Wick-a-what?

I have a mystery for you today. What, pray, is ‘wick-a-wack’? ‘German’ wick-a-wack, to be specific. I have a recipe for it, and my inference is that it is an interpretation of a German recipe – perhaps one for sausage meat or some other pork smallgoods.

I found the recipe in Home pork making; a complete guide ... in all that pertains to hog slaughtering, curing, preserving, and storing pork product--from scalding vat to kitchen table and dining room (Chicago, 1900), by Albert Fulton, and I have been unable to find any other reference to it at all.

German Wick-a-Wack.
Save rinds of salt pork, boil until tender, then chop very fine, add an equal amount of dried bread dipped in hot water and chopped. Season with salt, pepper, and summer savory; mix, spread one inch deep in baking dish, cover with sweet milk. Bake one-half hour. Very nice.

It is some sort of savoury bread pudding, and does indeed sound interesting, but whence the name? I await your enthusiastic comments, wild guesses, and the fruits of you deep knowledge. In the meantime, it is an excuse to give you a favourite, but rather long, prose extract in lieu of a quotation for the day.

Quotation for the Day.
Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibiles, I will maintain roast pig to be the most delicate. There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted crackling, as it is well called – the very teeth are invited to their share of pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance – with the adhesive oleaginous – oh, call it not fat! But an indefinable sweetness growing up to it – the tender blossoming of fat – fat cropped in the bud – taken in the shoot – in the first innocence – the cream and quintessence of the child-pig’s yet pure food – the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal manna – or rather fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other that one together makes one ambrosian result or common substance.
Charles Lamb.

Bread, or Beer?

The people of Britain were faced with a particular dilemma early in 1917. The First World War was dragging wearily on, and there was a serious shortage of grain. In January, the Food Controller had warned that it was ‘really a question of bread v. beer.” A choice between bread and beer - the two great products of fermented grain, and the two great staples of Europe for millennia – an ominous situation, and a very difficult choice, Yes?

A letter to The Times from Mr. Duncan Miller, M.P, was printed in the edition of April 28. Mr. Miller made his choice quite clear, and also reminds those of us who read his words today of a more sinister use for alcohol.

“The public cannot be expected to take seriously the appeals made to them for economy in bread and sugar while the Government is allowing the consumption of 367,220 tons of barley and 44,700 tons of sugar in the manufacture of beer during the present year, and also of 425,000 qr.of grain in the manufacture of spirits, not a gallon of which can be consumed under the Immature Spirits (Restriction) Act, 1915, for three years. In view of the serious shortage of cereals, and of the growing submarine menace, the first duty of the Ministry of Food surely ought to be to lay aside the 1,000,000 qr. of malt at present in the hands of the brewers, and the further large quantity of malted barley in the hands of the distillers, for the production of bread and other food for the people. If the Food Controller’s statement in January was true, i.e., that it was ‘really a question of bread v. beer,’ it is much truer today, and the use of malted barley in various forms would provide a valuable additional food supply. Alternatively, the Food Controller might at least ration all consumers of grain and sugar on the same footing, whether consumed in the form of bread an sugar or of beverages in the manufacture of which sugar and grain are employed.

The nation is now beginning to realize that, if compulsory rations are to be introduced, this will be due in no small degree to the unlimited consumption of malt liquors and other spirituous beverages permitted in the past, and the large quantity of cereals still allowed to be used for their manufacture.

Another valuable saving might readily be effected by the use of such quantity of the 156 ½ million gallons of bonded spirits as may be suitable for the manufacture of explosives. This would at once release for the food of the people a further considerable supple of grain and other materials presently employed in manufacturing alcohol for explosives.”

If you have both bread and beer, then you are indeed blessed. You can even combine them, if you wish, as in the following recipes, taken from the book Soups, by S.Beaty-Pownall, (London, 1904)

Beer Soup (German)
Bring two quarts of bottled beer to the boil, remove a little of the froth, sweeten to taste with brown sugar, add the rind of a lemon cut in fine strips free from pith, and a little stick cinnamon. Have ready some crisp, nicely toasted bread cut into strips or fingers (or use zwieback); place these in the tureen, pour the scalding soup upon it and serve.

Beer Soup (Russian)
Bring two quarts of barley beer to the boil, with 6 oz. or 7 oz. of loaf sugar; beat up the yolks of six or eight eggs with a gill of sour cream, strain these into a large hot basin, work to them gradually the boiling beer, and serve very hot.

Quotation for the Day
Do not cease to drink beer, to eat, to intoxicate thyself, to make love, and to celebrate the good days.
Egyptian Proverb.

Wickelkuchen

Adding regularly to the Vintage Christmas Recipes archive but avoiding too much duplication is becoming a challenge after several years – but I refuse to give up. Here is something a little different – a Christmas cake that is not a Fruit Cake. And from a celebrity to boot. It is from a Massachusetts newspaper of 1926, in an article entitled “Christmas Recipes from famous actresses”.  It serves my secondary purpose of trying to find some dishes from outside the English and American corpus – which is a tricky challenge, given my limited language skills!

Ilsa Marvenga’s Wickelkuchen.

This popular German Christmas cake is made of 4 cupfuls of flour, 1 cupful of butter, 1 ½ small cupful of warm milk, 1 ½ tablespoonful of rose-water, and ½ yeast cake which is dissolved in the warm milk.

Rub the butter and flour together and stir In the milk, yeast, and rose-water, making a soft dough even if you have to use more milk. Roll this out on a board to one-half inch thickness and put on it ½ cupful of butter in small pieces. Strew over this ¼ pound of finely cut citron and ¾ cupful of sugar mixed with a teaspoonful of cinnamon. Roll up and make a slash down the middle lengthwise about one inch deep Brush over with the yolk of 1 egg and let rise in a warm place until very light.

Bake one-half hour in a moderate oven. It takes from one to three hours to rise.

[Fitchburg Sentinel, Massachusetts, Dec 22, 1926]

This is ‘cake’ in its original sense (before leavening powders) of a sweet bread . I love the idea of rosewater in fruit bread, don’t you? It sounds like a great breakfast bread.

With the help of those invaluable research and translation aids from Google, I find that Wickelkuchen translates as Wrap Cake – which makes sense, when you read the recipe. I would love some feedback on this cake from German readers or those with a German heritage. Is it specifically a Christmas bread?

As for Ilsa Marvenga, the same research tools let me down somewhat, but it appears that she was a performer in the Ziegfeld Follies in the 1920’s, as well as other shows around the country.

Quotation for the Day …

Christmas is for children. But it is for grownups too. Even if it is a headache, a chore, and nightmare, it is a period of necessary defrosting of chill and hide-bound hearts.

Lenora Mattingly Weber.

A New Rival to Tea.

In August 1854 the New York Daily Times followed up on an article a few weeks earlier on a ‘new rival to tea.’ A Dr. Stenhouse was the expert opinion called in to examine the specimen – dried leaves from the coffee bush, imported from Sumatra.

Dr. Stenhouse noted that “ the leaves had been strongly roasted in rather a rough manner, .. closely resemble Paraguay tea. … The coffee leaves, when digested with boiling water, yielded a deep brown infusion, which, in taste and odour, closely resembled a mixture of coffee and tea. On the addition of milk and sugar, it formed a very tolerable beverage; and, as the coffee-leaf can be imported into Europe for rather less than twopence a pound, the poorer classes are likely to find it a very useful substitute for tea and coffee.”

Coffee-Leaf Tea had a brief moment in the spotlight in the 1850’s. Samples were demonstrated at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, and other other journals discussed its history and possibilities:

“Coffee leaf tea is sipped in Sumatra, while the Ethiopians of Central Africa quaff the Absyssinian chaat. Thus we see that warm drinks are popular with Christian and Savage, and if we accept the wisdom of intuition and instinct, we must consider them, as a general rule, healthful.”

And “The natives universally prefer the leaf to the berry, giving, as a reason, that it contains more bitter than the berry, and is more nutritious.”

Surprising, that a tea made from the coffee bush that tasted like a mix of tea and coffee did not become an instant success or an enduring favourite, no?

German Coffee Cakes.
To make good coffee cakes in the German style, take two pounds of flour, a pint and a half of milk, three eggs, a quarter of a pound of butter. Set a sponge with one pint of the milk warmed, flour to make a stiff batter, and one cake of compressed yeast. When it has risen sufficiently, add the other ingredients, the butter being worked into the flour; then knead well. The cake should be rolled, or better, pressed out with the fingers very thin for baking. When in the pan, brush over with melted butter, and on top place chopped almonds, cinnamon, and sugar. Bake in a moderate oven. The cake may be sweetened to taste. The greater part of the sweetness should be on the top.
Apple cake and Kranzkuchen are made in the same way.For the apple cake, apples are cut according to size into halves or eights, and laid over the dough, pulled out very thin, and brished over with melted butter. There should be sugar and cinnamon on the apples, and also a few currants. When the apple cake is taken from the oven it is sprinkled with water with a brush to make it moist. This sprinkling must not be omitted or the quality of the cake will suffer. It is done “according to judgement.”
The ring, Kranzkuchen, and pretzel also, if made in a double ring, like the pretzel so familiar as an accompaniment to beer, are all made of coffee-cake dough. The dough is, as before, brushed over with melted butter, and upon the thin cake, sugar, cinnamon, chopped almonds, currants, and raisins are laid. The whole is rolled as a jelly cake, and then formed into a ring, Kranz, or double ring, pretzel, as desired, and is also baked in a moderate oven. When this is done, a thin frosting of the white of an egg and sugar is spread on it, and the result is a very delicious cake, which is eaten with an excellent cup of coffee.
New York Times, July 1897

Coffee Recipes.

To remind you: there is an archive of recipes using coffee as an ingredient on the now-defunct Companion Site. It is waiting HERE for me to import it all to this one, but it will have to wait a while.

Quotation for the Day …

It is true, says Liebeg, that thousands have lived without a knowledge of tea and coffee; and daily experience teaches us that, under certain circumstances, they may be dispensed with without disadvantage to the merely animal functions, but it is an error, certainly, to conclude from this that they may be altogether dispensed with in reference to their effects; and It is a question whether, if we had no tea and no coffee, the popular instinct would not seek for and discover the means of replacing them.... Isabella Beeton, 1861.

Pi(e) No. 2

March 11 ...

One would not normally consider an ornithology book to be the source of an interesting recipe, but Bird Life of Heligoland, published in 1895 by ‘Herr Gäthes’ had an interesting recipe for Gull Pie, ‘Heligolandish fashion’. I don’t believe I have ever given you a recipe for gull before, and I have certainly never given you one from Heligoland. To be perfectly honest, I had to look it up. Heligoland (or Helgoland) is an island in the North Sea belonging to Germany.

This is the extract of the book, as given by The Scotsman newspaper.

“During November and December they [Kittiwake Gulls] are remarkably fat, and are then considered a delicacy: and although ‘a certain Greenland flavour’ clings to them, nevertheless, when I shot them myself, I used to relish them considerably when prepared in Heligolandish fashion. By this method, some coarse pearl barley is boiled, with water and some salt, over a moderate fire until it is half cookd, and then spread over the bottom of a stone-ware of brass saucepan; next to this comes a layer of gull, which is covered with a layer of barley, and so on, until the quantity of the layers corresponds with the number of individuals in the family. The whole is topped by a layer of dough sprinkled with raisins. This primitive pie is allowed to cook for three hours in a baking oven, and is served at the mid-day meal. In serving, the basin or saucepan is turned upside down on a dish, its contents, baked to a beautiful brown, and shining with fat, are thus dislodged in more or less perfect shape, and certainly present all the appearances of a very tempting dish.”

The writer of the review felt compelled to add “ To the above recipe we would desire to add – after ‘layers of gull’ after cooking only the breasts and meat without the bones or skins."

We could, of course, debate at some length as to whether or not this recipe represents a true pie - but then you wouldnt need to read the book, would you?

Tomorrow’s Story …

Pi(e) No. 3

Quotation for the Day …

I live on toasted lizards,
Prickly pears, and parrot gizzards,
And I’m really very fond of beetle-pie.

Charles Edward Carryl (1841–1920), U.S. poet

Succulent Esculents.

February 26 ...

Yesterday’s wonderful source – the Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum (1715) was so happy to be discovered that it has donated several stories. I wasn’t sure why one seemingly ordinary definition – “Esculents: Plants for Food; as Chokes, Carrets, Turneps etc.” - caught my eye initially, but it had something to do with the idea of esculents sounding succulent, and that phrase sounding catchy. I had no doubt that the words had a similar origin, but it turns out that I was wrong. Both are from the Latin: succulent (from succulentus) meaning “full of juice”, but esculent comes from esca (food), and means “suitable for food”.

I have sadly neglected the carrot up to now. It has been a much esteemed vegetable for many centuries, and at its best should certainly be a succulent form of esculent. It originated in what is now Afghanistan, was prized by the Ancient Romans, and was well known in Europe and England by the Middle Ages. By 1533 the English diplomat Thomas Elyot noted in his book The Castel of Helthe, that “Parsnepes and carettes ... do nourishe with better iuyce [juice] than the other rootes”. According to the Doctrine of Humours (the prevailing medical doctrine of the day) this meant that as a “moist” vegetable they would be very suitable for those of dry “complexion” or temperament, or those suffering from diseases characterised by dry humours. Aside from its caloric and medicinal value, the carrot was also prized for its inherent sweetness, as sugar was still far too expensive for profligate use in medieval times. The sweetness came in handy again four hundred years later during both World Wars when sugar was rationed in the U.K, and carrots (which were home grown and therefore in good supply) were made into jam and put into puddings, pies, and cakes.

Early carrot varieties were white, yellow, red, purple, or black. The orange colour that we now know, which was probably the one familiar to Thomas Elyot, came about as a result of intensive horticulture on the part of the Dutch. We have orange carrots today thanks to a deliberate decision to breed a national vegetable in the patriotic colour of the House of Orange during the fifteenth century.

Perhaps we can best pay homage to the humble carrot by skipping through the centuries, sampling as we go.

Here is how to cook carrots Ancient Roman style, from the Vehling translation of the cookbook of Apicius. Authenticity would demand white or purple carrots, as these were the only ones the Romans knew. These colours are being revived again as “heirloom carrots” if you can find an artisan grower, but in the meantime I am sure you will get the idea with “modern” orange varieties.

Carrotæ et Pastinacæ
The carrots [are] boiled [and] sliced, stewed with cumin and a little oil and are served. At the same time [here is your opportunity] make a cumin sauce [from the carrot juice] for those who have the colic.

If sixteenth century German carrots are more your fancy, and you like some meat with your vegetables, try this recipe from Ein New Kochbuch (1581), by Marx Rumpolt.

Yellow Roots
[could be carrots, parsnips or turnips]
Take yellow roots that are large/ hollow them out/ and take cooked veal that is fine roasted/ chop it with beef fat/ and with bacon/ put many eggyolks thereunder/ and little black raisins/ yellow it/ and fill the yellow roots therewith/ block the opening so that the filling does not climb out/ cook it with a beefbroth/ or brown it in hot butter and when you have browned them / so cook them in beef broth. Make it yellow though/ that it is not brown/ chop green welltasting herbs thereunder/ with whole pepper and whole nutmeg blossom. You may season the filling with garlic or onions/ so it is good and welltasting.

Finally, a sweet pudding from the eighteenth century, from a book with one of my favourite titles: Adam’s luxury, and Eve’s cookery; or, the kitchen-garden display’d (1744). It is actually a pie (or tart), and clearly demonstrates the shared heritage of Pumpkin Pie.

To Make Carrot Puddings.
Scrape your Carrots clean, and grate them; to half a pound of Carrots put a Pound of grated Bread, a Nutmeg, a little Cinnamon, Salt, half a Pound of Sugar, half a Pint of Sack [sherry], eight Eggs, a Pound of melted Butter, as much Cream as will mix it together; stir it and beat it up well, then sheet a Dish with Puff Paste and send it to the Oven.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Whetting the Appetite.

Quotation for the Day …

I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond. Mae West.

Gourmet Eggs and Giant Eggs.

Today, May 18th …

Peter Carl Fabergé was born on this day in 1846 in St. Petersburg, and he grew up to be the goldsmith to the Russian Imperial Court of Tsar Alexander III. He is famous for the extraordinary handcrafted bejewelled Easter Eggs he created for the Russian royals, who gave them to each other as gifts.

In 1998, Fabergé was honoured by the famous London hotel, Claridges, during its centenary year. The focus was on the recreation of famous and fabulous dishes from historic events for a special “Taste of History” menu. At least one new dish was especially created for the centenary, and it was inspired by Fabergé’s exquisite jewelled eggs. Egg Fabergé consisted of a lobster mousseline stuffed with a quail's egg and garnished with a mosaic of macaroni and truffle, served on a nest of celeriac. An elegant, stylish dish for an elegant stylish hotel.

In medieval times, the feast was an opportunity to impress – a feast was as much about theatre (and propaganda) as about food, and often these were the same thing. At the end of each course, a ‘subtelty’ would be produced and paraded around the feasting hall. It might be a huge pastry sculpture of a castle complete with drawbridge and moat, or a stag in full flight which spouted red wine when it was ‘shot’, or an image of a saint. Whatever its actual form, it was a message designed to induce shock or awe in the guests. When they left the feast they were in no doubt as to the wealth, power, and superiority of their host.

Sometimes of course theatrical food was just fun. Style is all very well, but some celebrations demand size. Giant eggs seem to have been particularly popular, if the surviving references and recipes are any guide. Here is one from a fifteenth century German manuscript.

A dish made from 30 or 40 eggs

In order to make a dish from 30 eggs or 40 in form of one big egg, you must take two pig's bladders, one of them smaller than the other. Rinse them carefully inside. Then take the eggs, remove the shells, and separate the whites from the yolks. Take the small pig's bladder, mix the yolks and put them into the smaller bladder, until the bladder is full. Tie the bladder up carefully and give it into a pot. Let it boil, until the big yolk becomes solid. Then take away the bladder from the big yolk. Take the bigger bladder and cut a hole in it, big enough to put in the big yolk. Sew up this hole in the bigger bladder with the big yolk within. Then you have to mix up the white of the eggs. Take a funnel, put it into the opening hole of the bigger bladder and pour the white of the eggs on top of the yolk within the bigger bladder, so that the bladder is filled. Tie it up, put it into the pot and let it boil once more. The white of the eggs will boil around the big yolk, and there will be one big egg. You can serve it with a sauce of vinegar.

Monday’s Story …

Wonder(ful) Bread?

This Day, Last Year …

We found out a little about the history of coffee.

Quotation for the Day …

He that but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs to lust after it hath already committed breakfast with it in his heart. C.S. Lewis.

Second Breakfast.

Today, March 16th …

The novelist Sybille Bedford was born on this day in 1911. Her surname was a legacy of her brief marriage to an Englishman – she was in fact born in Charlottenberg, (Germany) of an aristocratic German father and an Italian mother.

Sybille’s childhood was spent in Germany, England, and Italy, and she continued her International life in adulthood. She often wrote lyrically about food, and there is a superb illustration of this in her novel A Legacy, which is set amongst a community of wealthy Berlin jews.

They were at second breakfast. Second breakfast was laid every morning at eleven-fifteen on a long table in the middle of the Herrenzimmer, a dark, fully furnished room with heavily draped windows that led from an antechamber to an antechamber. The meal was chiefly for the gentlemen. They ate cold Venison with red-currant jelly, potted meats, tongue and fowl accompanied by pumpernickel toast and rye-bread, and they drank port wine. Grandmama sat with them. She had a newly-laid egg done in cream, and nibbled at some soft rolls with Spickgans, smoked breast of goose spread on butter and chopped fine. Grandpapa had a hot poussin-chicken baked for him every day in a small dish with a lid; and Cousin Markwald who had a stomach ailment ate cream of wheat, stewed sweetbreads and a special kind of rusks.

This magnificent concept of Second Breakfast is a particularly German idea (did they get it from the Hobbits, or vice-versa?). It is a meal coming between first breakfast and lunch which is too substantial to be called ‘morning tea’ (or elevenses or smoko), and yet is too early for lunch. Apparently special dishes are made just for this meal, which makes me wonder why on earth I haven’t visited Germany yet (soon, I hope, soon ..). One of the very traditional things at this meal, is, I am told Weißwurst – a white sausage made early in the day (presumably before first breakfast) to be eaten within a few hours.

I am given to believe that the average German gets through 67 pounds of sausage per year! I wonder how much of this is at Second Breakfast? We have previously looked at old recipes for Zervelat and Bratwurst from the mid-sixteenth century cookbook of Sabina Welserin, but sadly, she does not include one for Weißwurst – I hope a German reader will enlighten us here.

Here are a couple of other recipes from her book which might be very nice even for Third Breakfast, which someone really ought to invent.

A tart with plums, which can be dried or fresh

Let them cook beforehand in wine and strain them and take eggs, cinnamon and sugar. Bake the dough for the tart. That is made like so: take two eggs and beat them. Afterwards stir flour therein until it becomes a thick dough. Pour it on the table and work it well, until it is ready. After that take somewhat more than half the dough and roll it into a flat cake as wide as you would have your tart. Afterwards pour the plums on it and roll out after that the other crust and cut it up, however you would like it, and put it on top over the tart and press it together well and let it bake. So one makes the dough for a tart.

If you would bake good hollow doughnuts

Take good flour of the very best and pour on it one third quart of cream and beat eggs into it, six, seven, eight, according to how much you will make, and knead the dough as carefully as possible and roll it out very thin. Afterwards fry them, then from the inside they will rise like tiny pillows, then they are ready.

The German version of the Cookbook of Sabina Welserin is HERE.

An English transcription can be found HERE.

Monday’s Story …

Maundy Money, Maundy Food.

This Day, Last Year...

France bans absinthe.

Quotation for the Day …

I detest ... anything over-cooked, over-herbed, over-sauced, over elaborate. Nothing can go very far wrong at table as long as there is honest bread, butter, olive oil, a generous spirit, lively appetites and attention to what we are eating. Sybille Bedford.