Short, Sweet Story.

I have for you today a fine romantic tale in which the food is as much a star as the two lovers. It has only a tenuous connection with food history, its sole excuse being that I found it in a marvellous book from which I have previously drawn blog material - Morton’s Sixpenny Almanack and Diary published in 1876.

For those wordsmiths amongst you, this story inspires a challenge. The story is a mere 149 words long – but every word begins with the letter ‘S’. Can you do better with another letter of the alphabet (the story must include mention of food)? I promise to try my best to find a historical recipe for any entries submitted. There is no prize except the honour of your clever work being included in a blog post.

Here is the story:

Sam Small sauntered slowly scullery-ward, supperless. Saw Sal Swift sitting silently-shelling small sweetpeas. Says Sam, snappishly, "Some supper, Sally ?" Says Sal, "S'pose so." Says Sam, "Stir smartly, Sal, Sam's starving." Says Sal, smilingly, "Some soup Sam, sauer-kraut, sausages. Say something suits." Says Sam speedily, "Stir some shortcake. Some strawberries, syrup, sugar. Some such sweet stuff suits Sam." Sal stirred self spryly, stepped swiftly, spread sideboard speedily; supper soon stands smoking side Sam. Says Sam, sheepishly, " Soon's supper's swallowed shall say something, Sally." Sal sat stirring sweetmeats. Sam stole several sidelong squints Sally-wards. Sal started, simpered, stammered, spying, " Speak Sam." Says Sam, " Shall select spouse sometime. Sally, s'pose Sam'll suit? Shall Sam stand side Sal?" Sal stole swiftly Sam's side, saying softly, "Sam suits Sally." Sam seized Sal's slender self, stole several sweet smacks speedily, sealing Sal securely. Sal seemed supremely satisfied. So story stops short.

For the recipe for the day I give you Strawberry Shortcake from Jennie June’s American Cookery Book, published in 1866, a decade before our short sweet story for the day.

Strawberry Shortcake.
Mix dough as for soda biscuit; that is to say, one quart of sifted flour, piece of butter size of an egg, two tea-spoonsful of cream of tartar, one of soda, a pinch of salt, and sweet milk to form a soft dough. Put cream of tartar in the flour, and soda in dry also, and, when thoroughly mixed, roll out half an inch thick and bake in a shallow pan fifteen or twenty minutes; have ready two quarts of fresh, fine strawberries; split the cake, place half the strawberries between and cover thickly with white sugar and cream; put the other half on the top and cover in the same way; send to the table immediately. This is the method of making at the finest city restaurants.


Quotation for the Day.

“Even the coeur flottant merveilleux aux fraises, presented with a great flourish, made little impression, for it was no more than what may happen to the simple, honest dish of strawberries and cream once it falls into the hands of a Frenchman.”
Dr. Watson in 'Sherlock Holmes and the Hapsburg Tiara' by Alan Vanneman (2004)

Russian Afternoon Tea Cake?

An ultra-short (but sweet :) ) post today folks, as other things seem to have taken over my life this last few days.

Could the pastry described in the following article from the New York Times of April 8, 1909, be filed under ‘fusion cuisine’ do you think? Does this combination of flavours and layers - suggested to be ‘Russian’ - have any degree of authenticity in that country? It sounds delicious. I am intrigued.

SWEETS FOR AFTERNOON TEA.

A young woman who has been to Russia has introduced on her tea table a little cake that is popular among her friends.
A rich, puff paste is divided into four parts, each rolled as thin as possible. On one sheet is put almond paste, on another pounded peanuts or pistache nuts, on a third currant jelly or orange marmalade. The layers are placed on each other, honey or maple syrup is poured over, and the whole baked in a moderate oven until delicate brown.
When cold the crust is cut in squares or diamonds, and passed on a plate covered with a lace doily.

Quotation for the Day.

Tea pot is on, the cups are waiting, Favorite chairs anticipating, No matter what I have to do, My friend there's always time for you.
Anon (?)

On The Use and Abuse of Condiments.

The title of the following article from the South Australian Advertiser, of September 21, 1858, was irresistible - as was the urge to share it with you. It gives a little insight into some of the prevailing medical opinions and dietary ideas of the time.

On The Use and Abuse of Condiments.

(From the Family Herald)

Of the substances that find a place in the diet of mankind, many are used only to please the palate, the consideration of which belongs to the art of cookery. Apart, however, from epicurean taste, there are some condiments used to facilitate digestion, and to impart principles essential to the healthy condition of the body. These may be divided into five classes: 1. Saline; 2. Acid; 3. Aromatic; 4. Saccharine; 5. Oleaginous.

Saline condiments. – Common salt is the only necessary saline condiment. It is found in every fluid and soft part of the body, and also in some of the hard parts. It exists in large quantities in the blood, and forms a principal ingredient in the gastric juice. When taken in too large quantity, salt causes thirst, irritation of the alimentary canal, and various disorders. When too little is taken, or when it cannot be procured, as is the case at times in regions remote from the sea, putrid fevers may be produced, and worms are liable to be generated in the bowels. Some persons profess to abstain wholly from salt; but there is a certain amount in bread and many articles in common use, sufficient to save them from the evil consequences of their foolish theories. Salt provisions ought not to form too large a proportion of diet, being apt to produce scurvy, the tendency to which is counteracted by lemon juice, when fresh meat or vegetables cannot be procured.

Acid Condiments. – Of all the acids, vinegar is the best, and it is the most commonly used. It is antiseptic or corrective of the tendency to putrescence, and it also assists digestion if taken in moderate quantity. With shell-fish, uncooked vegetables, and oily substances, it forms a wholesome condiment. Vinegar formed part of the rations of the soldiers of ancient Rome, every man carrying a small stone bottle of it to correct the qualities of doubtful water which they might have to drink on their marches. It is sometimes used largely to reduce corpulency, but this effect can only be obtained at the cost of injury to the stomach. The vinegar at inferior oyster-shops and stalls, is commonly adulterated with oil of vitriol, and will be shunned by those who value their health. Tartaric acid, citric acid, lemonade, and other vegetable acids belong to this class of condiments. Moderate use of fruits, although not fully ripe is sometimes wholesome from the acidity. In other constitutions and states of the body, soda and alkalis are required for health.

Aromatic Condiments.- Mustard, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, horse-radish, and the various aromatic condiments are chiefly used in promoting the secretion of the gastric juice. In moderation they are beneficial, but when taken in excess the digestive power is weakened, and it is not easy again to diminish the quantity, as we see in the hot spices which old Indians continue to use after their return to this country. In hot climates, where less exercise are taken, the habit is acquired of artificially stimulating the appetite. With most kinds of vegetables it is advisable to take pepper, especially when the stomach is not strong. Cayenne pepper is very wholesome, but it must be remembered that, as sold in shops, it often contains a large amount of red lead, or other heavy poisonous mineral. Garlic, onions, shallots, and other vegetables of the class may be ranked among aromatic condiments by those who like their flavor, but they contain a sufficient amount of direct nutriment to entitle them to be classed with ordinary diet.

Saccharine Condiments:- Sugar in its great diversity of forms, including coarse and refined sugar from cane, molasses, honey, &c., is a nutritious as well as a palatable condiment. Being a corrective of acidity, it ought generally to be taken with fruit. When taken in excess it causes indigestion, and the large use of sweetmeats by the young is the source of frequent stomach disorders, which are aggravated by the noxious substances often mixed with the sugar in their preparation. Cases of death from the poisonous colouring matter of sweetmeats are not infrequent.

Oleaginous condiments:- Oily substances, moderately used, are of great benefit to the body, and the consumption of them, in the shape of butter, olive oil, ghee, and other forms is large amongst all nations. They are in themselves very nutritious, and they assist the digestion of vegetables and other articles of diet. Butter is the most wholesome of these condiments, but if taken in excess it causes indigestion and bilious disorders, and also leads to the formation of unhealthy fat instead of firm flesh in the body. Rich pastry is amongst the most indigestible of all articles of diet.

Mixed Condiments: - Combinations of condiments of various classes are made sometimes extemporaneously, as for salad, or for preserving in different kinds of seasonings and sauces. Ketchup is formed from fermented juice of mushrooms, to which salt, vinegar, and aromatics are added. Soy, and other Indian sauces, are made from various vegetables, with salt and spices. There are also various kinds of curry powders and other mixed condiments in the solid state. Of all these preparations, while it may be admitted that they help digestion, the chief object is to gratify the palate and to stimulate the appetite. The young ought not to accustom themselves to their use, and the healthy do not require them. Where there is a deficiency of appetite, or feebleness of digestion, they may be used with thankfulness.

As the recipe for the day I give you a spice cake – a variation of the seed cake recipe in The young cook's assistant, and housekeeper's guide; P. Masters, 1841.

A Seed Cake.
Take a little light dough as prepared for rolls. Warm six ounces of butter in a saucepan, and with two pounds of dough mix three eggs, a cupful of milk or cream, six ounces of sugar, and one of carraway seeds. Butter the shape, mix up the cake lightly, and put in enough to half fill it. Set it by the fire to rise to the top of the shape before baking.


A Spice Cake.
Prepare a cake as the seed cake, leaving out the caraway seeds only. Pound and sift some allspice, and put in a large teaspoonful. Finish as in the preceding.


Quotation for the Day.

Condiments are like old friends – highly thought of, but often taken for granted.
Marilyn Kaytor.

Sand Cake.

I am, I hesitate to repeat to those of you freezing in the Northern hemisphere winter, on holiday at the beach here in South East Queensland. We do have the best beaches in the world here, you know.

About the only thing I don’t like about the beach is its amazing ability to infiltrate everything in the immediately adjacent environment - such as my bed and my food. How can this be when I wash it all off before I enter my bedroom and kitchen?

The unfortunate association of sand with food has not put me off sandwiches, but somehow I don’t fancy something called Sand cake, even though the actual recipe sounds very nice.

Sand Cake [so called, the author tells us, from its fine crumbly texture.]

For Sand cake, which will keep in good condition for many days, take half a pound of butter; beat to a cream, when add the yolks of five eggs and half a pound of sugar. Stir for half an hour, and then add gradually half a pound of cornstarch, one sherry-glassful of Jamaica rum, the grated peel of half a lemon, and lastly the stiff snow of three eggs. Bake like the sponge cake*. It is best made a couple of days before cutting it.

* in a moderately hot oven for from half to three quarters of an hour.

Letters to a Young Housekeeper, Marion Taylor, 1892.

Hobo Cake.

On this day in 1898 in Sedan, Kansas, the circus performer Emmett Leo Kelly was born. Kelly was the creator of “Weary Willie”, the famous tragic, tattered clown with the permanently mournful expression. Now, there is a white cake in the American repertoire which is called “Weary Willie Cake”, so naturally I am intrigued by the connection.

Here is today’s mystery. Kelly apparently based his character on the tramps and hobos of the Depression era of the 1920’s. So, how come there are references to the cake in a newspaper cookery column in 1908 (the earliest I have found so far)? Perhaps “Weary Willie” was a pre-existing name for an itinerant beggar? Perhaps one of you with some local knowledge can enlighten us.

The recipe from 1908 contains an obvious error in the amount of flour, so I give you one from 1915, from The Syracuse Herald of April 8, 1915. Note that some recipes for the cake use butter, not Crisco (an unavailable mystery to those of us on the other sides of the two big waters), so we can make this wherever we live.

Weary Willie Cake.
2 large or three small egg whites, Crisco, Milk, 1 ½ cupfuls flour, ¾ cup sugar, 1 ½ teaspoonfuls baking powder.
Break eggs into a standard measuring cup. Fill cup over egg to one-half full with Crisco, then fill with milk. Pour into mixing bowl. Put dry ingredients into sift into first mixture. Beat thoroughly and bake twenty-five to thirty minutes in a slow oven.

Quotation for the Day

If God had intended us to follow recipes, He wouldn't have given us grandmothers.
Linda Henley

Ned’s Bread.

The infamous Australian bushranger, Ned Kelly, was hanged for his misdeeds at the Old Melbourne Jail on this day in 1880. His exact burial place was not known until his remains were found by a construction crew working on what is now the R.M.I.T building, in 1929, after which they were removed to H.M. Prison Pentridge.

Details of Ned’s last meal would have made a marvellous blog entry, but if they have been recorded, I have not been able to find them. It is likely, however, that at least part of it would have been provided by the prison that was his last resting place. Pentridge prison had been built in 1850, and it had state-of-the art kitchens that supplied bread to other Victorian jails. Ned’s capture and execution occurred in the same year as the Melbourne International Exhibition, and a reporter from the The Queanbeyan Age who was in Melbourne for the event wrote a report on Pentridge’s kitchens, which was published two days after Ned’s demise. I give you an extract of the report:

The bread, though coarse in quality, is very sweet and nutritious. The ovens in which it is baked are not directly heated by fire, but the necessary degree of heat is conveyed to the ovens by means of flues or pipes. The advantages secured by this method are the moderation and equal distribution of the heat, and the cleanness of the bread from ashes. The officer in charge told me that beyond supplying bread for the 600 or 700 prisoners confined in Pentridge, more than half-a-ton of bread is daily sent out of these ovens for prison and other establishments in Melbourne.

Meanwhile, I wondered, what fine foods were the ‘better sort’ of folk eating at the time? Cookery columns were not a big feature in Australian newspaper of the time, although an exception seemed to be a Brisbane newspaper called The Queenslander. Five weeks after Ned’s execution, the following recipe appeared in the regular feature called ‘The Housekeeper.’

Recipes.

[CONTRIBUTED BY A LADY CORRESPONDENT.]

SPONGE CAKES

THERE is no cake more easily made than a sponge cake, if you but adhere to the following directions: - The weight of the eggs in sugar, and half their weight in flour. No occasion to use a given number of eggs; you can, if you like, make a cake with only one, provided you add the weight of that egg in white sugar and half its weight in flour. To make a good-sized cake, take eight or nine eggs - eight if all are large, nine if not; they will weigh exactly 1 lb. Separate the yolks from the whites, beat the sugar with the yolks, whisk the whites to a stiff froth (the whole success of your cake depends upon the whites) - they should be beaten until no liquid remains at the bottom of the basin; then add them to the yolks and sugar and stir till all are mixed; throw in the flour, and stir again till everything is blended - there is no occasion to go on beating after that. Pour into a well-buttered cake tin or mould, and bake in a quick oven. If the top gets brown before the cake is cooked wet a piece of brown paper and place over it; twenty minutes ought to bake it if the oven is in order. Many people use baking powder in their sponge cakes; it is quite unnecessary, unless the eggs are stale or you use duck eggs. A sponge cake made with stale eggs, either with or without baking powder, will not be very palatable.

The Queenslander, Brisbane, Dec 18, 1880

Quotation for the Day.

You will never get out of pot or pan anything fundamentally better than what went into it. Cooking is not alchemy; there is no magic in the pot.
Martha McCulloch-Williams, Dishes & Beverages Of The Old South (1913)

A Brief History of Cakes.

In the past, when I have posted a recipe originating from before the mid-nineteenth century for ‘cake’, I have often gotten a query from a reader who is confused either about the use of the word ‘cake’ for what appears in fact to be a yeast-risen sweet bread, or about the nature of ‘saleratus’ or ‘pearl ash.’ I hereby give you a very brief summary of the history of ‘cake’ as we know it.

I understand that the word ‘cake’ comes to us from the Vikings – an ancient and allegedly tough and manly race who we would hardly associate with something fluffy like Angel Food Cake. To the ancient Vikings, and to many generations of their descendants, a ‘cake’ was a slab of bread, baked hard, and by extension came to refer to a hard slab of anything – such as a ‘cake’ of soap.

How did this dense, hard bread develop into the lightest of light sponge cakes? The dough had to be lightened somehow, and the first method was with the use of yeast. Yeast has been used since the time of the ancient Egyptians, who probably discovered it by accident when some dough was accidentally left aside and became contaminated with local wild varieties. The yeast cells produce carbon dioxide as a by-product, and it is this gas that ‘rises’ the dough.

As time progressed, the basic bread dough was enriched with eggs, butter, spices and fruit, and sweetened with sugar for special occasions such as feast days. For many centuries this sweet yeast dough was the only sort of ‘cake’. Here is an example from a cookbook published in 1596 – which specifies the use of ‘Gods good’ (an obsolete word for yeast).

To make fine Cakes
Take fine flowre and good Damaske water you must have no other liqueur but that, then take sweet butter, two or three yolkes of egges and a good quantity of Suger, and a few cloves, and mace, as your Cookes mouth shall serve him, and a lyttle saffron, and a little Gods good about a sponfull if you put in too much they shall arise, cutte them in squares lyke unto trenchers, and pricke them well, and let your oven be well swept and lay them uppon papers and so set them into the oven. Do not burne them if they be three or foure days old they bee the better.

A soft dough can also be ‘risen’ with eggs. The protein from the egg encloses bubbles of air produced by the beating process – which was very arduous in the days before food processors. This recipe from the famous Mrs. Raffald required well over an hour of hand-beating of the mixture.


To make Queen Cakes.
Take a pound of loaf sugar, beat and sift it, a pound of flour well dried, a pound of butter, eight eggs, half a pound of currants washed and picked, grate a nutmeg, the same quantity of mace and cinnamon. Work your butter to a cream, then put in your sugar, beat the whites of your eggs near half an hour, mix them with your sugar and butter. Then beat your yolks near half an hour and put them to your butter, beat them exceedingly well together. Then put in your flour, spices, and currants. When it is read for the oven, bake them in tins and dust a little sugar over them.
The Experienced English Housekeeper. Elizabeth Raffald. 1769

Sometime near the end of the eighteenth century, in America, baking soda and powders were developed. Sodium and potassium bicarbonates (baking soda, ‘saleratus’, and pearl-ash or potash) had been known about for a long time - they were used in soap-making, in curing hams, for softening the tough skins of beans, and for preserving the colour of green leafy vegetables. These alkaline agents produce carbon dioxide gas when they are mixed with an acid (such as in buttermilk) – and someone obviously got the idea that the gas might lighten a cake mixture. Here is a nice example:

Shelah, or Quick Loaf Cake.
Melt half a pound of butter - when cool, work it into a pound and a half of raised dough. Beat four eggs with three-quarters of a pound of rolled sugar, mix it with the dough, together with a wine glass of wine, or brandy, a tea-spoonful of cinnamon, and a grated nutmeg. Dissolve a tea-spoonfu1 of saleratus in a small tea-cup of milk, strain it on to the dough, work the whole well together for a quarter of an hour, then add a pound of seeded raisins, and put it into cake pans. Let them remain twenty minutes before setting them in the oven.
The American Housewife … An Experienced Lady, 1841

Baking powder came about when someone thought to pre-add the acidic component to the soda, in a form that was released in contact with the ‘wet’ ingredients. It was a good advance, but the mixture had to be got into the oven quickly before the gas-production ceased. Finally, in 1889 double-acting baking powder was invented, with a slower-acting acid which hardly worked at all at normal temperatures, but was much quicker in the higher temperature of the oven.

Of course, the several methods of leavening remained in use simultaneously – and the yeast from the manufacture of ale was always popular. Here is an early nineteenth century recipe that uses ale-yeast as well as eggs.


Plum Cake.
Flour dried, and currants washed and picked, four pounds; sugar pounded and sifted, one pound and a half; six orange, lemon, and citron peels, cut in slices; mix these.
Beat ten eggs, yolks and whites separately; then melt a pound and a half of butter in a pint of cream; when lukewarm, put it to half a pint of ale-yeast, near half a pint of sweet wine, and the eggs; then strain the liquid to the dry ingredients, beat them well, and add of cloves, mace, cinnamon, and nutmeg, half an ounce each. Butter
the pan, and put it into a quick oven. Three hours will bake it.
A New System of Domestic Cookery … By A Lady. New York, 1814

The final recipe I give you today uses another type of baking powder that I have not mentioned: bakers ammonia, also called sal volatile, or sal ammonia – the main ingredient in smelling salts. I leave you with the knowledge that in really old times, sal volatile used to be made from stale urine.

Pound Cake.
Take one pound of flour toasted, one pound of grated loaf sugar, and one pound of butter beat to a cream ; separate one dozen of eggs, the yolks from the whites, beat up the yolks with one half of the sugar, the other half with butter ; then put them together
and beat well, you cannot beat it too much ; put in the fourth part of a tea-spoonful of sal volatile; have the whites beat to a snow upon two dinner plates ; they should be as thick as to carry the fork; sift in the flour amongst the yolks and sugar, with a little of the whites ; mix it lightly, do not stir it much, and when the flour is all in, add the whites, and an ounce of carraway seeds ; have your pan or hoop buttered and ready. It will take one hour and three quarters in a moderate oven.
Practice of Cookery and Pastry,... Mrs I Williamson. Edinburgh. 1854

Quotation for the Day.

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we're here we should dance.
Anon.

Fragrant Food.

After pasties and pulpatoons of multiple ingredients and complicated methods, I think it is time for something lighter and more fragrant, don’t you? The decision allows me to indulge myself in something rose-scented. Regular readers will be aware of my weakness for rose-flavoured Turkish Delight. Recently I was delighted to come across a rose-flavoured (non-alcoholic) beverage that is like drinking liquid Turkish Delight, and which for sheer rosiness surpasses both the rose & vanilla tea, and the pure red rosebud tea that have been recent indulgences of mine.

Rosewater was used in Europe (in the kitchens of the rich) from at least medieval times. It was included in all manner of dishes, both sweet and savoury (although as we know, this distinction was not made back then.) I don’t know of any book detailing the definitive history of the use of rosewater in Europe, so someone surely ought to write it? In the meanwhile, I must resort to sweeping generalisations, such as suggesting that it was imported from the exotic east and not home-made, and that the use of it began to decline when vanilla became more accessible in the nineteenth century. Certainly it essentially disappeared from English cookery, even from baked goods, by the end of the century. A sad loss, which makes one think that the good-old days did indeed have some good aspects to them.

There are many recipes in this blog which include rosewater, but today I give you one of my particular favourites.

To make a cake the way of the royal princess, the Lady Elizabeth, daughter to King Charles the First.

Take halfe a peck of Flowre, half a pint of Rosewater, a pint of Ale yest, a pinte of cream, boyle it, a pound and a half of Butter, six Egges (leave out the whites), four pounds of Currants, one half pound of Sugar, one Nutmeg, and a little salt, work it very well, and let it stand half an hour by the fire, and then work it again, and then make it up, and let it stand an hour and a half in the Oven; let not your Oven be too hot.
The Queen’s Closet Opened, by W.M (1655)


Quotation for the Day.

How many flowers there are which only serve to produce essences, which could have been made into savory dishes.
Charles Pierre Monselet (1825-1888)

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

Medicinal Chocolate.

Yesterday’s ‘medical’ source for an ice-cream sundae recipe reminded me of just how many ‘new’ ingredients have been used first for their medicinal properties. Rhubarb, which featured in a post a few weeks ago, is one such example. The tomato too, when it first came from the New World was suspected as a food, but got an early step up the familiarity ladder on the basis of its supposed therapeutic purposes.

Chocolate (also from the New World) met a different reception from the tomato and the potato when it was introduced to Europe. Not surprisingly, it was instantly embraced by the aristocracy for the sheer deliciousness of it – and for the same reason instantly suspected by the clergy, on the principle that if it was delicious, it must be sinful. A happy solution for all was the determination that chocolate had medicinal qualities, and was therefore acceptable.

Various therapeutic benefits were attributed to chocolate, and it really took off as a medicine in the seventeenth century. The opinion quoted below highlights how much our attitudes to ‘preserving health’ have changed since that time – when being fat was a health advantage!

The confection made of Cacao called Chocolate or Chocoletto which may be had in diverse places in London, at reasonable rates, is of wonderful efficacy for the procreation of children … for it not only vehemently incites to Venus, but causes conception in women . . . and besides that it preserves health, for it makes such as take it often to become fat and corpulent, fair and amiable.

William Coles, Adam in Eden (1657)

Chocolate was useful also as a vehicle for other medications – and a significant step better than ‘a spoonful of sugar’ to make the medicine go down, methinks. One did not need a medical degree to publish medical advice in the seventeenth century, so there was no barrier to the famous scientist Robert Boyle (1627-1691) doing just that. Here is one of the remedies from his little book Medicinal Experiments, or, a collection of choice and safe remedies for the most part simple and easily prepared.

An Excellent Remedy for the Gonorrhoea.
Take of choice Amber [ambergris], and of Mastich, both reduc’d to very fine Pouder, and very well mixt, equal parts, and of this Mixture give half a Dram at a time in proper Vehicle, or in a draught of Chocolate. Continue this for three Weeks, or a Month, if need require, purging the day before you begin to take it, and once every Week afterwards, especially when you leave off the use of the Pouder.

Chocolate still had a firm place in the therapeutic armamentarium as the nineteenth century advanced. The first known recipe pamphlet issued by Walter Baker & Co. in the USA was entitled An Account of the Manufacture and Use of Cocoa and Chocolate and was published in 1876. It was followed by Chocolate Receipts, in about 1880. The medical and nutritional value of chocolate was heavily promoted by the company, with the usual expert testimonials for support. A German physician called Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland is quoted as saying “I recommend good chocolate to nervous, excitable persons; also to the weak, debilitated and infirm; to children and women. I have obtained excellent results from it in many cases of chronic diseases of the digestive organs.”

Modern medicine is catching up with this old idea too, as there seems to be good evidence for the health benefits of small amounts of dark chocolate in the diet.

For today’s recipe, I give you a treat from a cookery book heavily biased towards healthy food. It is Miss Beecher's Housekeeper and Healthkeeper: containing five hundred recipes for economical and healthful cooking; also, many directions for securing health and happiness ... published in New York in 1873. Miss Beecher’s Chocolate Cake is a variation of the basic recipe for One, Two, Three, Four Cake.


One, Two, Three, Four Cake.
Take one cup of butter (half a cup is better), two cups of sugar, three cups of flour, and four eggs. Mix butter, sugar, and yolks. Then add the flour very thoroughly, and lastly the whites in a stiff froth. Bake immediately, and the cake will be light, with nothing added. But it is equally light to omit the eggs and work two tea-spoonfuls of cream tartar into the flour, athen mix well first the butter and sugar, and then the flour. When ready to bake, mix very thoroughly and quickly a tea-spoonful of soda, or a bit of sal volatile dissolved in a cup of warm (not hot) water. This makes two loaves.

Chocolate Cake.
Bake the above in thin layers, only a little thicker than carpeting. When nearly cool, spread over the cake a paste made of equal parts of scraped chocolate and sugar wet with water. Place the cake in layers one over another, frost the top, and then cut in oblong pieces for the cake-basket.

Quotation for the Day.

Make a list of important things to do today. At the top of your list, put 'eat chocolate.' Now, you'll get at least one thing done today.
Gina Hayes.

Portugal Cakes.

On this day in 1739, the celebrated “pastry-master”, cookery teacher and cookbook writer Edward Kidder died at the age of seventy-three. In spite of the centuries between us, I am quite fond of Edward. His book Receipts of Pastry for the Use of his Scholars published in London in about 1720) was one of the first historical cookery books that I looked at in any detail – indeed I laboriously transcribed the text from the scanned images of the pages of the version (apparently laboriously copied by a student) held at the University of Pennsylvania. You can still read my transcript here.


Kidder ran two schools in London, and he also gave private lessons in pastry-making and cookery to ladies in their own homes. It is said that over six thousand ladies benefitted from his instruction in cookery – which presumably meant that six thousand entire families were made happier.

If Mr. Kidder personally taught all lessons at his school, then he must have been a very busy man: the frontispiece of one edition of his book reads:

“To all young ladies, at Edward Kidder’s pastry-school in Little Lincoln’s Inn Fields, are taught all sorts of pastry and cookery, Dutch hollow-works, and butter-works, on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, in the afternoon; and on the same days in the morning, at his school in Norris-Street, in St James’s Haymarket; and at his school in St. Martin’s le Grand, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, in the afternoon.”

I have no idea what “Dutch hollow-works” are – so methinks I have another topic for the near future.

For the recipe of the day, I give you Edward Kidder’s Portugall Cakes, from the transcription of the student copy. ‘Portugal’ (or portyngalle) was another term for oranges in England from at least the sixteenth century, so perhaps these cakes were so called because of their golden colour? They were also sometimes called Heart Cakes, which is why the instructions call for a ‘hart pan’ in the recipe below.

Portugall Cakes
Put a pd of fine sugar & a pd of fresh butter 5 eggs & a little beaten mace into a flatt pan beat it up wth yor hands till tis very leight & looks curdling yn put thereto a pd of flower ½ a pd of currants very clean pickt &dryd beat yn together fill yor hart pan & bake ym in a slack oven
You may make seed cakes ye same way only put carraway seeds instead of currants

Quotation for the Day.

Eat butter first, and eat it last, and live till a hundred years be past.
Old Dutch proverb

Easter Cakes.

It is holiday time for me for the next nine days, and very glad I am of it too. Stories will still magically pop up at the appointed time however, thanks to a mad rush of writing before departure and especially to modern technology, which allows them to be pre-posted.

Many things go by the name of ‘Easter Cake’, and today I give you a small sample and wish you bon choix!

Easter Cake.
Take 1 lb butter to 2 lbs of fine flour, and mix thoroughly well together. Add 1 lb of sifted sugar, 1 lb of currants, and beat in a separate basic eight eggs to a froth. Strain some saffron (about four pennyworth) – two or three times into the basin, and add one shilling’s worth of brandy. Beat all well together, and pour into the other basin containing the flour. If it is too moist, add a little more flour; if the effect is contrary, put either another egg or a little more brandy. The dough is then set out in any sized cakes required on a baking sheet, but they should be about a couple of inches thick, and when baked present a light brown appearance. The quantity of saffron can be varied according to taste, some people liking the cakes more highly flavoured than others.
[The Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle (Portsmouth, England), March 7, 1891]

Easter Cakes.
Scotch shortbread is frequently substituted for Easter cake. I give a recipe for one kind of Easter Cake.
1 ½ lb flour, ½ lb sugar, ⅓ lb butter, ½ lb currants, 1 ½ oz candied peel sliced, powdered cinnamon to taste, the yolks of four and whites of three eggs, a glass of brandy, and half a teaspoon of sal volatile. Mix the dry ingredients first, well beat the eggs, add them, and thoroughly mix. Roll out to any thickness, make into round cakes, and bake in a quick oven.
[Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales), Saturday, April 17, 1897]

Child’s Easter Cake.
2 cups sugar.
1 cup butter.
3 cups flour.
2 teaspoons baking powder.
Whites of seven eggs beaten to a stiff froth with a pinch of salt.
Cream butter and sugar. Add flour and baking powder, then milk. Flavor with extract of almond. Fold in eggs last. Slow oven for one hour. When cool, cover with white icing. Ornament center with candy rabbit and row of pink, blue, and brown sugar eggs around edge.
[Washington Post, Jan. 13, 1929]

Quotation for the Day.

If you are ever at a loss to support a flagging conversation, introduce the subject of eating.
Leigh Hunt

Pikelets Anyone?

Everyone knows about the Aussie food icons of damper, lamingtons, pavlova, and pie-floaters, but there is another favourite snack in this wide brown land, and today I want to tell you about it.
It is the pikelet. You probably already know it, but by some other local name.


Pikelets came to my mind recently (the part of my mind that told me that I have not yet written about them) when I went in pursuit of something called a bara-picklet. I thought I had found an old food waiting to be rediscovered. Instead I found an old name and a nice example of recipe evolution.

According to the Dictionarium Rusticum, Urbanicum, & Botanicum (1726), bara-picklet is ‘Bread made of fine Flour, and kneaded up with Barm [yeast], which makes it very light and spungy. Its Form is round, about an Hand’s breadth.’ A later dictionary - an updated version of the above, it seems, with the far less interesting name of The Universal Etymological Dictionary (1773) describes bara-picklet as ‘Welsh. Cakes made of a fine Flower [flour] kneaded with yeast. So, we have a change of idea from ‘bread’ to ‘cake’, but still yeast-raised (there being no baking powder yet for half a century or so.)

Most sources do give the picklet a Welsh heritage, the name coming from bara, the Welsh word for bread, and usually referring to a type of ‘bun’ or griddle bread cooked on a hot plate, not in an oven. As always however, regional names and recipe variations abound. In several sources it is referred to as ‘a sort of muffin’ or a ‘glazy kind of muffin.’ In some references it is associated with London, in others with Midland counties of England, and in others with the North of the country. Sometimes it is a ‘pyflet’, and occasionally there is a reference to a ‘picklet (or pyflet) stone’ on which they are cooked.

The OED calls the pikelet ‘a thin kind of crumpet (also) a type of small round teacake made of fine flour; a muffin’, which is not a very definitive definition – which fits the variety of styles of pikelet. The modern variety is made with modern powder leavening agents rather than yeast, of course, it being far quicker and easier to make them this way – and indeed they do lend themselves jolly nicely to a spontaneous treat or unexpected visitors. Pikelets then fall somewhere on the multiple cusps between ‘English’ muffins, crumpets, griddle cakes and pancakes. In Australia they are usually eaten as a sweet snack for morning or afternoon tea, spread with jam and dolloped with cream.

I give you two versions of the pikelet today. Firstly, an early yeast-raised griddle ‘bread’ from the 1786 edition of Elizabeth Raffald’s The Experienced English Housekeeper.

To Make Picklets.
Take three pounds of flour, make a hole in the middle with your hand, then mix two spoonfuls of barm, with as much milk and a little salt as will make it into a light paste; pour your milk and barm into the middle of your flour and stir a little of your flour into it, then let it stand all night, and the next morning work all the flour into the barm, and beat it well for quarter of an hour, then let it stand an hour; after that take it out with a large spoon, and lay it on a board well dusted with flour, and dredge flour over them; pat it with your hand, and bake them upon your bake-stone.

And a modern quicky version from The Sydney Morning Herald of September 10, 1953.

Golden Pikelets.
Every young housewife dreams of making perfect pikelets. Here’s how to start, but remember that practice will help too.
Pikelets may be made with a special iron griddle iron, a very heavy quality frying pan, or directly on the solid type hotplate of an electric range.
The iron pan, or hot plate, must be heated first, greased quickly with a little white vegetable shortening of butter. The heat of the iron may be tested by cooking a couple of pikelets.
Ingredients.
1 large or 2 small eggs.
2 level tbsps. Sugar
1 level dstspn. golden syrup or honey
½ to ¾ cup of milk.
1 heaped cup S.R. flour
Good pinch salt.
Method.
Beat eggs with sugar until fluffy, add golden syrup, then ½ cup of the milk. Sift in flour, salt,mix well with wooden spoon until smooth. If necessary add remaining ¼ cup of milk. Allow to stand one hour if possible. Drop in spoonfuls on heated, greased iron, reduce heat, when surface begins to bubble, turn to cook other side. Keep hot between two plates on top of saucepan of hot water.

Quotation for the Day.

The laziest man I ever met put popcorn in his pancakes so they would turn over by themselves.
W.C.Fields.

A Perfumed Cake.

After this week’s gastronomical traumas of ersatz coffee and rhubarb with ketchup, I feel that perhaps we need something comforting today. From a new find - One Hundred and One Layer Cakes, by May E Southworth, (San Francisco and New York, 1907) - I give you an exceedingly fragrant, and very girly cake.


Violet [Layer Cake]
Cream a half-cupful of butter; add a cupful of sugar and cream again. Sift together a teaspoonful of baking-powder, one and a half cupfuls of flour and a quarter of a teaspoonful of salt; add this to the butter and sugar with a half-cupful of milk and the beaten whites of four eggs. Flavor with a teaspoonful of violet-extract and four drops of vanilla.
Filling.
Whip a pint of cream dry and stiff; add the beaten whites of three eggs and a half-cupful of confectioner’s sugar. Flavor with a teaspoonful of crème yvette cordial and a half-teaspoonful of vanilla. Color violet with coloring paste. Put this between the two layers and make a plain icing for the top flavored with crème yvette. Decorate with crystallized violets, making stems of shredded angelica.

And to gild the lily, what better than some violet tea?


Violet Tea.
This is a soothing beverage for persons suffering from bronchitis and similar affections. Put a teaspoonful of dried violets in a jar, and pour upon them half a pint of boiling water. Let them infuse for five minutes, strain the liquor, sweeten with honey, and it will be fit for use.
Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery, c.1870’s

Quotation for the Day.

I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.
Henry David Thoreau.

Luncheon, again.

I was going to skip luncheon today (as a topic, not as a meal – do you think I am crazy?), because I have talked about it before in previous posts (including the origin of the word, and good lunchtime manners, and what to serve at a Shooting Lunch). I came across some enlightening comments, however, which suit our theme of the week perfectly. They are from a lovely book on etiquette called Etiquette of Good Society (1893), by Lady Gertrude Elizabeth Campbell.


Lady Campbell expounds rather disapprovingly, but resignedly, to the new fashion of ‘luncheon’, proving to us that although we have ‘lost’ some meals (such as ‘dewbit’), we have also gained others. She writes:

“Luncheon has been defined as an insult to one's breakfast and an outrage to one's dinner. It is clearly an interpolation of no very ancient date. Three meals a day - breakfast, dinner, and supper - were formerly considered as amply sufficient; but now two more have added themselves to the list, and shouldered out to a great extent the old-fashioned after-dinner tea and supper. Luncheonis one of these extra " feeds " which has squeezed itself firmly in, and now the half-hour devoted to this meal is considered indispensable. We leave it to the decision of the medical community whether long abstinence or the too frequent supplying of the inner man is the most deleteriousto health. Luncheons are fairly established in most households. Sometimes they answer the purpose of dinner, and then they require to be more substantial, but still should only exhibit "an elegant sufficiency.”

Lady Campbell goes on to discuss the informal nature of an ordinary lunch – noting that informality is one thing, but ‘An elegant disorder is perfectly distinct from a vulgar confusion.’ A fine distinction, methinks, and I am grateful to Lady C for the statement, which I will apply henceforth to a number of areas of my life.

For the recipe for the day – for your next elegantly sufficient and elegantly disordered luncheon, I have chosen a dish from a cookbook written by another aristocrat – Lady Clark of Tillypronie. Her extensive recipe collection was published in 1909, after her death, but the recipes themselves clearly date back a long way.

Luncheon Cake. No. 2 (Small and very light)
1 lb. flour, ¼ lb. butter, same weight sugar, 3 eggs beaten together ready in a basin, 1 oz. German yeast dissolved n ¼ pt. warm milk and strained, 2 oz. sultana raisins, 2 oz. citron peel.
First rub the butter into the flour, next stir in the yeast and milk; add the fruit, then the 3 eggs; mix all together and pour into the tin, which it should about half fill; let it rise to top of tin before baking in a slack oven. It will take1 to 1 ¼ hours.

Quotation for the Day.

The word lunch is adopted in that ‘glass of fashion’, Almacks, and luncheon is avoided as unsuitable to the polished society there exhibited.
H.Best, Pers. & Lit. Mem. 1829.

The Good Old Days.

I read, somewhere, quite a while back, that twenty-five years ago the average American family went on a family picnic five times a year, but in recent times the frequency is less than once a year. I suspect that a similar situation would apply in Britain, Australia, and many other developed countries. No doubt a number of factors are responsible. Our 24/7 society means that the entire family are not likely to have all the weekend off simultaneously – and even if we do, we are often spread geographically over too wide a segment of the country to make get-togethers an easy, spontaneous thing to arrange. If time and geography are not a problem – our attitude (and priorities?) are – when we have time to spare, we tend to retreat to our individual rooms to watch our personal televisions or play with our virtual computer friends.

Bring back the family picnic, I say. Not the sort of grand picnic event requiring “a bill of fare for forty persons” such as Mrs. Beeton recommended in 1861 (which included ‘2 cold cabinet puddings in moulds’), or the sort that end in an embarrassing assassination attempt such as happened at the public picnic for Prince Alfred when he visited Melbourne in 1867, but a picnic in the style of the elegant, genteel Edwardian ‘motoring excursion’ picnic that we enjoyed in a previous blog post.

Should you be so inclined as to organise a family picnic, there are some lovely catering ideas in a little book called For Luncheon and Supper Guests, by Alice Bradley (Boston, 1923). Alice notes in her introduction that many of the dishes recommended as ‘Sunday Night Suppers’ ‘will be found desirable for afternoon teas or evening spreads, and for use in tea and luncheon rooms, and for automobile picnics.’ She goes on to say:


Automobile Picnics.
For picnics the beverages and hot dishes may be prepared at home and carried in thermos food jars. The cold dishes may be packed in a small portable refrigerator. The biscuits, sandwiches, cakes, and cookies should be carefully wrapped in wax paper and packed in boxes. Ice creams may be taken in the freezer. Hot sandwiches and bacon may be cooked over the coals or on a portable oil or alcohol stove. In some menus it may be desirable to omit or modify a few of the dishes, if food is to be carried several miles.

Because I know that what most of you like best are retro cake recipes, here is my choice for today, from our book of the day. A lovely cake, quite suitable for a picnic, or luncheon or supper – or breakfast for that matter.


Cream Caramel Layer Cake
Beat until thick
¾ cup heavy cream
1 cup sugar and
¼ cup water. Add
1 cup bread flour sifted with
2 teaspoons baking powder and
¼ teaspoon salt. Add
3 egg yolks and
1 whole egg, well beaten, and
2 tablespoons chocolate caramel syrup.
Bake 20 minutes at 400 degrees F in 2 layer cake pans 7 inches square, and put together with Chocolate Caramel Frosting between and on top.


Chocolate Caramel Syrup
Melt
2 squares bitter chocolate over hot water. In a saucepan put
¾ cup sugar and
¼ cup water, and cook until it forms a dark brown syrup. Add
½ cup boiling water and cook until thick. Add slowly to the melted chocolate and stir until smooth.


Chocolate Caramel Frosting
For frosting boil
Chocolate caramel syrup remaining from cake and cook to soft-ball stage. Beat
2 egg whites until stiff and continue beating while slowly adding the syrup. Then add, a little at a
time, enough sifted confectioners' sugar to make of right consistency to spread.

Quotation for the Day
If the rain spoils our picnic, but saves a farmer’s crop, who are we to say it shouldn’t rain?
Tom Barrett.

Sweet fun with Potatoes.

Methinks I have neglected the potato lately, which is not laudable, given that this blog has a special archive called Fun With Potatoes.

Once, long ago, I made coconut ice with potatoes: it was not memorable and has never been repeated. Nevertheless, it demonstrated the great adaptability of the potato to sweet as well as savoury dishes – thanks to all that high-carb (Shhh!!) starch.

Potatoes were adapted for use in bread in Europe in the eighteenth century, the starch eking out the more expensive wheat flour. The result was nutritionally very acceptable, but rather more dense and damp than pure wheat bread – and very suitable, according to the mores of the time, for feeding the poor. Taking advantage of the starch in potatoes in sweet baked dishes (apart from in pies) came later. By the mid-nineteenth century, the one-time chef to Queen Victoria, Charles Elmé Francatelli included the following very elegant recipes in his book The Modern Cook (1846)

POTATO CAKE
Bake eighteen large York potatoes, and when done, rub their pulp through a wire sieve; put this into a large basin, add four ounces of butter, eight ounces of sifted sugar, a spoonful of pounded vanilla, a gill of cream, the yolks of six eggs and the whipped whites of two, and a little salt; work the whole well together, and then place it in a mould previously spread with butter, and strewn with bread crumbs; bake the cake for about an hour, and when done, dish it up with a fruit sauce poured round the base, made in the following manner:-
Pick one pound of either currants, raspberries, cherries, damsons, strawberries, or apricots; place them in a stewpan with eight ounces of sifted sugar and half a gill of water; boil the whole down to the consistency of a thick pureé, and then rub it through a sieve or tammy.


POTATO FLOUR SOUFFLE
Ingredients: Six ounces of potato flour, ten ounce of sugar, four ounces of butter one pint of cream or milk, twelve eggs, two sticks of vanilla, and a little salt. Put the milk or cream to boil, then throw in the vanilla; cover the stew pan with its lid and allow the infusion to stand for about half an hour in order to extract the flavour of the vanilla. Next put the potato flour, the sugar, butter, salt, and one egg into a stewpan, and mix the whole well together; then add the milk and the vanilla, and stir the preparation on the stove fire until it boils, when it must be worked with the spoon to make it perfectly smooth; after adding the yolks of ten eggs, set it aside while the ten whites are being whipped quite firm, and then add these in with the soufflé batter pour the whole lightly into a soufflé dish, having a broad band of buttered cartridge paper round the outside, and then set it in the oven to bake: this will take about three quarters of an hour. When the soufflé is done, place it (on its baking sheet) upon another baking sheet covered with hot embers of charcoal, and let it be thus carried to the dining room door; just before dishing it up remove the bands of paper, shake some sifted sugar over the top, place it in the soufflé dish and serve immediately.
Note: Soufflés of flour, ground rice, semolina, arrow- root, tapioca, tous les mois (a kind of potato flour, ) should all be prepared as the above substituting either of these for the potato flour. Soufflés may be flavoured with orange, lemon, cinnamon, orange-flowers ,or with any kind of essence or liqueur

Quotation for the Day.

What I'm doing here is seeking to offer protection from life, solely through the means of potato, butter and cream... there are times when only mashed potato will do.
Nigella Lawson.

Cakes and Ale.

Today I continue the theme for the week, and give you the January 5 entry from Books and My Food (1904) by Elisabeth Luther Cary. On this day Cary takes as her inspiration the idea of ‘cakes and ale’, via the well-known quotation (given below) from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

The phrase ‘cakes and ale’ as a metaphor for earthly pleasures is generally attributed to Shakespeare, but it is in fact a great deal older. It appears several times in a version of the ancient Egyptian ‘Book of the Dead’ – a funerary text (actually a roll of papyrus) containing instructions and advice to help the deceased person negotiate the passing into the afterlife.The following extracts are taken from the version known as ‘The Papyrus of Ani’ (written in about 1240 BC), as translated by E.A.Wallis Budge in 1913.

Let there be given unto me bread-cakes in the House of Refreshing, and sepulchral offerings of cakes and ale, and propitiatory offerings in Anu, and a permanent homestead in Sekhet-Aaru, with wheat and barley therein-to the Double of the Osiris, the scribe Ani.

Hail, O ye who give cakes and ale to perfect souls in the House of Osiris, give ye cakes and ale twice each day (i.e., in the morning and in the evening) to the soul of

the Osiris Ani, …..

Cakes and ale and joints of meat from those which are on the altar of Ra shall be given to him [the deceased person], and his homestead shall be among the fields of the Field of Reeds, and wheat and barley shall be given unto him therein, and he shall flourish there even as he flourished upon earth.

And he [the deceased] shall present as offerings oxen, and feathered fowl [geese], and incense, and cakes and ale, and garden herbs.

The following quote suggests its modern metaphorical usage:

… says the deceased to the god Thoth: “But let the state of the spirits be given unto me instead of water, and air, and the satisfying of the longings of love, and let quietness of heart be given unto me instead of cakes and ale.”

And here is Cary’s entry, and recipe, for today, January 5th.

“Dost think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?”

SHAKESPEARE (“Twelfth Night”)

For good little nut-cakes cream half a cupful of butter and a cup and a half of sugar; add the yolks of two eggs and beat all together. Sift two cupfuls of flour into which has been stirred a teaspoonful and a half of baking powder. Add to the butter, sugar, and eggs a cupful of milk, and then the flour. At the last stir in a cupful of chopped pecan or hickory nuts and fold in lightly the whites of the eggs, beaten to a stiff froth. Bake in patty pan[s], ice and sprinkle chopped nuts thickly over the icing.

Postscript:
Today is also the 11th day of Christmas, which you can read about HERE.



Quotation for the Day.

Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear.
Aesop’s Fables.

A Walking Cake.

I came across a rather intriguing advertisement recently, in an American newspaper from 1930 (the Lebanon Daily News). The Lebanon Hardware Company were holding a very interesting cooking demonstration:

GREAT MAJESTIC WALKING CAKE

TUESDAY EVENING 8P.M.

Do not fail to witness this UNUSUAL EVENT. The cake is 17x17 inches, 5 layers high - Baked right here in our store, in a Majestic operated with a paper smoke pipe. Ten ladies will stand on this monster cake. After being crushed it conies back to its former height, and is served to those present.

It seems that the Majestic Range Air-Tight Oven had been promoted in this way for several decades. An advertisement from 1911 explained (and illustrated) how a large number of ladies (in this case twenty –five!) could stand on one cake – two 12-foot planks were placed upon it, crushing it flat, whereupon ‘in five minutes it will rise to its natural height, when it will be cut and served to all present.’

What sort of cake pops back up to its original size after having twenty-five ladies stand on it? The only other reference to a ‘walking cake’ references a baba – as a cake suitable for folk to eat on the run. A baba does not seem to be the cake in the advertisement. Can any of my enthusiastic informants out there offer any more information?

I don’t think this baba would stand up to the treatment.


Baba with Raisins.
Mix half an ounce of German yeast and four ounces of sifted flour with warm water to a soft dough, and put it near the fire to rise. Rub twelve ounces of butter into twelve ounces of flour, work it into a smooth paste with eight well-beaten eggs, one ounce of powdered sugar, and a little salt. When the paste is ready, and the sponge sufficiently risen, blend them well together and mix in two ounces of finely minced candied citron-peel, two ounces of well-dried currants, and three ounces of stoned raisins. Butter a small mould – fill it about half full, and allow it to rise until it is nearly at the top, when it may be baked at once in a moderate oven.
Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery, 1870’s.