Miserly Onions.

Today, July 3^rd
The fabulously wealthy Hetty Green - “The Witch of Wall Street” - died on this day in 1916 at the age of 80 years, leaving a legacy of over a hundred million dollars to her children. Hetty was born to money, married money, and very cleverly made money throughout her life (this was at a time when women were not supposed to bother their little minds about such a thing, never mind be good at it.) One thing she did not do well was spend money. Her penny-pinching was an expression of the Christian virtue of frugality (she came from Quaker stock), plain stinginess, or simple eccentricity, depending on the point of view of the teller.

Naturally, some of the tales of her meanness related to food, so these are the stories we will focus on today. They are all of the “it is said” variety. Rumour had it, for example, that Hetty would walk any distance to save a few cents on milk or other basics, that she would return berry boxes for the one cent deposit, and that she would ‘cook’ her oatmeal on the office radiator to save fuel. It is also said that on her 78^th birthday she attributed her health and longevity to eating baked onions.

Hetty could have done worse than develop a taste for onions. They are usually cheap and easily available for one thing. For another, there are many medicinal effects attributed to onions. One late 17^th C household manual says of them that they are ‘proper to such as are afflicted with cold vicious Humours, because they procure Sleep, and help Concoction, prevent sower [sour] Belchings, open Obstructions, force Courses, and the Urin, promote insensible Transpiration …. ’, which would make them extraordinarily useful if it is true.

Humans have been eating onions of one sort or another since ancient times, and it is almost impossible to imagine cooking without them. It is a rare savoury dish that does not include onions. I remember reading years ago an article by a cook or chef (I don’t remember any name) who said that as soon as he arrived home from work he would chop up an onion or two, and perhaps some garlic, and put these on to gently sauté while he decided what to have for dinner. There is something in that concept.

What is surprising about onions, given their long history in the human diet, is that this is their role – as an essential ingredient of a huge number of dishes, not a featured performer. I do not think that we give enough consideration to onions in their own right (I don’t include onion jam or caramelised onions here). There are relatively few historic recipes starring onions, but I have chosen a few for your enjoyment.

To butter Onions.
Beeing peeled, put them into boiling liquor, and when they are boil’d, drain them in a cullender, and butter them whole with some boiled currans [currants], sugar, and beaten cinnamon, serve them on fine sippets [toasts], scrape on sugar, and run them over with beaten butter.
[The Accomplisht Cook; Robert May; 1660]

To make an Onion Pye.
Wash, and pare some Potatoes, and cut them in Slices, peel some Onions, cut them in Slices, pare some Apples and slice them, make a good Crust, cover your Dish, lay a Quarter of a Pound of Butter all over, take a Quarter of an Ounce of Mace beat fine, a Nutmeg grated, a Tea Spoonful of beaten Pepper, three Tea spoonfuls of Salt, mix all together, strew some over the Butter, lay a Layer of Potatoes, a Layer of Onion, a Layer of Apple, and a Layer of Eggs, and so on, till you have filled your Pye, strewing a little of the Seasoning between each Layer, and a Quarter of a Pound of Butter in Bits, and six Spoonfuls of Water. Close your Pye, and bake it an Hour and a Half: A Pound of Potatoes, a Pound of Onion, and a Pound of Apples, and twelve Eggs will do.
[Art of Cookery made plain and easy; Hannah Glasse, 1747]

Baked Onions
Put six large onions into a saucepan of water, or water and milk in equal proportions, add salt and pepper and boil until tender. When done so they can be easily mashed work them up with butter to the consistency of paste, cover with breadcrumbs, and bake in a moderate oven. If preferred they may be boiled whole, put in a baking dish covered with butter and breadcrumbs, then baked.
[Good Things To Eat, As Suggested By Rufus … ; Rufus Estes... 1911]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Humble Gleaners.

Quotation for the Day …

Happy is said to be the family which can eat onions together. They are, for the time being, separate, from the world, and have a harmony of aspiration. Charles Dudley Warner, My Summer in a Garden, 1871

Eggs, 18th C Style.

Today, April 11th ...

Still on our egg theme, and with minimal commentary due to TOF being TNM (The Nurse-Maid) to TOC (The Old Curmudgeon) who has a broken right shoulder due to his efforts to get fit by riding his bicycle at great speed, weather not permitting (i.e drizzly rain).

So - here we are already in the eighteenth century, with a selection of egg recipes quite unlike those in modern textbooks.

First, from a French cookbook:

Eggs after the German Mode.
Break some Eggs into a dish, as it were au Miroir, and put a little Peas-soop therein: mix two or three Yolks with a little Milk, and strain them through a Sieve: Then take away the Broth in which the Eggs were dress’d, put the Yolks upon them with some scraped Cheese, and give them a good Colour.
[The court and country cook ; Massialot; 1702]

Eggs after the Burgundian Way.
Take a piece of red Beet, that has not an earthy or unsavoury tast, and pound it well with a slice of Lemmon, a few Macaroons, Sugar, and beaten Cinnamon: Then taking four or five Eggs, without the Sperm, mix all together very well, and strain them thro’ the Hair-sieve, with a little Milk and Salt. Afterwards they may be dress’d in the same manner as Eggs with Milk, and brought to a fine colour.
[The court and country cook ; Massialot; 1702]

And now from an English book, a recipe with an interesting name:

A Pallateen* of Eggs.
Beat twelve Eggs, and take out the Crumb of a Penny Loaf, add to it a Jill of Rhenish Wine, and mix it well with the Eggs; boil six Artichokes, take the Bottoms and cut small, and mix with the Eggs; season them with Mace, Nutmeg, and Salt, and mix them all well together: Grease a round Bason that will just hold them, and pour them into it, lay three thin Slices of Butter over all, and set it an Hour in a slow Oven; then take half a Hundred fresh Oysters and wash them clean in Water, lay them on a clean Board, and season them with Black-pepper and Salt, and drudge some Flour over them; then take a Quarter of a Pound of Butter in a clean Frying-Pan over a clear Stove or brisk Fire, let the butter be brown when you put in the Oysters, and turn them; then add to them half a Jill of Water, a Spoonful of Catchup, and thicken it with Flour and Butter; then turn the Eggs out of the Bason on the middle of the Dish, pour over it the Ragoo: Garnish with Barberry-berries and Parsely, and send it up.
[Professed Cookery …; Ann Cook; 1760’s]

*Pallateen references the Palatine Hill in Rome, therefore suggests things Imperial and Grand. Makes a change from “Royal” I guess.

And finally, from Hannah Glasse’s well known cookbook, a recipe that seems anything but “Plain and Easy”

A Ragoo of Eggs.
Boil twelve Eggs hard, take off the Shells, and with a little Knife very carefully cut the White a cross long-ways, so that the White may be in two halves, and the Yolk whole. Be very careful neither to break the Whites, nor Yolks, take a quarter of a Pint of Pickle Mushrooms chopped very fine, half an Ounce of Truffles and Morells, boiled in three or four Spoonfuls of Water, save the Water and chop the Truffles and Morells very small, boil a little Parsley, chop it fine, mix them together with the Truffle Water you saved, grate a little Nutmeg in, a little beaten Mace, pu it into a Sauce-pan with three Spoonfuls of Water, a Gill of Red Wine, one Spoonful of Ketchup, a Piece of Butter, as big as a large Wallnut, rolled in Flour, stir all together and let it boil. In the meantime get ready your Eggs, lay the Yolks and Whites in Order in your Dish, the hollow Parts of the Whites uppermost, that they may be filled, take some Crumbs of Bread, and fry them brown and crisp, as you do for Larks, with which fill up the Whites of the Eggs as high as they will lye, then pour in your Sauce all over, and garnish with fry’d Crumbs of Bread. This is a very genteel pretty Dish, if it be well done.
[Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy ..; Hannah Glasse; 1747]

18th C Egg recipes from previous stories:

To broil Eggs.(1747)

Last year, on This Day ..

We had a story about sauerkraut

Minding the belly.

Today, December 13th …

Samuel Johnson – “the second most quoted man in the world” - died on this day in 1783. His admirers around the world have formed societies to celebrate his life and work, the first one (The Johnson Society) being formed in London in 1884. Every year it held a supper of steak and ale on the anniversary of his death.

Some of his most deliciously quotable sayings are on the topic of food:

“Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously and very carefully, for I look upon it that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else”

“A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of any thing than he does of his dinner; and if he cannot get that well dressed, he should be suspected of inaccuracy in other things."

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

Sam’s magnum opus was, of course, his dictionary, and his definitions are far wittier than most:

Oats: A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

Kickshaw: A dish so changed by the cookery that it can scarcely be known.

The word “kickshaw” comes from the French “quelque chose”, and came to mean any dish so frivolous it could not possibly have an English origin.

The authorship of Hannah Glasse’s famous “Art of Cookery made plain and easy …”, published in 1747, was the subject of much debate at the time, with Samuel himself weighing in on the side that said it was written by a man, for “women can spin very well, but they cannot make a good book of cookery.” He thought that he himself could write a very good cookbook, because he would write it upon “philosophical principles”.

In spite of her vigorous condemnation of the fad for French cooks, Hannah did include a recipe for a “kickshaw” in her book:

Kickshaws
Make puff paste, roll it thin, and if you have any moulds work it upon them; make them up with preserved pippins: you may fill some with gooseberries, some with raspberries, or what you please: then close them up, and either bake or fry them; throw grated sugar over them, and serve them up.

Tomorrow: A prophet in the kitchen.

Sellery from Italy.

Today, October 31st …

Is the first day of stories by The Old Foodie, who hopes you enjoy them each Monday to Friday.

Sellery from Italy.

John Evelyn, writer, gardener, and salad enthusiast extraordinaire was born on this day in 1620. Salad Enthusiast Very Extraordinaire actually, raw veges being viewed with great suspicion in the seventeenth century. His fellow diarist Samuel Pepys had attributed the death of at least one neighbour to “eating cowcumbers” in 1663. The anxiety was not unjustified, water quality being what it was at the time, boiled vegetables were much safer.

It was the golden age of the English kitchen garden when Evelyn published “Acetaria: A discourse on sallets” in 1699. He listed 73 main salad ingredients, plus “sundry more” (including tulip bulbs), which he said should be “exquisitely cull’d, and cleans’d” and blended “like the Notes in Music, in which there should be nothing harsh or grating”. The dressing should be made with smooth, light oil from Lucca olives, the best wine vinegar infused with herbs and flowers, the brightest Bay grey-salt, the best (Tewkesbury or Yorkshire) mustard, sugar and pepper, “the yolks of fresh and new-laid eggs, boil’d moderately hard”, and various other “Strewings and Aromatizers”.

Ingredient number 59 in Evelyn’s list was “Sellery”, newly introduced from Italy, with the “high and grateful Taste” of its tender leaves and “whiten’d stems” making it, he said, eminently suitable for the grandest salads at the greatest feasts.

Within a few decades, celery was commonplace in cooked dishes as well as salads. One of its most popular uses was as an accompaniment to turkey, as in this recipe, from Hannah Glasse’s “The Art of Cookery made plain and easy …” (1747).

To make Sellery-Sauce either for roasted or boiled Fowls, Turkies, Partridges, or any other Game.

Take a large Bunch of Sellery, wash and pare it very clean, cut it into little Bits, and boil it softly in a little Water till it is tender; then add a little beaten Mace, some Nutmeg, Pepper and Salt, thicken’d with a good Piece of Butter roll’d in Flour, then boil it up, and pour into your dish.

What I want to know is this: what happened to celery? We don’t put the leaves in salads, and we don’t serve it as a side dish anymore. What a waste.

Could celery leaves be the new parsley?
Could braised celery be the new roasted beetroot?

Tomorrow… Eating the flower of death.