Any Banana With That?

Sorry folks, I just couldn’t resist continuing yesterday’s theme. A banana, at its simplest, needs no effort – it is already dessert in a skin, is it not? A fruit with a very short shelf-life however, as those of us who have half a freezer full of the super-soft, blackly over-ripe specimens know only too well. There are only so many banana muffins and banana cakes that one little household can consume.

Because of its spectacularly short shelf life, the banana was a great luxury outside of its natural habitat until modern methods of transport and climate-controlled environments enabled it to be delivered to the eager markets of the temperate parts of the world. Recipes for bananas really only start to appear regularly in cookbooks towards the end of the nineteenth century, and then they were mostly for sweet dishes. That is not to say that the idea of a savoury banana (no doubt based on the use of the related plantain) did not exist at all.

To help you use up the over-supply of bananas in your fruit bowl before they become muffin-material, I give you the following recipes for savoury dishes.

Steak with Bananas
Peel one banana and slice in round pieces, and while the steak is cooking fry them in a little hot butter until they are brown. After the meat is on the platter, lay these pieces over it, arranging them prettily, and put the parsley round as before.
Bananas are very nice with steak.
A Little Cookbook for a Little Girl. 1905


Bananas Fried in Egg and Crumbs: for a Savoury.
Sift the following mixture over the banana before coating with egg and crumbs and also before serving:
One teaspoonful of salt, ¼ teaspoonful of dry mustard, ¼ teaspoonful of pepper, a little cayenne, and 1 teaspoonful of red or brown crumbs [of what, the author does not say!]. Mix well together and shake over the bananas.
The banana its cultivation, distribution and commercial uses, William Fawcett 1921

Banana Savouries.
Banana savouries are not unusual. Here is an excellent one. Melt some butter in a fireproof dish and season it with salt and paprika. Cook for a few minutes, stirring well. Then lay in sufficient bananas split lengthways. Turn them several times so that the sauce works in, then sprinkle with breadcrumbs and grated cheese and a very little paprika. Add a few pieces of butter and bake in the oven.
Recipes for Small Households, The Times, Monday, Mar 20, 1939


Quotation for the Day…

Bananas are more like flowers, ... you can't mess around with them.
Richard Benson.

Any Oranges With That?

Lemon with fish is pretty much an incontrovertible rule in the kitchen, is it not? Break the rule and risk punishment by mass exodus of customers, and mass sackings of staff. Once upon a time citrus was used pretty commonly with meat too. Of course we are all familiar with the idea of duck with an orange sauce. Sadly, usually nowadays it comes as a tacky, sickly-sweet marmalade-y mess that is centuries away from the elegant original form made with the bitter Seville orange - a far better foil for the rich and fatty duck meat, methinks.

Here is an early version of the idea, from The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin (1594)


To boyle a Capon with Oranges after Mistres Duffelds way.
Take a Capon and boyle it with Veale, or with a mary bone [marrow bone], or what your fancie is. Then take a good quantitie of that broth, and put it in an earthen pot by it selfe, and put thereto a good handfull of Corrans [currants], and as manie Prunes, and a few whole Maces, and some Marie [marrow], and put to this broth a good quantitie of white wine or of Claret, and so let them seeth softly together: Then take your Orenges, and with a knife scrape of all the filthinesse of the outside of them. Then cut them in the middest, and wring out the ioyse [juice] of three or foure of them, put the ioyse into your broth with the rest of your stuffe, then slice your Orenges thinne, and haue upon the fire readie a skellet of faire seething water, and put your sliced Orenges into the water, & when that water is bitter, have more readie, and so change them still as long as you can finde the great bitternesse in the water, which will be sixe or seven times, or more, if you find need: then take them from the water, and let that runne cleane from them: then put close Orenges into your potte with your broth, and so let them stew together till your Capon be readie. Then make your sops with this broth, and cast on a litle Sinamon, Ginger, and Sugar, and upon this lay your Capon, and some of your Orenges vpon it, and some of your Marie, and towarde the end of the boyling of your broth, put in a little Vergious [verjuice], if you think best.


We did play with the idea of orange food once before, and our source was Aunt Babette's Cook Book: Foreign and domestic receipts for the household (Cincinnati, 1889). On that occasion I gave you four orange recipes – all sweet ones however - orange fritters, cake, ice, and orangeade. I was reminded of that post recently as I was browsing 365 Orange Recipes; an Orange Recipe for Every Day in the Year (c1909). Today, to match the numbers, I give you a further three recipes for the use of orange in savoury dishes, taken from the latter book.


Onions with Orange Sauce.
Boil 1 dozen onions in three changes of water until tender but not broken; drain them and add ½ cupful of melted butter mixed with a little grated rind, 1 teaspoonful of minced parsley and salt and pepper to taste. Serve very hot.


Calf’s Liver with Orange.
Cut 1 pound of calf’s liver in slices one-half inch thick, cover with boiling water for a minute, drain and cook brown in bacon fat. Chop one onion and brown in butter adding 1 peeled and chopped orange two minutes before removing from the fire; season with salt and pepper and place one spoonful of the sauce on each slice of liver.


Finnan-Haddie with Orange Butter.
Soak finnan-haddie for one hour in two changes of warm water, drain well and fry in butter or broil over slow coals. Melt ½ cupful of butter, stir into it the diced pulp and the grated rind of ½ an orange; spread over the fish and serve at once.

Quotation for the Day.

When life sucks and hands you lemons, I say beat the crap out of it and demand some Florida oranges as well.
By ?

Liverpool Curry.

The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations (commonly known as the Crystal Palace Exhibition) in London in 1851 made the country, at least for a time, a tourist destination. The visitors seemed to come for some years afterwards, and at least one author (who is not named) felt the need (or saw the niche) for a travel book. The American stranger’s guide to London and Liverpool at Table was published in 1859, and not only advised ‘how to dine and order a dinner, and where to avoid dining’, but also gave ‘practical hints to butlers and cooks’ – and threw in some recipes from the Royal Yacht Squadron Steward’s Manual. It all sounds as if the author wasn’t really sure who his target audience was, doesn’t it?

The author was, however, aware that the shared heritage and common language between the two countries did not obviate all cultural confusion. He spent some time explaining the mysteries of “Curry” to his American readers (the English considering themselves experts on the topic of course, on account of owning India at the time). He is clear and dogmatic on the fine point that Bengal, Madras, and Bombay Curries differ in the details, and pompous and pedantic in the associated footnote.

Speaking of Curries, it is lamentable to witness this aromatic dish served in Europe as an Entrée, sometimes with scarcely any rice, and that in the same dish. The rice should he abundant and carefully boiled; handed round in a separate dish, and then the Curry. It should never appear until the second course, and is an admirable substitute for Game, when the latter is not in season, or to be had. In India this dish is indispensable both at tiffin and dinner daily. It is a hors d’oeuvre that people never tire of, when properly concocted and served à l’Oriental, being in fact the Pâté de Foies-Gras of India. When partaking of Curry, always use a Dessert spoon instead of a fork; the use of the latter betokens a “Griffin”.

There is so much worthy of comment in this short opinion piece that it is hard to know where to start. His use of a capital for ‘Curry’ in every instance; Curry as a second course dish, never, God forbid! as an Entrée; Curry as an hors d’oeuvre; Curry as the ‘Pâté de Foies-Gras of India’; the entire concept of ‘Curry’ as an ‘Indian’ dish when it is unequivocally Anglo-Indian. I am sure those of you with a heritage based in the Indian subcontinent are falling about laughing or crying right now. I would love to hear your thoughts.

The last word intrigues me. It was clearly an undesirable thing to be a griffin, or at least poor form to demonstrate griffinism. I understood a griffin to be a fabulous, imaginary beast, half eagle, half lion – so how does that fit here?

The OED gives an alternative meaning of ‘griffin’ as ‘A European newly arrived in India, and unaccustomed to Indian ways and peculiarities; a novice, new-comer, greenhorn.’ One of the supporting quotations notes ‘Young men, immediately on their arrival in India, are termed griffins, and retain this honour until they are twelve months in the country.’ So, there we have it. Or at least, we have half of it. The definition begs the question of ‘why griffin?’. Why not unicorn or centaur or phoenix or dragon? Is there an Indian dialect word that is similar in sound and meaning?

There was no agonising dilemma in chosing the recipe for the day from this book. The delightful dissonance produced by the collision of words in the name of the dish was instantly irresistible (methinks in inverse proportion to the degree of irresistibility of the dish itself.)

Liverpool Curry.

à la Parry.

Form two table spoonfuls of curry powder into paste. Cut up a rabbit or fowl into small pieces an inch long, rub them over with the paste, fry the meat with butter, and four onions sliced, to a deep brown; then add about two-thirds of a pint of good gravy, and let simmer for twenty mintues, remove all fat and skim, and put by cold; when wanted stew gently for four hours.
Mix together 2 spoonfuls of cream, 1 spoonful of Soy, a tea cupful of sour apples, or a table spoonful of craberries, 1 of flour, Dessert spoon of salt, a bit of butter, which add to the curry half an hour before it is taken from the fire.
When dished up add the juice of half a lemon. In India ham is eaten with curry and pickles, &c., to suit the taste of partakers; the remains of a duck, or of game, all come well into season, if you have them

Quotation for the Day.

Where life is colorful and varied, religion can be austere or unimportant. Where life is appallingly monotonous, religion must be emotional, dramatic and intense. Without the curry, boiled rice can be very dull.
C. Northcote Parkinson.

Egg-O-See

With a bit of luck, on this day in 1914, you might have been aboard the SS Minnesota of the Chicago-Milwaukee-Buffalo Line. The breakfast sounds substantial, and is a fine demonstration of the inroads of commercial breakfast cereals into the traditional fare for this meal.

Breakfast

Thursday, July 9th, 1914

Fruit in Season Stewed Fruit

Rolled Oats      Manioca

Egg-O-See     Force     Maple Flakes, Toasted

Boiled Eggs

Fried Eggs or Eggs à la Turque

Fried Spring Lamb Chops, Breaded

Tomato Sauce

Smithfield Sausage

On Toast

Hash Brown Potato à la Spain

Baked Potatoes

Toast, Dry or Buttered Home Made Rolls

Coffee English Breakfast Tea

Uncolored Japanese Tea

Coffee, Boston Style        Milk       Postum Cereal

The proprietary breakfast cereals include the Postum which is listed with the beverages. Postum was a cereal-based substitute for the evil and over-stimulating drink of coffee, and was invented in the late nineteenth century by C.W. Post – one of the converts of John Harvey Kellogg.

We have previously considered Force – also on another steamship menu (and I was much enlightened on this topic by bloggers’ comments on this, thankyou). The Egg-O-See and Maple Flakes remain to be understood.


The Maple Flakes are presumably Mapl-Flake, a direct contribution of the Kellogg family’s Battle Creek company, who invented the whole concept of breakfast cereals in the first place. They are, according to the advertisements of the time “simply the Flakes of the finest Washington white wheat, flavored with pure Vermont maple syrup’ (takes 96 hours to make)”, also conveniently made and served in “leading hotels, clubs and dining car systems” in “‘dainty one-portion package, wrapped in embossed onion-skin paper and sealed with gold seals.”

The Egg-O-See (a strange name?) is yet another offering from Battle Creek. The flaked breakfast cereal‘takes selected wheat and makes it delicious and digestive.’ Advertisements in 1905 informed readers of its popularity with the information that “more than 3600 miles of Egg-O-See are manufactured and consumed annually, that is, over twenty-eight million packages are sold’ (1905), and of its deliciousness with the slogan “Dere aint go’n’er be no leavin’s”.

There is much else to ponder upon in this menu. What is ‘uncolored Japanese tea’? What, specifically, is ‘Boston Style’ coffee? How was the manioca prepared?

While I search out a recipe for my preferred dish for the morning – the Eggs à la Turque, I give you the following idea – nicer than manioca perhaps?


Delicious Maple Sauce.
2 egg yolks.
¼ cup maple syrup.
½ cup whipped cream.
Beat the yolks very light, putting in a pinch of salt; put in the syrup and cook till the spoon coats over when you dip in; then cool and beat in the whipped cream and serve very cold.
A Cookbook for a Little Girl, 1905

Quotation for the Day.

Life is like a grapefruit. Well, it's sort of orangy-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have a half a one for breakfast.
Douglas Adams.

Stick-jaw.

I always thought that ‘stick-jaw’ was toffee. I was right, but only partially. It seems that before it was toffee, stick-jaw was a pudding. Not a delicious pudding, but a pudding whose sole purpose was to occupy space in the digestive system and provide calories – especially to those living in institutions of various kinds. It was apparently ranked alongside scrap or resurrection pie as the bane of the nineteenth century boarding schoolboy’s life.


The dictionary describes stick-jaw as “a pudding or sweetmeat difficult of mastication’. To a schoolboy it was “pudding crammed down our throats to take away our appetite for the meat to follow.”

Sometimes it was a simple boiled pudding with the solidity and flavourlessness that only large amounts of suet and completely absent fruit (sugar, butter, eggs, spices) can provide. Often, like resurrection pie, stick-jaw pudding was made from scraps – in this case the scraps of bread accumulated over the course of the week.

Bread pudding, properly made, has a lot going for it of course. Here is a nice version from The Accomplished Housekeeper, and Universal Cook (1717), by T. Williams

A Bread Pudding.
Boil half a pint of milk with a little cinnamon, four eggs well beaten, the rind of a lemon grated, half a pound of suet chopped fine, and as much bread as necessary. Pour your milk on the bread and suet, keep mixing it until ocld, then put in the lemon peel, the eggs, a little sugar, and some nutmeg grated find. You may either boil or bake this pudding.

Quotation for the Day.

Books cannot always please, howver good;
Minds are not ever craving for their food.
George Crabbe (1754-1832), The Borough Schools.

Darkie Pickle, Darkie Pie.

An atmosphere of political correctness makes us shudder at some phrases – food phrases included – nowadays, doesn’t it? Ugly phrases with nasty connotations. Makes one reluctant to mention them. Fearful of being labelled oneself as something equally ugly and nasty. Nevertheless, the names, the phrases, and the concepts all have history, and we cant pretend they don’t.

I give you two recipes from the 1930’s from The New York Times’ column Recipes for Small Households. The common ingredient is Demarara (or Demerara) sugar, which is raw or unrefined sugar named for the colony of Demarara in Guyana.

Darkie Pickle.
Throw salt over half a peck of green tomatoes. Let them stand overnight. Then rinse out the salt and put them into the preserving pan. Now mix in a bowl half a pound of demarara sugar, half an ounce of ground cloves, the same quantity of ginger, pepper, and allspice, and one ounce of dry mustard. Sprinkle the tomatoes with this mixture. Add sufficient vinegar and let it boil for five hours, stirring frequently to avoid burning. Then cool and put into jars. The vinegar must completely cover the pickle. It will keep for a long time.


Darkie Pie.
Cut eight bananas in thin slices lengthways. Place a layer in a buttered pie-dish, sprinkle with Demarara sugar, a little powdered cinnamon, a squeeze of lemon juice. Dot with small pieces of butter. Repeat the layers, finishing with butter, sugar, and lemon. Add a tablespoon of water and bake in a moderate oven for about 45 minutes. Serve hot with whipped cream and brandy snaps.


Quotation for the Day.

Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.
Proverbs xv. 17

Jaune Mange

You have all heard of blancmange – the dish literally translated as ‘eat white’ that once upon a time (in the Medieval era) was the pale and elegant fusion of chicken, almond milk, and fragrant spices which somehow over the centuries morphed and degenerated into the artificially coloured and flavoured chilled gelatine and cornflour ‘thing’ served at children’s parties.

Perhaps, like me, you have never heard of jaune mange (eat yellow) before? I love it when ignorance is exposed. Especially my own. I came across the phrase somewhere in my recent wanderings, and want to share my findings with you.

Without searching exhaustively, the first reference I came across is in Charlotte Mason’s The Lady’s Assistant for Regulating and Supplying Her Table, in 1777.

Charlotte gives general directions on how to colour blancmange green (juice of spinach), red (cochineal, steeped in a bit of brandy), and yellow (saffron). She also gives a specific recipe for Jaune Mange – a delicious sounding orange custard set with isinglass (the old-fashioned gelatine).


Jaune Mange.
Boil one ounce of isinglass in three quarters of a pint of water, till melted, strain it; add the juice of two Seville oranges, a quarter of a pint of white wine, the yolks of four eggs beaten and strained, sugar to the taste; stir it over a gentle fire till it just boils up; when cold put it into a mould or mould: if there should be any sediment, take care not to pour it in.

Quotation for the Day.

Chopsticks are one of the reasons the Chinese never invented custard.
Spike Milligan.