Sour Milk.

I thought I might give you a milk diet this week, as I don’t seem to have given much blog time to one of my favourite foods. A brief look at past posts suggests that the only story to date which focussed on milk was about koumiss and artificial asses’milk, although I have alsogiven you recipes for milk punch from 1724 and 1778, and of course a lot of milk puddings. I’ve hardly scratched the surface of milk, really, have I?

So, today I want to look at yoghurt – specifically the early Western experience of it, for the good reason that I can’t read very early references in Arabic or Turkish or other languages of its countries of origin!

The Oxford English Dictionary describes yoghurt as ‘a sour fermented liquor made from milk, used in Turkey and other countries of the Levant; now common in many English-speaking countries as a commercial semi-solid, often flavoured, foodstuff.’ It gives the first reference in English as appearing in 1625, as ‘Neither doe they [sc. the Turks] eate much Milke, except it bee made sower, which they call Yoghurd’ (S. Purchas Pilgrimmes II)

The Monthly Magazine, and American View for the Year 1800, in its section on Useful Economical Information included an extract from Eton’s Survey of the Turkish Empire which described the preparation of yoghurt in its native land, and which will serve for our recipe for the day.

The Arabians and the Turks have a preparation of milk, which has similar qualities to the kumiss of the Kalmuks: by the first, it is called leban; by the Turks, yaourt.

To make it, they put to new milk, made hot over the fire, some old leban, or yaourt. In a few hours, more or less, according to the temperature of the air, it be comes curdled, of an uniform consistence, and a most pleasant acid; the cream is in great part separated, leaving the curd light and semitransparent. The whey is much less subject to separate than in curds made with rennet with us, for the purpose of making cheese. Yaourt has this singular quality; that left to stand, it becomes daily sourer, and, at last, dries without having entered into the putrid fermentation. In this state, it is preserved in bags, and, in appearance, resembles pressed curds after they have been broken by the hand. This dry yaourt, mixed with waiter, becomes a fine cooling food or drink, of excellent service in fevers of the inflammatory or putrid kind. It seems to have none of those qualities which make milk improper in fevers. Fresh yaourt is a great article of food among the natives, and Europeans soon become fond of it.

No other acid will make the same kind of curd-: all that have been tried, after the acid fermentation is over, become putrid. In Russia they put their milk in pots in an oven, and let it stand till it becomes sour, and this they use as an article of food in that state, or make cheese of it, but it has none of the qualities of yaourt, though, when it is new, it has much of the taste. Perhaps new milk curdled with sour milk, and that again used as a ferment, and the same process continued, might, in time, acquire the qualities of yaourt, which never can be made in Turkey without some old yaourt.

They give no rational account how it was first made; some of them told me an angel taught Abraham how to make it, and others, that an angel brought a pot of it to Hagar, which was the first yaourt (or leban).

It merits attention as a delicious article of food, and as a medicine.

It seems that popularisation of yoghurt in the English-speaking world took more than three centuries from that first mention in 1625. It was still essentially unknown in the very working class post-WWII community in the North of England in which I grew up. I do not remember when I first tried yoghurt myself, or when it became part of my daily (almost) routine, but I do remember making it myself in the ‘80’s when we lived in the country with no shops nearby but a house cow which provided more milk than we could use.

Literary references suggest however that the better off and better informed in England did appreciate yoghurt before my time – although it is still surprising that the first mention of it in The Times newspaper was not until 1938, and the first of it being used in cookery not until 1961, in a brief mention of it being a good addition to briefly cooked shredded beetroot.


Quotation for the Day

I asked the waiter, 'Is this milk fresh?' He said, 'Lady, three hours ago it was grass.'
Phyllis Diller

Dinner Abroad.

Traveller’s responses to the food they come across in far off lands are always interesting – and often they reveal as much about the writer as about the food and dishes being described. Many, or perhaps most, European travellers of the nineteenth century seemed to find it impossible to compare favourably the food which was graciously provided by their generous foreign hosts, with that of their homeland. Worse, most seemed incapable of actually enjoying the experience – the only value of the meals appearing to be in their story value after they returned home. Funny people, foreigners, what?

How about the attitude of the writer who attended this magnificently fragrant Moroccan feast, which he (I am assuming it was a 'he') described in the New York Times in 1880:

A Feast in Morocco.

We seated ourselves, and were served at once. Twenty-eight dishes, without counting the sweets! Twenty-eight immense dishes, every one of which would have been enough for twenty people, of all forms, odors, and flavours; monstrous pieces of mutton on the split [sic], chickens (with pomatum), game (with cold cream,) fish (with cosmetics,) livers, puddings, vegetables, eggs, salads, all with the same dreadful combinations, suggestive of the barber’s shop; sweetmeats, every mouthful of which was enough to purge a man of any crime he had ever committed; and with all this, large glasses of water, into which we squeezed lemons that we had brought in our pockets, then a cup of tea, sweetened to syrup; and finally, an irruption of servants, who deluged the tables, the walls, and ourselves with rose-water. - Morocco de Amicis.

Not all travellers were quite so crass however. Compare this Moroccan feast story with the more considered, kind, and informative report of Mr. Charles White, Esq, who visited Constantinople (Istanbul) in the 1840’s, and wrote of his stay there in Three Years in Constantinople; or, Domestic Manners of the Turks in 1844. He says:

‘Turkish culinary productions are numerous and diversified’, and that ‘the culinary art in Turkey varies, as it does elsewhere, according to the fortune and taste of its patrons.’ He describes the ingredients and the cooking and serving methods of the kabâbs, pilafs, dolmas, and other dishes he comes across, with obvious care and interest. Here are his words on dolmas:

Dolmas are of fifty kinds. They consist of minced or forced meat, rice, vegetables, or other well-seasoned substances, stuffed into young pumpkins or melons, or enveloped with lettuce, vine, or cabbage leaves. The most popular are those made of young green pumpkins. Their frequent use for this purpose has caused them to be called dolma, where the true meaning of this word signifies any substance cut into minute particles, as well as earth employed to fill up excavations. Thus the palace of Dolma Baghtshy, as justly remarked by the learned Dr.Reumont, derives its name from a portion of the valley being filled up with earth for garden ground.

He also describes a typical meal in a well-to-do family:

The following specimen of a bill of fare may be taken as a criterion of the dinners given, and the order in which they are served, to six or eight guests, in families of superior station. The dishes therein specified are also met with in the houses of the most wealthy, whose repasts merely differ in the quantity contained in each dish, with some additions tedious to enumerate.

Bill of Fare of Turkish Dinner for eight or ten persons.

Chehrya tchorbassy (town soup), mutton, vermicelli, eggs, and vinegar.

Ormau kabâby (lamb roasted whole).

Poof-beurighy (cheese puffs)

Nohoot yanissy (fricassee) of fowl and young peas.

Yernik halvassy, a sweet mixture made of semolina, butter, and fresh honey.

Yaprak or lany dolmassy (dolmas), rolled in cabbage leaves, or stuffed into other vegetable substances.

Elmassya (the diamond), calves foot jelly sweetened.

Katayif (the velvety) a sort of pancake made of flour, eggs, and butter, having cream or sweet vermicelli inside.

Assyda, a paste of semolina, garnished with bahmias, and stewed in rich sauce.

Gulatch (the rose dish), a kind of cream, thickened with fine starch and scented with rose water.

Zerdeh pilaf (the golden pilaf)

Khosh-âb (the agreeable water).

As the recipe for the day, I give you a genuine nineteenth century Turkish recipe for ‘dolmas’ made with vegetable marrow. It is from the absolutely delightful Turkish Cookery Book, compiled by Turabi Effendi in 1862.


Piyāzli-Kabak.
Peel very thin seven or eight small-sized vegetable marrows, and take out the insides; then stuff them with some nice cheese, grated and mixed with one or two tablespoonfuls of chopped parsley, and half a tablespoonful of mint chopped; then beat up three or four eggs, in which dip the vegetable marrows, and fry them a nice brown in hot fresh butter; then take them out and place them in a stewpan, cover them with broth, set the pan on a charcoal fire and let it boil gently, until the liquor is nearly absorbed; then dish up and serve.


Quotation for the Day.
There are a lot of people who must have the dinner table laid in the usual fashion or they will not enjoy the dinner.
Christopher Morley.

Turkish Delight.

I am particulary fond of “Turkish delight”, especially (maybe exclusively) the rose-scented version. Maybe also the pistachio version. In Turkey itself, I understand, this delicacy is called lokum. I came across an interesting reference to it the other day, in an early nineteenth century travelogue:

“We were also favoured with morsels of confectionery, in which, it is supposed, the Turks are unrivalled, but with a single exception, the great family of candies, including the species rock lemon and hoarhound, with the minor varieties of plum, comfit, &c., are in nowise different, but if anything rather inferior to our own. The exception to which we allude is a delicious pasty mass which melts away in the mouth and leaves a fragrant flavour behind. It is, as we are informed, made by mixing honey with the inspissated juice of the fresh grape, and the Turks, who esteem it highly, call it rahat locoom, or ‘repose to the throat’ - a picturesque name to which it seems fairly entitled.”
[Sketches of Turkey in 1831 and 1832. By an American (James Ellsworth De Kay)]

No rosewater or nuts there. Hmmmm. In search of an early recipe I went. My first find confused the issue further.

Lòkùm
Put three quarters of a pound of fresh butter in a saucepan, and set it on the fire. When hot, add one pound and six ounces of the best flour and keep stirring till it becomes a light brown; then pour three quarters of a pint of water over, and continue stirring until it becomes like a paste; then take it off and let it remain till cold; then add about ten eggs, and work it with your hands to form a softish paste; then divide it in round pieces the size of small peaches, hollow the centre of each with the point of your finger, lay them in a buttered baking tin and bake them a nice delicate colour. When done fill them with the jam, clotted cream, or minced meat previously stewed brown in fresh butter. Dish them up tastefully on a white napkin and serve.
[The Turkish Cookery Book, by Turabi Efendi, 1865]

This buttery choux-pastry with sweet or savoury filling would certainly give comfort to the throat, but it is a long way from the Western/European idea of ‘Turkish delight’, which, as the Oxford English Dictionary tell us is ‘a sweetmeat consisting of gelatine boiled, cubed, and dusted with sugar.’ I am utterly delighted that the first mention given in the OED is from Charles Dickens:

‘I want to go to the Lumps-of-Delight shop.’ ‘To the .. ?’ ‘A Turkish sweetmeat, sir.’
[Edwin Drood, 1870]

The Western history of the concept of Turkish Delight would surely make a most wonderful story, would it not?

Quotation for the Day.

Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.
Alice May Brock

From Acorns to Chocolate.

Sometimes a historic trail leads off to somewhere quite different from where you start – which is a large part of the fun of course. I was exploring the use of acorns as food (boiled, in bread, as subsitute coffee), and found myself browsing an interesting bookcalled Waste Products and Undeveloped Substances, or, Hints for Enterprise in Neglected Fields, published by Peter Lund Simmonds in 1862. He describes the historic use of the acorn, and then says:

“ … In Turkey acorns are buried for some time in the earth by which the bitterness is destroyed They are then dried and toasted. Their powder with sugar and aromatics constitutes the palamoud of the Turks and racahout of the Arabs an alimentary substance readily digestible and very much esteemed.”

So, now I had two unfamiliar foods to investigate. Bear in mind, that as I do not speak Turkish or Arabic, what I ended up with was the Eurocentric view of these items. I would love some response from those really in the know! Anyway, I was doubly delighted to find references in, of all things, The Druggist's General Receipt Book , published in London in 1850.

We don’t generally think of pharmacopoeia as sources of recipes. Remedies, maybe, for gruel or beef tea or gruesome laxatives and other foods for invalids, but not delicious-sounding delicacies. Here is the The Druggist's General Receipt Book’s intrepretation of the “Turkish” and “Arabic” dishes of palamoud and racahout as fortifying drinks based on chocolate. Note that “by chocolate is meant the cacao beans roasted and pulverized to powder”, not the “dutched” and often sweetened chocolate powder of today.


Racahout Des Arabes
1 oz chocolate powder
3 oz rice flour
9 oz sugar
3 oz potato arrow-root
1 dr. vanilla (pulverized with part of sugar).
This is professedly a preparation of acorns (perhaps those of the Quercus ballotta, which are naturally sweet, or of other kinds deprived of their bitterness by
being buried in the earth)


Palamoud
1 oz chocolate
4 oz rice flour
4 oz potato arrow-root
1 dr. red sanders in fine powder

So, here we are with another example of the “everthing old is new again” – chocolate (the dark variety, in mini-moderation) now apparently being suspected of having medicinal value.

Quotation for the Day.

Chocolate is not only a pleasant of taste, but it is also a veritable balm of the mouth, for the maintaining of all glands and humours in a good state of health. Thus it is, that all who drink it, possess a sweet breath.
Stephani Blancardi (1650-1702), Italian Physician.

The Tragedy of Fat.

Theories of the cause and cure of ‘corpulence’ are not new. Neither is the Weight Loss Industry. Those who write about nutrition and weight loss are divided into two camps, to my mind. Those with a genuine, scientific interest in the topic, and a genuine desire to make a difference, and those who just want to make money. The latter rule, it seems, because they sell magic - which always rules over common-sense and hard-work. Oh Dear! I am cynical today, aren’t I?

My theory of the two distinct groups fell apart a bit with the discovery of Eat and Grow Thin: the Mahdah Menus, written by Vance Thompson in 1914. Clearly, the man is passionate – No!, evangelical, about his subject (being a reformed corpulent person himself). A bit of evangelism doesn’t go astray if one wants to be the sort of nutrition guru in the make-money camp. Evangelists always offer a simple solution to an enormously difficult problem, which is alluring magic in itself. So, Vance has one strike against him already. Second strike – he is horribly judgemental. Here is a random selection of his ‘scientific’ theories:

One thinks of the beautiful women one has known - loved perhaps - who have vanished forever, drowned in an ocean of turbulence and tallow ..

There is a strange kinship between obesity and financial crime - almost all embezzlers are fat.

To the scientist there is nothing so tragic on earth as the sight of a fat man eating a potato.

The fat man, to the reformed writer, is ‘A tragedy in suet’

… the fat man may clown and slap himself and wag a droll forefinger, but he is not merry at all … He knows he is ridiculous … He falls in love. (It is a destiny - like being born with the sun in Aquarius; always the fat man falls in love.) And this is his bitterest tragedy. He cannot kneel at Beauty's feet without a derrick to let him down ; and a man who goes a-wooing with a derrick looks like a fool. He cannot clasp the dear girl to his heart - for fear of smothering her. … Fierce burn the fires of love within him and the fiercer they burn the faster flees the terrified girl - for he looks like a vat of boiling oil; and that is a fearsome thing to fall into. So, wrapped in tallow, the poor lover goes his sebaceous way - wearing his maiden aunt's bracelet for a ring. …. A tragedy in suet.

Strangely, the actual advice given is eminently sensible. He warns against extreme measures, such as ‘devastating baths’:

And one had far better be fat than ruin one's digestion with drugs, weaken the body by fasting, and strip it of all symmetry by undue exercise and devastating baths.

… a fat man is an ill man — [he] can boil out a great deal of his fat in a Russian bath, but the cure is neither lasting nor safe

All the violent anti-obesity cures are touched with this defect — they work no permanent result.

He acknowledges that success can be a slow process:

You have only to persevere and week by week and month by month you will see that you are going back to your healthy, normal condition, having lost all superfluous fat and recovered pristine energy.

The choice is simple:

Either you sink, cowardly, in the sea of tallow and your life as a man is over; or, you "take advice."

The ‘advice’ is to follow the ‘Mahdah Menus’. The specific food advice is essentially sensible:

And the rule is a simple one : - Eat the right food rightly prepared.

It is axiomatic: Fat foods make fat and lean foods make for leanness.

There is a serious list of ‘Don’t’s’

DONT

Don’t sleep too much

Don't take naps.

Don't overeat, even of lean dishes.

Don't eat unless you are hungry.

Don't drink with your meals.

Don't drink alcoholic beverages.

Don't eat bread - except gluten bread toasted, and this in moderation.

Don't take a cab - WALK.

But he reassures that ‘the list of things one may eat is far longer than the list of forbidden things.’

There is one potential down-side to the regime:

There is no wine list is printed on the back of the Mahdah menus. This deficiency is not due to any “mystical horror of fermented drinks” - it is due to the somber fact that wine makes for corpulency. (Beer and ale are worse still.)

And there is one unexplained mystery. Who is Mahdah? She is female, that is all we find out.

Naturally, there are recipes, including some slightly exotic Turkis, Spanish, and Russian dishes, for those who like the idea. If not:

Regarding the Turkish, Spanish and Russian dishes given, they may be eaten or not, as you wish. For instance, the Dolmas or Turkish mutton is a very nice dish, and it has nothing fattening in it, but plain boiled mutton with mint or caper sauce will be simpler and answer the purpose quite as well - if not better.

Dolmas.

Take the tender leaves of a young cabbage, place three or four together and fill with the following mixture :
Two pounds of raw mutton hashed through the meat-chopper, two large onions, one-half cup chopped parsley, salt and paprika. Stir in three beaten eggs, form the mixture into oblong meat balls, roll and tie in thinly-buttered cabbage leaves. Place the Dolmas in a bake dish in layers with a plate to press them down and keep in place. Cover with the stock of any meat and cook slowly one and a half hours. When done make a sauce of the juice with the yolks of eggs or simply pour over the Dolmas. The Dolmas are very good served with tomato sauce. A can of Campbell's condensed tomatoes, to which has been added a boiled onion, finely chopped, and a bay leaf for flavor, makes an excellent and quickly prepared tomato sauce.

This post has been long enough to try your patience! I will give you a daily menu another day.

Previous posts on the diet topic are HERE and HERE.

Quotation for the Day ….

The hippopotamus is a vegetarian and looks like a wall. Lions who eat only red meat are sleek and slim. Are nutritionists on the wrong track?
Erma Bombeck