Losing it with Liquorice.

I am leaving Sydney today to return to Brisbane after a marvellous weekend. Just for the fun of it, I decided that for my final Sydney-themed post I would try to find at least one food-related story in the Sydney newspapers of one hundred years ago today.

Sadly for us, the Sydney Morning Herald of 20 September 1910 (a Tuesday) did not contain any recipes. There was mention of the Lord Mayor’s dinner the previous evening, with an extensive discussion of the speeches, but none of the bill of fare. Several other articles covered the success (or not) of the market for Australian products such as oranges, butter, and chilled beef in Britain. And there was this interesting ‘scientific’ article:

CURED OF CORPULENCY.

SCIENTIFIC CERTAINTY NOW RECOGNISED.

The marvellous progress of modern medical science shines all the more markedly for the acknowledged ignorance of old-time practitioners in their treatment of many diseases – especially that of obesity, with which nobody can deny that they boggled [?] deplorably. Nowadays the matter is simple. Any over-fat person can make up the following efficacious prescription, or get his (or her) chemist to do so: Take one ounce of fluid extract of Glycyrrhiza B.P., one ounce of pure Glycerine R.P., one half-ounce of Marmola, and mix with peppermint water, to make six ounces in all. Dose: Two teaspoonfuls after each meal. The rapid reduction of weight effected by this simple and harmless remedy is delightful to every stout person who tries it, especially as there are no exacting dietary or other restrictions imposed. The tonic value of this remedy is as highly appreciated as is its reductive properties; the entire digestive system undergoes a beneficial change. Health, vigour, pure rich blood, renewed muscular development, are amongst the valuable results of this truly scientific and reinvigorating treatment, which leaves no wrinkles, however great the reduction effected.

It seems that the weight loss industry was already alive and well a hundred years ago. So, how efficacious would this ‘remedy’ have been? It might actually have worked – at a price. The active ingredient was Marmola - a patent medicine of the time containing ‘thyroid substance’ which was sold over the counter as a cure for obesity. Sufficient of this product would cause the equivalent of an over-active thyroid gland, so it would certainly have had the potential to cause weight loss – or death due to heart damage. The American inventor of this product, Edward D. Hayes, had for several decades been the subject of much activity on the part of government agencies in his own country, over his claims for the benefits of several of his snake-oil nostrums, including Marmola. The dangers and controversy must not have reached Australia – so the marketing in Australia may well have been a clever move on Mr Hayes’ part.

The other ingredients were presumably in the product for reasons of taste and texture.
Glycerine (glycerol) is a sweet, viscous liquid obtained from the saponification of fats and oils, and which has many applications in the food, pharmaceutical, medical, and beauty industries. Glycyrrhiza is an ingredient derived from the rhizome (‘root’) of the plant Glycyrrhiza glabra – commonly known as licorice (or liquorice). Licorice was used for medicinal purposes since at least since the early middle ages - long before it became used as a sweetmeat (beware: nowadays, ‘licorice’ candy is frequently actually flavoured with anise.)

The story seems a good excuse to give you a recipe for licorice. If you take out the thyroid extract, the ‘remedy’ for corpulence given above would probably make a quite delicious ‘tea’, but I thought you would want more. I had a mind to give you a recipe for licorice toffee, but was unable to find a convincing historical version. Instead, I give you licorice tablets – intended presumably for medicinal use, but quite an acceptable confection, methinks. There are two particularly interesting points about this medicine/confection. One is that the resulting cake is white, not black as we think of liquorice today. The other is that it takes three hours beating (never suffering it to stand still during that time) – in the days well before electrical appliances were available! Kitchen hands must have had a lot of stamina in those days.

Cakes, Liquorice.
Take hyssop and red rose water, of each half a pint, half a pound of green liquorice, the outside scraped off, and then beat with a pestle; put to it half a pound of aniseeds, and steep it all night in the water; boil it with a gentle fire till the taste is well out of the liquorice; strain it, put to it three pounds of liquorice powder, and set it on a gentle fire till it is come to the thickness of cream; take it off, and put to it half a pound of white sugar candy seered very fine; beat this well together for at least three hours, and never suffer it to stand still; as you beat it, you must strew in double-refined sugar finely seered, at least three pounds; half an hour before it is finished, put in half a spoonful of gum dragon [gum traganth], steeped in orange-flower water: when it is very white then it is beat enough; roll it up with white sugar; and if you want it perfumed, put in a pastil or two.
The cook's own book, and housekeeper's register, by Mrs. N. K. M. Lee (1854)

Quotation for the Day.

Not on morality, but on cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his elect!
Thomas Carlyle.

Camping Candy.

Once upon a time, in the bad old days, the kitchen was the exclusive preserve of women. The only men-who-cooked were professional chefs or men outdoor-of-doors (hunting, shooting, fishing, exploring, war-making etc). “Camping” was a very different experience, I expect, in the days before super light-weight materials, freeze-dried foods and mosquito repellent – especially for men with no experience of the domestic arts. One supposes that other, more war or wilderness-wise men would mentor these novices in the outdoor culinary arts, and presumably, most of the time, this is what happened.

Occasionally, the advice was given by ladies, who almost certainly had no experience of rough living, but understood the principles enough to feel their methods could be adapted. In 1917, a little book called the ABC of cooking for men For men with no experience of cooking on Small Boats, Patrol Boats, in Camps, on Marches, etc. was published for the benefit of the Knitting Committee of the American Defence Society.

The foreword clarified the connection between women who knit and men who are forced to cook.

“It is hoped that both cook-book and knitted garments may help to make more comfortable the men who are only too ready to do their bit.”

The knitting ladies made no assumptions as to the existing skills of their proteges, and they included instructions for elementary kitchen tasks such as how to boil potatoes. They clearly assumed however that a well-equipped pantry would be available, as the following recipe shows:

If starving for a taste of candy, make fudge.
1 cake unsweetened Baker's Chocolate
4 cups of sugar
2 cups of milk, piece of butter about the size of an egg (little generous)
Boil for half to three-quarters of an hour, then take off the fire and beat till it gets
a little thick, and pour into a buttered tin.
You can tell if it is done by stirring a little in a saucer.

My questions are these. Why would the hungry hunters not simply eat the chocolate from the pack? How did they store the generous hunk of butter in the absence of refrigeration? Are not saucers a little namby-pamby for the huntin’ shootin’ fishin’ sorts of men to include in their packs?


Quotation for the Day.

There he stands, draped in more equipment than a telephone lineman, trying to outwit an organism with a brain no bigger than a breadcrumb, and getting licked in the process.
Paul O'Neil.

Aussie Christmas Lollies.

“Lollies” are to Australian kids what “Candy” is in the USA and “Sweets” are in Britain. The word seems to be derived from “lollipop”, but why in Australia it became the word for all sorts of small confectionery is a mystery (to me, at any rate.) “Lolly” is also slang for money – but that doesn’t appear to explain the transition to sweeties, does it?. “Lolly” also used to be an old English dialect word for the tongue, which maybe fits a bit better with the idea of a lollipop (a candy on a stick). Finally, “lolly” is also, according to the OED the word for “soft ice, or congealed snow floating in the water when it first begins to freeze”- which explains Ice-lollies perhaps (which, perversely, are “ice-blocks” in Aus).

Enough of this struggle with English as she is interpreted through the ex-colonies! On to today’s story, which begins, as all good stories do, with “Once Upon a Time. …”

Once upon a time a certain “Polly Parrot” ran the children’s pages in The Argus (a Melbourne newspaper). The “Fun Children” who sent in good ideas for publication were awarded Parrot Cards – a reward which I am quite sure delighted them to a degree that would be incomprehensible to the modern child. As Christmas approached in 1931, cards were awarded for recipes for “Christmas Lollies.” Here are the parrot-card winning entries for the edition of Saturday 12 December 1931.

LOLLIES for CHRISTMAS.

Most Fun Children enjoy making home-made sweets during the school holidays.
It would be very jolly to make some for Christmas. If they are placed in attractive little boxes they make charming Christmas presents. Polly Parrot is sure that you will like the following recipes, which she recommends:-

Fruit Nougat
For this recipe you will need some dates, dried figs,raisins, and Maraschino cherriesand two cups of melted sugar. Chop the dates, figs, raisins, and cherries into smallpieces, and arrange in alternate layers in a shallow buttered pan. Melt two cups ofsugar over a quick fire, watching closely that it does not turn yellow. Pour it overthe fruits evenly and slowly, using only enough to blend. Before the mixture isquite cold, cut it into small bars.
(A Parrot Card for Frances Hope Bertuch, Bonnie View, Harcourt North.

Turkish Delight.
Soak one ounce of powdered gelatine in three-quarters of a cup of cold water for two hours. Put 2 lb. of sugar into a saucepan with three-quarters of a cup of water, bring to the boil, and add the soaked gelatine, a little citric acid, and a few drops of vanilla essence. Simmer for 20 minutes, skim well, and then pour on a damp dish.
Leave for 24 hours, then cut into squares and roll in castor sugar. For colouring use cochineal.
(A Parrot Card for Edna Hoskin, Primrose street. Violet Town)

Cocoanut Dainties.
Here is some cooking which a small child could do. The ingredients needed are:-
Four table-spoonfuls of sugar, 8 tablespoonfuls of desiccated cocoanut, and thewhites of two eggs. Beat the whites of the eggs to a froth, add the sugar, and beatwell again. Then stir in in the cocoanut.
Drop teaspoonfuls of this mixture on to a greased slide, and bake about 10 or 15minutes in a moderate oven.
(A Parrot Card is awarded to Jean Douglas, Coast Road, Mirboo [?] North, Gippsland.)

These recipes have been added to the Vintage Christmas Recipes archive.

Quotation for the Day …

There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.
Erma Bombeck (I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression)

Nutty Candy.

Today is the end of Confectionary week at the Old Foodie. I want to talk to you about prawlongs. Prawlongs (or prawlins) appear in a couple of old confectionary books, and I have been intrigued about the name for a while. I was going to ask your help in puzzling out what they are, as the OED, Google, and Wikipedia are of no use at all. Silly me. I should have looked at the recipes – I mean, really looked at them. When I did, the answer was embarrassingly obvious. Prawlongs are Pralines, which the OED does know about. They are ‘a confection made by browning almonds or other nuts in boiling sugar.’ Mrs. Kettilby in her book Above 300 Receipts (1714) also calls them Fry’d Almonds, which I like. There is nothing so consistent as inconsistency in culinary language however, and one of the supporting quotations in the OED is from Canada, and refers to ‘a small quantity of praline, made of roasted maize, rendered palatable with sugar’ in a camp-food context. Another says ‘It was the fragrance of prawleens, that compound of New Orleans molasses, brown sugar, chocolate, and butter.’

For no better reason than that his name fits his subject, I have chosen a recipe for prawlongs from Frederick Nutt’s The Complete Confectioner, published in 1807.

He gives recipes for lemon, orange, pistachio (red), pistachio (white), burnt filbert (red), and orange flower prawlongs, as well as burnt almonds and filberts.

Burnt Filbert Prawlongs, Red.
Take some Barcelona nuts and crack them, put the kernals into a copper pan or sheet, and put them in the oven to roast; have a pan with syrup boiling and let it boil till it becomes almost to carimel; put a little cochineal in a cup, when the sugar is boiled, add it to it and the filberts, and stir them very much with a large wooden spoon, till you find the sugar is got hard around them; put them in a sieve, and separate them which stick together; have another pan, with syrup in, and boil it as before and as high; put the same quantity of cochineal in, and mix them as before, because the second time you do them, the finer the colour will be, and then put them in your box.

Apart from the fact that it sounds delicious, there are two other great things about this recipe. Firstly, it gives me another new-old food word – ‘Barcelona’ in relation to filberts (and their alter-ego, the hazelnut). Secondly, I think it may have given me a topic for next week– cochineal.

In the meanwhile, if any of you hail from New Orleans, and can treat us all to a recipe for the local version of prawleens, with chocolate, butter, and molasses, I would be most delighted.

Quotation for the Day …

Candy
Is dandy,
But liquor
Is quicker.
Ogden Nash.

Barley Sugar and Butterscotch.

Barley Sugar and Butterscotch are boiled sugar sweets – but which is the oldest?

The OED says barley-sugar is ‘a confection, usually in twisted sticks, made from sugar, formerly by boiling in a decoction of barley’, and gives the first mention as 1712 in a pharmacology text. As with many of our candies, it started out as medicine. I am in search of a barley sugar recipe that specifies barley-water, and when I find one, I will let you know. In the meanwhile, here a recipe from Frederick Nutt’s The Complete Confectioner (1789)

Barley Sugar.
Take a small stewpan, put some syrup into it and boil till it comes to carimel; rub a little butter on a marble stone just to grease it that it may not stick; then take your saucepan by the handle and let the syrup run out of the spout along the stone in long sticks; twist it (while it is hot) at each end and let it stand till cold.

Butterscotch (also, apparently butterscot) is ‘a kind of toffee, chiefly composed of sugar and butter’, and it appears to be a more recent invention.

The OED is not accurate here, I am afraid. It gives the first mention in 1865. Other sources, including Wikipedia, say it was made in Doncaster in the north of England, in 1817, by a Mr. Samuel Parkinson. In another case of ‘hiding place of secret old recipe on tatty piece of paper discovered’ (see my cynical Sally Lunn story earlier this week), it is now being made again, to this original recipe.

As for its name, is it scorched, scotched (cross-hatched) or Scottish? I don’t know. But I am intrigued, and am in search of the ‘first recipe.’ Until then, you will have to be happy with the barley sugar.

Toffee Time.

I leave England today for home. About 30 hours travel I reckon, including hanging around at Heathrow before the flight, then a couple of hours each in Dubai and Brunei airports. Not that I care, really, I have my Sony e-Reader – a gift from my lovely spouse before I left. Never again to have that dreadful panic about running out of reading material en voyage. Heaven, for a readaholic, is 150 books in one small device. I only got time to upoad 40 or so before I left, but it has been enough …

But I digress. For this week I will either be in planes or airports, or recovering from same, or catching up on family, friends, and emails. So – short posts which will be set up to pop up at the usual time. On confectionary, methinks, as on reflection I have neglected the sweetie, candy, lollie department so far. A quick but not necessarily complete review shows that we have had:

- A story called ‘Candy for health’, and a recipe for Liquorish Cakes.

- A story about nougat and a recipe for sugared fruits (the original sweetmeats)

- A story about Kendal Mint Cake with a recipe for ‘Sugar of Roses’

- A story about the Maquis de Sade, and a recipe for Caraway comfits.

- A story about Lammas, and Yellowman (honeycomb toffee)

- Dulcia Domestica (Ancient Roman sweets made from dates)

- Candy in Cakes.

- Jelly Babies, Jujubes, and Dr.Who.

- Tomato marshmallows.

- And of course, a number of stories on chocolate in all its dark brown glory.

Which leaves a lot yet uncovered.

Today is Toffee Day.

‘Toffee’ is a word that puzzles the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, who say it is of ‘uncertain origin’, and possibly a dialect word. It is sometimes spelled tuffy or toughy, and is a later form of taffy. The first mention, according to the OED which is marvellous but not infallible, is 1817 for taffy and 1825 for toughy (the quotation says is is named for its toughness.). Given that words are usually in use for some time before they are enshrined in a quotable publication, it looks like toffee as we know it might be a late eighteenth century idea.

The first references to toffee/taffy suggest it was made from treacle or molasses. The recipe I have chosen for today is for Everton Toffee. I have no idea why it is so-called, and would love it if you do, and let us all know in the comments. The thing I like about this recipe is that it proves you can make candy without a sugar thermometer – all you need is a clean tobacco pipe.

Everton Toffee.
Boil half an ounce of bruised ginger in half a pint of water till it obtains the flavour of ginger; strain it, put the liquor into a saucepan, add two pounds of sugar and one ounce of butter; let them simmer gently over the fire for some time, then take a piece of clean tobacco pipe, dip it into cold water, then with it stir the mixure round, plunge the pipe into the water, if the sugar adheres to it and becomes crisp, pour it into tins which have been buttered ready for use.
The Frugal Cook, by E.Carter (1851)

Sweet Things.

I am in Oxford for the Symposium, you still (I hope) receiving these (very) little stories courtesy of Bloggers post-ahead feature.

Today I am drawing from the Barossa Cookery Book, published in aid of the Tanunda Soldiers Memorial Hall, no date but the drawing look very 1920’s. The Barossa Valley is in the state of South Australia – famous for its great wines (it has some of the oldest Shiraz vineyards in the world) and with its German migrant heritage still obvious in its cuisine.

Almost all of this book is given over to baking – there are only a few pages at the beginning with meat, fish etc. Browsing it made me realise that I have not included near enough sweets (candies, lollies, confectionary) in the nearly three years of this blog.

Butter Scotch.
One lb. sugar, 1 ½ oz. butter, ¼ cup cold water. Melt butter in saucepan, add water and sugar, boil 20 mins but do not stir.

Almond Toffee.
Two cups sugar, ¾ cup water, 1 eggspoon cream of tartar, ¼ lb.blanched almonds. Put sugar and water into a greased pot. When boiling, add cream of tartar and almonds. Boil till toffee cracks when dropped into cold water. Pour into a greased toffee tin and leave to set. To be kept in air-tight tin.

Peppermint Creams.
Break into a bowl the white of one egg, add to it an equal quantity of cold water, then stir in enough icing sugar to make a firm paste. Flavour with peppermint essence. Roll out, cut into rounds or any fancy shapes and place on waxed paper to dry.

Revolutionary Candy.

I remember once trying to sneak some vegetables into my little daughter by making a zucchini cake. It never got past her 4 year-old eagle eyes: she somehow knew the green bits weren’t choc chips. Thankfully, she grew up and converted and now eats all her greens with relish, so perhaps there was something subliminal in the attempt. There was a little book that might have inspired me, written in 1912, had I known about it and been able to find a copy all the way over here in Australia. It is Candy-making revolutionized; confectionery from vegetables, written in 1912 by Mary Elizabeth Hall.

Ms. Hall waxes so enthusiastically lyrical about her idea one could almost be convinced that it should be a force-fed health food.

“Vegetable candy, to my mind, is ideal confectionery. Of its purity, there can be no doubt. Moreover, it furnishes the valuable element of sugar so combined with nutritious vegetable bases that, because of the bulk, there is no temptation to overeat. This quality of the new confection would seem insurance against the evil effects of gluttony! Before an undue amount of sugar is consumed, the very mass of the vegetable base has satisfied the appetite.
…. for the more vegetable candy is made, the less unhealthful confectionery there will be consumed. For the same reason, I hope, too, that women and girls seeking to make profitable their idle hours at home, may embark in a small way in the manufacture and sale of vegetable candy.”

An ideal food for children, and a pin-money bonus to boot! The colour plate of samples at the front of the book looks tempting – they look like ‘real’ candy. The expected suspects are here – lots made with potatoes (plain starch, really) and beets (sweet starch with bonus colouring), and a few with dates, which at about 60% sugar are a candy in their own right, and anyway don’t count as vegetables. The idea of Tomato Marshmallow however is a bit of a shock to the culinary-idea part of the brain. Or maybe not. Maybe it would fit on some trendy restaurant tables after all?

Tomato Marshmallow.
Very often marshmallows even the sort sold in candy stores of the better class contain gums and glucose which the amateur would find difficult to handle even if she felt no scruple in their use. Tomato marshmallows, however, are pleasing in consistency and more attractive in flavor than the old-fashioned kind. Moreover, they are easy to make, although it is necessary to give more detailed directions than would be required in the description of the process with which the home candy-maker is more familiar.
Dissolve three tablespoonsful of granulated gelatine in one cupful of hot water.
Cook and strain ripe tomatoes; to one-half cupful of the strained tomato add one cup-ful of sugar and cook the mixture to two hundred and thirty degrees. Have ready in a deep saucepan, three cupsful of sugar, moistened with one-quarter of a cupful of water. Upon it strain the tomato syrup, stir well, thin with a cupful of water, and cook to two hundred and forty degrees. Set the mass off the fire, add the gelatine water previously prepared, mix thoroughly and strain into a fresh bowl. Have ready the whites of two eggs beaten to a stiff froth. With a French egg whip or a common wooden paddle, beat the cooked mass hard until it is white and does not separate. When it becomes foamy and spongy, gradually add the beaten egg whites and keep beating until the whole mass is very stringy and will almost set on the paddle. Sift upon the mass one tablespoonful of corn starch; stir well.
Pour the candy between candy bars on a marble well dusted with XXXX sugar. Leave ten or twelve hours, cut into squares, roll well in XXXX sugar, spread the other side up and dry off. Instead of pouring the marshmallows between candy bars, they may be molded in corn starch. Store in a tight box.
The receipt sounds more laborious than is the process. The repeated boilings are necessary to perfect the product. The acid of the tomato destroys the granularity of the sugar. Straining the mixture eliminates the particles of tomato which, not having blended thoroughly into the syrup, would cause trouble by sticking to the bottom of the saucepan in the later higher cooking.

The XXXX is a bit alarming to a Queenslander. The local beer is called XXXX. I assume that ‘Over There’ it is a brand of sugar.

Quotation for the Day …

Dessert is probably the most important stage of the meal, since it will be the last thing your guests remember before they pass out all over the table. The Anarchist Cookbook.

Candy for Health.

December 19 …

An article in the prestigious British Medical Journal on this day reported on a study conducted by the equally prestigious Harvard School of Public Health. The results appeared to show that the mortality rate was lowest amongst men who ate candy at least three times a week compared with those who did not eat candy at all..

I find this study immensely interesting, not only because of its value in reducing greed-guilt, but also on account of the wild and wonderful theories that can be inspired by it (not by the Harvard researchers I might add). Was it the preserving power of the sugar? Or were the ancient medicos right and sugar has medicinal benefits in its own rights, even if they were wrong on the dose (they thought tiny amounts were sufficient)? Would the same results apply to women? Are the results explained by the candy-eaters doing large amounts of exercise penance? Are candy-eaters more fun, and it is actually the fun that saves your life? Did the BMJ deliberately choose to publish this article before Christmas, as their gift to their reading public?

We have met several different forms of candy in this blog – chocolate occasionally (but not often enough), nougat (in relation to a crime), ‘sugar of roses’ (in an article about climbing mountains and eating mints), caraway comfits (in a story about lust and orgies), and ‘others too numerous to mention’ (or look up) by this lazy writer.

So what to choose by way of recipes, to reduce your mortality risk over the Christmas season?

I have so far neglected liquorice in this blog. Liquorice comes from the root of several species of shrubby plants of the genus Glycyrrhiza, especially G. glabra. It has been used for centuries as a medicine, and is said to be useful in – among other things – disorders of the gastrointestinal tract, which are prevalent in late December due to the festivites. It is timely then to address the omission.

‘Confectionary’ only fairly recently came to apply only to hard candy. Once upon a time it was part of the pastrycooks domain and also included all manner of conserves and sweetmeats as well as pastries. Pastrycooks of the early eighteenth century had a frighteningly large sphere of responsibility, if we are to judge by the information immediately below the title of today’s recipe source, which was published in 1705.

The pastry-cook’s vade-mecum: or, a pocket-companion for cooks, house-keepers, country gentlewomen, &c. ...

Choice and Excellent Directions, and Receipts for making all Sorts of Pastry-Work; Dressing the most Dainty Dishes; Candying, Preserving and Drying all manner of Fruit. As also, the Art of Distilling and Surgery.

The “Good Old Days” Huh? When the local pastrycook had pretensions to chirugerie? No thankyou. I’ll take my varicosed veins to a real surgeon.

To make Liqourish Cakes.
Take 12 ounces of Liquorish scraped very thin, then take two pints and a half of Isop [hyssop?] Water, one pint and half of Coltsfoot Water, a pint and half of red Rosewater, two good handful of Rosemary flowers, one handful of Maiden-hair, keep all these together three or four days in a stew Pot or Jug that may be close stop’d, shaking them together two or three times a day, then put them all into a Skilet, and set them upon a soft Fire two hours, then strain it into a Silver Bason, put to it a pound of brown Sugar-candy so let it boil till it grow thick enough to beat to a Paste, when you find it grow pretty thick, take a little upon a Spoon, and beat it with a Knife till it be cold, and then you will find whether it be enough, when you take it off the Fire, it must be beaten with a good strength with a Spoon till it be white, then take some fine Sugare searced, and so roul it up in little Cakes, the best way is to keep beating it to the last, or else it will so crackle that it will never role handsomely, half this Receipt is enough to make at a time.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Mystery Turkey.

Quotation for the Day …

Anyone who uses the phrase 'easy as taking candy from a baby' has never tried taking candy from a baby. Unknown

Stocking the Shelter.

The prolonged face-off between the USA and the Soviet Union that came to be called the Cold War began as World War II ended and lasted for over three decades. The Cold war never (thankfully) heated up to boiling, although it got uncomfortably warm during the fourteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. By this time many American families, at the urging of the government, had built bomb shelters in their backyards or under their houses as preparation for a nuclear attack, should it occur. The building and provisioning of the shelters spawned a whole new industry and Government did its bit by producing a voluminous amount of pamphlets and manuals on various aspects of the survival business.

Naturally, provisioning the shelter adequately was paramount. This is what one pamphlet advised:

FOOD SUPPLY REQUIREMENTS

As an absolute minimum, a 90 day supply of food is recommended; 6 months is more realistic; 24 months would not be beyond the realm of common sense

UNAVAILABLE FOOD

The following conditions will probably prevail in the event of a nuclear attack. Fresh milk will be impossible to obtain and canned evaporated or dry powdered milk must be substituted. Fresh eggs will be scarce. Since chickens have great tolerance for radiation, fresh eggs will probably be one of the first staples available after a nuclear attack

SELECTING FOOD

Buy only foods that will be enjoyed because shelter occupants will be under emotional stress. When buying shelter food select proper size containers to eliminate left-overs that might be difficult to preserve

SHELTER FOODS

Store, prepare, and serve the following inside shelter facilities: bacon; corned beef hash; sausage; meat balls; chili con carne; tamales; chipped beef; salmon steak; crab meat; shrimp; clams; oysters; smoked bologna; country cured ham; au gratin potatoes; spaghetti; macaroni; buckwheat mix; canned cheese; tomatoes; brown bread; flour; relish; maple syrup; oatmeal; hot cereals; baby foods as needed

It might be sensible to keep a few packages of vegetable seeds in the shelter for a do-it-yourself post-war project.

Concerned housewives of the time who wished to do their own preserving had no shortage of recipe books to turn to for advice. Some recipes sound more than a little scary today, when we are more aware of serious food-poisoning, and some sound a little unnecessary – such as one in the 1940’s The New American Cookbook for preserving nuts by canning (bottling) in a pressure cooker. The idea was to delay rancidity – which would hardly be an issue under the circumstances, one would think. The same book has many candy recipes, and this one seems to me to be a better way of preserving nuts – and it would be a great comfort food too.

Penuchi.
½ cup evaporated milk
2 cups brown sugar
2 tablespoons butter or fat
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup broken nut meats.
Combine milk and sugar. Cook slowly, stirring only until sugar is dissolved, until 236^o F is reached, the stage at which a drop of mixture will form a soft ball when dropped into cold water. Add butter or fat. Cool slightly. Add other ingredients and beat until creamy. Pour into greased pan. Chill.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Dinner to die for.

Quotation for the Day …

Even if only ground beef was irradiated, it would save lots of lives. Dr. Donald Thayer, USDA; 1997