Household Hints, Part 2.

Today’s household hints come from Mrs. Ellis's housekeeping made easy, or, Complete instructor in all branches (Sarah Stickney Ellis; 1843.)  On the surface of it, it is advice that makes me very grateful to have a refrigerator, freezer, airtight storage jars, and plastic food wrap. But in the deep of it, it reminds me that there are times and places and circumstances when there may not be electrical power, and discarding meat fat and bread crusts are a wicked waste, and plastic an environmental disaster.

How and Where to Keep Things.

Crusts and bits of bread should be kept in an earthen pot, closely covered in a dry cool place. Keep fresh lard and suet in tin vessels. Keep salt pork fat in glazed earthen ware. Keep yeast in wood or earthen. Keep preserves and jellies in glass, or china, or stone ware. Keep salt in a dry place. Keep meal in a cool dry place. Keep ice in the cellar, wrapped in flannel. Keep vinegar[r] in wood or glas[s].

Mrs. Ellis also gives the following piece of advice, which made me ashamed to admit how rarely I peer into the depths of my tea-kettle to assess its crustiness.

To Prevent the Formation of a Crust on Tea-Kettles.

Keep an oyster-shell in your tea-kettle and it will prevent the formation of a crust on the inside of it, but attracting the stony particles to itself.

Naturally, Mrs Ellis’ hints include several other ways for avoiding waste, and the recipe for the day, taken from her book, shows you how to renovate bad butter and rancid lard.

Tainted butter.

Some good cooks say that bad butter may be purified in the following manner: Melt and skim it, then put into it a piece of well-toasted bread; in a few minutes the butter will lose its offensive taste and smell; the bread will absorb it all. Slices of potatoe fried in rancid lard will in a great measure absorb the unpleasant taste.

Quotation for the Day.

A lucky person is one who plants pebbles and harvests potatoes.

Greek proverb.

Anchovies anyone?

Today I want to consider one more of the classic compound butters – made with anchovies - before I move on to another topic tomorrow.

People seem to either love or hate anchovies, but I suspect that many of those who admit to hating them have been prejudiced by the cheap, over-salty, pasty-textured versions packed in unidentified oil and stored for far too long. Perhaps their minds might be changed with exposure to some of the admittedly more expensive anchovies which still resemble little fish, not gritty, salty, mush.

The anchovy is ‘a small fish of the Herring family (Engraulis encrasicholus) found on the European coasts, especially in the Mediterranean, where it is extensively caught, and pickled for exportation (Oxford English Dictionary).

I don’t remember seeing anchovy butter in any modern textbooks or restaurant menus, but it certainly used to be a staple in kitchens with a long British heritage. Nowadays virtually the only way most of us meet an anchovy is on a pizza or in a Caesar salad.

An enjoyment of salty, fishy condiments is common to many cultures. The British no doubt got a taste for it thanks to the Roman garum, and this taste was no doubt reinforced by contact with food discovered during their Empire adventures – such as the Asian fish sauce we are familiar with today.

As we found with garlic butter, there are many interpretations of the simple concept. This one clearly shows the influence of the Empire:

Anchovy Butter.
Put anchovy essence into a boat with a little lemon pickle and corach; put melted butter to it.
A Complete System of Cookery, by John Simpson, 1808


This one is in the strictly European classic tradition:

Anchovy Butter Sauce, Sauce au Beurre d'Anchou.
Take three or four anchovies; wash them well; rub them so that no scales may remain; take off the flesh, beat them with the size of an egg of butter, gather it together; hare four skimming spoonfuls of Espagnole; warm the sauce without allowing it to boil; having put in the anchovy butter just at the moment of serving, add the juice of one or two lemons to freshen it; pass it through a search [sieve] and vannez it well; if too thick add a little comommé and serve.
Art of French Cookery, Antoine B. Beauvilliers. 1827

And finally, from that classic cookery book Modern Cookery (1845) by Eliza Acton, another which demonstrates the British love of cayenne pepper – another legacy from the Empire.


Anchovy Butter.
(Excellent.)
Scrape the skin quite clean from a dozen fine mellow anchovies, free the flesh entirely from the bones, and pound it as smooth as possible in a mortar; rub it through the back of a hair-sieve with a wooden spoon; wipe out the mortar, and put back the anchovies with three quarters of a pound of very fresh butter, a small half-saltspoonful of cayenne, and more than twice as much of finely grated, nutmeg, and freshly pounded mace; and beat them together until they are thoroughly blended, if to serve cold at table, mould the butter in small shapes, and turn it out. A little rose pink* (which is sold at the chemists') is sometimes used to give it a fine colour, but it must be sparingly used, or it will impart an unpleasant flavour: it should be well pounded, and very equally mixed with it. For kitchen use,

*I found this inclusion interesting. The OED says of ‘rose pink’ that it is ‘a pinkish pigment made by colouring whiting or chalk with a decoction of Brazil wood or other coloured wood. I have always wondered why some bottled anchovies have that strange pinkish colour. What are they coloured with today, I wonder?


Quotation for the Day.

Anchoua's, the famous meat of Drunkards, and of them that desire to haue their drinke oblectate the pallate.
T. Venner Via Recta 1620

Butter makes it better.

Mackeral à la maître d’hôtel, as we found out in Friday’s post, has been a popular dish for a very long time. ‘The great authority’ mentioned in the post, the famous gourmand Grimod de la Reynière, was born in 1758 (died 1837), and à la maître d’hôtel was already a classic way of serving fish during his writing and eating lifetime. A dish served à la maître d’hôtel traditionally means that it is served with a ‘sauce’ of maître d’hôtel butter, which we discussed in a previous blog post (here). The other ‘compound’ or flavoured butter with a long history, but which is more familiar to most of us is garlic butter, which we have also met in a previous post (here). Compound butters are amongst the standard sauces of classic cuisine, yet we have hardly given them due reverence here to date, so methinks it is time to remedy that situation.

My ‘go to’ book on this topic is Charles Herman Senn’s Book of Sauces (Chicago, 1915). He gives no less than sixteen savoury versions of compound butters. Naturally he includes the very classic Ravigote Butter. In a previous post we learned that the name comes ‘from the French verb ravigoter, meaning to cheer or revive. This ability supposedly comes from the four herbs it traditionally contained - tarragon, chervil, chives, and burnet - which together had the reputation for being restorative.’ There are several ‘sauces’ named this way, including a vinaigrette type and one with a velouté base. Today I give you Senn’s version of the compound butter.

Ravigote, or Green Herb Butter.
Ingredients: 1½ ozs. chervil, 2 ozs. spinach, 1½ ozs. of green chives, 1 oz of tarragon, ½ oz. of parsley, 3 or 4 shallots, 6 ½ ozs. of butter, pepper and salt.
Method: Wash and pick the chervil, spinach, green chives, tarragon, and parsley. Put it in a sauce-pan with water and blanch. Drain well and pound in a mortar. Peel 3 or 4 shallots, chop finely, cook them in a little butter until of a golden color, and put with the herbs; work in 6 ozs. of butter, rub through a fine sieve, add a little pepper and salt, and spinach greening if necessary. The butter is then ready for use.

Amongst the classic butters Senn also gives recipes for several other interesting combinations. This one caught my fancy, because I cant resist anything with an Anglo-Indian twist.

Chutney Butter (Beurre à la Madras)
Ingredients: Four ounces of Mango chutney, 1 tablespoonful of French mustard, 6 to 8 ounces of fresh butter, and lemon juice. Method:
Pound the chutney in a mortar, add the French mustard, add work in the fresh butter, season to taste, and add a few drops of lemon juice. Rub through a hair sieve, place it on the ice, and use as required.

If you scale that recipe down, it is the perfect way to use up that last spoonful of any chutney lurking in the bottom of a jar in the depths of your refrigerator!


Quotation for the Day.

It was the sort of poverty of conception, reproached by some foreigner to English cookery, that we had but one sauce, and that that sauce was melted butter.
W. Windham Speeches Parl. (1812)

Garlic Butter.

You might not think that you do, but you probably do some historical cookery from time to time. Take garlic butter for example. Garlic butter = garlic + butter, Yes? The recipe has remained unchanged for at least a couple of hundred years. Hasn’t it?

Beurre d’Ail was mentioned by the famous French chef Antoine Beauvilliers, in Le Cuisinier Royal (1814). In the English translation of 1837, the recipe read:

Garlic Butter - Sauce au Beurre d’Ail.
Take two large heads of garlic; beat them with the size of an egg of butter; when well beaten rub it through a double hair search [searce or sieve] with a wooden spoon; gather it, and use, either with velouté or with reduced Espagnole.

Popular stereotyping has it that the English have (or used to have) a notorious disgust for the French appetite for garlic, while at the same time being somewhat in jealous awe of their culinary reputation and skills. How would a nineteenth century foodie-cook cope with the paradox of wanting to cook like the French, but without so much garlic?

In French domestic cookery, by an English physician (1825), the recipe asks for two large cloves instead of two large heads of garlic to the egg-sized nut of butter. I really don’t know if this is an error of translation, or was an intentional adaptation to suit English readers – do you?

Beurre d’Ail (Garlic Butter)
Take two large cloves of garlic, pound them in a mortar, and reduce them to a paste, by mixing with a bit of butter about the size of an egg. This garlic butter may be put into any sauces you think proper. Those who like the taste of garlic, season their roast or broiled meats with it.

However good and simple a basic recipe might be (and you cant get much better and simpler than garlic + butter), there is that irresistible human urge to fiddle, isn’t there?

In Charles Ranhofer’s The Epicurean (New York, 1893), an even greater reduction in the pungency of the garlic is effected by a previous blanching, this then being offset to some extent by the heat of the red pepper.

Garlic Butter (Beurre d’Ail)
Blanch one ounce of garlic in plenty of water, drain and pound it well, adding half a pound of butter and seasoning with salt and red pepper.

Personally, I like it made with roasted garlic.


Quotation for the Day.

Garlic used as it should be used is the soul, the divine essence, of cookery. The cook who can employ it successfully will be found to possess the delicacy of perception, the accuracy of judgment, and the dexterity of hand which go to the formation of a great artist.
Mrs. W. G. Waters

Buying Better Butter.

The London Adviser and Guide (1776) by John Trusler, must be one of the earliest guide books published for travellers to that great city. The author included advice on how and where to source the best household goods and services. Our topic of yesterday was butter, and I feel sure that his general advice on sourcing and purchasing a good quality product was the same as would have been offered by his worthy contemporary Hannah Glasse, who provided yesterday’s recipe for roasted butter.

Today we simply go to the refrigerated section of our supermarkets and buy butter already cut and wrapped in such accurate and convenient portion sizes that we don’t need to cut it to make it fit into our butter dishes, or use in many of our favourite recipes. It was a far different exercise in the eighteenth century. Getting half a firkin of butter home instead of half a pound would be quite a logistical issue - and one had to deal with unscrupulous butter-men too.

Here is Mr.Trusler’s advice on the matter:

For fresh butter, Leadenhall market is the best and cheapest in London. The best lump butter, in summer, may be bought for 9d [pence] halfpenny or 10d. a pound; in winger for 11d or 12d. … In winter time, Cambridge and Dorsetshire salt butter arrives fresh in London twice a week, and is within one penny or a halfpenny a pound as dear as fresh; but the best way for a family is to buy half a firkin, which weighs 28lb.of the best Yorkshire butter. This may be bought for 17s. or 18s. the half firkin, less than 8d. a pound, and may be bought agreeable to the palate of the buyer; but when you taste it, taste a piece on the outside, next the tub; if this is good, and free from any rankness, you may be certain the middle is. But the middle shall often be sweet, when the outsides are rank; and butter-men, knowing this, always give a taste out of the middle.

Bad butter-men who were caught were heavily penalised:

Bad butter is not to be mixed with good, on pain of forfeiting double the value. Buyers of butter should set their mark on the tub &c, and if the sellers open the tubs, or put in other butter, after the tubs are thus marked, they are liable to a fine of 10s. for every hundred weight.

So, what delights could the eighteenth century housewife prepare with good fresh butter? How about flavouring it with orange ? This recipe is far more elegant than the early twentieth century version of orange butter I gave you in an earlier post, for serving with your Finnan Haddie.

Orange Butter.
Take new cream two gallons, beat it up to a thickness, then add half a pint of orange-flower water, and as much red wine, and so being become the thicknesse of butter, it has both the colour and smell of an orange.
Closet of Rarities, 1706

Quotation for the Day.
Honest bread is very well - it's the butter that makes the temptation.
Douglas Jerrold (1803-1857)

A Curious Recipe for Butter.

There is avery curious recipe for butter which I have been meaning to post for some time, in the hope that your comments will enlighten me as to how it actually ‘works’. I have never tried to roast butter, but the amazing Hannah Glasse describes the method in her wonderful The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy (1774). The intention seems to be to make a buttered breadcrumb topping for oysters, but I really don’t understand why it would not immediately melt off the spit and drip into the ashes – even over the very low fire she suggests. If buttered crumbs are needed, why not simply melt the butter in a pan and then toss in the breadcrumbs?

To roast a pound of butter.
Lay it in salt and water two or three hours, then spit it, and rub it all over with crumbs of bread, with a little grated nutmeg, lay it to the fire, and as it roasts, baste it with the yolks of two eggs, and then with crumb of bread all the time it is a roasting; but have ready a pint of oysters stewed in their own liquor, and lay the dish under the butter; when the bread has soaked up all the butter, brown the outside, and lay it on your oysters. Your fire must be very low.

I have searched for other recipes for roasted butter, in the hope of gaining some insight, but without success. That is not to say there are not any interesting variations of the idea however. Firstly I give you a version from The Country Housewife’s Family Companion, by William Ellis (1750), which was sliced and eaten as a sort of snack.

TO roast a Pound of Butter or more the Irish Way. Take a pound of butter, season it well with salt, and put it on a wooden spit; place it at a good distance from the fire, let it turn round, and as the butter moistens or begins to drip, drudge it well with fine oatmeal, continuing so to do till there is any moisture ready to drip, then baste it, and it will soon be enough. A certain Irish woman told me this eats very nicely, insomuch that she has done on a Christmas eve twenty-seven different pounds so, at a farmer's house in her country, where it has been kept all the holidays, to accommodate a friend with a slice or two, as we do cakes or minced pies here.

The following recipe, from a century and a half earlier, is quite different and obviously intentionally sweet – but I still don’t understand how, even with the sugar and the repeated dredging with breadcrumbs, it would stay on the spit. Do you? The recipe is from Gervase Markham’s The English Housewife (1615), and he describes how to roast the butter ‘curiously and well’. The word ‘curiously’ had different meanings in the past – it could mean ‘carefully, attentively’, ‘skilfully, exquisitely, cunningly’, and ‘finely, handsomely, beautifully’, and (but perhaps not until after Markham’s time), ‘in a way that excites interest or surprise.’

To roast a pound of butter curiously and well.
Take a pound of sweet butter and beat it stiff with sugar, and the yolks of eggs; then clap it roundwise about a spit, and lay it before a soft fire, and presently dredge it with bread crumbs; then as it warmeth or melteth, so apply it with dredging till the butter be overcomed and no more will melt to fall from it, then roast it brown, and so draw it [from the spit], and serve it out, the dish being as neatly trimmed with sugar as may be.

Quotation for the Day.
Butter is "...the most delicate of foods among barbarous nations, and one which distinguishes the wealthy from the multitude at large."
Pliny

Butter to follow the Bread.

April 29 ...

Butter is the natural corollary to bread. After several - Nay! - Numerous bread stories over the last couple of years, I am finally induced to write about the lovely, pure, vitamin-rich (A and D), all-natural and very tasty yellow grease. Olive Oil may be all very well and equally pure and natural, but you cant make decent pastry and cakes with olive oil. Butter’s only crime is that it is currently politically-nutritionally incorrect. As for its substitute, the awful yellowish grease called m..g….e, – to paraphrase someone whose name escapes me – Who do you trust most, cows or factories?

Margarine has been described as being only one step away from plastic, and I for one believe it. In less enlightened times, entirely chemical-free butter substitutes were available, and they were quite delicious in their own right. Here is one:

Almond Butter Gelly.
Take a pound of almonds blanched, and beat fine seven yolks of eggs, and strain out the amonds, then set a quart of cream, or more, on the fire, and when it boils up put in a little lemon peel, and add the juice of a lemon; put it in a cloth, let it hang a day or two, and put it into dishes.
[Hannah Glasse, Compleat Confectioner, 1742]

Doesn’t that sound delicious?

Butter does not keep well, this is its sole fault. Such is the way of ‘natural’ foodstuffs. In previous times some heroic efforts were made to preserve it, and by way of example I give you “Dr Anderson’s famous recipe for preserving butter”, from an article in A Compendium of Useful Knowledge (1835).

“Best common salt, two parts; saltpetre, one part; sugar, one part – beat them up together, so that they may be completely blended. To every pound, or sixteen ounces of butter, add one ounce of the composition. Mix it well with the mass and close it up for use.” The article continues “Butter prepared in this manner will keep for years, and cannot be distinguished from that recently salted. It should, however, be remarked, that butter thus cured does not taste well, till it has stood a fortnight or three weeks. Dr. Anderson remarks, that he has found by experience, that the above mentioned composition not only preserves the butter more effectually from any taint of rancidity, but makes it also look better, taste sweeter, richer and more marrowy, than if it had been cured with common salt alone.”

That is a pretty amazing recipe – it manages to make margarine sound almost tempting. I like my butter to taste buttery, not marrowy. It is the saltpetre that is the problem, not the sugar. The addition of sugar to butter gives us buttercream icing. Hannah Glasse also gives us the following delightful idea – a recipe that was plagiarised regularly in subsequent cookbooks for the rest of the century.

Fairy butter.
Take the yolks of two hard eggs, beat them in a marble mortar with a large spoonful of orange-flower water, and two spoonfuls of fine sugar beat to powder; beat all to a fine paste, add a like quantity of fresh butter just taken out of the churn, and force it through a fine strainer of little holes into a plate.

Tomorrow’s Story …

More on Fairy Food.

Quotation for the Day …

Honest bread is very well - it's the butter that makes the temptanion. Douglas Jerrold (1803-1857)

Mock Food No. 3

April 16

The very strict dietary rules decreed for hundreds of years by the Christian Church were a very powerful inspiration for fake food. At some times in history almost half the days of the year were ‘fish’ days. There were multiple and overlapping reasons for this. The prevailing idea was that ‘flesh’ food stimulated bodily heat and lust, whereas fish, which came from the water was cooling, including cooling to the passions. The fact that fish do not have an observable sex life enhanced the belief that it was more suitable for times of religious observance when distracting thoughts were best kept to a minimum – and for those in religious orders, that meant all the time.

There were economic and political reasons too: encouraging fish consumption preserved livestock on the land, and encouraging the fishing industry meant the availability of a large cohort of men with sailing experience who could then be sent on voyages of discovery or used to supply the Navy.

The proscriptions led to the invention of some wonderful fish dishes, and some artful substitutes for meat, but the best fake food was invented for Lent. During Lent, all animal products were forbidden. Essentially it was a vegan diet, although the word was not coined until very recent times.

No milk, no butter, no eggs. What to do?

Make almond milk, that was step number one. Huge amounts of it were made in medieval times, and the mind boggles at the work involved in pounding vast quantities of almonds without the assistance of food processors – but kitchen labour was cheap in those days, I suppose.

Eggs? No problem. The following recipe is taken from the Harleian MS (circa 1430). It is difficult to follow, but essentially says to ‘blow’ the eggs (pinhole each end and … blow the contents out) then re-fill it with a ground almond mixture, half of which is coloured yellow with saffron (and cinnamon) and placed in the middle to mimic the yolk.

Eyroun in lentyn [Eggs in Lent].
Take Eyroun, & blow owt þat ys with-ynne atte oþer ende; þan waysshe þe schulle clene in warme Water; þan take gode mylke of Almaundys, & sette it on þe fyre; þan take a fayre canvas, & pore þe mylke þer-on, & lat renne owt þe water; þen take it owt on þe cloþe, & gader it to-gedere with a platere; þen putte sugre y-now þer-to; þan take þe halvyndele, & colour it with Safroun, a lytil, & do þer-to pouder Canelle; þan take & do of þe whyte in the neþer ende of þe schulle, & in þe myddel þe ȝolk, & fylle it vppe with þe whyte; but noȝt to fulle, for goyng ouer; þan sette it in þe fyre & roste it, & serue forth.

Butter? Almonds again to the rescue. The following recipe is from a Neopolitan recipe collection, Cuoco Napoletano, via Terence Scully’s excellent translation.

Butiro Contrafata.
Get a pound and a half of blanched, well ground almonds; get half a beaker of good rosewater and strain the almonds - if that rosewater is not enough, use however much you need so that the amount of almonds can be strained; then, so the almond milk will bind well, get a little starch, a little saffron if you want, and fine sugar, and lay this mixture into a mold as if were butter; like that it is good to eat.
[Scully, Terence. Cuoco Napoletano. The Neapolitan Recipe Collection: A Critical Edition and English Translation. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2000].

Tomorrow’s Story …

Mock Food No. 4

Quotation for the Day …

Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat, and yet thy head hath been beaten as addle as an egg for quarrelling. William Shakespeare (1564-1616), from Romeo and Juliet.

Green butter and the Art of Sandwiches

Today, November 24th …

The word “sandwich” first appeared on this day in 1762, in the journal of the historian Edward Gibbon.

“I dined at the Cocoa Tree ... That respectable body … affords every evening a sight truly English. Twenty or thirty of the first men in the kingdom, supping at little tables upon a bit of cold meat, or a Sandwich”

Tradition has it that the sandwich was “invented” by John Montague, Fourth Earl of Sandwich, to enable him to eat at the gaming table. Another culinary myth I am afraid, perpetuated from a single gossipy mention by a travel writer of the time. Montague was variously Postmaster General, Secretary of State, or First Lord of the Admiralty between 1753 and 1782, busy, and not known to be a gambler.

Montague’s name may have attached to the sandwich, but “bread and meat” has been around as long as there has been bread, and meat – which is long before cutlery and plastic food wrap. It was the original transportable dinner, and at its worst still has that murky association with the desperate search for food on the road.

Anthony Trollope must have suffered, for he wrote:

“The real disgrace of England is the railway sandwich - that whited sepulchre, fair enough outside, but so meagre, poor, and spiritless within, such a thing of shreds and parings, with a dab of food.”

Caterers could do epicurean sandwiches instead of sepulchral if they read “The Gentle Art of Cookery” (1925) by those elegant ladies Leyel and Hartley:

“ … many hostesses who offer their friends indifferently cooked but pretentious lunches could, with far less trouble, gain an epicurean reputation if they were content with the simplicity of wine and sandwiches.

They give 38 variations starting with this one:

Green Butter
Well wash and bone two ounces of anchovies. Boil a large handful of very green parsley, just cover it with water and leave the lid off the pan it boils in. Boil for about five minutes then immediately put the parsley under the cold water tap. Strip the parsley from the stalks and chop it very fine (a parsley cutter costs only a few pence and saves a lot of time). Beat the parsley, the anchovies and a quarter of a pound of butter together into a paste, and pot it. This will keep for a week.

Naturally, they recommend champagne as the proper accompaniment.

Tomorrow … A co-incidence of princesses.