All about cucumbers.

Today, July 31st

Nathaniel Hawthorne, the American author, enjoyed the produce of his own garden on this day in 1843.

Monday July 31st. We had our first cucumber yesterday.

The cucumber is not the world’s most exciting food, is it? Cool and crisp and used for its texture rather than its flavour. Nothing to dislike, but nothing to travel across town for. Inoffensive perhaps is the best word.

One thing I have never quite been able to understand is the concept of cucumber sandwiches. The British writer Sir Compton MacKenzie probably summed it up best in his description of an English tea party as somewhere where “You are offered a piece of bread and butter that feels like a damp handkerchief and sometimes, when cucumber is added to it, like a wet one.” I have certainly never been able to understand why this wet handkerchief-like sandwich has come to represent an entire English class of the Edwardian era – a class that could have afforded whatever it wanted as a sandwich filling. Why not truffled grouse sandwiches? Or sandwiches made from ham from peach-fed single-sty piglets? Or plain old cheese and tomato?

I decided to look into the puzzle. I came across a fairly lame explanation that the development of hot-houses made them easier to grow, and they became a symbol of the class that could afford hot-houses. Are cucumbers so difficult to grow in England that Mr and Mrs Peasant couldn’t manage any in their gardens? I thought they were the garden-glut vegetable par excellence. Another theory is that being pale and delicate and light they symbolised the class which could eat for style rather than sustenance. If anyone else has any ideas I would love to know.

Cucumber sandwich recipes (or should that be instructions?) do not seem to exist in cookbooks of the era. The only one I could find was hardly classical, as I understand that ‘classical’ in respect of a cucumber sandwich means bread + butter + cucumber. Sir Compton MacKenzie would find the following sandwich, from the very elegant The Gentle Art of Cookery (1925) to be very ‘wet’ indeed.

Cucumber Salad Sandwich.
Mix sliced cucumber with mayonnaise and spread between bread.

This paucity of instructions for what was (is?) clearly a very important sandwich historically speaking surprised me, particularly as so many authors comment on how badly sandwiches are made. To give a couple of examples:

The ‘lady’ responsible for Murray's modern cookery book. Modern domestic cookery, (1851) says ‘Sandwiches require more care than is usually bestowed on them, for this reason, that every one believes he can cut sandwiches.’

The redoutable Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery (1870s) says ‘Sandwiches, when properly prepared, constitute a convenient, elegant, and palatable dish for suppers or luncheons, but have fallen into bad repute on account of the manner in which they are often made’.

Future food historians and archeologists will be baffled, for although they are mentioned in books, cucumber sandwich remains do not last long in midden heaps.

In the meanwhile, my quest developed into a search for an interesting (dare I say exciting?) culinary use for cucumbers, as it seems negligent only giving you a one-line recipe for the day. I have been unable to find anything any more intriguing than the recipe for Cowcumbers, to Pickle in the likeness of Mangoes which featured in another story. I did find the following recipe however, and being a marmalade and jam lover and maker from way back it seemed interesting – if your neighbour has a glut of cucumbers and you have an insufficiency of lemons.

Cucumber and Lemon Jam.
3 lb. green cucumbers; 3 fresh lemons; 2 ½ lb sugar; 1 pint water.
Cleanse and slice cucumber thinly. It may be peeled or not as desired. Sprinkle lightly with salt and allow to remain for several hours, then drain off the water which the salt has drawn.
Meanwhile cut the lemons roughly and boil them in a covered pan for forty-five minutes. Strain the liquid into a preserving pan, add the cucumber (washed and drained) and cook for fifteen minutes, then add the sugar, and finish the cooking rapidly in an open pan. Usual time fifteen to twenty minutes after adding the sugar. If desired the cucumber may be cut in strips or blocks. Apple cucumber may be used instead of the green ones, but they should be used while the skin is white, and not after it becomes yellow.
[Australian Cookery of Today; Sun News-Pictorial; Prudence; 1930s]

On this Topic …

For exciting information on the EU regulations on cucumbers, go to this previous post.

Tomorrow’s Story …

A Fashionable Brunch.

Quotation for the Day ...

A cucumber should be well sliced and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing. Samuel Johnson.

Arabian Delights.

Today, April 27th …

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam is a collection of about a thousand poems written about a thousand years ago by a Persian astronomer. Most of us don’t read medieval Arabic, so have to appreciate it via translations, and the best known English translation is that by the wealthy, learned, and eccentric English writer Edward FitzGerald. He was referring to this work in the letter he wrote on this day in 1859 to his friend Edward Byles Cowell: “I hardly know why I print any of these things which nobody buys, and I scarce now see the few I gave them to”.

Many of the phrases from his translation of the Rubáiyát have entered our everyday language, and one of the best known is this quatrain (from the 5th edition)

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

FitzGerald’s work has been criticised as being more of a free interpretation than a straight translation, although he himself referred to it as a ‘transmogrification’. He was said to be indifferent about food himself, but nevertheless he has managed one of the most poetic and beautiful evocations of a simple meal in a simple setting in the history of literature.

Transmogrification is something that cooks do very well, and those delightful ladies Mrs Leyel and Miss Hartley in their very delightful book The Gentle Art of Cookery (1925) seem to have provided us with a good example in their chapter on Dishes from the Arabian Nights. They do not source the recipes from that other famous Eastern tale, but tell us that:

‘The people of the Arabian Nights are gourmets; the stories are full of expatiations of the luscious things they had to eat. Food is treated as a fit subject for poetic ecstasy…. The following recipes are for some of the real “Arabian Nights” dishes, as delectable today as hundreds of years ago.’

They proceed to give a number of recipes which may or may not be a long way from authentic, but nevertheless sound delicious. Firstly, a dish that would be excellent for a picnic, if you felt you needed a little more than just wine and bread:

Cold Chicken Stuffed with Pistachio Nuts
Make a stuffing of two ounces of minced cold veal freed from fat and gristle and skin, the same quantity of suet or butter, half an ounce of minced apple, half an ounce of powdered almonds, a little coriander seed, two ounces of pistachio nuts chopped finely, a little sugar and a pinch of salt, a little lemon peel, and half a drachm of mace or allspice.
Pound all these together, adding the pistachio nuts last, and mix it with the beaten yolk and white of one egg.
Stuff the chicken with this and boil it whole with vegetables in the French way.
Serve it cold with a thick poulette sauce, to which some of the liquor in which the fowl was boiled has been added, poured over it.
Decorate it with chopped pistachio nuts, and serve it with a dish of cold well-seasoned rice.

And I cannot resist also giving you this recipe, in spite of its unpronounceable name, which is quite different from the standard hard-boiled picnic eggs.

Oeufs à la Constantinopolitaine.
Mix in equal proportions olive oil and Turkish coffee. Put into this mixture as many eggs as are required, in their shells, and cook them very slowly for twelve hours at least. After a long time the mixture penetrates the shells, makes the whites of the eggs amber colour, and the yolks the colour of saffron, and gives to them a flavour of chestnuts. Serve.

Monday’s Story …

Murder in the Kitchen.

This Day, Last Year.

Anne Frank, in the ‘Secret Annexe’ in Amsterdam where she and her family hid during WW II, discussed coffee substitutes.

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