On Cloves.

September 24^th …

Samuel Pepys got himself a bargain on this day in 1665:

“…. And there, after breakfast, one of our watermen told us he had heard of a bargain of Cloves for us. And we went to a blind alehouse at the end of the town, to a couple of wretched, dirty seamen, who, poor wretches, had got together about 37 lb. of Cloves and 10 lb. of Nuttmeggs. And we bought all of them – the first at 5s. 6d. per lb and the latter at 4s. – and paid them in gold …..”

I get the distinct impression that our old friend Sam Pepys did not care to enquire too deeply into the source of the cloves. At least the poor wretches who sold them were a lot less poor at the end of the transaction:

- 5s. 6d. in 1665, is approximately equivalent today to ₤ 31.60 UK = $63 US = $75.8 AUD

- 4s. in 1665, is equivalent today to ₤ 23 = $45.8 US = $ 55 AUD

Which means, by my reckoning, the wretches made away with almost $2,800 U.S in today's money. No doubt Sam himself made a decent profit too when he on-sold them.

Cloves are the dried flower buds of Caryophyllus aromaticus, a tree originating in the Moluccas - the original Spice Islands, now part of Indonesia. The desire for them (and other spices) drove many of the early European voyages of exploration, and successful traders made fortunes. Their value lay as much if not more in their medicinal than their culinary use. To judge from the Household Dictionary of William Salmon (1695), they were a great panacea. He says:

They help Digestions, stay the Flux of the Belly, and are binding; they clear the sight, and the powder of them consumes and takes away the Web or Film in the Eye, as also Clouds and Spots: being beaten to Powder, and drunk with Wine or the Juice of Quinces they stay Vomiting, restore lost Appetite, fortifie the Stomach and Head, gently warm an over-cold Liver: and for this Reason they are given with success to such as have the Dropsie; the smell of the Oil of them is good against fainting Fits and Swoonings; and being chewed, they sweeten the Breath, and fasten the Teeth; the Powder of them in White-wine is given for Falling-Sickness, or Palsie, the distilled Water of Cloves is good against Surfeits and pestilential Diseases; receiving the Smoak of the Cloves into the Nostrils whilst they are burning on a Chafing-dish of Coals, opens the Pores of the Head.

Today’s recipe, inspired by the nautical location of the story, is from a famous cookbook of Pepys’ era – The Accomplisht Cook, by Robert May (1660). Naturally, it contains cloves. It is also quite do-able today.

To Stew a small Salmon, Salmon Peal, or Trout.
Take a Salmon, draw it, scotch the back, and boil it whole in a stew pan with white wine, (or in pieces) put to it also some whole cloves, large mace, slic’t ginger, a bay leaf or two, a bundle of sweet herbs well and hard bound up, some whole pepper, salt, some butter and vinegar, and an orange in halves; stew all together, and being well stewed, dish them in a clean scowred dish with carved sippets, lay on the spices and slict’t lemon, and run it over with beaten butter, and some of the gravy it was stewed in; garnish the dish with some fine searsed manchet, or searsed ginger.

Tomorrow’s Story …

On Corned Beef.

Quotation for the Day …

Salmon are like men: too soft a life is not good for them. James de Coquet.

Eat Local, Eat Seasonal.

Today, May 1st …

There is nothing new under the sun, it seems. We regularly rediscover old ideas and by the process of re-branding, think they are new. The recent vogue for the ‘100 mile diet’ (that is, eating only what is grown within a hundred mile radius of one’s home) is only a new name for ‘eat local’, the corollary to which is ‘eat seasonal’. In Samuel Pepys’ day, eating local was the only option, other than eating food kept in storage or preserved (often long and indifferently) by drying, salting, smoking, or encased in a thick pastry crust. Sam had a real treat on this day in 1662.

“Sir G. Carteret, Sir W. Pen, and myself, with our clerks, set out this morning from Portsmouth very early, and got by noon to Petersfield; several officers of the Yard accompanying us so far. Here we dined and were merry. At dinner comes my Lord Carlingford from London, going to Portsmouth: tells us that the Duchess of York is brought to bed of a girl, at which I find nobody pleased; and that Prince Rupert and the Duke of Buckingham are sworn of the Privy Councell. He himself made a dish with eggs of the butter of the Sparagus, which is very fine meat, which I will practise hereafter.”

Sam's asparagus would certainly have been grown around Petersfield - as it still is, and ultimately May 1st would become the official start of the asparagus season in England (which lasted until June 21st or thereabouts).

Asparagus probably originated in Eurasia, was cultivated by the Ancient Egyptians and Romans, but perhaps not by the Greeks, and had been known in England for at least a hundred years before Sam’s meal. It had only recently become more easily available and fashionable however, which probably explains the dearth of recipes for it in cookbooks of Sam’s time.

I am intrigued and puzzled by Sam’s reference to the ‘butter of asparagus’. What did he mean by this? The best part (the tips), or a puree perhaps? Whatever it was, it seems that one of the natural partners of asparagus had already been determined in Sam’s day – eggs.

Asparagus is best eaten as close to au naturelle as possible, unless it be with eggs or butter or cream. This then must be the perfect recipe as it contains them all, and would not be out of place in a modern cookbook.

Asparagus, or Artichokes in Cream.
Take your large Asparagus, and cut them in Pieces, half an Inch long, as far as they are green; then stove them in clear strong Broth till crisp and tender; season them with Pepper, Salt, and Nutmeg and a little Onion; then toss them up thick with Yolks of Eggs beat up in a little white Wine and Cream, and some thick Butter, and so serve them, and garnish with Lemon.
You must do Artichokes the same Way, but boil the Bottoms tender, and then stove them in Gravy, and season them, and thicken them, and toss them up with Cream as you do Asparagus.
[Complete Practical Cook; Charles Carter, 1730]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Buns from Chelsea.

This Day, Last year …

The Story was called ‘Spring rites, Workers rights’

Quotation for the Day ….

Sparagrass eaten to Excess sharpen the Humours and heat a little; ...They cause a filthy and disagreeable Smell in the Urine, as every Body knows. Louis Lémery, 1702.

A Belated Feast.

Today, April 4th …

In 1658 Samuel Pepys was “cut for the stone” – that is, he had surgery for a bladder stone. It was a common medical problem of the time, particularly amongst the wealthier folk who had little in the way of dairy produce in their diet. Butter was for the lower classes, and clean fresh milk was difficult to get in the cities, so city folk were more liable to suffer from Vitamin A deficiency – a known contributor to the problem. Specialised ‘stone-cutters’ were kept busy plying their trade, and a gruesome and risky procedure it was in the days before anaesthesia (the patient was strapped to the table) and sterilisation of instruments.

Surviving such surgery was indeed worth celebrating. Every year on the anniversary of his operation, Samuel had a special dinner. The actual day had been March 26th, but in 1663 he had been forced to postpone the celebration because the household was in a muddle due to his wife Elizabeth being ill, and “my servants being out of order” (they were in search of a new cook-maid.) The delayed dinner was finally held on this day, and what a good feast it was.

“…This being my feast, in lieu of what I should have had a few days ago, for my cutting of the Stone …… Very merry before, at, and after dinner, and the more for that my dinner was great and most neatly dressed by our own only mayde. We had a Fricasse of rabbits and chicken – a leg of mutton boiled – three carps in a dish – a great dish of a side of lamb – a dish roasted pigeons – a dish of four lobsters – three tarts – a Lampry pie, a most rare pie – a dish of anchoves – good wine of several sorts; and all things mightly and noble to my great content.”

Samuel Pepys’ diary is fascinating to histo-foodies, but he also recorded the political events of the day (well, you can't eat all the time). He lived through England’s eleven-year post-civil war government by the Commonwealth and Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate, and the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660. In 1664 a piece of Royalist propaganda was published in the form of a cookbook purporting to be written by Elizabeth (“Joan”) Cromwell. In spite of its satirical tone, there are some interesting recipes in the book. Here is one for a tart that would not have been out of place on Samuel’s feast table.

To make a double Tart.
Take some codlings tenderly boyled and peel them, cut them in halves, fill your Tart, put into a quarter of a hundred of codlings a pound and a half of sugar, a few cloves, and a little cinnamon, close up the coffin and bake it; when it comes out of the Oven, take a quart of cream, six eggs, a quartern of sugar and a sliced nutmeg, beat all these well together, pour them into the Tart, then set your tart in the Oven for half a quarter of an hour, when it comes out, cut off the ley and having a lid cut in flowers ready, lay it on, and garnish it with preserves of damsons, resberries, apricocks and cherries, and place a preserved quince in the middle, and strew it with sugar biskets.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Spanish Stew.

Last Year on This Day …

Tinned apricots were the topic of the day.

Quotation for the Day …

The longer I work in nutrition, the more convinced I become that for the healthy person all foods should be delicious. Adele Davis (1904-1974)

To Dress a Cod’s Head.

Today, January 23rd …

Our good friend Samuel Pepys dined with Sir William Batten, the Surveyor of the Navy on this day in 1663, upon a cod’s head.

I cant help noticing that Cod’s Head has fallen out of favour. What is strange is that it was once very much in favour, and not just by those who couldn’t afford a nice thick fillet. One household manual from 1881 describes it as ‘a very genteel and handsome dish’ - echoing the thoughts of several hundred years of fish connoisseurs and cookbook writers. Why has it fallen from grace?

Perhaps it is our ignorance? Fish head sounds like not enough meat for the effort of getting it off the bones. If we discover that ‘a cod’s head’ was usually shorthand for ‘a cod’s head and shoulders’, does the offer of more flesh for our fiddling change our attitude?

Is it the appreciation that shoulders or not, it would still be a nuisance to serve? Carving - the skill that was once essential to all men of good breeding (or housewives of good training) - seems to be a Lost Art. If this is the issue holding us back from truly enjoying a Cod’s Head, then some old cooking texts can come to our rescue with detailed carving instructions.

A Cod's Head and Shoulders, perhaps, require more attention in serving than any other. ... In carving, introduce the trowel along the back, and take off a piece quite down to the bone, taking care not to break the flakes. Put in a spoon and take out the sound, a jelly-like substance, which lies inside the back-bone. A part of this should be served with every slice of fish. The bones and glutinous parts of a cod's head are much liked by most people, and are very nourishing. [The Complete Cook...; Sanderson, J. M. 1864]

Some are even more detailed, and provide illustrations to assist:

Cod-Fish. Next to turbot, a cod's head and shoulders is the handsomest dish of fish brought to table. The fish-knife must be passed through the back from 1 to 2, and then transversely in slices. No fish requires more care in helping, for when properly boiled the flakes easily fall asunder, and require a neat hand to prevent the dish looking untidy. With each slice should be sent a portion of the sound, which is the dark lining underneath the back-bone, to be reached with a spoon. Part of the liver may be given if required. The gelatinous part about the eye, called the cheek, is also a delicacy, and must be distributed justly, according to the number of the party. [Routledge’s Manual of Etiquette, 19th C]

Or is our lack of enthusiasm an aesthetic thing? In our modern age, do we associate fish heads with fish bait or funny foreigners? Or is it the eye, staring at us reproachfully from the platter? It need not be this, for another 19th century household manual reassures us that “The green jelly of the eye is never given to any one”.

A final mystery is this one: Codfish presumably still come with heads. What do fishmongers now do with that part of the fish? As we are now informed and reassured, and keen to make up for this deficiency of Cod’s Head in our lives, we need to solve this puzzle.

In anticipation of our success in securing ourselves a good source of this Esteemed Delicacy, I give you this recipe.

Cods-Head to Dress.
Cut it fair and large, boil it in Water, and Salt, add a pint of Vinegar, so that all the Head and Appurtenances may be just covered, put into the mouth of it a quart of stewing Oisters, a bundle of sweet-Herbs, and an Onion quartered: and when it is sufficiently boiled, set it a drying over a Chafing-dish of Coals; then take Oister liquor, sliced Onion, and two or three Anchoves, a quarter of a pint of White-wine, and a pound of sweet Butter, shred the Herbs, mix them with the Oisters, and garnish it with them, adding withal some slices of Lemon, grated Bread, and a little Parsley.
[William Salmon’s The family dictionary, or, Household Companion…1695]

Tomorrow’s Story …

A Big Night.

A Previous Story for this Day …

Rhubarb was our topic a year ago to the day.

On this Topic …

We have previously considered other Funny Fish Bits.

Quotation for the Day …

Cod
The codfish is a staple food

For which I'm seldom in the mood.

This fish is such an utter loss

That people eat it with egg sauce.
Ogden Nash.

New Year Breakfast.

Today, January 1st …

Samuel Pepys started the New Year in January 1661 with breakfast with his father, brother, uncle and two cousins. He gave his guests a rather substantial and impressive meal, but unfortunately the day then went rapidly down-hill, food-wise.

… and I had for them a barrel of oysters, a dish of neat's tongues, and a dish of Anchoves, wine of all sorts, and Northdown ale. We were very merry till about eleven o'clock, and then they went away. At noon I carried my wife by coach to my cozen, Thomas Pepys, where we, with my father, Dr. Thomas, cozen Stradwick, Scott, and their wives, dined. Here I saw first his second wife, which is a very respectfull woman, but his dinner a sorry, poor dinner for a man of his estate, there being nothing but ordinary meat in it. … and so returned to Mr. Pierces, and there supped with them, and Mr. Pierce, the purser, and his wife and mine, where we had a calf's head carboned [carbonadoed] but it was raw, we could not eat it, and a good hen. But she is such a slut that I do not love her victualls.

First, some explanation of Sam’s victuals is probably in order:

Neats tongues are calves tongues.
Northdown ale refers to the type of hops used in the manufacture – the Northdown hop making a full-bodied, characteristically British ale, apparently.
‘Ordinary Meat’ meant basic beef – usually considered a bit low class, unless it was in the form of something like a grand chine of beef.

‘Carbonadoed’ means ‘A piece of fish, flesh, or fowl, scored across and grilled or broiled upon the coals’.

The breakfast was a little unusual for the times in that Pepys clearly planned it and catered for it. A more usual way of breaking the overnight fast was with something simple, taken informally - a piece of bread and cheese perhaps, or leftovers from the night before, or most commonly a “morning draft” at an alehouse. As Pepys indicates, the main meal of the day in the seventeenth century was in the middle of the day, which meant that there was little need for a substantial early meal. Over the intervening centuries, the dinner hour has moved progressively later in the day necessitating a parallel increase in the significance of breakfast – for the well-to-do that is. The poor have always started work at the crack of dawn, and eaten whatever they can whenever their masters allow a meal-break. What we think of as a traditional British breakfast is largely a nineteenth century invention of wealthy households - although even the heartiest breakfast today would be unlikely to include anchovies and tongue.

Unfortunately Pepys does not give us any clue as to how his breakfast dishes were prepared, but luckily a contemporary cookbook comes to our rescue. Here is an elegant dish from Robert May’s The accomplisht cook (1660).

To stew a Neats Tongue whole.
Take a fresh Neats tongue raw, make a hole in the lower end and take out some of the meat, mince it with some bacon or beef-suet, and some sweet herbs, and put in the yolks of an egg or two, some nutmeg, salt, and some grated parmisan or fat cheese, pepper and ginger; mingle all together, and fill the hole in the tongue, then wrap a caul or skin of mutton about it, and binde it about the end of the tongue, boil it till it will blanch: and being blanched, wrap about it the caul of veal with some of the forcing, roll it a little brown, and put it in a pipkin, and stew it with some claret and strong broth, cloves, mace, salt, pepper, some strained bread or grated manchet, some sweet herbs chopped small, marrow, fried onions and apples amongst; and being finely stewed down, serve it on fine carved sippets with barberries and slic’t lemon, and run it over with beaten butter. Garnish the dish with grated or searced manchet.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Sweet Beets.

Quotation for the Day …

Breakfast is a notoriously difficult meal to serve with a flourish. Clement Freud.

Wine for health.

Today, January 13 …

Samuel Pepys spared no expense on a “noble” dinner for friends on this day in 1663. His guests arrived around midday, and stayed on till supper, when they had “a good sack-posset and cold meat” before leaving around 10 o’clock at night.

A “posset” was a hot, sweet drink made by heating alcohol in a bowl, then pouring hot cream or milk in from a great height. It was a popular supper dish, a comfort food or treat, considered to have a restorative or medicinal benefit. It was often made with “sack” (sherry), which was also sometime called “Canary”, as the best came from those islands.

In Pepys’ day every good housewife, though she employed a cook to prepare daily meals, was expected to take responsibility herself for making preserves and simple household remedies, and books of “receipts” for these were enormously popular. One written by a contemporary of Pepys, Sir Kenelm Digby, and published posthumously in 1669 is the earliest collection of fermented drink recipes that we know. He was a colourful character – amateur scientist, linguist, privateer, diplomat, and according to some a “great mountebank”. When his beloved wife Venetia died suddenly it was widely believed that he had accidentally poisoned her with the viper wine that he gave her to preserve her beauty. There is no recipe for viper wine amongst the possets, meads, hydromels and metheglins of Digby’s book, as this was more properly in the domain of the alchemists such as John French. He published his book “The Art of Distillation” in 1651.

Posset recipes being easily available, I give you French’s instructions for viper wine. Conveniently, sherry is the basis for both.

Viper Wine is Made Thus
Take of the best fat vipers, cut off their heads, take off their skins, and unbowel them. Then put them into the best canary sack, four or six according to their bigness into a gallon. Let them stand two or three months. Then draw off your wine as you drink it.Some put them alive into the wine, and there suffocate them, and afterwards take them out, and cut off their heads, take off their skins, and unbowel them, and then put them into the same wine again, and do as before.This wine has the same virtues as the foregoing quintessence. It also provokes to venery, cures the leprosy and such like corruptions of the blood.

On Monday: Peace and Plenty.

The Roast Beef of Old England.

Today, November 23 …

Sam Pepys wrote in his diary in 1661 “This day I had a Chine of beefe sent home, which I bespoke to send and did send it, as a present to my Uncle Wight”. What a gift for an Englishman! A chine – a huge piece of cow consisting of the backbone and the loin meat each side, roasted to perfection, and the envy of visitors to England such as the Swede Pehr Kalm (1716-1779) who disguised his jealousy with scorn:

“Roast meat is the Englishman's delice and principal dish. .. The English men understand almost better than any other people the art of properly roasting a joint, which also is not to be wondered at; because the art of cooking as practiced by most Englishmen does not extend much beyond roast beef and plum pudding.”

You cant get more English than roast beef. Unless you have chicken tikka that is. Anyway, beef isn’t roasted anymore. Baked in ovens, yes, but not roasted on a spit in front of an open fire, turned all the while by little boys or ingenious mechanical devices, basted lovingly by the cook at regular intervals, the juice (none of your fancy jus) and drippings falling down into a pan of batter, transforming it into Yorkshire pudding.

Sadly, truth is often more prosaic than fiction. Contrary to popular belief, the sirloin did not get its name when a particularly splendid example of that “joint of goodly presence” was given a mock knighthood (“Sir Loin” – get it?) by either King Henry VII, James I, or Charles II. The name simply comes from “surlonge”, i.e above the loin.

In case you should be lucky enough to have the right sort of beef, fireplace, and small boy, here is a recipe from Robert May’s “Accomplish’t Cook” (1660).

To roast a Chine, Rib, Loin, Brisket, or Fillet of Beef,
Draw them with parsley, rosemary, time [thyme], sweet marjoram, sage, winter savoury, or lemon, or plain without any of them, fresh or salt, as you please; broth it, roast it, and baste it with butter: a good chine of beef will ask six hours of roasting.
For the sauce take straight tops of rosemary, sage leaves, picked parsley, time, and sweet marjoram; and stew them in wine vinegar, and the beef gravy; or otherwayes with gravy and juyce of oranges and lemons. Sometimes for change in saucers of vinegar and pepper.

Tomorrow ….Green butter and the Art of Sandwiches.

All Hail the apple trees.

Today, November 9th …

It was probably a bitterly cold night when Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary for this day in 1666: “Being come home, we to Cards till 2 in the morning; and drinking lamb’s-wool, to bed.”

“Lamb’s wool” is a drink made from hot, sweet, spiced ale mixed with the pulp of roasted apples. The ale would have been sweeter than we are used to today, as it was brewed without the hops which made it bitter but improved its keeping qualities – the brew that we now call “beer”. It was a traditional drink at Hallowe’en, which occurred during the harvest season, and at Twelfth night, when it was used to “wassail” or toast the orchard fruit trees to encourage a good new crop.

Why the name? You can take your pick of the two most popular explanations. The name may be derived from La Maes Abhal, a pagan celebration of the apple harvest, or it may simply be that the hot, fluffy roasted apple pulp floating on the top of the drink looked like lamb’s wool. Probably of course it is a happy symmetry of both ideas.

Mrs Beeton seems oddly confused over lamb’s wool. She refers to it as an old English beverage, but then goes on to give the recipe for a French version made from wine, which she likens to marmalade!

“ … is made by boiling any given quantity of new wine, skimming it as often as fresh scum rises, and, when it is boiled to half its bulk, straining it. To this apples, pared and cut into quarters, are added; the whole is then allowed to simmer gently, stirring it all the time with a long wooden spoon, till the apples are thoroughly mixed with the liquor, and the whole forms a species of marmalade, which is extremely agreeable to the taste, having a slight flavour of acidity, like lemon mixed with honey”

A far more authentic version is by Robert Herrick (1591-1674), from his “Twelfth Night”, with the added bonus is that it is poetic.

"Next crowne the bowle fullWith gentle lamb's wooll;Adde sugar, nutmeg and ginger'With store of ale too;And thus ye must doeTo make a Wassaile a swinger."

Tomorrow … A taste of France, or is it Italy?…

Marmalade, madams, and maladies

Today, November 4th …

Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary on this day in 1663 “Home to dinner and very pleasant with my wife, who is this day also herself making of Marmalett of Quince, which she now doth very well herself.”

Elizabeth’s marmalade would have been a dry paste such as we now eat with cheese - cut with a knife, stored in boxes and served as an after dinner sweetmeat. Over time, other fruit came to be used such as “Wardens, peares, apples, & Medlars, Seruits or Checkers, strawberys everyone by him selfe or els mixt it together as you think good.” Eventually it became our familiar citrus jelly with rind suspended in it, perfect for spreading on breakfast toast.

For some odd reason the Scots have claimed marmalade as their own by perpetuating a couple of myths. One idiotic explanation for the name “marmalade” is that it came from the medicinal use of candied orange (“to cool the stomach”) by Mary Queen of Scots, who suffered sea-sickness on her voyage from France to Scotland in 1561 - hence “Marie est malade” became “marmalade”. The word of course comes from the Portuguese word “marmelo” for quince, and was in use well before Mary’s travels. “Modern” orange marmalade was also decidedly not invented by Janet Keillor of Dundee in 1797, there being recogniseable recipes for it from almost a century before.

If not a medicinal excuse to indulge, why not aphrodisiacal? Quinces were always believed to be aphrodisiacs, and oranges were extravagant (therefore enticing) delicacies in the seventeenth century, so the reputation became attached to marmalade, which is probably why prostitutes were called “marmalade madams” in Pepys’ time.

Perhaps Mrs Pepys had a copy of “The French Cook…” by La Varenne (1653), which contained this recipe:

How to make the Marmalat of Quinces of Orleans.
Take fifteen pounds of Quinces, three pounds of sugar, and two quarts of water, boil all together; after it is well sod, pass it by little and little through a napkin, and take out of it what you can; then put your decoction in a bason with four pounds of sugar, seeth it, for to know when it is enough, trie it on a plate, and when it doth come off, take it quickly from the fire, and set it up in boxes, or somewhere else.

Aphrodisiac anyone?

On Monday … Elephant (not) on the menu.

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.