Beer recipes, Part 3.

The United Brewer’s Industrial Foundation produced a recipe booklet in 1937 to promote the use of beer in cookery. A beer-themed luncheon menu based on recipes from this book was mentioned in a recent blog post (and a follow-up here), and regular readers will remember that I determined to find enough of them (or suitable alternatives) to make it possible for you to hold your own beer-based lunch. I have been unable to find an actual copy of this recipe book, but luckily, some of the recipes are quoted elsewhere.

At the end of the two posts we had recipes outstanding for ‘melon balls with beer dressing, beer bread, sweet potatoes in beer, beer sauce on asparagus, potato salad with beer dressing, jellied vegetable salad containing beer, beer with eggs.’ Some of these are still proving elusive, but today I offer you beer soup (not in the menu quoted, but why not?), and a fine alternative for the fish course.


Bohemian Beer Soup.
2 cups beer (room temperature)
2 cups milk
2 tablespoons white sugar
2 whole eggs
Little grated nutmeg.
Get the milk very hot and then add to it eggs, sugar, and nutmeg beaten together. Stir until thickened then pour in the beer. Then pour all the mixture back into the kettle from which you poured the beer. Try this pouring back and forth for 4 to 6 times and serve immediately – to six of your best friends.
[From the United Brewers’ Foundation beer cookery book; quoted in a New York Times article of September 1937]

Fish Sauce [with beer].
5 ounces shallot onions, cut fine and braised.
2 ounces gingersnap crumbs
1 stalk celery, finely cut
Parsley
Put in a fish kettle the desired fish, add the onions, celery, gingersnap crumbs, parsley, salt. Cover the whole completely with a light bottled beer and cook slowly till done.
To prepare the sauce, use the fish broth, cook it down to two-thirds of its volume and put thru a sieve, add 5 ounces of fresh butter, beat lightly, and pour over fish.
[From ‘Joseph Happle, chef at Schroeder Hotel in Milwaukee’, quoted in the New York Times of April 27, 1934]

Quotation for the Day.

I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.
Brendan Behan

Back to Beer.

I am coming good today on the promise I made to find more recipes for the beer-themed luncheon mentioned in a post earlier in the week.

To refresh your memory, the luncheon held in 1937 featured “melon balls with beer dressing, beef kidney with beef, beer bread, sweet potatoes in beer, beer cabbage slaw, beer sauce on asparagus, potato salad with beer dressing, jellied vegetable salad containing beer, beer spice cake, chocolate beer cake, and … beer with eggs”

I gave you a contemporary recipe for Chocolate Beer Cake in the earlier post, and today I am able to add three more dishes from the menu. Firstly, here is the Beer Spice Cake – also from 1937.

Beer Spice Cake.
1 cup beer
1 cup seedless raisins
3 cups sifted cake flour
¼ teaspoon baking soda
3 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ cup shortening
1 ¼ cups sugar
2 eggs, separated.
Turn beer over raisins. If cold and carefully poured it will not foam and will be easy to measure. Let stand 15 minutes. Mix and stir together 3 times flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and raisins. Add cinnamon. Cream shortening until soft. Add sugar gradually, beating until light and fluffy after each addition. Add egg yolks. Blend well. Add flour alternately with beer a small amount at a time, beating until smooth after each addition. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Turn into 2 greased loaf tins [cant read tin measurements here] and bake in a moderate oven (375 degrees F) thirty minutes or until done.
Adair County Democrat, June 4, 1937.

Nineteen thirty-seven certainly seemed to be the year of beery recipes, thanks, apparently, to promotional booklets produced by various stakeholders in the brewing industry. Here is a lovely savoury dish from the menu.

Beef Kidney with Beer.
2 Beef Kidneys
4 tablespoons Golden State Butter
2 tablespoons Globe A1 flour
2 teaspoons salt
4 glasses Rainier beer
6 slices crisp Wonder Bread toast.
Cut kidney into small cubes. Remove skin and white core. Cover with cold water. Bring to boiling point. Drain. Repeat. Drain well. Saute in butter until brown. Add flour. Mix well until blended. Add salt and beer. Cook slowly, stirring occasionally for 35 minutes, or until kidney is tender and beer cooked down to a thickened sauce. Serve on toast. Approximately 6 servings.
Oakland Tribune, July 23, 1937

And for the final recipe for the day I you - Beer Cabbage Slaw. Of all the menu items listed for the United Brewers Foundation luncheon in 1937, the coleslaw made with beer intrigued me the most. I have seen mention of recipes from this era, but so far have been unable to actually find one, so the following, from 1979 will have to suffice.


Beer Cabbage Slaw.
1 medium head cabbage, shredded
1 red or green pepper, shredded
2 teaspoons celery seeds
2 teaspoons minced onion
½ teaspoon salt or to taste
½ teaspoon pepper
½ cup mayonnaise
¼ cup beer
Pinch sugar
Combine cabbage, red or green pepper, celery seeds, onion, salt and pepper. Thin mayonnaise with beer. Add to cabbage with sugar to taste. Toss thoroughly. Chill.
Winnipeg Free Press, October 3, 1979

Which leaves us only with recipes to find for “melon balls with beer dressing, … beer bread, sweet potatoes in beer, … beer sauce on asparagus, potato salad with beer dressing, jellied vegetable salad containing beer, … beer with eggs”, and you can prepare a complete beer meal for the beer fans in your life.

Quotation for the Day.
It was a woman who drove me to drink and I never got the chance to thank her.
W.C. Fields

Take one cup of beer …

If you have ever wanted a beer-themed dinner for the beer-lover in your life, I do believe I have found a prototype menu for you to follow. All I need to find over the ensuing weeks is a recipe for each of the items mentioned, or at least some reasonable alternatives, and you will have no excuse not to go ahead.

The Wisconsin newspaper, the Rhinelander Daily News of June 2 1937 printed the following article about some promotional activity on the part of the United Brewers Industrial Foundation.

‘Some of the foundation’s ineffable squibs of information would seem to indicated that the beer-makers press agents have been sampling something stronger than the mild amber fluid manufactured by their employers. Witness the latest creation of the foundation’s press contact men – a blurb for the use of beer in cooking which asserts:

“Recipes which excited the interest and enthusiasm of the guests at the luncheon included such exotic and wholesome items as melon balls with beer dressing, beef kidney with beef, beer bread, sweet potatoes in beer, beer cabbage slaw, beer sauce on asparagus, potato salad with beer dressing, jellied vegetable salad containing beer, beer spice cake, chocolate beer cake, and for pure liquid delight, beer with eggs!” (exclamation point ours.)

These proclaimed “exotic” creations impelled a recheck on the meaning of “exotic”. The Webster unabridged dictionary gives these meanings: “not native, extraneous, foreign.”

“Exotic” is the word. It is hoped, for the sake of peace and quiet at dinner time, that melon balls with beer, sweet potatoes in beer, beer cabbage slaw, and all the rest of these beery innovations will remain “not native, extraneous, foreign.” – Grand Rapids Press.’

Chocolate Beer Cake sounds quite tame after Sauerkraut Cake, doesn’t they? Nevertheless it will be the first on our list. It seems that this novel cake did indeed burst onto the scene in the year of 1937, with various interpretations of the idea making the housewifely sections of a number of newspapers. We will almost certainly never know for certain who ‘invented’ this cake, but a hotel chef (either in Milwaukee, or at the Waldorf in New York City) seems to be the most popular theory.

The Oakland Daily Tribune, of June 11, 1937 began with: ‘Recently there was an inquiry for a chocolate beer cake, so here it is.

Chocolate Beer Cake.
1 ¾ cups sifted Globe A1 cake flour
1 teaspoon any kind of baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
⅓ cup Golden State butter
1 cup sugar
2 Golden State eggs, separated
2 squares unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
¾ cup Budweiser beer (cold)
Mix and sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together three times. Cream butter until soft. Add egg yolks one at a time, beating until well blended. Add chocolate. Beat until smooth. Add flour alternately with beer, a small amount at a time, beating until smooth arter each addition. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Turn into two greased seven-inch layer tins. Bake in a moderately hot ove (375 deg.) 30 minutes or until done. Cool. Spread butter frosting generously between and on top of layers.

I shall endeavour to bring you more beer cookery ideas over the coming weeks – may be one more tomorrow, then we shall move onto another topic.

Quotation for the Day.
There are better things in life than alcohol, but alcohol makes up for not having them.
Terry Pratchett

Nips, naps, and caps.

I have a new word today – new for me that is. I was reading about the old profession of ale-conning (that’s not the word, yet). An ale-conner was an officer appointed to assess the quality of beer and ale. Now, I know that many of you feel superbly equipped to do this job, but you are no longer required, it has been taken over by laboratories. There was an apocryphal story – I think about Shakespeare’s father who was, according to the apocryphal story, an ale-conner – that says that the way the strength of the ale or beer was determined was by pouring some ale onto a bench, then sitting down in it for a while in leather trousers. The expert determined the sugar content depending on how well the leather stuck to the beery seat. That’s about as apocryphal a story as you can get.

Of course, the ale-conner did it by taste, as the following story tells. It is about an ale-conner in the time of Queen Elizabeth I, by the name of Captain Cox. The story says that he was “of such credit and trust” that he had retained the job for many years “and ever acquitted himself of such estimation, as yet, to taste of a cup of nippitate, his judgement will be taken above the best in the parish, be his noze near so read.” I think the last word should be “red.”

My new word of the day is nippitate. Any of you heard it before?

The OED says it is a form of nippitatum, a mock Latin word meaning “ale or other alcoholic drink, of the highest quality and strength”, and dates its use to the sixteenth century. The word’s origin is unknown, but it may be related to the later word nipperkin or perhaps nappy. A nipperkin is also of obscure origin, but appears to come from Dutch and means a little drink and a small measure (less than half a pint) for the little drink. It is a grand way of saying a nip, in other words. We are in the land of obscure origins well and truly, and nappy is also one of its citizens. It refers to the head or nap of the beer or ale – a nappy beer being a strong beer. So, nippitate is as another old dictionary says, a whimsical word. An alternative whimsical word for the same thing is huff-cap (because it goes to your head, and figuratively speaking it huffs or raises your cap.)

Beer Soup.
Take equal quantities of beer and milk (one quart of each); mix two tables-spoonfuls of flour with a little of the beer, and add it to the remainder with the grated peel of half a lemon, half a teaspoonful of powdered ginger, cinnamon, or nutmeg, and sugar to taste: boil the milk separately and stir it rapidly with a whisk into four well-beaten eggs; put the beer with the milk into a saucepan, bring it to the point of boiling, keeping it well stirred all the time, and turn it quickly into a tureen. Serve with toasted rolls. Sufficient for twelve persons.
Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery. c1870’s

Quotation for the Day …

When this nippitatum, the huffe cappe, as they call it, this nectar of life, is set abroach, well is he that can get the soonest to it, and spend the most upon it.
Stubber’s Anat. of Abuses.

A Recipe for Mum.

Today, June 28^th

Samuel Pepys enjoyed a trendy seventeenth century drink on this day in 1664:

“…thence with my uncle Wight to the Mum house; and there drinking, he doth complain of his wife most cruelly, as the most troublesome woman in the world…”

The specialty at the Mum house was – Mum. Mum was a type of beer originally made in Braunschweig (Brunswick) in Germany. At first it was made entirely from wheat malt, although at later times barley malt was also used. It was strong, flavoured with hops and various herbs, and aged for a couple of years before being unleashed on the public. Mum was popular in Pepys’ time, partly on account of its supposed medicinal benefits (an old beer-drinkers excuse). It was supposedly “wholsom for Melancholy Flegmatic People, and for those whose Food is coarse Bread and Cheese, Flower'd [i.e floured] Milk, Herbs and lean Potages, …” as well as being “very great in the Gravel, and against inward Bruises”.

Naturally, whatever the Germans could do, the English tried to do better, and recipes for Mum soon started appearing in English cookbooks. There were often comments about its not particularly pleasant flavour (probably necessary in order to claim medicinal benefit?) – perhaps on account of the birch and fir tops. Maybe that is why old cookbooks also had recipes for bottled sauces using old Mum as an ingredient?

To make Mum.
Take thirty-two gallons of Water, boil it till a third part is waster, brew it according to Art, with three Bushels and a half of Malt, half a Bushel of ground Beans, and half a Bushel of Oat-meal; when you put it into your Cask, do not fill it too full, and when it begins to work, put in a Pound and a half of the inner Rind of Fir, half a Pound of the tops of Fir and Birch, (instead of the inward Rind and tops of Fir, our English Mum-makers use Cardamums, Sassafras and Ginger, the Rind of Walnut-tree, Elecampane-root, and red Sanders; others add Alexander Water-cresses, Brook-lime, and Horse-radish Root rasp’d) Avens, Beton, Burnet, Marjoram, Mother of Thyme, Penny-royal, of each a small Handful, Elder-flowers a Handful, of Rosa Solis a handful, of Carduus Benedictus a handful and a half, of Barberries bruis’d half an Ounce, of Cardamums bruis’d an Ounce and a half; these Ingredients are to be put in when the Liquor has wrought a while, and after they are let it, let it work over the Vessel as little as may be; when it has done working, fill up the Cask, and put into it five new laid Eggs, not broken nor crack’d, stop it close, and it will be fit to drink in two Years.
[Cook and Confectioners Dictionary; John Nott 1724]

To make Mum Catchup.
To a quart of old mum put four ounces of anchovies, of mace and nutmegs sliced one ounce, of cloves and black pepper half an ounce. Boil it till it is reduced one third. When cold, bottle for use.
[The Experienced English Housekeeper; Elizabeth Raffald, 1769]

Tomorrow’s Story …

An Antipodean Dinner.

Quotation for the Day …

Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer. Dave Barry.

To Feed a Butt of Beer.

Today, June 19^th …

According to the French Revolutionary Calendar, what we now call June 19^th (or sometimes the 20^th) was the first day of the month of Messidor. Messidor was the tenth month of the year, and the first month of the Summer quarter. The name comes from the Latin word messis, meaning ‘harvest’.

The French Revolutionary Calendar was the official calendar over three periods of time: it was initially adopted on October 24^th 1793 (but made retrospective from September 22^nd – although how a calendar is made retrospective I have no idea.) It lasted until Napoleon Bonaparte restored the conventional (Gregorian) calendar on January 1^st 1806. It was briefly reinstated for two brief periods during the Revolution of 1848 and the Paris Commune in 1871 before it fell into oblivion- apart from in the hearts and minds of a few enthusiasts who apparently still dote on it for historic, sentimental, or philosophical reasons. The fact is, the calendar never worked very well for a number of reasons – and one particular bone of contention with the workers was that they still only got one day off a week – and the ‘week’ was 10 days long.

The days of the calendar were named after agricultural plants, apart from the 5^th (named after a domestic animal) and the 10^th (named after an agricultural tool). The leftover days at the end of the year to bring the start back to the autumn equinox were called the Sansculottides (which refers to "those without trousers". There is a logical explanation for this name, but the ones provided by your own imagination will no doubt be much more amusing.

The first (Primidi) of Messidor was called Seigle (Rye), so this is the topic today.

Rye probably originated in North East Europe or South West Asia (or both, of course). Originally, say the experts, it was a weed in the wheat crop. It grew better than the wheat in many areas, particularly the colder ones, and eventually farmers gave up trying to separate the two, and harvested the fields as they were. The combined crop was called “maslin”, from an old French word meaning “mixed” - and the word lives on in our word for mixed salad greens - “mesclun”. Maslin bread was the common bread of the common folk for centuries, fine white wheat bread being only affordable for the well-to-do. Wheat is high in gluten, which is what gives bread its characteristic texture and structure; rye is low in gluten, so bread made solely with rye is very dense indeed, although it may be tasty.

In order to make bread, dough must be fermented by the addition of yeast, either deliberately or serendipitously from the air. The other great fermentation product of grain of course is alcohol, and the world has a goodly selection of these made from rye. What you can do, if you make your own rye bread, is to make an extra batch of extra-nutmeggy flavour, and use it to make beer, as Mrs. Taylor shows:

To feed a Butt of Beer.
Bake a rye loaf, of two-pence price, with a pretty deal of nutmeg in it; then cut it in pieces, and put it in a bag of hops with some wheat, and put them altogether in your cask.
[Mrs.. Mrs. Taylor's family companion; or the whole art of cookery display'd, in the newest and most easy method, being a collection of receipts …. London; circa 1795]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Potage Jubilé.
Quotation for the Day …

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Benjamin Franklin

Hardy’s Ale.

Today, January 11th…

The novelist Thomas Hardy died on this day in 1928, and forty years later a commemorative ale was released in his honour in his home county of Dorset. This is a very special ale. It is matured in sherry casks for nine months, bottle fermented in individually numbered bottles, designed to be laid down for 5-25 years, and - at 12.5% ABV - decidedly not for wimps.

The ale was inspired by a passage in Hardy’s novel “The Trumpet Major”. The action of the novel occurs in the fictional county of Wessex (which is certainly Dorset), and Hardy describes the local beer as:

“……of the most beautiful colour that the eye of an artist in beer could desire; full in body, yet brisk as a volcano; piquant, yet without twang; luminous as an autumn sunset; free from streakiness of taste; but, finally, rather heady. The masses worshipped it, the minor gentry loved it more than wine, and by the most illustrious country families, it was not despised."

There were some anxious moments for beer aficionados around the world when the Eldridge-Pope brewery was sold in 1997 and it looked like the beer would not survive. There was no 2000 vintage, but happily common (and commercial, it seems) sense has returned, and the beer is once again available.

A recipe for the ale is clearly out of the question, and a recipe using it as an ingredient would clearly be sacrilege. Luckily, Dorset is also famous for its apples, and a recent competition was held to determine what would be the signature dish of the county. The local Dorset Apple Cake won, and fine recipes for it can be found on the sites belonging to my fellow-bloggers, Andrew at Spittoon Extra, and Anna at Baking for Britain.

My offering to you is a mid-Victorian apple cake from Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery (1845), and leave it to you to decide if it is actually cake, or tart, or pie.

Apple Cake, or German Tart.
Work together with the fingers ten ounces of butter and a pound of flour, until they resemble fine crumbs of bread; throw in a small pinch of salt, and make them into a firm smooth paste with the yolks of two eggs and a spoonful or two of water. Butter thickly a plain cake tin, or pie mould; roll out the paste thin, place the mould upon it, trim a bit to its exact size, cover the bottom of the mould with this, then cut a band the height of the sides, and press it smoothly round them, joining the edge, which must be moistened with egg or water, to the bottom crust, and fasten upon them to prevent their separation, a narrow and thin band of paste, also moistened. Next, fill the mould nearly from the brim with the following marmalade, which must be quite cold when it is put in. Boil together, over a gentle fire at first, but more quickly afterwards, three pounds of good apples with fourteen ounces of pounded sugar, or of the finest Lisbon, the strained juice of a large lemon, three ounces of fresh butter, and a teaspoonful of pounded cinnamon, or the lightly grated rind of a couple of lemons. When the whole is perfectly smooth and dry, turn it into a pan to cool, and let it be quite cold before it is put into the paste. In early autumn, a larger proportion of sugar may be required, but this can be regulated by the taste. When the mould is filled, roll out the cover, lay it carefully over the marmalade that it may not touch it, and when the cake is securely closed, trim off the superfluous paste, add a little pounded sugar to the parings, spread them out very thin, and cut them into leaves to ornament the top of the cake, round which they may be placed as a sort of wreath*. Bake it for an hour in a moderately brisk oven. Take it from the mould, and should the sides be not sufficiently coloured put it back for a few minutes into the oven upon a baking tin. Lay a paper over the top, when it is of a fine light brown, to prevent its being too deeply coloured. This cake should be served hot.
Paste: flour, 1 lb.; butter, 10 oz.; yolks of eggs, 2; little water. Marmalade: apples, 3 lbs.; sugar, 14 oz. (more if needed); juice of lemon, 1; rinds of lemons, 2; butter, 3 oz.: baked, 1 hour.
*Or, instead of these, fasten on it with a little white of egg, after it is taken from the oven, some ready-baked leaves of almond-paste, either plain or coloured.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Victory Sausages.

A Previous Story for this Day …

The story on this day last year featured the explorer David Livingstone.

Quotation for the Day …

I have fed purely upon ale; I have eat my ale, drank my ale, and I always sleep upon ale. George Farquhar, Irish dramatist (1678-1707?)

Pioneers and Persimmons.

Today, December 15th …

Things were pretty grim for Washington’s forces at Valley Forge in December 1777. The surgeon, Albigence Waldo had his own ‘medical’ problem too, in addition to plain old hunger. Luckily both were solved on this day, with the assistance of some fruit. His diary reads:

‘Quiet. Eat Pessimmens, found myself better for their Lenient Opperation. Went to a house, poor and small, but good food within - eat too much from being so long Abstemious, thro' want of palatables. Mankind are never truly thankfull for the Benefits of life, until they have experienc'd the want of them. The Man who has seen misery knows best how to enjoy good… ’

Much as we might be sympathetic to the relief offered to Waldo’s bowels by the persimmons, it is frustrating for us as curious students of food history that he makes no comment about the rest of the meal. We can be safe in assuming however that the fruit was very ripe indeed, as otherwise they are traumatically astringent and mouth puckering. Captain John Smith of the English settlement in Virginia early in the seventeenth century said:

‘Plums there are of three sorts. The red and white are like our hedge plums; but the other, which they call Putchamins, grows as high as a Palmeta, the fruit is like a Medler, it is first green, then yellow, and red when ripe. If it be not ripe, it will drawe a man’s mouth awrie, with much torment; but when it is ripe, it is delicious as an Apricocke.

Putchamin is the Algonquin Indian word from which we get persimmon, and it appears from a report by Hernando de Soto in 1541 that Indians in the Mississippi region made it into “bread”. The variety of persimmon enjoyed by these intrepid explorers and early settlers is what we now call Diospyros virginiana. Another variety originally from China is Diospyros kaki – or simply kaki – which is inherently sweeter and less astringent, and is certainly the most popular today.

If you want to feel like a pioneer, you could make the suggested variation of this pumpkin bread from Dishes & Beverages Of The Old South by Martha McCulloch-Willia (1913), or the beer, or both!

Pumpkin Bread: (Pioneer.)

Sift a pint of meal, add salt to season fully, then rub through a large cupful of stewed pumpkin, made very smooth. Add half a cup melted lard, then mix with sweet milk to a fairly stiff dough, make pones, and bake crisp. Mashed sweet potato can be used instead of pumpkin, and cracklings, rubbed very fine in place of lard. Folks curious as to older cookery, can even make persimmon bread, using the pulp of ripe persimmons to mix with the meal - but they will need the patience of Job to free the pulp properly from skin and seed.

Persimmon Beer:

The poor relation of champagne - with the advantage that nobody is ever the worse for drinking it. To make it, take full-ripe persimmons, the juicier the better, free them of stalks and calyxes, then mash thoroughly, and add enough wheat bran or middlings to make a stiffish dough. Form the dough into thin, flat cakes, which bake crisp in a slow oven. When cold break them up in a clean barrel, and fill it with filtered rainwater. A bushel of persimmons before mashing will make a barrel of beer. Set the barrel upright, covered with a thin cloth, in a warm, dry place, free of taints. Let stand until the beer works--the persimmon cakes will rise and stand in a foamy mass on top. After three to four weeks, either move the barrel to a cold place, or rack off the beer into bottles or demijohns, tieing down the corks, and keeping the bottled stuff very cool. The more meaty and flavorous the persimmons, the richer will be the beer. Beware of putting in fruit that has not felt the touch of frost, so retains a rough tang. A very little of it will spoil a whole brewing of beer. If the beer is left standing in the barrel a wooden cover should be laid over the cloth, after it is done working. Fermentation can be hastened by putting in with the persimmon cakes a slice of toast dipped in quick yeast. But if the temperature is right, the beer will ferment itself.

Monday’s Story …

Conceited Dishes.

A Previous Story for this Day …

"Sex and Science in the Kitchen"

Quotation for the Day …

having examined

three thousand haiku poems -

two persimmons

Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902)

The food which is also a toy.

Today, December 6th …

What a relief to have a jolly saint for the day – one who is rotund and generous rather than skeletal and ascetic! It is of course St Nicholas’ day – the saint who has been transformed by popular vote into “Santa Claus”, who even in real life was associated with anonymous gift-giving. He was born in the third century AD in what is now Turkey, and is now particularly revered in Northern Europe, where his day marks the beginning of the Christmas season.

He is the only saint who has a special beer brewed and named in his honour. The Swiss lager called “Samichlaus” (Santa Claus) is made on December 6th one year and released on December 6th the next. At an awesome 14% alcohol the beer probably assists in the development of jollity even more than most!

As befits a jolly saint, he is also associated with the most fun food – gingerbread – the food which is also a toy, as it can be made into gingerbread men or gingerbread houses, or even in some areas, gingerbread pigs.

“Gingerbread” did not always mean “cake”. Originally it simply meant preserved ginger, but by the middle ages it was a fudgy sort of concoction, made with honey and breadcrumbs flavoured with a variety of spices, which could be cut or moulded into different shapes. Supposedly Queen Elizabeth I had gingerbread made to represent her favourite courtiers, which is a good enough reason for me to give you a courtly recipe from her era, from “Delights for ladies …” (Hugh Plat, 1602).

To make Gingerbread.

Take three stale manchets [small loaves] and grate them, drie them, and sift them through a fine sieve, then adde unto them one ounce of ginger being beaten, and as much Cinamon, one ounce of liquerice & anniseedes beeing beaten together and searced [sifted], halfe a pound of sugar, then boile all these together in a posnet [3 legged metal pot], with a quart of claret wine till they come to a stiff paste with often stirring of it; and when it is stiffe, molde it on a table and so drie it thin, & pring it in your moldes, dust your moldes with Cinamon, Ginger, and liquerice, being mixed together in fine powder. This is your Gingerbread used at Court, and in all gentlemens houses at festivall times.

Tomorrow … Prayers in the kitchen.