Auld Man’s Milk.

Hogmanay is Today.

The last day of the year – the chief of “the daft days” - is upon us. As we all know, it is especially celebrated in Scotland where it is called Hogmanay (although they probably got the name from old French, thanks to the Auld Alliance).

If we are to celebrate properly we must consider Scottish food today. On the off-chance that haggis, crappit-heads, Glasgow tripe and sheeps-head broth are not to your liking, I give these recipes from that good Scots lady who called herself Mistress Margaret Dods, but was really the novelist Christian Isobel Johnstone (1781-1857).

From The Cook and Housewife's Manual (1826)

Scottish Shortbread, or Short-cake.
To the fourth of a peck of flour (two pounds) take six ounces of sifted sugar, and of candied citron, orange-peel, and blanched almonds, two ounces each. Cut these in rather long thin slices, which cut in dice and mix with the flour. Rub down among the flour a pound of butter in small bits, melt a half-pound more, and with this work up the flour, &c. The less kneading it gets the more short and crisp the cakes will be. Rollout the paste lightly into a large well-shaped oval cake, about an inch thick, and divide this the narrow way, so as to have two cakes somewhat the shape of a Saxon arch. Pinch the cakes neatly at the edges, and dab them on the top with an instrument, the dabber, used for that purpose, or with a fork. Strew caraway-comfits over the top, and a few strips of citron-peel. Bake on paper, rubbed with flour. The cakes may be square, or oblong.
Obs. Plainer shortbread may be made using less butter and no candied peel. The whole of the butter may be melted, which makes the process easier. Chopped almonds, and buter, are used in larger quantity or Scotch shortbread wanted very rich for sending as a holiday present to England.

Auld Man’s Milk.
Beat the yolks and whites of six eggs separately. Put to the beat yolks sugar and a quart of new milk, or thin sweet cream. Add to this rum, whisky, or brandy to taste (about half a pint). Slip in the whipt whites and give the whole a gentle stir up in the china punch-bowl, in which it should be mixed. It may be flavoured with nutmeg or lemon-zest. This Highland morning-cup is nearly the egg-nog of America.

And so the Lord be thankit.

Today, January 25th …

Today is Burn’s Day, the anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns in 1759. If you have the tiniest trace of Scots ancestry, you will, like your relatives all over the world, be intending to hold your own traditional Burns Supper on this night.

In case the trace is very distant and your ancestral memory of the evening’s ritual needs jogging, I remind you of the proper order of proceedings.

1. Welcome by the Chairman.

2. Burns’ “Selkirk Grace” is said by all:

“Some hae meat and cannae eat,
And some wad eat that want it.
But we hae meat and we can eat
And so the Lord be thankit”

3. The company then stands, and performs a slow handclap during the piping in of the haggis. The procession consists of the piper, the chef bearing the haggis on a silver platter, the honoured guest who will address the haggis, and – let he not be forgotten - the whisky bearer.

4. The honoured guest recites Burns’ ode “To a Haggis”, with great gusto and feeling, and at the lines “His knife see Rustic-labour dight, An cut you up wi ready slight” he plunges his own knife into the haggis, spilling out its “gushing entrails”.

5. At the final line "Gie her a Haggis!” (“her” being Scotland) the company applaud, raise their whisky glasses and make a toast “To the Haggis”.

6. The meal proper then commences. The haggis is compulsory, but other menu items may vary so long as they stay within the traditional Scots culinary repertoire. A common selection would be:
Cock-a-leekie soup
Haggis with Bashed Neeps and Champit Taties
Clootie Dumplin or Tipsy Laird

7. A short speech on Burns is given.

8.There is a Toast to the Lasses, and various other recitations and entertainments, accompanied by as much whisky drinking as seems necessary and appropriate.

9. The evening ends with the traditional rendering by the company of Auld Lang Syne.

If you have any Scottish blood at all, I assume that you have your own inviolable family recipe for haggis, but hope your ancestors are not offended by my suggestion that you try Mistress Meg Dods’ variation of Bashed Neeps (from her “Cooks and Housewife’s Manual”, 1856).

Our Club put a little powdered ginger to their mashed turnips, which were studiously chosen of the yellow, sweet, juicy sort for which Scotland is celebrated.

Tomorrow: The inevitable banquet.

Some baloney about Bologna.

Today, December 19th …

If you had been a Second Cabin guest aboard the famous “Lusitania” in 1911 on this day, this would have been your luncheon menu:

Lettuce Sliced Tomatoes
Bordeaux Sardines
Puree of Split Peas
Fillets Flounder, Florentine
Steak and Kidney Pudding
Roast Mutton and Onion Sauce
Corned Brisket of Beef with Cabbage
Spinach Parsnips, Creme
Baked, Boiled, & Mashed Potatoes
COLD
Roast Beef Brawn Ox Tongue
Galantine of Veal Bologna Sausage
Beetroot
Plums and Rice Small Pastry
Sago Pudding
Ice Cream
Apples Oranges Dates Roasted Peanuts
Cheese Tea Coffee

I bet the sago pudding was popular. What about the Bologna Sausage?

The mystery that is sausage meat causes us a great deal of food anxiety, and this is reflected in our word “baloney”, meaning nonsense or “rubbish”, which supposedly derives from the idea of Bologna (or “Poloney”) sausage. This is grossly unfair to Bologna, which has no more sinister a potential than any other type of sausage.

Genuine Bologna sausage is Mortadella. It has been made for at least 500 years from pure pork studded with distinctive cubes of white fat, flavoured with pepper, coriander, anise, and pistachio nuts, without smoking or drying. Someone once got an inspiration from it and created luncheon meat, which really is baloney.

The only constant factor in recipes for Bologna sausage in old cookbooks is the name. Robert May’s recipe (1660) comes pretty close to the real thing. He uses “a good leg of pork” and a lot of lard, flavoured with cloves, nutmeg, mace, pepper and caraway seeds. Rabisha’s “Poloney Sassages to keep all year” (1682) are all wrong from point of view of authenticity, although they do sound delicious: they are a smoked dried sausage made from a gammon of bacon, with cloves, mace, nutmeg, pepper, and red wine.

Mistress Margaret Dods, the Scottish pseudonymous author of the very amusing “Cook and Housewife’s Manual” (1856), says in a footnote: “Bologna sausages labour under the calumnious imputation of being made of asses’ flesh”. She does not commit herself to an opinion as to what the correct ingredient should be, but plays it safe by using a bit of everything in her version, and calling it:

Imitation Bologna Sausage.
Take equal weight of bacon, beef, pork, and veal. Mince, and season high with pepper, salt, and sage. Fill a well-cleaned gut, and boil for an hour; or smoke and dry them for future use.

Tomorrow: Another sort of shipboard victuals.