Vegetarianism, 17th C Style.

Thomas Tryon (1634 -1703) was an interesting man for his time – or for any time, for that matter. He was the archetypal self-taught, self-made man who rose from poor beginnings to become a successful businessman (in the hat industry) and widely-read author (especially of books that we would now call ‘self-help.’) He seems to have espoused every possible ethical cause of the time: temperance, pacifism, animal rights, and anti-slavery.

Tryon was also a vegetarian, (although it would be several centuries before the phrase was invented) which was certainly not a common choice in the seventeenth century, for those in a position to choose. He believed that man should not be careless of what goes into his mouth, because essentially – he is what he eats. Here are his words on the subject:

“Likewise this Prince, the Taste or Pallate hath another powerful Officer placed in this great Gate the Mouth, or common Road that leads into the Metropolitan or Human City, which is called the Expulsive Faculty, by whose Innate power it can, at the command of its Superior Prince the Tafte or Pallate, immediatley Expel or Spit forth, (and that with great vigour) what Meat, Drink or other thing is distafteful or unpleasing to the Pallate or Sense of Tasting, so wonderfully hath our Creator guarded the Gate, Road or common Passage, that nothing might pass into the Body or Stomach but only what is proper and agreeable to sustain and preferve the Human Nature in a due regular Temperature and Union.

For if this Gate or common Passage be kept from being violated or forced upon, by Adulterers and Thieves, and that no unclean thing enters, then all the whole Body and Mind is Sound, Healthy, and free from all cloudy Burthensom Diseases.

But on the other side, if the Prince the Pallate, or Superior Officer be adulterated, and hath by intemperance and improper Meats and Drinks lost its intire and natural Taste or true distinguising Power, then presently all the under-graduated Officers and Centinels are thereby made heavy, sleepy, dull, idle, careless and impure, and then this great or wonderful Gate or Road stands open to all Intruders, and there is no Uncleanness nor Intemperance that is withstood but all Viciousness doth freely pass without any Examination of the said Officers or sentinels so that the Human City must needs be Defiled, Wounded and Distempered."

Tryon did not write cookery books, but one of his works is particularly relevant to this blog. It was published in 1696, and its extended title was:

Wisdom’s Dictates: or Aphorisms and Rules, Physical, Moral, and Divine; For Preserving the Health of the Body and the Peace of the Mind, fit to be regarded and practiced by all that would enjoy the Blessings of the present and future World.

To which is added, A Bill of Fare Of Seventy five Noble Dishes of Excellent Food, far exceeding those made of Fish or Flesh, which Banquet I present to the Sons of Wisdom, or such as shall decline that depraved Custom of Eating Flesh and Blood.

My plan for the remainder of this week is to troll through these ‘seventy five noble dishes of excellent food’, and see what we make of them in the twenty-first century. To start with however, I give you a recipe from a very early ‘vegetarian’ cookery book called Primitive Cookery: or, the Kitchen Garden display’d. Containing a Collection of Receipts for preparing a great Variety of Cheap, healthful and palatable Dishes without either Fish, Flesh, or Fowl, published in 1691. Please note that the book is not exclusively vegetarian in the modern sense – it contains at least one recipe which uses ‘mutton-gravy.’

Artichoke Soup.
Wash the bottoms of the artichokes, and boil them in blanched water, putting in a large piece of butter, kneaded up with a little flour and salt. When they are boiled, take them out, mash them through a sieve, as you do pease; then let them simmer in a stew-pan over a gentle fire, putting in butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and cloves pounded in a mortar, also a bunch of young onions, thyme, and a bay leaf. When it is almost ready, pound in a mortar some blanched sweet almonds, candied lemon peel, biscuits, bitter almonds, yolks of hard eggs, sugar, and a little orange-flower water; put this to your soup, set it a little over the fire, then serve it.

Quotation for the Day.

Let none of your food be attended with the dying Groans of the innocent Creatures.
Thomas Tryon, 1691

Breakfast Afloat.

Today I would like you to join me, and the other ‘Second Cabin’ passengers aboard the Cunard liner RMS Mauretania, for breakfast on this day in 1921. There is something about breakfast aboard a cruising vessel, isn’t there? Here is what we are offered today.

Compote of Figs

-

Oatmeal Porridge Fresh Milk.

Grape Nuts Corn Flakes

Fried Plaice

-

Grilled Smoked Bacon

Fried and Boiled Eggs

Minced Veal a la Crème

Mashed Potatoes

-

Radishes Spring Onions

-

Breakfast Rolls

-

Tea Coffee Cocoa

I am not altogether convinced about raw radishes for breakfast, but their inclusion on this menu made me realise that they have featured in only one measly story on this blog in well over a thousand posts. To read that particular post is to believe that radishes only ever appear in salads. Surely there are other alternatives for this particular vegetable? Perhaps even in some recipes suitable for breakfast?


Eliza Acton comes to the rescue in Modern Cookery, in all its branches (1845) with a method of cooking radishes to serve on toast ‘like asparagus.’

Boiled Turnip Radishes.
These should be freshly drawn, young and white. Wash and trim them neatly, leaving on two or three of the small inner leaves of the top. Boil them in plenty of salted water from twenty to thirty minutes, and as soon as they are tender send them to table well drained, with melted butter or white sauce. Common radishes when young, tied in bunches, and boiled from eighteen to twenty-five minutes, then served on a toast like asparagus, are very good.


Quotation of the Day.
The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.
Tom Robbins

Anglo-Mex Anyone?

My gift to those of you celebrating Cinco de Mayo today was to be the best of all gifts (well, one of them anyway), it was to be the gift of something to think about. I wanted to give you Anglo-Mex food. Sadly, a prolonged search of English cookery books and newspapers produced a single recipe. It is from The Times, and although it is Mexican in name, I have to say that it is a recipe whose nationality is scarcely identifiable, a recipe which singlehandedly makes the whole authenticity debate utterly hilarious.

Mexican Refresher.
Dissolve 6 oz of loaf sugar in a pint of boiling water. Pour in by degrees a quarter of a pint each of sherry and of lemon juice. Then add three quarters of a pint of cold milk. Stir well and pass through a jelly bag until clear. Serve icy cold.
The Times, Monday, Jul 24, 1939.

The magnificent and thoroughly English Victorian tome - Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery (1892 ed) - did however ease the dearth of recipes with this description of a much more authentic (I think) Mexican beverage:

Pulque:- This is a beverage much delighted in by the Mexicans and inhabitants of
some parts of Central and South America. It is made from the juice of different species of agave. The juice is collected by cutting out the flowering stem just when it is beginning to grow from the midst of the leaves, and scooping a hole for the juice. The cavity being formed, large quantities of juice are removed daily from it for months. When fresh, pulque is an agreeable drink, but it is more frequently drunk after fermentation, when its taste is more
pleasant. The great drawback is a putrid smell, but one gets over that in time. Mixed
with water and sugar, and allowed to ferment for a few hours, pulque forms a beverage called
Tepach.

Quotation for the Day.

I never ask God for anything, I only ask him to put me where things are.
Mexican proverb.

Why is English Mutton So Good?

I understand that mutton is making a come-back in Britain. I do hope I have not been misinformed, as, in the light of this information, I have put mutton on my list of must-eats when I next visit the country of my birth.

I am intrigued by the idea that the flesh of an animal tastes differently depending on its diet. The scientist in me asks “What are these flavourful dietary molecules that become incorporated in muscle tissue – and how do they get there?” I wonder if anyone has actually done taste tests with a panel of experts with discriminating palates on, say, pork reared three ways (solely on peaches? on ginger biscuits? on potato peelings?) If it has not been done, why not? If you have heard of such an event, I would love to know about it.

There was an interesting article on the topic in the New York Times in February 1870, submitted by their Own Correspondent in England. I am unable to detect any tongue in the cheek of this reporter, but surely it must be there?

“I have learned at last what gives its peculiar flavour to English mutton. It is fattened on Egyptian mummies. These are bought from the catacombs on camels to the Nile, loaded on English vessels, and brought to England and ground up for manure. A field of English turnips is only a crowd of ancient Egyptians in a new form, and the sheep eat them with avidity.”

The article also provides our quotation for the day, which I found vastly amusing, and you will find below.

The recipe for the day is for human turnip-eaters (to whom I especially dedicate the quotation). It is from Isabella Beetons’ iconic Household Manual (1861).

TURNIPS, German Mode of Cooking.
Ingredients.8 large turnips, 3 oz. of butter, pepper and salt to taste, rather more than ^ pint of weak stock or broth, 1 tablespoonful of flour.
Mode. Make the butter hot in a stewpan, lay in the turnips, after having pared and cut them into dice, and season them with pepper and salt. Toss them over the fire for a few minutes, then add the broth, and simmer the whole gently till the turnips are tender. Brown the above proportion of flour with a little butter; add this to the turnips, let them simmer another 5 minutes, and serve. Boiled mutton is usually sent to table with this vegetable, and may be cooked with the turnips by placing it in the midst of them: the meat would then be very delicious, as, there being so little liquid with the turnips, it would almost be steamed, and, consequently, very tender.
Time.- 20 minutes. Average cost, 4d. per bunch. Sufficient for 4 persons. Seasonable.- May be had all the year.


Quotation for the Day.
The ethnologists are right. We are all cannibals, only vegetarians who live on the turnips are only one stage nearer direct cannibalism than those who eat the mutton.
‘Monadnock’: from the article quoted above.

Good Friday dinner with the Brothers.

I thought it would be interesting on this Good Friday to dine with the seventeenth century brethren at the Hospital of St.Cross. This was a hospital in the old sense of the word meaning a place for hospitality, in this case to ‘distressed travellers.’ The hospital was instituted (in England) by the Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem, and its history was recorded in 1868 in the Memorials of the Hospital of St. Cross and alms house of noble poverty, by Lewis Macnaughten Humbert.
Details of the meals of the brethren for the special days of the year are noted in the book, for the period 'after the restoration of the monarchy’ (specifically in 1675). I have included the whole segment so that you can see the range of food offered on all of the days, including Good Friday.

“The diet and allowances of the brethren are very minutely recorded, both for ordinary and extraordinary occasions. An extract in reference to the latter will be interesting, the more so, as it describes, with few alterations, the present custom. "That there are five Festival days in the year, to wit, - All Saints, Christmas, New Year’s day, Twelfth-day, and Candlemas-day: on which days the brethren have extra-ordinary commons, and on the eve of which days they have a fire of charcoal in the Common Hall, and one jack of six quarts and one pint of beer extraordinary, to drink together by the fire. And on the said Feast-days they have a fire at dinner, and another at supper in the said hall; and they have a sirloin of beef roasted, weighing forty-six pounds and a half, and three large mince pies, and plum broth, and three joints of mutton for their supper, and six quarts and one pint of beer extraordinary at dinner, and six quarts and one pint of beer after dinner, by the fireside; six quarts and a pint at supper, and the like after supper. And on Wednesdays before Shrove-Tuesdays at dinner every brother hath a pancake; and on Shrove-Tuesdays at dinner every brother hath a pancake besides his commons of beef, and six quarts and one pint of beer extraordinary, among them all; and at supper their mutton is roasted, and three hens roasted, and six quarts and a pint of beer extraordinary. And in Lent-time every brother hath in lieu of his commons eight shillings in money paid. And on Palm Sunday the brethren have a green fish, of the value of three shillings and fourpence, and their pot of milk pottage with three pounds of rice boiled in it, and three pies with twenty-four herrings baked in them, and six quarts and one pint of beer extraordinary. And they have on Good Friday, at dinner, in their pot of beer a cast of bread sliced, and three pounds of honey, boiled altogether, which they call honey sop.”

So, honey-sop for Good Friday. Sounds good, doesn’t it? There was no shortage of honey in religious houses on the time – bees were kept primarily to supply wax for candles, and honey was the useful by-product.

I am not going to give you a ‘recipe’ for honey sops, because the text above explains it (‘sops’ are simply pieces of bread soaked in a liquid; it is the word from which we get ‘soup.’) Honey is still the theme however, and I really cannot resist the following recipe for an interesting variation of honey mead.

Walnut Mead.
Put seven pounds of honey to every two gallons of water, and boil it three quarters of an hour. To every gallon of liquor put about twenty-four walnut leaves, pour your liquor boiling hot over them, and let it stand all night. Then take out the leaves, and pour in a cupful of yeast, and let it work two or three days and then make it up. Let it work two or three days and then make it up. After it has stood three months bottle it cork it tight and keep it for use
The accomplished housekeeper, and universal cook, by T. Williams (1797)

Quotation for the Day.
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.
Mahatma Ghandi.

Food fit for a Cottager.

Household hints are not the only treasures to be found in the depths of books such as yesterday’s source, Cottage comforts, with hints for promoting them, gleaned from experience: enlivened with authentic anecdotes, by Esther Copley (London, 1830.) Sometimes they give us recipes for things long-forgotten – forgotten to most of us city-dwellers and supermarket-shoppers that is. Occasionally they even supply the instructions for some of the down on the farm dirty peasant stuff that no cottager’s wife would have needed to read because she would have learned the skill growing up. Such stuff is chitterlings.

Esther’s instructions for the preparation of chitterlings give the distinct impression that she had never actually prepared them from scratch, herself. Before I give you her instructions for this decidedly not-modern dish, I cannot resist sharing her introductory platitudes, which perhaps go some way to explaining why she does not appear to have put her own hands inside a pig and pulled out its innards. She was in an entirely different social class than the folk who normally prepared such stuff, that’s why.

‘The writer of this little volume has long been accustomed to observe the habits, resources, and privations of the labouring classes of society, and to cherish a lively interest in their welfare and happiness. Under a conviction that the outward condition of these classes might be materially meliorated by an improvement in their moral and prudential habits, she has often indulged the wish that some enlightened and benevolent friend to their true interests would furnish them with a familiar compendium, calculated to meet their daily round of wants, feelings, circumstances, and duties, and to suggest friendly and profitable hints relative to each.’

When the hocks, feet, or cheeks are boiled, it would never enter into the head of a wasteful slattern, that the liquor was good for any thing—it would never enter the head of a careful manager to throw it away. She knows very well, that when cold there will be a cake of fat settled on the top, enough to make a good pudding: and that the liquor boiled up with a few peas and herbs, will make good soup; (a capital breakfast this for a hard labouring man, on a cold frosty morning.) Even from the liquor in which bacon has been boiled, very good fat may be gained, and freed from salt, by skimming it from the liquor while warm, and dropping it into a vessel of cold water—the salt will go to the bottom, and the fat remain at the top. Even the brine that runs off from salting the bacon is useful. A spoonful or two of it put into the saucepan with potatoes, causes them to boil light and flowery: this is particularly useful during the latter part of the winter and spring, when potatoes are old and indifferent, and other vegetables scarce.

Chitterlings.— I am surprised that I cannot, in any cookery book that I have seen, find directions for preparing these: it is a shame they should be wasted — however, I believe all the matter is, immediately they are taken out of the pig to turn them inside out, and give them many, many washings in salt and water, till they are perfectly sweet and clean, and then slowly boil them for several hours.

Quotation for the Day.
He fell upon whate'er was offer'd, like
A priest, a shark, an alderman, or pike.
Lord Byron

Household Hints, Part 2.

Today’s household hints come from Mrs. Ellis's housekeeping made easy, or, Complete instructor in all branches (Sarah Stickney Ellis; 1843.)  On the surface of it, it is advice that makes me very grateful to have a refrigerator, freezer, airtight storage jars, and plastic food wrap. But in the deep of it, it reminds me that there are times and places and circumstances when there may not be electrical power, and discarding meat fat and bread crusts are a wicked waste, and plastic an environmental disaster.

How and Where to Keep Things.

Crusts and bits of bread should be kept in an earthen pot, closely covered in a dry cool place. Keep fresh lard and suet in tin vessels. Keep salt pork fat in glazed earthen ware. Keep yeast in wood or earthen. Keep preserves and jellies in glass, or china, or stone ware. Keep salt in a dry place. Keep meal in a cool dry place. Keep ice in the cellar, wrapped in flannel. Keep vinegar[r] in wood or glas[s].

Mrs. Ellis also gives the following piece of advice, which made me ashamed to admit how rarely I peer into the depths of my tea-kettle to assess its crustiness.

To Prevent the Formation of a Crust on Tea-Kettles.

Keep an oyster-shell in your tea-kettle and it will prevent the formation of a crust on the inside of it, but attracting the stony particles to itself.

Naturally, Mrs Ellis’ hints include several other ways for avoiding waste, and the recipe for the day, taken from her book, shows you how to renovate bad butter and rancid lard.

Tainted butter.

Some good cooks say that bad butter may be purified in the following manner: Melt and skim it, then put into it a piece of well-toasted bread; in a few minutes the butter will lose its offensive taste and smell; the bread will absorb it all. Slices of potatoe fried in rancid lard will in a great measure absorb the unpleasant taste.

Quotation for the Day.

A lucky person is one who plants pebbles and harvests potatoes.

Greek proverb.

Household Hints, Part 1.

I am particularly fond of the sort of household manual that is not afraid to meet the challenge of assisting the housewife to cope with the myriad demands that the role requires. Sadly, no-one seems to publish these any more, and I am left to fend for myself in the matter of removing stains from silk gowns, making blacking for the stove, and concocting remedies for the green sickness. The Victorian housewife was luckier, for the publishing industry went wild for these books at the time, and she had a vast choice of such books to make her life easier, her servants better behaved, and her husband happier.

Methinks that there may still be much to learn from these books, in spite of their advice being nearly two hundred years old. To test the theory, I went first to Household Hints to Young Housewives, published in London in 1852. I chose this one because of the author’s name - or rather, her pseudonym – ‘Mary Careful.’ The name itself positively breathes reassurance, doesn’t it? It is just the thing that a new bride needs. The fact that the author chose a pseudonym is interesting in itself too. It is difficult to imagine, living in an age when celebrity rules as it seems to do today, that anyone wanting to publish a cookery book – or any book for that matter – would choose anonymity.

Mary Careful, in her lengthy preface, mentions her seventy-five years, her arthritis and her eight sons as if these in themselves give her some authenticity – and perhaps they do. She advises the newly-wedded wives to whom the book is addressed that ‘the helm of a vessel fully freighted with affection, wealth, and happiness is placed in your hand to guide – one false step may cast you on a rock of sorrow.’ The advice in her book will ‘place young housekeepers at once within the magic ring of wedded happiness’ by assisting them with ‘the trifles which make up the sum of human bliss.’ Now, I say without fear of correction, that those sentiments are not to be found in any current books on cookery or marriage, or life, - seafaring for that matter.

Mrs Careful gives some sample menus and this one caught my eye for its odd fragment of food etiquette advice below the menu proper.

MONDAY’S DINNER.

Soles – Melted Butter

Minced Beef, with Potatoe Wall.

Bread and Butter Pudding.

Spinach.

It is not etiquette to serve up potatoes with fish. If you fancy them, a distinct order must be given.

Believe me, faithfully yours

Martha Careful.

I have never come across this piece of advice before, and this demonstrates to me the need for a return of the general household manual. I might have been saved from the culinary faux pas of serving potatoes with fish, had I had the benefit of such a manual on my kitchen bookshelves in my formative cooking years.

Perhaps it was part of the longstanding prejudice (and its accompanying misinformation) about potatoes that persisted into the early nineteenth century? Another book of the time,
Cottage comforts, with hints for promoting them, gleaned from experience: enlivened with authentic anecdotes, by Esther Copley (London, 1830), has this to say:

Potatoes should not be boiled in the liquor of which soup is made; they render it unwholesome. If you choose to have potatoes with your soup, let them be boiled in another vessel.

Another regular bad habit of mine exposed – actually cooking potatoes in the soup.

A second, minor point: I am equally intrigued by Mrs Careful’s placing of the spinach on her menu after the pudding.

Here is her recipe for the pudding, which is a rather nice version of this English staple.

Bread and Butter Pudding.

Cut very thin bread and butter; grate on it lemon peel, almond and nutmeg; place it in layers in a dish, strewing a few well washed currants or marmalade between each piece; till the dish up with custard a quarter of an hour before baking; a quart dish will require three quarters of an hour. The pudding may be turned out on a flat dish, and powdered with white sugar.

Custard for this, or any baked pudding, is made as follows:—Beat three eggs with whites, well sweeten and flavour it, then stir it into pint of new milk. An extra egg will increase the richness when required, and varied flavourings can be used—lemon, almond, noyeau, ratafia, cinnamon, coriander, orange, nutmeg, &c.

Bread and butter pudding flavoured with coriander – now that’s an idea!

Quotation for the Day.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
Douglas Adams.

Easter with Samuel Johnson.

James Boswell, the diarist and author best known for his biography of Samuel Johnson, was very excited to be invited to his hero’s home for dinner on Easter Sunday in 1773.

He wrote:
'To my great surprize he asked me to dine with him on Easter-Day. I never supposed that he had a dinner at his house; for I had not then heard of any one of his friends having been entertained at his table. He told me, "I have generally a meat pye on Sunday: it is baked at a publick oven, which is very properly allowed, because one man can attend it; and thus the advantage is obtained of not keeping servants from church to dress dinners."’

When the big day came, he wrote in his journal:

April 11, being Easter-Sunday, after having attended Divine Service at St. Paul's, I repaired to Dr. Johnson's. I had gratified my curiosity much in dining with JEAN JAQUES ROUSSEAU, while he lived in the wilds of Neufchatel: I had as great a curiosity to dine with DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON, in the dusky recess of a court in Fleet-street. I supposed we should scarcely have knives and forks, and only some strange, uncouth, ill-drest dish: but I found every thing in very good order. We had no other company but Mrs. Williams and a young woman whom I did not know. As a dinner here was considered as a singular phenomenon, and as I was frequently interrogated on the subject, my readers may perhaps be desirous to know our bill of fare. Foote, I remember, in allusion to Francis, the negro, was willing to suppose that our repast was black broth. But the fact was, that we had a very good soup, a boiled leg of lamb and spinach, a veal pye, and a rice pudding.

From Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1784), here are the instructions a boiled leg of lamb and spinach such as Samuel Johnson may have provided for his guests.

To boil a Leg of Lamb.
Let the leg be boiled very white. An hour will do it. Cut the loin into steaks, dip them into a few crumbs of bread and egg, fry them nice and brown, boil a good deal of spinach, and lay it in the dish; put the leg in the middle, lay the loin around it, cut an orange in four and garnish the dish, and have butter in a cup. Some love the spinach boiled, then drained, put into a saucepan with a good piece of butter, and stewed.

Quotation for the Day.

"I, Madam, who live at a variety of good tables, am a much better judge of cookery, than any person who has a very tolerable cook, but lives much at home; for his palate is gradually adapted to the taste of his cook: whereas, Madam, in trying by a wider range, I can more exquisitely judge."
Samuel Johnson, quoted by James Boswell.

Fit for a King.

There was a sudden large spike in visits to this blog a couple of weeks ago. When I looked to see what had triggered it, most of the searches were for ‘Eggs Drumkilbo.’ This puzzled me for a while. Then I remembered a rumour that those of you in The Old Country are in for a royal wedding pretty soon. Thankfully we are somewhat protected from the hype over here in the old colony. Eggs Drumkilbo is apparently a dish popular with the royals - especially for wedding breakfasts - on account of it having being a favourite with the dear old Queen Mum. I put this and that together and came up with the theory that perhaps the menu details for the wedding breakfast of the Future King and his bride were being discussed in the press, and the egg dish was named, and, it not being a dish readily available in the caffs and pubs of England, more members of the public than usual Googled it and my story came up. Any truth in that theory? Someone out there must be an avid reader of all things relating to the royal wedding, surely.

All of this led me to the idea that I must give you a right royal menu. The bill of fare (the ‘purveyance’) for a feast for King Richard II (1377-1399) is given in Constance Hieatt’s indispensible book Curye on Inglysch . I have adapted the translation from the old English to make it a little more accessible to food enthusiasts who are not medieval food scholars, and hope that not too many inaccuracies have been introduced in the doing.

This is the purveyance (bill of fare) for the feast for the king at home for his own table. Venison with frumenty in potage, boars' heads, boiled large joints of meat, roasted swan, roasted fat capons, peas, pike, and two subtleties. White pudding, a jellied dish, roast pork, roasted cranes, roasted pheasants, roasted herons, roasted peacocks, bream (fish), tarts, meat served in pieces, roasted rabbit, and one subtlety. German broth, a ‘lombard’(a ‘solid’ spiced dish with pork, dried fruits and eggs in a sauce of almond milk or wine), roasted venison, roasted egret, roasted peacocks, roasted perch, roasted pigeons, roasted rabbits, roasted quails, roasted larks, a puff pastry dish (probably containing fruit – ‘mete’ in this sense referring to ‘food’, not specifically flesh meat), perch, a rice dish, fritters, and two subtleties.

Many of the dishes mentioned have previously appeared in this blog, but as time is short for me today to provide links to earlier posts (there are almost a million words to search now), I invite you to search for the terms yourself, should you be interested. If time permits later today I will return and do the links for you.

The Master Cooks of King Richard II left us their ‘cookery book’, and I have referred to it and given many recipes from it in the past. It is called The Forme of Cury. There are no instructions in it for boiling or roasting the vast amounts of meat on this menu – no cook would have needed these. The manuscript is more like an aide-memoire for the made-dishes, for cooks who did not need detailed instructions on actual methods.

I give you the recipe from the manuscript for the ‘German broth’ (bruet of almayne’, or ‘brewet of almony’ as it is called here.) It is a dish of pieces of rabbit (or kid), cooked with almond milk and sweet spices and thickened with rice flour – and sounds delicious.

Brewet Of Almony
Take Conynges or kiddes and hewe hem small on moscels other on pecys. parboile hem with the same broth, drawe an almaunde mylke and do the fleissh therwith, cast therto powdour galyngale & of gynger with flour of Rys. and colour it with alkenet. boile it, salt it. & messe
it forth with sugur and powdour douce.

Quotation for the Day.

When we decode a cookbook, every one of us is a practicing chemist. Cooking is really the oldest, most basic application of physical and chemical forces to natural materials.
Arthur E. Grosser (Professor of Chemistry at McGill University) 1984

Fool’s Food.

Today is April Fool’s Day. I just know I am going to get an email from someone (who assumes that this is my April Fool joke – or that I am just stupid) pointing out that ‘today’ is still Thursday. Believe me when I tell you that here in Australia it is already Friday.

The origins of April Fool’s Day traditions are lost in the mists of antiquity, and as such are subject to much conjecture and fanciful embroidery. There is much about the day that suggests a spring festival of renewal – it is a day of organised havoc, with rules. Beware that you don’t continue your pranks beyond midday or …. I am not sure what will happen, but you just don’t do it, it is the rule. Perhaps the April Fool Gods will turn your nose into a stick of rhubarb, or you will be doomed until the next Fool’s Day to wear your underpants on the outside of your trousers, or you will be forced to eat only low-fat, low-carb, high fibre chocolate until Christmas.

The day is strongly associated with fish, for some (to me) very obscure reason. This is relevant to us today because this is a food blog after all. The fish symbolism is particularly strong in France (some experts do blame the French for originating the tradition) where the day is called Poisson d’Avril, or April Fish Day. They even have a fish called the April Fish, as is explained in Kettner’s Book of the Table, (London, 1877)

MACKEREL: A great authority, Grimod de la Reynière, says : “The mackerel has this is common with good women – he is loved by all the world. He is welcomed by rich and poor with the same eagerness. He is most commonly eaten à la maître d’hôtel. But he may be prepared in a hundred ways; and he is as exquisite plain as in the most elaborate dressing.” (au maigre comme au gras). This is immense praise, and is a complete justification of the common English method of serving him – plain boiled, with fennel or with gooseberry sauce. Nevertheless I give my vote to those who assert that there is but one perfect way of cooking a mackerel – to split him down the back, broil him, and serve him with maître d’hôtel butter. Still better, take his fillets and serve them in the same way.

The name of mackerel is supposed to be a corruption of nacarel, a possible diminution of nacre – from the blue and mother-o’-pearl tint of the skin. In one of the dialects of the south of France he is called pies d’Avril, the April fish – or as we should say, and April fool, both because he is a fool coming easily to the net, and because he first comes in April. He is not only quickly caught, but he spoils so quickly that the law accords him a peculiar privilege: he is the only fish that may be hawked about the streets on a Sunday. For the same reason he is the only fish besides the salmon that is much soused or marinaded in this country.

For those of you living in the other hemisphere, where April means Spring, not Autumn, and who can source a mackerel in season , I give you a simple version of the traditional gooseberry sauce to serve with him.


Gooseberry Sauce.
Put some scalded gooseberries, a little juice of sorrel, and a little ginger, into some melted butter.
The universal cook: and city and country housekeeper (1792), by By Francis Collingwood.

There is a slightly different version of the sauce (from 1709), intended to be served with goose here, and one for mock gooseberry sauce (made with rhubarb) here.


Previous April Fool’s Day stories are here, here, and here (my favourite, the amazing spaghetti trees of England.)


Recipes for Fools are here and here.

Fun Pudding is here.


Quotation for the Day.

Food is so fundamental, more so than sexuality, aggression, or learning, that it is astounding to realize the neglect of food and eating in depth psychology.
James Hillman.

Random Ideas for Milk.

The title says it all today folks. I have something different planned for you tomorrow, so to end our milk series I give you a little cache of milk recipes that didn’t fit in the posts earlier in the week.

Milk Yeast.
Take a pint of new milk, a tea-spoonful of salt, and a large spoonful of flour stirred in; set it in a warm place, and it will be fit for use in an hour. Twice the quantity of common yeast is required for use. It must be used soon, as it will not keep.
The Family Doctor, or guide to health, (1844) by H.B.Skinner

Milk Soda.
Half fill a tumbler with milk, and pour upon it soda water.
The Invalid’s own book, Lady Mary Anne Boode Cust, 1853.

Milk Jelly.
Ingredients: One ounce of Iceland Moss. One quart of milk or water. Two tablespoonfuls of powdered loaf sugar.
Time required (after the Iceland Moss has soaked all night), for ‘Water Jelly’, about one hour; for ‘Milk Jelly’, about two hours.
To Make [Milk] Jelly with Iceland Moss:
1. Wash one ounce of Iceland moss well in cold water.
2. Then put it in a basin of cold water and let it soak all night.
3. After that time, take it out of the water and squeeze it dry in a cloth.
4. Then put it in a saucepan, with one quart of cold milk.
5. Put the saucepan on the fire and let it boil for two hours; you must stir it frequently.
6. Then strain it through a sieve into a basin, and sweeten it with loaf sugar, according to taste.
7. When it is cold, turn the jelly out of the basin onto a dish, and it is ready for use.
Lessons in Cookery: Handbook of the National Training School for Cookery (London, 1879)


A Delicious Candy.
Milk Candy is a delicious one for children. It can be made with either brown, castor, or loaf sugar. When made with brown sugar it becomes very hard, with castor sugar slightly sticky, with loaf sugar it is crisp. The method is the same whichever sugar is used, and it can be flavoured to suit the tastes of those who are going to eat it. Lemon juice, vanilla, and peppermint essence can all be used to flavour it. For brown or castor sugar, take a breakfastcupful of sugar and the same quantity of milk. Put the milk and sugar into an enamelled pan, bring it to the boil, and boil it 20 minutes, when the candy should set; pour it into a greased tin, and score it well with the point of a knife before it is cold or it will not break into nice neat pieces. When using loaf sugar, use half a pint of milk to a pound of sugar, and treat exactly as above described. A breakfastcupful of milk and one of sugar will only make a small quantity of candy, as it reduces so much in the boiling.
The Echo, [newspaper], London, July 11, 1905.

Quotation for the Day
I won't eat any cereal that doesn't turn the milk purple.
Bill Watterson

Coffee: First Impressions.

Centuries before it spread to Europe, the use of coffee was virtually confined to the Arab and then the Ottoman Empires. The Arabs protected their control of the coffee industry fiercely, not allowing plants to leave the country, and par-boiling or roasting all beans to destroy their fertility. They were remarkably successful in maintaining their monopoly, and until the end of the sixteenth century very few Europeans had tasted coffee.

The first reports to reach Europe were from the few diplomats or merchants who were sent to the Arab or Ottoman lands, or the rare, adventurous independent traveller. First accounts described coffee simply as a curiosity, a strange black brew made from berries and drunk - very hot - as the Muslim alternative to wine or beer, or for its medicinal qualities. Most of these early reports also made specific mention of the consumption of coffee in public places.
Prosper Alpinus was a physician and botanist who observed its use in Egypt, and is credited with bringing coffee back to Venice in about 1570. He was primarily interested in coffee as a botanical specimen, and does not mention drinking it himself, but noted that “Among the Arabs and Egyptians there is made a kind of decoction which is heavily used, and which they drink in place of wine: it is likewise sold in public places, just as wine is sold among us”

In 1573 a Bavarian – also a physician and botanist - called Leonhard Rauwolf, went to Egypt. He was the first person to describe the preparation of the drink , from a “fruit” which he recognised as being similar to that described by the classical Arab physicians as “buncho”, the name given to the green coffee bean. He said “Among the rest they have a very good Drink, by them called Chaube, that is almost black as Ink, and very good in Illness, chiefly that of the Stomach; of this they drink in the Morning early in open places before everybody, without any fear or regard, out of China cups, as hot as they can; they put it often to their Lips, but drink but little at a Time, and let it go round as they sit”

Several of the English travellers who visited Turkey at the end of the first decade of the 17th century returned to write about their adventures, reviving the enormous fascination with the Orient which had really begun with the crusades. They had some comments on the strange black brew.
William Biddulph was an English clergyman who visited Turkey in 1609. His reaction to the use of coffee was similar to Rauwolf’s in Aleppo “Their most common drink is coffa, which is a black kind of drink made of a kind of pulse like pease, called coava; which being ground in the mill and boiled in water, they drink it as hot as they can suffer it; which they find to agree very well with them against their crudities and feeding on herbs and raw meats”

The British poet George Sandys also visited Turkey at about the same time. He was singularly unimpressed with the lack of provision of places for travellers to eat or stay in “inhospitalle Turkie” , but did sample coffee for himself. He was not impressed. "Although they be destitute of taverns, they have their coffa-houses, which something resemble them. They sit there chatting most of the day and sip a drink called 'coffa' in little china dishes as hot as they can suffer it: black as soot, and tasting not much unlike it." He also noted that coffee was not the only thing on offer at the coffee shops: “Many of the Coffamen [keep] beautifull boyes, who serve as stales [i.e lures] to procure them customers.”
In 1610 William Lithgow left Scotland to escape a scandal involving a young woman. He spent many years travelling Europe and the East and survived many adventures, including torture at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. He was impressed with the “delectable” sherberts in Constantinople, but noted that the drink given to honoured guests was “a cup of coffa, made of a kind of seed called coava, and of a blackish colour; which they drink so hot as possible they can”.

About ten years later, Sir Thomas Herbert visited Persia(Iran) and tasted coffee; he was definitely not impressed, calling it "a drink imitating that in the Stygian lake, black, thick, and bitter." The intrepid Robert Burton happened to be in Turkey at about the same time and was similarly unimpressed, saying “The Turks have a drink called Coffee (for they use no wine), so named of a berry as black as soot, and as bitter, (like that black drink which was in use among the Lacedæmonians, and perhaps the same), which they sip still off, and sup as warm as they can suffer” He added “they spend much time in those Coffee-houses, which are somewhat like our Ale-houses or Taverns, and there they sit chatting and drinking to drive away the time, and to be merry together, because they find by experience that kind of drink so used helpeth digestion, and procureth alacrity. Some of them take Opium to this purpose”

Within a few decades coffee went from being a talked about curiosity, to a popular if still controversial beverage in England and Europe. The first recorded instance of coffee being drunk in England was in 1637 in Oxford, where a Cretan scholar named Nathaniel Conopios “disseminated his grave learning and amused his colleagues by brewing a black drink from roasted coffee berries".
The coffee houses flourished and although much of the promotion was still related to its medicinal qualities, there is no doubt that simple enjoyment, particularly of its social aspects, was becoming its main attraction. The first treatise on coffee was published in 1657, by Walter Rumsey, and in the same year in London it was advertised as a drink which

"……closes the Orifice of the Stomack, fortifies the Heart within, helpeth Digestion, quickeneth the Spirits, maketh the Heart lightsom, is good against Eye-sores, Coughs or Colds, Rhumes, Consumptions, Head-ach, Dropsie, Gout, Scurvy, Kings Evil and many others."

Not everyone was pleased however, and also in that year, James Farr, the man who opened the second coffee house in London, the Rainbow, was taken to task “for making and selling a drink called coffee, whereby, in making the same, he annoyeth his neighboors by the evill smells, and for keeping of fire the most part night and day, whereby his chimney and chamber has been set on fire, to the great danger and affreightment of his neighboors.”


Recipe for the Day.
It is only relatively recently, historically, that coffee has been used as a cooking ingredient. May I refer you to the Coffee Recipes Archive for some early inspiration?

One thing that frustrates me is a recipe for ‘coffee cake’ that does not contain coffee. I know how this occurs (please don’t email me) – it often refers to cakes to have with coffee, which is not helpful as this includes all cakes, really.

Here, to redress the balance, is a true coffee cake:

Coffee Cake
5 cupfuls Flour
1 egg
2 cupfuls Currants (or 1 ½ cupfuls stoned and chopped raisins)
2 cupfuls sultanas
1 cupful butter
1 cupful treacle
1 cupful brown sugar
1 small cupful Lemon Peel
2 cupfuls boiling coffee
2 teaspoons Carbonate of soda
1 dessertspoonful ginger
Mix the butter with the flour, then add the fruit, egg, sugar, lemon peel, ginger and treacle. Mix the soda into the boiling coffee, then stir the coffee, still boiling, into the mixture. Stir quickly and thoroughly , pour into buttered tims, and bake in a quick oven for about 2 hours.
New Standard Cookery Illustrated (London, 1933)

Quotation for the Day
Coffee is real good when you drink it it gives you time to think. It's a lot more than just a drink; it's something happening. Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a location, but like somewhere within yourself. It gives you time, but not actual hours or minutes, but a chance to be, like be yourself, and have a second cup.
Gertrude Stein

A Different Spin on Salad.

Our source for the week, Adam's Luxury and Eve's Cookery, or, the Kitchen-Garden display’d, (1744), has, I think, singlehandedly put to rest the myths that vegetables were essentially neglected by our ancestors, and if they were served at all, the recipes were uninspiring.


One of the other things the book demonstrates is that at the time, many of the plant foods that we consider as salad vegetables were much more likely to be cooked before serving. As a sweeping generalisation, raw vegetables and fruits were considered with some suspicion in the past as being unhealthy. Remember the story of Samuel Pepys, who believed his neighbour died from eating ‘cowcumbers’? This was the topic of my very first blog post over five years ago.


One of the other things that stands out in cookery books of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is the number of recipes for cooking the vegetables that we now mostly eat raw in salads. When was the last time you had a dish of celery or cucumber cooked, as a side dish? I I am not talking about a couple of sticks of celery added to a stew, or cucumber to a stir-fry here, I am talking about these vegetables performing solo.

From our cookery book of the week, I give you a couple of ideas worth reviving.

Cellery with Cream.
Tie up your Branches and boil them tender; then cut them into Bits three Inches long, and put to them half a Pint of Cream, four Yolks of Eggs, a little Butter, and season it with Salt. Shake it together and serve it.

A Regalia of Cucumbers.
Slice twelve Cucumbers, put them in a Cloth, beat and squeeze them dry, flower and fry them brown; then add half a Gill of Claret, a little Gravy [broth], and some Salt, Pepper, Cloves, Mace, Nutmeg, and Butter work’d in Flower; toss them together, and serve them.


Quotation for the Day.

We can get fuel from fruit, from that shrub by the roadside, or from apples, weeds, saw-dust - almost anything! There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There is enough alcohol in one year's yield of a hectare of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the field for a hundred years. And it remains for someone to find out how this fuel can be produced commercially - better fuel at a cheaper price than we know now.
Henry Ford.

Take Some Wild Thistles ….

I have never eaten cardoons. I know a little about them, of course, but it is all theoretical. Now that I have realised this, deficit in my life, eating cardoons is on my A list, which I prefer to call my TTT-list (Things To Try list). I don’t remember ever seeing cardoons at any of the Brisbane farmers’ markets, but perhaps this will change now that they are on my curiosity radar.

I did consider the cardoon in a post a long time ago (here), but this week I am seeking vegetable inspiration from Adam's Luxury and Eve's Cookery, or, the Kitchen-Garden display’d, published in 1744. What does this lovely book have to give us on cardoons (which it calls chardoons) ? Four recipes, as it turns out – which is four more than any of the high profile celebrity chef cookery books that have ended up on my bookshelves over the last few years. How come we keep losing vegetable recipes from our cookery portfolios?

A couple of the recipes are quite substantial – chardoons with cheese, and one with bacon and marrow and more cheese, and one is for buttered chardoons. I am going to give you the first one in the book, which shows that if you prepare them right, they can substitute for asparagus, or even peas.

Chardoons Fried and Butter’d.
They are a wild Thistle that grows in every Ditch or Hedge. You must cut them about ten Inches, string them, tie them up twenty in a Bundle, and boil them like Asparagus: Or you may cut them in small Bits, and boil them as Pease, and toss them up with Pepper, Salt, and melted Butter.


Quotation for the Day.
I am better off with vegetables at the bottom of my garden than with all the fairies of the Midsummer Night's Dream.
Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) 'Lord, I Thank Thee'

Red is Good.

The Cabbage has been a staple vegetable for humans for millenia. We probably domesticated the wild form well over two thousand years ago, which has given us plenty of time to develop the different varieties from which we can now choose. The one I want to focus on today red cabbage.

As you well know, red cabbage is the litmus vegetable of the garden and kitchen – turning bluish if it is grown or cooked at the alkaline end of the pH spectrum, and red if it senses an acidic environment. This ability is due to the presence of one of the flavinoid pigments called anthocyanins – the same pigments that give the red colour to blood oranges, red apples, and autumn foliage, and which may well act as powerful anti-oxidants when we eat red foods.

Blue food on the other hand is not ‘natural’ to humans, probably because there are no really, truly blue foods in nature – only a few at the purplish (reddish) or blackish end of the spectrum such as blueberries and blackberries. Truly blue food is therefore quite repellent to humans – a fact exploited by the famous film-maker and practical joker Alfred Hitchcock when he held his legendary ‘Blue Dinner’ for some selected industry guests. And it is the reason why recipes for red cabbage almost always include a little vinegar or other acid, as this ensures the desirable red does not become disgusting blue in the cooking process.

As promised yesterday, my recipe inspiration this week is coming from Adam's Luxury and Eve's Cookery, or, the Kitchen-Garden display’d, published in 1744. Amongst its cabbage offering, this book has three methods for stuffing the vegetable – I don’t know of any modern or celebrity cook books that include that number for stuffed cabbage - but I digress. The red cabbage recipe is my focus today, and a fine one-pot dish this book recommends too, and ideal for a winter night or your slow-cooker. The ‘gravy’ referred to probably means meat broth, not the thickened ‘sauce’ that the word usually refers to today. The touch I like is that not just any vinegar is added at the end to preserve the colour and give the dish an edge, but elder-flower vinegar is specified.

To Stew Red Cabbage.
Cut your cabbage very fine, and stew it with Gravy, Sausages, and Ham, and season it with Pepper and Salt. Before you serve it, put in a little Elder-Vinegar, and mix it well together.

Quotation for the Day.

Botany, n. The science of vegetables - those that are not good to eat, as well as those that are. It deals largely with their flowers, which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and ill-smelling.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) 'The Devil's Dictionary' (1911)

Beetroot à la 1744.

In the year of 1744, France declared war on one old enemy (England), and made peace with another (Prussia), James Bradley, the English Astronomer Royal, discovered that earth periodically wobbles on its axis, Abigail Adams (wife of President John Adams) was born, and William Byrd of Westover (Virginia) died.

But what really important things were happening? What was going on in the kitchens around the country? Some pretty good things with vegetables, it seems.

There is a common assumption that in the past vegetables played an insignificant role on the dinner table. The assumption has been fuelled, I think, by the study of menus and meal descriptions of the time. Menus (or Bills of Fare, if you like) were kept or recorded only for important events, so no inference can be drawn from them as to the daily meals of most ordinary folk. Meat was the star at important meals and in wealthy households, because protein food was more valuable and more expensive (and not easy to preserve), so is presence was emphasised – leaving us to assume that vegetables were the poor relations.

Vegetables were grown and used extensively of course in the eighteenth century. There was a great flourishing of the herb and vegetable garden at this time, and great interest in horticulture and the development of new and useful food plants. One of my favourite food books was published in 1744, the chosen year for this post. It is Adam's Luxury and Eve's Cookery, or, the Kitchen-Garden display’d , and I like it in part because of its title, and in part because of the range and variety of recipes included at the end of the book.

I have given a couple of recipes from this book in previous posts: To butter Onions, and an interesting sweet Bean Tart made with green beans. There are more delights within it, and this week I want to feature the book, and see if it gives us inspiration several centuries later.

One of my favourite themes is the re-discovery of old recipes that would seem interesting and innovative on a modern restaurant menu. The recipe I have chosen today fits this bill, I think. I am not sure whether or not beetroot is still trendy, but if it is, it is no doubt the small roasted beet, served with goats cheese or similar. I have never seen anything on a modern menu like today’s recipe for what is essentially fritters of beetroot – especially fritters in the shape of fish.

To Fry the Roots of Red Beets.
Wash your Beet-roots, and lay them in an Earthen glaz’d Pan, bake them in an Oven, and then peel the Skin off them: After this is done, slit them from the Top to the Tail, and cut them in the Shape of a Fish call’d Soal, about the Thickness of the third Part of an Inch. Dip these in a thick Batter, made of White Wine, [fine] Flower, sweet Cream, Eggs, Pepper, Salt, and [?] beaten, and all well mix’d. As you dip each Beet-root in this Batter, strew them over thick with fine Flower mix’d with grated Bread and Parsley shred small, and then fry them in lard. When they are enough, let them dry, and serve them with a Garnish of Lemon. These likewise may be put about Carps, Tench, and roasted Jacks, by way of Garnish.

Quotation for the Day.

A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables.
Gertrude Stein.

To Dress Frogs.

I seem to have become distracted somewhat from my original intention to focus on liqueurs this week. I am going to give you a brief glimpse of frogs-as-food instead. I guess no-one makes a liqueur out of frogs, do they?

Amongst the English, the idea of eating frogs is so indelibly associated with the French, that the affectionate (not) nickname for persons of that nationality is, as you probably know, ‘frog.’ It may be somewhat surprising then, to find out that severable venerable English cookery books of the nineteenth century do include recipes for cooking frogs (albeit with a rather apologetic tone and a reference to the frog-eating habit in France. Here is what the author of The Domestic Dictionary and Housekeeper’s Manual, (G Merle; London, 1842) has to say on the topic.

"The use of frogs as an article of food is almost peculiar to France, although from the delicacy of the dish it is worth figuring on every table. As only the hind quarters, however, are used, this dish is an expensive one. The flavour resembles very much that of a very fine chicken, but is superior: and the flesh is more light of digestion than that of chicken. There are two ways of cooking frogs; the one is en fricassee, the other is by frying them in batter."

Frogs en Fricassee.

Cut off the hind legs, with so much of the loin as will hold them together. Having put them in boiling water, and subsequently allowed them to lie in cold water for ten minutes, put them into a stewpan with some champignons, a little parsley, chibols*, and some butter. After having given them two or three turns with the butter, add a little flour, a glass of French white wine a little stock, and some salt and whole pepper. Let them stew gently for a quarter of an hour, and then thicken with some yolks of eggs, butter, and a little parsley.
*usually taken to mean a type of young green onion (spring onion).

Quotation for the Day.

France has found a unique way of controlling its unwanted critter population. They have done this by giving unwanted animals like snails, pigeons, and frogs fancy names, thus transforming common backyard pests into expensive delicacies. These are then served to gullible tourists, who will eat anything they can't pronounce.
Chris Harris (2001)

Rook Pie Anyone?

A few years ago, a list of Britain’s ten best dishes was created and made much of. I have previously given this list, and intended to eventually find historical recipes for all the dishes for you. I don’t know how many I have found so far, but I am sure rook pie has not been one of them.
The rook is often confused with the crow, which is a carrion-eater. Humans tend to avoid eating carrion-eaters, I presume out of fear of inadvertently indirectly consuming an ancestor. Rooks, however, I am reliably informed, have a more acceptable diet to those who may choose to make a meal of the birds themselves.

I don’t know how popular rook pies have been in the past – most likely, I would guess, during times of necessity. They certainly seemed to engage some public interest during the meat-rationing times of World War II. There was a veritable flurry of correspondence on the topic in The Times during 1940.
Miss H. Brown, of 27. Peppard Road, Caversham, Reading, submitted the following recipe.

Rook Pie.
Use only the breast and legs of the bird, as the other parts are very bitter and unsuitable for eating. Fill the piedish with layers of breast and legs with hard-boiled eggs and a little fat bacon. Well season with pepper and salt. Cover with a good crust of pastry, and cook well in a moderate oven.

Over the ensuing months, other correspondents weighed in with hints about the making of rook pie. Some of the ideas were: the birds should be skinned, not plucked; best to steam the flesh before baking in the pie; pie is best eaten cold; best washed down with some good Bordeaux wine; pies are spoiled by having too little pepper and salt in them; the gravy should be liquid and the crust thick and flaky.


Quotation for the Day.

Hunting is now to most of us a game, whose relish seems based upon some mystic remembrance, in the blood, of ancient days when to hunter as well as hunted it was a matter of life and death.
Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage (1935)

The Best of All Possible Worlds.

Some historians say that the best time of all – by which I assume they meant the most fun time - to be alive was between the two world wars, assuming one was sufficiently flush to be unaffected by the Great Depression and Prohibition of course.

The best of all possible worlds then, would surely have been aboard ship on a voyage to somewhere (who cares where?) in that hopeful time at the beginning of the 1920’s. The Great War had just ended, the Roaring Twenties was just beginning, and the nasty reality of the Great Depression was yet to spoil the dream.

If you were lucky enough to still be able to afford ocean travel and were aboard the SS Sonoma of the Oceanic Steamship Company, on February 24th 1929, here is what you would have had for dinner in second class.

Second Cabin Dinner.

Chow Chow Pickles

SOUP

Puree of Split Pea & Sippets

FISH

Baked Flounder Fine Herb Sauce

ENTREE

Haricot of Mutton

BOILED

Ribs of Beef Spanish

ROAST

Leg of Mutton & Jelly

VEGETABLES

Mashed Potatoes Boiled Onions Boiled Potatoes

SALAD

DESSERT

Sago Custard Vanilla Sauce

Water Ice Pie

Fruit in Season

Coffee      Cheese      Crackers     Tea

For today’s recipe, I give you a very dainty dish indeed, from a very aristocratic cookery book author, Lady Harriet Elizabeth St.Clair.

Sago Custard Puddings.
Take a spoonful and a half of sago, and put it into a saucepan with as much water as will cover it, a drop of cinnamon, three blades of mace, and some lemon-peel, and set it on to boil. When you find it clear and thoroughly done, add to it half a pint of new milk, and keep stirring it over the fire. When it becomes thick take it off, remove the seasoning, beat the yolks of four and the white of one egg well up with half a pint of cream; sweeten to taste; then take the milk and sago boiling hot, and mix well with the cream and eggs. Put it into small moulds, and bake or steam for ten minutes. Tapioca may be done in the same way.
Dainty Dishes (1866)

Quotation for the Day.

Who discovered we could get milk from cows, and what did he think he was doing at the time?
Billy Connolly.