Blood Pie.

Today, April 16th …

The contents of a commercial meat pie are always a bit mysterious and therefore worrying. If you buy them and eat them, but are of an anxious turn of mind, it may be better not to read further today.

On this day in 2002, a spokesperson for the Australian consumer organisation Choice, which had just completed an investigation of meat pies, made a statement in reference to the legal definition of ‘meat’:

‘The definition of meat is broadly embracing - well beyond the muscle tissue of cattle, which is how we normally think of meat - and includes fat, gristle, trimming, meat scraps. In fact, all parts of many animals, except the foetus is excluded. You could have gravies enriched, quite legally, by blood, and that could be a percentage of the meat as defined as meat.’

This is far too broadly-embracing a definition for me, and a better inducement to making meat pies at home is hard to imagine. It is not the idea of ‘eating’ blood that is the issue here, it is the lack of ‘meat’ in ‘meat’ (pies) that is the issue. For some, there are religious prohibitions about ingesting blood, and for some there are aesthetic objections, but outside of these exceptions, humans have been ingesting, even enjoying, blood for centuries.

Blood from various animals has a long medicinal history, and in ancient Rome the drinking of human blood from gladiators was a supposed cure for epilepsy. This is a food history blog however, and I risk putting you off eating with too many medicinal remedies, so let us concentrate on blood as an integral part of a dish.

Dishes in which blood is incorporated in the sauce are referred to as ‘jugged’, or the dish is called a ‘civet’ (not to be confused with the cat-like animal with the same name), and they feature in both classical British and French cuisine. At the comfort/peasant end of the spectrum of bloody food is of course Black Pudding, traditionally made at the pre-winter pig-killing but now available all year round at your specialist butcher, and just right with your bacon, eggs, and tomato for breakfast.

We started off on the topic of pie, and we end with it with this recipe from the days when cooks and eaters were not so squeamish.

A Blood-pie for a Side-dish.
On those days that young Turkeys, fat Pullets and other sorts of Fowl are kill’d, some of their blood may be preserv’d, to the quantity only ofa large Glass full. It must be put into an Earthen Pan, with some Filets of a Hare and of Veal: Let these Filets be larded with Gammon and thick slips of Bacon, and steept in the Blood; seasoning them a little. To make the Godivoe*, you are to provide some Flesh of Chickens and Partridges, a good piece of a Leg of Veal, some Bacon, Marrow, and a little Sewet; with Parsly, Chibbol**, A Clove of Garlick and Truffles, all well season’d, enrich’d and chopt small: Let the Blood be put into this Farce and temper’d with it. In the mean time, let two sorts of Paste be prepar’d, viz. one ordinary, of a greater quantity, and the other less, consisting of Eggs, Butter, Flower and Salt, all well workt, without any Water. Thus two large pieces are to be roll’d out of the common Paste, and two lesser ones of the finer sort: Let the great piece for the Bottom-crust be put upon Paper, and the lesser on the top of it: Take one half of your Godivoe, and spread it neatly upon those two pieces of Paste; then let your Filets in order, and the rest of the Farce upon them; covering all with Bards or Slices of Bacon, and afterwards with a small piece of the fine Paste; wetting the greater round about: At last, the other large piece being put on the top, to compleat the Lid or uppe Crust; the whole Pie is to be wash’d over with an Egg, and baked in the Evening, for the space of eight or ten Hours: For it must be left all Night till the same Hour next morning, taking care that the Oven be not over-heated. It must be served up hot to Table, after having poured a Partridge-cullis*** into it, and both the Meat and Crust ought to be eaten with a Fork.
[The court and country cook : giving new and plain directions how to order all manner of entertainments, ..François Massialot; 1702]

* Godivoe = a forcemeat stuffing, also called a Farce.
** Chibbol = onion
*** cullis = a broth reduction [same origin as ‘coulis’]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Pineapple Cheese.

Quotation for the Day …

A highbrow is the kind of person who looks at a sausage and thinks of Picasso." Alan Patrick Herbert (1890-1971)

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

Drowning in Armagnac.

Today, December 21st …

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Disraeli, Britain’s only Jewish Prime Minister. Before he entered politics, he was a writer, and being a dandy and gourmet, there are many references to the good life in his novels. One of his most frequently quoted sentences, from “The Young Duke”, is:

“All paradise opens! Let me die eating ortolans to the sound of soft music.”

Unless we are prepared to break the law, most of us will never know this paradisical experience, for these tiny European garden birds are now protected. The French chef M. Massialot (1702) described the ortolan as “a delicate Fowl of an exquisite taste, about the bigness of a Lark.” For centuries, in France, they have represented the abolute pinnacle of gastronomic experience. Francois Mitterand had them prepared (illegally) for what was his final fine dining experience before his death from cancer in 1996. I wonder, did he have soft music playing?

The famous chef, Alexis Soyer was briefed in 1846 to provide a dinner at the Reform Club in London, with “magnificent contempt of expense”. One of his inspirational thoughts was: “An ortolan can hardly be truffled, but I will undertake that a truffle shall be ortolaned!” Or, in other words he would cook “the delicate native of Provence .. gloriously interred in the choicest production of Perigord”. This culinary gilding of the lily did not eventuate; the birds were not delivered in time. Poor gourmets.

Poor birds: ortolans were caught and force-fed until they were “lumps of fat”, and were then suffocated (“take them by the Beak, and holding it close between your Finger and Thumb, the Bird will be stifled in about a Minute”), or drowned in Armagnac (super-gourmet method).

Soyer’s guests would not have needed instruction in the ritual of ortolan-eating. A large napkin covers the head and plate while the diner eats the whole bird (except the beak), with the hands. Depending on beliefs or sensibilities, the purpose of the napkin is to (a) capture the aroma (b) hide the messy process from other guests, or (c) hide the greediness from God.

As for cooking them, the method is simple. M. Massialot says:

Ortolans must be drawn, and roasted on a small Spit, and basted with a little Lard: Then they may be cover’d or strew’d with Bread and Salt, and eaten with Salt and Orange.

Tomorrow: The Taste of Music.