepper, pills of citrons, limons, and orenges, grains, cubebs, &c.mixe 1.2. or 3. of them, as need requireth, with wine or vinegar, made strong of rosemary or gilliflowers: or cold, helping the stomach and appetite, hurt by much choler, or adust and putrifyed phlegm; as those made of sorrel, lettuce, spinache, purselane, or saunders; mixt with vinegar, verjuice, cider, alegar, or water; or the pulp of prunes, apples, and currens &c. some help also for slow digestion, which is caused by coldnesse of the stomach or hardnesse of the meat, and helped by hot things; mustard therefore is to be used with beefe, and all kinds of salted flesh and fish; and onion sauce with duck, widgin, teal, and all water foule; salt and pepper with venison, and galingal sawce with the flesh of cygnets; garlicke or onions boiled in milk with stubble goose; and sugar and mustard with red deere, crane, shoveler, and bustard; and others are for temperate meats, and speedy of digestion; as pork, mutton, lamb, veale, kid, hen, capon, pullet, chicken, rabbet, partridge, and pheasant &c these therefore must have temperate sauces; as mustard and green-sauce for pork, verjuice and salt for mutton, juyce of orenges or limmons with wine, salt and sugar for capons, pheasants and partridges; water and pepper for wood-cocks; vinegar and butter, or the gravet of rosted meat with rabbets, pigeons, or chickens; for such meats, their sawces being too cold or too hot, would quickly corrupt in the stomach, being else most nourishing of their own nature; but others are to be corrected by artificial preparation, and appropriated sawce, which nature has made queazy or heavy to indifferent stomachs. These are the chief meats, sawces, or matter of Aliment ……

Now, isn’t that an impressive repertoire of sauce ingredients and sauces? There certainly some good ideas back in the good old days. Why have we forgotten some of them? Galingal doesn’t figure large in too many English recipes nowadays. And when did you last use gilliflowers in your sauce?

The recipe for the day is from Gervase Markham’s The English Housewife (1668)

To make an excellent Sauce for a rost Capon, you shall take Onions, and having sliced and peeled them, boyl them in fair water with Pepper, Salt, and a few bread crums: then put unto it a spoonful or two of claret Wine, the juyce of an Orange, and three or four slices of Lemmon peel: all these shred together, and so pour it upon the Capon being broke up.

Quotation for the Day.

What is sauce for the goose may be sauce for the gander, but it is not necessarily sauce for the chicken, the duck, the turkey or the Guinea hen.
Alice B Toklas.

Borodinsky Bread.

This day is the anniversary in 1812 of the Battle of Borodino. The event was the largest, and by far the most significant, of Napoleon Bonaparte’s campaign to invade Russia. There always has to be a ‘winner’ of a battle, and technically on this day it was the French, although the total cost was high – 65,000 bodies, lying six to eight deep in places, littered the battlefield at the end of the day.


The temporarily defeated Russians made a strategic withdrawal, but could recover on their own land, and had a massive population from which to draw more troops. Napoleon’s depleted Grand Armée may have won the battle, but they lost the war – defeated in large part by the bitter Russian winter as they made their way home.


What has this got to do with food, you ask? Well, there is a particular Russian rye bread called Borodino, or Borodinsky Bread which is associated with this day. Myth says that a wife of a General, wishing to cheer the troops on the eve of the battle, made a batch of the staple Russian rye bread, adding wild coriander seeds which she had gleaned that day. Truth says that sour rye bread had been around in Russia for centuries. And common sense says that it would have been logistically impossible for even the most caring and skilled General’s wife to have made rye bread for many thousands of troops (a few select officers, perhaps, but that is not the myth.)


I have been unable to find a genuine historical recipe for this Borodino bread, but can assure you there are many ‘on the net.’ There is however, is an interesting explanation of the Russian method of making sour rye bread in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1778) – a very interesting non-cookery book source of recipes. I guess if coriander seeds were to be added, it might represent the real thing. The article makes a point about the Russian preference for a degree of acidity in their bread, and also discusses the making of quass (kvass) – a fermented beverage made from rye bread.

The manner of making the Russian rye bread. – In the morning they mix as much rye flour with warm milk, water, and a bason full of grounds of quass, or leaven, as will make a thin dough, and beat it up for half an hour with the chocolate staff before described*; this they set in a warm place till night, when they add more meal by degrees, working it up at the same with the staff, till the dough becomes stiff. They then return it to its warm situation till morning, at which time they throw in a proper quantity of salt, and work it with the hand to a proper consistence for bread; the longer this last operation is continued the better; they then place it before the fire till it rises, when it is cut into loaves, and returned once more to the warm place where it before stood, and kept there for an hour before the last part of the process, the baking, which completes it.

*In the instructions for the preparation of quass there is reference to “ a machine resembling the staff of a chocolate pot, but larger”, for the ‘working’ of the liquid.


Quotation for the Day:


Every few thousand years some shepherd inhales smoke from a burning bush and has a vision or eats moldy rye bread in a cave and sees God.
Kerry Thornley.

In Praise of Baked Beans.

A couple of random bits of trivia surfaced during my brief foray into the history of baked beans last week, and they are far too much fun not to share with you. The first is from a homesick ‘Yankee’ whose ode to his favourite dish was published in about 1829 in a number of farming journals, most of which quote the Baltimore Weekly Messenger as the source.

Baked Beans.

Oh! How my heart sighs for my own native land,
Where potatoes, and squashes, and cucumbers grow,
Where cheer and good welcome are always at hand,
And custards and pumpkin pies smoke in a row:
Where pudding the visage of hunger serenes
And, what is far better, the pot of baked Beans.

Let Maryland boast of her dainties profuse,
Her large water-melons and cantelopes fine,
Her turtles and oysters and terrapin stews,
And soft crabs high zested with brandy and wine;
Ah! neither my heart from my native land weans,
Where smokes on the table the pot of baked Beans.

The pot of bak’d beans! With what pleasure I view it
Well season’, well pork’d by some rosy-faced dame,
And when from the glowing hot oven she drew it,
Well crisp’d and well brown’d to the table it came.
O give me my country, the land of my teens,
Of the plump Indian pudding and pot of baked Beans.

The pot of bak’d beans! Ah! the muse is too frail,
Its taste to descant or its virtues to tell;
But look at the sons of New England so hale,
And her daughters so rosy; ‘twill teach thee full well;
Like me it will teach thee to sigh for the means
Of health and of rapture – the pot of baked Beans.
                                                  Signed: A Yankee.

The second amusing story concerns the myth of the Sabbath beans – I think we are all agreed that it is a myth? Several nineteenth century magazines repeat the following nice piece of supporting ‘evidence’:

“Baked beans were always the only fashionable meal for Sabbath noon in Massachusetts. A minister who is a very correct mathematician, and a bit of a wag withal, has computed that he preached regularly every Sabbath afternoon to fifty-five bushels and three pecks of baked beans, while their owners were asleep.”

As for the recipe for the day, I was going to give you the earliest one I have found so far for simple ‘baked beans,’ as distinct from Boston baked beans. The earliest I have come across so far was from a magazine article in 1833, but it was virtually identical to the Boston baked beans recipe given on Friday. This may or may not be evidence that Boston baked beans are the real thing, and I leave you to consider this.

Instead, I give you the first cookery book version. It is from the prolific Lydia Maria Child’s The American Frugal Housewife (1835), and appears under the heading ‘Beans and Peas.’ Mrs Child does not used molasses or any other sweetener in her baked beans, but does advocate the addition of pepper for health reasons.

Baked beans are a very simple dish, yet few cook them well. They should be put in cold water, and hung over the fire, the night before they are baked. In the morning, they should be put in a colander, and rinsed two or three times; then again placed in a kettle, with the pork you intend to bake, covered with water, and kept scalding hot an hour or more. A pound of pork is quite enough for a quart of beans, and that is a large dinner for a common family. The rind of the port should be slashed. Pieces of pork alternately fat and lean are most suitable; the cheeks are the best. A little pepper sprinkled among the beans, when they are placed in the bean-pot, will render them less unhealthy. They should be just covered with water, when put into the oven; and the pork should be sunk a little below the surface of the beans. Bake three or four hours.

Quotation for the Day.

I like refried beans. That's why I wanna try fried beans, because maybe they're just as good and we're just wasting time. You don't have to fry them again after all.
Mitch Hedberg.

Baked beans.

Yesterday’s post reminded me that I have hardly touched the topic of baked beans in this blog. I have featured two baked bean recipes in the past, one from 1877 and one from 1943, but neither of these was for Boston baked beans – which, I understand from my limited discussions with friendly Bostonians, are the real thing.

Where I hail from, baked beans come in a can (courtesy of Mr. Heinz), are an orangey-red colour due to their coating of tomato sauce, and are essential to a traditional, full English breakfast. I realise now in my maturity that the baked beans that I grew up on may not speak to authenticity in the matter, so I - upstart outsider that I am - decided to seek the truth on Boston baked beans, and provide for you an authentic, original recipe.

I do understand now that I have bitten off more than I can chew, if you will pardon the pun, in the matter of authenticity as it relates to baked beans. It appears that passions can be easily aroused on the subject, and that there are, in fact, almost as many authentic recipes as there are cooks in their country of origin.

The country of origin is, of course, presumed to be America, and the original cooks its original inhabitants, who taught the technique to the migrants/colonists/invaders. It is difficult to sort out the truth from the pretty legend here, and I eagerly await enlightenment from you, dear readers.

The original inhabitants and their early international visitors clearly used the local beans - but pulses have long been a staple in Europe, and migrants/colonists/invaders take their familiar recipes and preferences with them and adapt them as they need to. For the English, pease cooked slowly (with some bacon, if available) were a staple. And what about the French? Did they not adapt their cassoulet when they went to America?

My favourite interpretation of the story of 'American' baked beans (I do hope that it is true) is that the native American method of cooking the native beans was to mix them with bear fat and maple syrup and slow-cook them in earthen or deerskin ‘pots.’ The early Pilgrims did not allow cooking on the Sabbath, so the slow cooking method suited them perfectly as the pot of beans could be left to cook on the back of the stove the previous night, and eaten next day without any further attention.

Next questions. Why the ‘Boston’ connection? And what is specific about ‘Boston’ baked beans? I am bravely entering a mine-field here, folks, so be kind.

The most popular story has it that in the early days, Boston became the centre for rum production, using sugar from the Caribbean. A by-product of the process was molasses, which therefore became the sweetener of choice. So - the early settlers substituted pork for the bear fat, and molasses for the maple syrup, and Voila! Baked beans for breakfast.

The first mention I have found to date specifically for Boston baked beans is in 1800. I feel sure that there are earlier references, and hope that one of you can point me in the direction of a genuine study of the topic. In the meanwhile I give you a recipe which appeared in the Massachusetts Ploughman, in 1847, which was repeated in a number of agricultural journals around the country in that year. An identical recipe was also included in The Improved Housewife: or,Book of Receipts … by Mrs. A.L.Webster, a married lady, published in 1847.

Boston Baked Beans.
The Massachusetts Ploughman gives the following recipe for cooking this famed Yankee dish. We can vouch for its excellence. Take two quarts of middling sized white beans, three pounds of salt pork, and one spoonful of molasses. Pick the beans over carefully, wash and turn about a gallon of soft water to them in a pot; let them soak in it lukewarm over night; set them in the morning where they will boil til the skin is very tender and about to break, adding a teaspoonful of saleratus. Take them up dry, put them in your dish, stir in the molasses, gash the pork and put it down in the dish, so as to have the beans cover all but the upper surface: turn in cold water till the top is just covered; bake and let the beans remain in the oven all night.
[Southern Cultivator, Volumes 6-7, 1847]


Quotation for the Day.

Beans are highly nutritious and satisfying, they can also be delicious if and when properly prepared, and they posses over all vegetables the great advantage of being just as good, if not better, when kept waiting, an advantage in the case of people whose disposition or occupation makes it difficult for them to be punctual at mealtime.
Andre Simon (1877-1970), in The Concise Encyclopedia of Gastronomy (1952)

In prison again.

A few weeks ago I gave you a menu from the Dallas County Jail in the 1930’s. The story was actually about the food in the infamous prison at Alcatraz, but at the time I could not find an Alcatraz menu from this decade. I still cant - but can move a step closer, thanks to the online image gallery of the prison museum.

I am delighted to report that on this very day in 1946 (a Monday), the daily menu for the inmates of Alcatraz was as follows:

Breakfast:
Stewed prunes.
Bran Flakes.
Fresh Milk.
Sugar
Orange Roll.
Bread and Coffee.

Dinner:
Split Pea Soup.
Roast Shoulder of Pork.
Sage Dressing.
Brown Gravy.
Mashed Potatoes.
Stewed Corn.
Apple Pie.
Bread and Coffee w/Milk.

Supper:
Split Pea Soup.
Boston Baked Beans.
Tomato Catsup.
Beet and Onion Salad.
Canned Pears.
Bread & Coffee.

Not bad, for the worst prisoners in the federal system, was it? As I indicated in the previous blog post, the policy at Alcatraz was to provide better than the usual prison fare, in an attempt to reduce rioting – prison food being a common source of complaint by prisoners. I guess it would also be harder to get up the energy to riot with a belly full of pea soup and roast pork and apple pie, wouldn’t it?


Beet and Onion Salad.
1 large cooked Spanish onion.
1 large cooked beet.
1 teaspoonful chopped tarragon.
1 teaspoonful chopped parsley.
Salt and pepper to taste.
4 tablespoonfuls olive oil.
2 tablespoonfuls vinegar
Slice the onion, add the beet chopped and the seasonings, oil, and vinegar. Mix well and serve with cold roast beef.
Salads, Sandwiches, and Chafing Dish Recipes, by Marion Harris Neil (Philadelphia, 1916)

Quotation for the Day.

Everything I eat has been proved by some doctor or other to be a deadly poison, and everything I don't eat has been proved to be indispensable for life. But I go marching on.
George Bernard Shaw