Valentine’s Day Treats.

Perhaps yesterday’s hearty recipe was not to the taste of your beloved? I think today’s choices have pretty universal appeal. They also only require easily available ingredients, and will serve well as last-minute – but very impressive - gifts, should you not be so well organised this year.

Cupid’s Wells.

Cut the rounds of puff-paste of three or four different sizes; use the largest one for the bottom, and cut the centres from the others, leaving the rims of different widths, and put them on the whole round, with the narrowest at the top. Bake, and fill with jelly.

The Universal Common-Sense Cookery Book (1887)

Bola d’Amour – Love Cake.

Take the yolks of eggs, as many as are required for the dish (about twelve), and beat them up in a pan with an equal weight of sugar, the same as sponge cades, using any kind of liquor or essence for flavouring. When the mixture is beaten up light and got thick, have ready some clarified butter in a stewpan, made hot enough for frying. Pour the mixture into a funnel, turning the hand while it is running, so that it may be formed into threads all over the surface of the pan. In about two minutes it will be done, when it should be taken out with a skimmer, and be placed on the dish for serving, garnishing it with any kind of preserve, and serve cold.

Another way is to beat up the eggs with some liquor and run into it some boiling syrup at the blow.

The modern housewife: or, Ménagère, (London, 1851) by Alexis Soyer

Quotation for the Day.

There are only three things which make life worth living: to be writing a tolerably good book, to be in a dinner party of six, and to be travelling south with someone whom your conscience permits you to love.

Cyril Connolly.

A Valentine’s Day Offering.

Today I have for you a Valentine’s Day recipe which you may like to prepare for your beloved. It is quite different from the usual blog offerings at this time. It is not sweet. It contains no chocolate, oysters, or champagne. It does not require a heart-shaped cookie cutter. I give it to you in advance of the day to give you time to source the ingredients.

Love in Disguise (to dress)

After well cleaning, stuff a calf’s heart; cover it an inch thick with good forcemeat; then roll it in vermicelli; put it into a dish with a little water, and send it to the oven. When done, serve it with its own gravy in the dish. This forms a pretty side dish.

The Female’s Friend, and General Domestic Adviser, by R.Huish, Esq. (London, 1837)

If you really want to impress, you could serve it with a fine sauce made from a recipe in the same book. You will remember that ‘love apples’ were an early name for tomatoes, on account of their supposed aphrodisiac properties when they were introduced to Europe from the New World in the early sixteenth century. The old name must surely be auspicious for tomorrow?

Love Apple Sauce (to make)

Take a dozen love apples, very ripe, and of a fine red; take off the stalks, open, and take out the seeds, and press them in the hand to take out the water; put the expressed love apples into a stewpan with a size of an egg of butter, a bay leaf, and a little thyme; put in a spoonful of good cullis, or the top of broth, called top-pot, which will be better; when it is thus prepared, rub it through a search [sieve], and put it into a stewpan with two spoonfuls of cullis; reduce it to the consistence of a light bouillie; put in a little salt, and a small quantity of cayenne pepper.

Quotation for the Day.

Cooking is at once child's play and adult joy. And cooking done with care is an act of love**

Craig Claiborne.

Frogs or Oatmeal?

In tropical Queensland, where floods, bushfires, and cyclones are part of life, we are urged by the authorities to keep 3 days of food on hand at all times, plus supplies of bottled water, batteries, and first-aid materials etc. I know that many of you in other parts of the world where the weather and geography are wild are similarly advised, and are probably similarly unco-operative.

What about local disasters lasting more than three days? We don’t get official advice about that, do we?  Well, the British did, in 1980, in the form of a flurry of activity on the part of an agency called Civil Aid. I give you almost all of an article in The Times, of February 14, 1980, which gives away some of Civil Aid’s survival tips.

Frogs on the Emergency Menu.

Down-to-Earth advice on nuclear survival.

Advice to people on how to protect themselves and survive a nuclear attack was published yesterday by Civil Aid. Some of the information is remarkably similar to that printed in Protect and Survive, the government booklet which the Home Office is refusing to issue until a short while before the bomb drops.

The difference is in Civil Aid’s approach, which is much more practical and down to earth. Whereas Protect and Survive concentrates on the survival of the individual family, Civil Aid places the emphasis on neighbours helping each other. Most of the ideas work better that way the pamphlet says.

“Preparations should be made for communal cooking, using one kitchen for several houses or by building a field kitchen”, Civil Aid says. It is speaking from hard experience, having cooked at “pop” festivals, sometimes using oven built in the field, and serving meals at a rate of up to 10,000 every 24 hours.

The ideas hark back to those primitive days before the deep freezer or refrigerator. Ways of preserving food from such appliances are being investigated, the pamphlet says.

“Meat and chickens taken out, thawed and cooked will keep longer than if left raw. Pickling, salting or smoking will ensure longer life, plain boiled bacon keeps well, and eggs can be kept after painting with or dipping in sealing mixture.

Civil Aid is keeping an open mind on how to improve dishes. Since biscuits and tinned foods are expensive, housewives should know how to make bread and scones without yeast.

Rice [cooking?] is dependent upon heat, but oatmeal needs less cooking, is almost a complete diet, and can be sweetened or salted. Dried fruit and vegetables, particularly protein-rich beans, store well.

Mr Robin Meads, vice-chairman of Civil Aid said at a press conference yesterday that after a nuclear attack people would have to take what they could get. “If you saw a frog running about, you would have to wash it down to get rid of active dust, cook it and eat it.”

The pamphlet departs from government policy in saying that food for 14 days, batteries, candles, and other essentials are not available in sufficient quantities for a last minute rush by the whole population. Some reasonable steps must be taken in advance, Civil Aid says.

The 14 days to which it refers is the period that must be spent in a shelter to avoid fall-out.

[The article then goes on to discuss various types of fuel which might be used, and suggests filtering water through sand or charcoal.]

Is this for real? Food advice in case of a nuclear incident: - thaw out and cook the chooks in your freezer - salt and smoke them too, for added longevity, if you happen to have the ingredients and equipment in your shelter. Alternatively – catch frogs (you will need to leave your shelter to do this), wash the radioactive dust off them, cook and eat them. Filter your water through sand. I am no physicist, but I am pretty sure that a sand-filtering would have no effect whatsoever on the level of radioactivity of the water, would it? 

This advice seems to me to be so spectacularly silly that surely not a single member of the generally gullible general public would have been reassured – which was surely the of its perpetrators?

Sadly, I have been unable to find any 1980’s thoroughly English recipes for frogs’ legs, so am unable to suggest what spices or condiments should be stored in case a frog hunt is needed. As we all know, when times are hard or circumstances disastrous, we often need to fall back on the wisdom of our grandparents. I give you a very economical, nutritious recipe for porridge. Cook some for breakfast and save the leftovers for lunchtime fritters.

Oatmeal Fritters.

Make a very stiff porridge, adding to it half a teaspoonful finely-chopped onion and parsley. Spread it on a plate to cool. Then cut into pieces, dip in frying batter, and fry. To add to the food value of this, a beaten egg may be stirred in when the mixture is almost cooked.

The Times, Saturday, February 10, 1917.

Quotation for the Day.

I went into a French restaraunt and asked the waiter, 'Have you got frog's legs?' He said, 'Yes,' so I said, 'Well hop into the kitchen and get me a cheese sandwich.'

Tommy Cooper

The Sounds of Simmering.

In yesterday’s post the fifteenth century instructions for poaching eggs advised to boyle. the water. Other common instructions for cooking in water that can be found in old recipes are to seethe and to sod. A modern recipe would advise to simmer. Do these represent subtle differences in the cooking method? Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius (at sea level), so a higher temperature process is impossible, and low temperature cooking in water was not generally performed – or fashionable - in the past. Any temperature differences must therefore be very subtle.

The Oxford English Dictionary is unusually poetic on the subject of simmering.  To simmer means ‘to make a subdued murmuring sound under the influence of continued heat; to be at a heat just below boiling-point.’ I will never again simmer anything without being especially attentive and appreciative of the sound. I do have a question though, for the food scientists out there. What does ‘just below boiling’ mean, exactly? How much below? Five degrees? One degree? Half a degree? Someone please put a thermometer in a gently murmuring pot of broth and let me know, soon.

To sod is an obsolete way of saying to boil, and sodden simply meant boiled – so it is possible to have sodden wheat (frumenty) or sodden milk, or even sodden beer.

To seethe, however, according to the OED, means ‘to boil; to make or keep boiling hot; to subject to the action of boiling liquid; esp. to cook (food) by boiling or stewing; also, to make an infusion or decoction of (a substance) by boiling or stewing.  The noun seethe (I did not know it was also a noun) is an ‘ebullition (of waves); intense commotion or heat.’ So, seething is more violent than simmering? I think we are agreed that the temperature of a good ebullition cannot be more than 100 degrees C.Someone please put a thermometer in a violently seething pot of broth and let me know, soon.

I give you a nice recipe for pork and cheese pies – or fried pasties, perhaps - from the fifteenth century. I don’t know what the origin of the word ‘raynolles’ could possibly be.

Raynolle.

Nym sode Porke & chese, & sethe y-fere, & caste ther-to gode pouder Pepir, Canelle, Gyngere, Clowes, Mace, an close thin comade in dow, & frye it in freysshe grece ryt wel; an thane serue it forth.

Which is translated, more or less as:

Raynolle.

Take seethed Pork & cheese, & seethe together, & cast thereto good powdered Pepper, Cinnamon, Ginger, Cloves, Maces, and close thy mixture in dough, & fry it in fresh grease very well; and then serve it forth.

Quotation for the Day.

The whole of nature, as has been said, is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and in the passive. 

William Ralph Inge

Pocket Food.

You think you don’t cook historic recipes, don’t you? OK. Next Sunday morning, why not cook your eggs from this mid-fifteenth century recipe?

Potage de egges.

Take faire water and cast in a faire frying pan, or elles in a other vessel, til hit boyle, and skeme it well; and then breke faire rawe egges, and cast hem in the water, and let the water stonde stil over the fire, and lete the egges boile harder or nessher as you wilt.

Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books , Thomas Austin (from the Harleian MS 4016)

You did it! You probably call them poached eggs however, and you may have been confused by the recipe title and thought you would end up with egg soup. In Old Speak, a ‘potage’ simply meant something cooked in water in a pot. Such is the nature of language – words are not fixed and immutable things, they change in meaning and occasionally terrible confusion occurs.

So, how did we come by the word ‘poach’? I was delighted to find that it comes from the Middle French pocher, and ultimately references pocket and poke (i.e a bag). It is suggested by the Oxford English Dictionary that pocher (in the sense of cooking eggs) is usually explained as referring to the enclosure of the yolk in the white as in a bag. I guess then, that the word poacher, when it does not refer to a pan specifically for cooking by poaching but to a man who steals game, indicates that his ill-gotten gains were quickly secreted in a bag or pocket.

You can, of course, cook your eggs in another sort of bag, if you wish. Nicolas Soyer, the grandson of the famous Alexis Soyer, gives the instructions in his book Soyer’s Paper Bag Cookery (1911)

Eggs aux Tomates.

Butter a bag thickly. Put into it half a pint of thick tomato catsup and a lump of butter the size of a walnut. Cook in a hot oven for 10 minutes. Cut a square from the centre of the bag, and break in one by one four eggs. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes. Dish up. Cut away the top of the bag only and serve at once.

Quotation for the Day.

He that wyll potche egges well muste make his water sethe first.

J. Palsgrave (1530)

Tube Food.

The stations of the London underground (‘the Tube’) became the night-time refuge from nocturnal bombing raids for thousands of city-dwellers during World War II. I had no idea of the sheer scale of this nocturnal migration and nesting until I read a short article on ‘Food for Tube Stations’ in The Times of  December 11, 1940. 

Food for Tube Stations.

“London Transport, as agent for the Ministry of Food, has completed the institution of refreshment services at the 80 tube stations where more than 100,000 people take shelter nightly from air raids.

This work has been competed in four weeks. It included:- Arranging six railway depots for the receipt and dispatch of food; fitting six refreshment trains, each equipped with 50 food containers; installing 134 canteen points on the platforms; fitting 600 electric boilers and ovens and half a mile of water mains; engaging, organizing, and training a new staff of 1,000 employees.

Besides tea and cocoa, hot soup is now served. Hot pies and sausages are served at some stations and soon will be available at all. The consumption of tea and cocoa now amounts to 12,500 gallons a night, and the food distributed each night weights seven tons.

There are now 30 stations at which regular shelteres have tickets for reserved, numbered places. Tickets have been issued to 35,000 shelterers, and the system will be extended to all stations by Christmas. The system has been a complete success. Queues are abolished, and shelterers take greater interest in their sleeping quarterers. Some bring small brushes to dust the space that they are to occupy, and they appear to bring a better type of bedding.”

Our recipe for the day is for ‘larder soup’, from a short piece on wartime canteen food in The Times of January 17, 1940.

On Soups.

Most London people have not been brought up to eat enough soups. This is a pity, because they are healthy and economical. Larder soup is particularly to be recommended. Any remains of cottage pie or stews, vegetables, &c, moistened with enough stock, cooked till blended, sieved and seasoned. A small tin of tomato soup stirred in gives a change of flavour.

The outside leaves of Brussels sprouts are blanched, cooked, then sieved. The purée is reheated in melted margarine with half milk and half liquor vegetables were cooked in, then simmered a while, well seasoned. If possible finish with small tin of milk.

In the canteen in which the writer works, soups have become a popular standby, and they seem to cost very little except heat and labour. There are all the pulses to choose from, and all vegetable waters should be used. In England we throw all the vitamin salts down the sink.

Many more recipes for soups could be given, but the writer would like to beg any women who are feeding large numbers of children or adults in these difficult times to use their ingenuity and learn to prepare soups well. They will find themselves amply repaid, and the children will thrive.

Quotation for the Day.

I think that women just have a primeval instinct to make soup, which they will try to foist on anybody who looks like a likely candidate.

Dylan Moran.

‘Dad of Bread.’

I am sorry to disappoint if the title of today’s post has misled you into thinking the story is about the Father of all Breads, or in some way associates bread with the male parent. According to Brockett’s  Glossary of North Country words (England, 1825), a ‘dad of bread’ is a large piece of bread. I am not sure of the etymological process in play here, but it is said to be related to the verb ‘to dad’, meaning ‘to shake, to strike.’ I have no idea if this suggests a connection between corporal punishment and the male parent, or if there is some entirely different origin for this version of the word.

As you will be aware, if you are a regular reader, I do love words, and I particularly love finding old words for food things. The discovery of ‘dads of bread’ led me on a brief search for other dialect words for odds and ends of bread.

Brockett’s also gives:

Shive: slice, as of bread or cheese.

Counge: a large lump, as of bread or cheese.

Whang: large thick piece of anything eatable esp. bread or cheese (a word we have met before, here)

Other glossaries of archaic and provincial words give various names for slices and lumps of bread, including louner, scuncheon, shag, stunch, and stoltum – and also mussel and pocket. Small fragments of bread  ‘such as children, who have more than they can eat given them, are apt to crumble or break the excess into’ are, in the old Cleveland dialect, called mamlocks – a word I like very much.

Perhaps in your own region or within your own family, you have your own word for a chunk or fragment of bread (or cheese)?

Here is something interesting to make with your dads and mamlocks:

Bread and Butter Salad.

Butter and trim the crust from four slices of bread (which should not be too fresh), and cut into dice. Have some finely chopped parsley ready, stir this through the bread lightly, a little at a time, managing to take out only what adheres to the butter. Place the bread in a low salad dish, then take a small cluster of chieve [sic], cut with a knife and scatter over, then salt and black pepper enough to brighten. Spray lightly with vinegar, not enough to soak or make it sour. Garnish with green nasturtiums. You will find this palatable in the spring, when your appetite is all gone.

The Weekly Wisconsin, May 17, 1890

Quotation for the Day.

Deliberation, n.  The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.

Ambrose Bierce