Capon Capers.

Christmas is on the horizon, and for those of you in the USA, Thanksgiving is closer still, which means that some grand catering schemes will already be underway in many of your households. I thought this week I would try to find some tricks, treats, or temptations to amuse you as you work.

One of the terrors of catering for family events is that of unexpected guests. Professional chefs have professional-size cold rooms and pantries and professional know-how, so an extra mouth or ten to feed should cause no more than a minor ripple of reorganisation in the kitchen. Not so for the harassed home-cook with an over-stuffed fridge and depleted bank account, for whom finding more food to go around at short notice can be traumatic in the extreme. What if there is only a small piece of pork or a single chicken to roast, and find (through one of those little family communication glitches) that you were not told (or were told and forgot) that half-a-dozen extras had been invited by ‘someone’ in the circle? You could get into a long debate along the lines of ‘I told you’ - ‘No you didn’t’ ‘- Yes I did’ - ‘No you didn’t’, but this will not make the guests fail to appear, and it will also waste valuable time.

Instead of wasting it in a futile conversation, you could use the time to make a ‘sham pig’ - if you had enough potatoes and were a dab hand at modelling (Sensible Rule No. 1: always ensure that you have the raw materials at hand for Fun with Potatoes). Or alternatively, you could make two chickens out of one, if you were a dab hand at skinning a bird neatly. The following fifteenth century recipe could be your guide.


Two capons of one.
To make two capons of one, take a capon and scald him clean and keme off the skin by the back. Then flay off the skin but keep it whole. Then grind figs and fresh pork with powder of ginger and cinnamon and stuff the skin and sew it fast and roast it sokingly and serve it

Quotation for the Day.

Do not be afraid of simplicity. If you have a cold chicken for supper, why cover it with a tasteless white sauce which makes it look like a pretentious dish on the buffet table at some fancy dress ball?
Marcel Boulestin (1878-1943)

Naughty Bakers.

Medieval punishments such as we considered yesterday were frequently made to fit the crime in a marvellously creative way that would not be possible in our modern criminal justice system. As was pointed out yesterday, the most important foodstuff at that time was bread, and as a consequence, bread-crimes were taken very seriously.

In medieval times, only the grandest houses had their own ovens. Most ordinary housewives took their own dough to the local baker, where for a small fee it would be cooked in the residual heat of the oven, after the baker had baked his own bread. Those bakers who did get caught cheating their customers were punished in a variety of ways. In England they were initially fined. After three offenses they could be sent to the pillory, or to gaol, or even lose their occupation. The pillory or ‘stretch neck’ was a very public humiliation. The accused was locked with head (sometimes shaved) and hands fixed in holes made between two horizontal boards set up in the market place where he or she could be pelted by disgruntled customers with anything noxious that came to hand.

The prize for the most creative deceit (and most appropriate punishment) must go to bakers at a public bakehouse in 1327. There were secret cavities built under the moulding boards from which an assistant would reach up and pinch off a chunk of the dough from a customer’s loaf, and over the course of the day built up a nice supply for themselves. The offending bakers in this instance were placed in the pillory with slabs of the dough around their necks. In other instances, bakers were forced to sell the underweight loaves at a loss (which was a gain for the previoius ‘victims.’)

In other parts of the bread-eating world the punishments varied. In Vienna, bakers caught selling underweight bread were put in the baeckerschupfen – a sort of cage which was then plunged into the river several times. In Turkey, a bad baker was stretched out on his own kneading table and the bastinado (foot-beating with a stick) was administered. Perhaps the most public and painful punishment was in ancient Egypt, were an offending baker could be nailed by the ear to the door of his shop, where no doubt his customers gave him even more abuse.

Cookery manuscripts and cookery books of early times contained recipes suitable for the wealthy, and did not include bread-making instructions. It would not have been considered necessary. Every large household had its own bakehouse. The bakers and bakehouse were quite separate (in several ways) from the kitchens and cooks, and bakers did not need written instructions for the various types of bread for the various ranks of persons within the household. Instead of a medieval ‘recipe’ for bread, I therefore give you, from the same source as yesterday, a nice recipe for stewed chicken. This sounds quite delicious, and quite Middle Eastern (although the source is unequivocally English)  – the chicken is stuffed with herbs, and braised in wine, and flavoured with saffron, ginger, sugar, and cinnamon, with the final sauce containing dates and currants.

A stewed capon.
To stew a capon tak parsly saige ysope rosmary and brek them between your handes and stop the capon ther with and colour it with saffron and couch it in an erthen pot and lay splentes under nethe and about the sides of the pot and straw erbes about the capon and put ther to a quart of wyn and non other licour then couer the pot close that no brothe passe out then set it on a charcole fyere and stew it softly and when it is enoughe set it on a wispe of strawe that it touche not the ground for brekinge then tak out the capon with a prik and luk yf it be enoughe or els stewe it better and mak a ceripe of good wyne mynced dates and canelle anld draw it with the same wyne put ther to raissins of corands sugur saffron and salt and guinger and wyn then lay the capon in a dysshe and put the fat of the sew to the ceripe and poure it on the capon and serue it.
A Noble boke off cookry ffor a prynce houssolde or eny other estately houssolde (1500)

Sweet chicken.

Two posts with a similar idea doth not a series make - but perhaps three doth? I just had to try to push this week’s accidental theme a bit further. A search for ‘Sweet Chicken’ led me to a new resource – always a wonderful moment.

Cookery made Easy: being a complete system of Domestic Management, uniting Elegance with Economy by Michael Willis (‘many years cook at the Thatched-House Tavern’) was first published in London in the 1820’s. It is quite a ‘retro’ effort for the time, although this does not appear to be intentional. Many of the recipes seem to be firmly grounded in the previous century, many with almost medieval overtones.

Now, Uniting Elegance with Economy is something that I aspire to daily, but pray, tell me what is Easy about the following Cookery recipe?



Sweet Chicken Pie
Break the bones of four chickens, cut them into small pieces and season them highly with mace cinnamon,, and salt four yolks of eggs boiled hard, and quartered, and five artichoke bottoms, eight ounces of sun raisins stoned, eight ounces each of preserved citron lemon, eringo roots, and marrow, four slices of rinded lemon, eight ounces of currants, fifty balls of forcemeat made as for umble pie: put in all, one with the other, butter the bottom of the pie, put in a pound of fresh butter on the top-lid, and bake it. Boil a pint of white wine, sweetening it to your taste, and thicken it with the yolks of two eggs; put it to the pie when very hot and serve it up.
Cookery made easy: being a complete system of domestic management, ... by Michael Willis, 1831.

Quotation for the Day.

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.
Samuel Johnson.

The Tax-Eaters Banquet.

Once the Easter season is well and truly over here in Oz, our thoughts inevitably and frequently unhappily are forced to turn towards the End of Financial Year ‘stuff’ – the crucial final date being May 31st. I don’t know how this little Aussie factoid is related to today’s post, except that when I decided it was time to give you a historic menu, the one I chose was tax-related.

In 1891, on this very date of April 29, the American Protective Tariff League held their first annual banquet. The good men (they were all men – but the ladies were allowed to watch from the balcony) made some concessions to their principles when it came to the actual function, as can be seen from the following newspaper report.

THE TAX EATERS’ BANQUET

FIRST ANNUAL DINNER OF THE AMERICAN

PROTECTIVE TARIFF LEAGUE –

IMPORTED BROADCLOTH AND AMERICAN CROCKERY.

There was not a vestige of homespun in the garments worn by the participants in the banquet of the American Protective Tariff League last night. The 500 good American protectionists who assembled in the banquet hall of the Madison Square Garden were shamelessly clad in imported broadcloth and fine linen. Their hearts were warmed and quickened by American wines, however, and, encircled by the smoke of domestic cigars, they listened contentedly to high-tariff speeches.

…. The dinner was served on crockery made in Trenton, N.J, with silver-plated ware and cutlery made in this country, and glassware also of American manufacture.

…. Most of the experienced banqueters, it was noticed, smoked cigars which they had brought with them.

… A few of the tables were spread, sad to relate, with English and German tablecloths on which a duty of 5 per cent was paid, that has since been increased by the McKinley bill to 50 per cent. But in the main, the tablecloths were of pure white “Georgia wool.” Linen napkins of German and English manufacture were neatly folded at each plate. Upon these a duty of 35 per cent, since increased to 50 per cent, was paid.

But it was upon the banquet itself rather than upon the apparel of the banqueters that the American Protective Tariff League and its supporting spellbinders and protected manufacturers expended their patriotic endeavors. All the furnishings of the hall, and all the wine and eatables were to be “the genuine American article” – and the cigars! The idea was grandly sentimental, but it involved sacrifices of which many of the pampered pets of protection were incapable. This accounts largely for the many conspicuous absentees. There was nothing threatening in the bill of fare (it was considered unpatriotic to call it a menu) as far as the food courses were concerned.

Oysters , (free;) green turtle soup (free;) mushroom patties (2 cents per pound;) salmon (¾ cents per pound;) tenderloin of beef (2 cents per pound;) chicken, (3 to 5 cents per pound;) asparagus (25 per cent if fresh, 45 per cent if canned;) snipe (10 per cent) on toast; frozen pudding (free;) cheese (6 cents per pound;) strawberries (free;) and coffee (if genuine, free,) had not terrors for them, although their palatability was imperiled by the exaction from Sherry, the caterer, that they must be prepared by American cooks and served by American waiters. Sherry is said to have filled this part of the contract and to have saved the dinner from complete disaster by seeing that his help was Americanized from the French, German, and Italian.

… Thus everything on the table, as well as every article of wearing apparel worn by the banqueters, was from a third to over twice as expensive as it would have been but for the McKinley tariff. Even the national emblem, the silken American flag, was protected from foreign cheap labor by a duty of 60 per cent.

Recipe for the Day.

From Charles Ranhofer’s The Epicurean (1894), I give you a classic, but labour-intensive chicken dish. For the subsidiary recipes, you must go yourself to the source, which you can find at the marvellous Historic American Cookbook Project.


CAPON à LA FINANCIèRE (Chapon à la Financière)
This relevé is dressed on an oval wooden bottom having in the center a four-sided tin support made hollow so that it be lighter. This wooden bottom and support must both be covered with a cooked paste or else of noodle paste (No. 142) dried in the air. Fasten a string of noodle paste of about three-eighths of an inch in diameter on the edge of the socle; this is intended for upholding the capons and garnishing. On the edge of the bowl of the plate, place a noodle paste border (No. 10). Prepare the capons as for an entrée (No. 178) having them stuffed with a stuffing made of cooked chicken livers, grated fresh lard, truffle parings, bread-crumbs, salt and cayenne pepper. Cover over with bards of fat pork placed in a narrow braziere (Fig. 134) moisten with sufficient stock (No. 194a) to cover the capons, add aromatic herbs and lemon pulp free of seeds and peel, then cook on a good fire, having the liquid reduce to one-third, at the last moment drain off the capons, untie and dress one on each side of the support inserting a garnished skewer on top; fill in the sides between the capons with a varied garnishing composed of mushrooms, cocks'-combs and quenelles; cover over either with a velouté sauce (No. 415) if needed for white or a financiére sauce (No. 464) if for brown; surround the base with a row of peeled truffles cooked in wine and glazed over with a brush, and serve apart a velouté sauce reduced with mushroom broth if for the white or else a brown financière sauce with Madeira.

Quotation for the Day.

Banquet: an affair where you eat a lot of food you don’t want before talking about something you don’t understand to a crowd of people who don’t want to hear.
Unknown.

Cooking with Ketchup.

As explained yesterday, short recipe curiosities are the order of the day until the IT issues are sorted out at the Old Foodie residence. Today’s treat is the joy that can result from cooking with commercial condiments – specifically, Heinz Tomato Ketchup. If you are having a ‘secret ingredient’ dinner, the following fruit crumble might do nicely for dessert.

Major League Rhubarb
Combine ½ cup sugar with 2 teaspoons salt, ½ teaspoon cinnamon, ¼ teaspoon nutmeg and 2 cups soft breadcrumbs. Stir 1 ½ cups of this mixture into one 12 ounce package of frozen rhubarb that has been thawed in a greased 1 ½ quart casserole. Add 1 medium banana and 1 medium tart apple, each peeled and thinly sliced. Pour over casserole contents a mixture of ½ cup ketchup and 1 tablespoon each lemon juice and rind. Sprinkle with remaining breadcrumb mixture, dot with 2 tablespoons butter or margarine, and bake, covered, in a moderate (350 degree) oven 30 minutes. Uncover, bake 20 minutes longer. Serve warm or cold, garnished with either whipped cream, cottage cheese, sour cream or ice-cream.
[Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Oct 3, 1957]

Of course, you may prefer something a bit more conventional, and considerably less scary, so, from a Heinz advertisement of 1957, we have:

Almond Chick-Up.
Heat oven to 375 degrees F (Moderately hot.)
Shake 3 lb cut-up frying chicken in paper bag with ½ cup flour, 1 Tabs. Salt, ¼ tsp pepper, 1 Tbs. paprika. Brown chicken in ½ cup melted shortening. Place in 2-qt. casserole. Sauté ¼ cup blanched almonds, slivered, in same shortening. Blend in remaining flour mixture. Stir in ¾ cup water and 1 can Heinz Consommé, undiluted. When thick, add 14oz. Heinz Tomato Ketchup, ½ cup dairy sour cream. Pour over chicken – cover – bake 50 min. Top with ½ cup grated process American cheese. Bake, uncovered,10 min (8 servings)


Today is also a fine opportunity to remind you of the history of Tomato Soup Cake:


Quotation for the Day.

“Blessed relief for Mother and the other women in the household!”
Heinz slogan for ketchup, 1876.

The Hunt Breakfast.

Today, with much relief, I leave behind the relentlessly awful, cold, uncooked, unsalted, unspiced, decidely unappealing offerings of the early raw-foodies, and instead give you a glimpse into another sort of lifestyle altogether. From the American Jessup Whitehead’s The steward's handbook and guide to party catering, (1889) I give you this short insight into breakfast with the English aristocracy.

One of the British princes was recently entertained at the country seat of a nobleman at a "hunt breakfast" and dinner, and the decorations and table-ware were changed for each as follows :

Hunt Breakfast Menu.

Broiled Kidneys. Pulled Fowl

Salmon Steaks. Stuffed Tomatoes.

Sheeps Tongues. Potted Pigeons.

Broiled Rump Steaks. Quenelles.

Croquettes of Rice and Ham.

Chickens in Bechamel.

Potted Game. Pate Mêlé.

Cold Sirloin of Beef. Pressed Tongues.

York Hams. Raised Pies (various).

Normandy Pippins. Stewed Prunes.

Clotted Cream.

Roast Snipes. Woodcocks. T[h]rushes.

Apple Marmalade. Apricot Jam. Currant Jelly.

Vanilla Milk. Café au Lait. Tea.

Liqueurs.

"The tables on this occasion were dressed with white cloths and decorated à la jardinière. The silver antique jardinières were filled with ferns and spring flowers, peeping out of mosses of various kinds. Large silver bowls and epergnes on the side-board and side tables were filled with exquisite arrangements of hyacinths, tulips, wood violets, snowdrops, etc., in mosaic patterns; whilst hanging baskets graced the windows, filled with the spiritulle cyclamen light foliage, interspersed with yellow and red flowers, that gave the grand old oak hall a splendid appearance. The display of antique plate would have delighted the heart of the most enthusiastic antiquary, and the tout ensemble seemed to give the young prince much pleasure.

"The vanilla milk, which, by the way, was half cream, found great favor, and was served steaming hot in silver cups. Some added curaçoa to it, others a petit verre de Cognac, but the majority preferred the sweet beverage simply as prepared in the kitchen by my worthy old friend, the chef, who is too modest to allow me to give his name."

The author then goes on, as promised, to describe the equally sumptuous dinner.

Two particular dishes appeal to me on this menu: the “pulled fowl”, and the featured vanilla milk (I think I would have had mine ‘straight’, to better enjoy the vanilla-ness.)

Pulled Fowl.
This is a side dish for company. Select a fine tender fowl young fat full grown and of a large kind. When quite done take it out of the pot, cover it, and set it away till wanted. Then with a fork pull off in flakes all the flesh (first removing the skin,) and with a chopper break all the bones, and put them into a stew pan adding two calves’ feet split, and the hock of a cold ham, a small bunch of parsley and sweet marjoram, and a quart of water. Let it boil gently till reduced to a pint. Then take it out. Have ready in another stew pan the bits of pulled fowl. Strain the liquor from the bones &c over the fowl, and add a piece of fresh butter (the size of a small egg) rolled in flour, and a tea spoonful of powdered mace and nutmeg mixed. Mix the whole together and let the pulled fowl stew in gravy for ten minutes. Serve it hot. A turkey may be cooked in this manner and will make a fine dish. For a turkey allow four calves feet.
Miss Leslie’s New Cookery Book, 1857.

Vanilla Milk.
To 12 drops essence of vanilla and 1 oz. of lump sugar, add 1 pint of new milk.
Cooling cups and dainty drinks; William Terrington, 1869.


Quotation for the Day.

Hunting is not a sport. In a sport, both sides should know they're in the game.
Paul Rodriguez

Cricket Dinner, Rangoon, 1825.

I have many historic menus left over, now that the manuscript is in for Menus from History. Not being a person to like waste, particularly of work, I suspect that many of them will find their way to you as the days (and years) go by.

The cricket season is upon us, so from this cricket-widow to cricket lovers and haters all, I give you the following little insight into the sheer fortitude of cricket players.

The Officers of the British Army at Rangoon in the early ninteenth century formed a cricket club, and after a “grand match” on January 18, 1825, they dined together. The bill of fare shows “that our gallant countrymen were not so near to starvation as some have represented.”


Bill of Fare for the Cricket Club Dinner
Six tureens of soup, 4 saddles of mutton, 6 legs of mutton (boiled and roasted), 6 fore quarters of mutton, 2 pieces of surloin beef roasted, 2 rounds of beef (corned), 3 Bengal humps, 4 briskets, 6 tongues, 4 geese, 4 stewed ducks, 6 roast duck, 4 ducks smothered in onions, 6 roast fowls, 6 boiled fowls, 4 country capt, 4 fowl pies, 4 gibblet pies, 2 mutton pies, 2 beef steak pies, 4 dishes of mutton chops, 3 roast pigs, 10 plates of yams, 10 plates of potatoes, 10 plates of onions, 10 plates of pumpkin, 4 dishes of prawn curry, 4 dishes of mutton curry, 6 fowl curries, 3 hams, 4 dishes of beefsteak, 2 fillets of veal (roasted), 2 knuckles of veal (boiled), 2 fore quarters of veal (roasted), 2 dishes of veal cutlets, calf’s head, 4 veal pies, 2 dishes of calf's liver and bacon, 2 bullocks hearts, 4 gooseberry tarts, 4 apple tarts, 4 currant tarts, 4 cherry tarts, 4 rice puddings, 4 plumb puddings, 4 dishes of mince pies 2 cheeses, biscuits, bread. Wine cordials and beer in abundance "

A nice little repast for the hungry players, yes? Last I heard there were only eleven men on a cricket team. Even allowing for a few spares and some officials, that sounds like an awful lot of food in the Rangoon heat. No vegetarians on that team, by the looks.

Bengal ‘Humps’ (bullock, usually) were cured like ham or ‘corned’ and spiced like beef, and according to an article published in 1807 had already “long been a favourite dish at the splendid entertainments of the great Lords .. in India” . Presumably what went down well in India was also enjoyed in Burma, as those staunch British colonials developed their own Anglo-Eastern cuisine.

The ‘Country capt.’ on the bill of fare were a favourite chicken dish, and one of my favourite sources from this time (‘A Lady’), gives us a recipe.

A Country Captain.
Cut a fowl in pieces, and shred a large onion very small, and fry it brown in butter. Sprinkle the fowl with fine salt, and dust it over with fine curry-powder, and fry it brown; put all into a stewpan, with a pint of soup, and stew it down to one half: serve it with rice.
Domestic economy, and cookery, for rich and poor, by a lady, 1827

Quotation for the Day …

It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or two things still safe to eat.
Robert Fuoss. Saturday Evening Post.

From the Orient.

I (and my lovely daughter) are in Thailand this week. Shopping and Eating. It seems appropriate then, to give you something with an Eastern flavour.

Mrs Woolley from last week was silent on the subject of the Orient, which is not surprising for a woman born in the early seventeenth century. A hundred years later however, knowledge of the outside world was pressing in on England, and the author of  Domestic economy, and cookery, for rich and poor(1827), known at the time only as “A Lady”, had quite a comprehensive chapter on “Oriental Cookery.”

She starts by saying:

“WE are accustomed to look to the East for the origin of arts and sciences. I am not, however, inclined to ascribe the invention of cookery to Brahma or Visnu, nor do 1 feel myself so far implicated in its honour as to fall out with the heathen of old for not elevating to a niche in the Pantheon a deity that has, in these latter ages, found so many worshippers. The art of cookery; more than any other, depends upon local circumstances, as it is with the greatest difficulty communicated from one country to another, the natural productions of the soil requiring to be transported, as well as the modes of dressing them. In the early emigrations, the people must have been shepherds to abandon their native country without very great inconvenience; in their progress to husbandry and civilisation, they would adopt peculiar fashions of their own, from chance or necessity. The styles of the different nations might be thus various, though much on a par with respect to quality; and, although that of one country might surpass the rest, the others, not admitting of any general standard, could not possibly adopt it or profit by it. Travellers, while they might communicate unknown sciences, against which there could be no very rooted prejudice, or discoveries in known ones, which would be received with avidity, not only would have found it impossible to introduce improvements in this art, but would also have had to divest themselves of the deepest rooted of all prejudices. …

She then finds a recipe to illustrate her point:

“On opening Dr. Hunter's Culina accidentally, at the last page (quite in the oriental style), I was not a little pleased at finding the following admirable receipt, so different from the English style; there being some obsolete words in it, he has thus rendered it …”  

A delicious Dish,
Take good cow's milk and put it into a pot; take parsley, sage, hyssop, savory, and other good herbs; chop them and stew them in the milk; take capons, and after half roasting them, cut them in pieces, and add to them pines [pine nuts], clarified honey, and salt; colour with saffron, and serve up.

The Lady goes on to say:

“Nothing but prejudice could call any thing in this receipt disgusting. This dish is completely Turkish. The sweet herbs (the milk is in the Arab style), the saffron, the capons, the making of which is a constant practice in the East, and of which we have no trace among our nations anterior to the time of the Crusades; but, above all, the sweets, the honey, and the pine kernels, which arc richer and stronger than almonds, and must have been imported, as they never bear fruit more towards the north than the 43°, all proved to me that our travelled forefathers had not been proof against the dainties of the East. The dish I have tried, and, even without capons, I can affirm that it well merits its title.”

And then:

“But what was my surprise, on turning the page for the connexion, to read as follows: “Whoever looks into the 'Forme of Cury,' as compiled about 400 years ago, by the master cook of Richard the Second, will he highly disgusted with the dishes there recorded. Much, therefore, is due to those who have brought forward the culinary manners of the present age, in opposition to the nauseous exhibitions of former times. For example:” then follows (will the reader believe me ?) the above-mentioned ‘Delicious Dish’ ”

The author is referring to a dish (or one of a number of dishes) that are a fore-runner of our modern blancmange, or “white eat”, - one variety being called Blank Dessire or Blank de Sur, meaning “white dish from Syria”.

For to make Blank de Sur.

Take the zolyks of Eggs sodyn and temper it with the mylk of a kow and do thereto Comyn and Safron and flowr’ of ris or wasted bread myced and grynd in a morter and temper it up with the milk and make it boyle and do thereto wit of Egg corvyn smale and take fat chese and kerf ther’to wan the liquor is boyld and serve it forth.

Form of Cury, circa 1390.

A recipe for Blanc Maunger, also from the Form of Cury, is HERE.

Quotation for the Day …

I prefer to regard a dessert as I would imagine the perfect woman:  subtle, a little bittersweet, not blowsy and extrovert.  Delicately made up, not highly rouged.  Holding back, not exposing everything and, of course, with a flavor that lasts.  Graham Kerr.

A French Wedding.

The wedding of my young friend is approaching fast (The Girls’ Lunch is today), and the realisation of all that planning is at hand. Wedding catering always means a lot of work for someone. It was no different in fourteenth century France. Here are some instructions from Le Menagier: A Treatise on Moral and Domestic Economy by A Citizen of Paris, published about 1393.

Arrangements for the wedding done by Master Helye in May, on a Tuesday; dinner only for twenty bowls.

Platter: butter, none because it is a meat day. Item, cherries, none, because none could be found; and so no platter.

Soups: capons in fricassee, pomegranate and red sugared almonds on top.

Roast: on each plate a haunch of kid: haunch of kid is better than lamb; a gosling, two young chickens and sauces for them, oranges, cameline, verjuice, and for this fresh towels or napkins.

Side dish: crayfish jelly, loach jelly, small rabbits and pigs. Dessert: frumenty and venison. End: hippocras and wafers. Extras: wine and spices.

The arrangements for supper done this day are for ten bowls.

Cold sage soup of halves of young chickens and little geese, and a vinaigrette of this same dish for supper on a plate. A pie of two young rabbits and two flans - it is said that at French weddings you must have meat pies - and on the other dish the kids' mesenteries and the half-heads, browned.

Side-dish: jelly as above. End: apples and cheese without hippocras, because it is out of season .

Dancing, singing, wine and spices and torches for light.

Now we shall talk about the quantities of the things spoken of above and what goes with them and the prices, and who provides them and sells them.

At the baker's, ten dozen flat white bread baked one day ahead and costing one denier each.

Trencher bread, three dozen of half a foot in width and four fingers tall, baked four days before and browned, or what is called in the market Corbeil bread.

Vintner: three pairs of wines.

At the butcher, half a sheep to make the soup for the companions and a quarter of bacon for larding; the master bone of a leg of beef to cook with the capons so as to get broth to make the fricassee; a forequarter of veal to serve in the fricassee. For the seconds a hind leg of veal or veal feet, to make the liquid for the jelly. Venison, a hefty leg.

At the pastry-cook order: first, to serve the young women, a dozen and a half conical wafers stuffed with cheese, three sous; a dozen and a half long wafers, six sous; a dozen and a half porte wafers, eighteen deniers; a dozen and a half stirrup wafers, eighteen deniers; one hundred sugared cakes, eight deniers.

Item, they shopped for twenty bowls, for the wedding-day dinner, and for six bowls for the servants, and this cost six deniers per bowl, and served each bowl eight wafers, four supplications and four stirrup wafers.

At the poulterer, twenty capons, two Paris sous each; five kids, four Paris sous; twenty young geese, three Paris sous each; fifty young chickens, twelve Paris deniers each; that is to say forty to be roast for the dinner, five for the jelly and five for supper in the cold soup. Fifty young rabbits, that is to say forty for the dinner, which will be roasted, and ten for jelly, and cost twelve Paris deniers each. A thin pig, for the jelly, four Paris sous; twelve pairs of pigeons for the supper, ten Paris deniers the pair. One may enquire of him for venison.

In the market, trencher bread, three dozen. Pomegranates for fricassee, three costing... Oranges, fifty costing... Six new cheeses and one old, and three hundred eggs.

You must realise that each cheese must furnish six tartlets, and also for each cheese you need three eggs.

Sorrel to make verjuice for the chickens, sage and parsley for the cold soup, two hundred pommes de blandureau.

Two brooms and a shovel for the kitchen and salt.

At the sauce-maker's, three half-pints of cameline for dinner and supper and a quart of sorrel verjuice.

At the grocer's: ten pounds of almonds, forty deniers a pound. Three pounds of blanched wheat, eight deniers a pound. - One pound of columbine ginger, eleven sous. - one quarter-pound of mesche ginger, five sous. - A half-pound of ground cinnamon, five sous. - Two pounds of ground rice, two sous. - Two pound of lump sugar, sixteen sous. - A quarter-pound of cloves and seed of garlic, six sous. Half a quarter-pound of long pepper, four sous. - Half a quarter-pound of galingale, five sous. - Half a quarter-pound of mace, three sous four deniers. - Half a quarter-pound of green laurel leaves, six deniers. - Two pounds of tall thin candles, three sous four deniers the pound, making six sous eight deniers, - Torches at three pounds apiece, six; smaller torches at one pound apiece, six; that is to say a cost of three sous a pound, and six deniers less per pound on the returns .

For chamber-spices, that is to say, candied orange peel, one pound, ten sous. - Candied citron, one pound, twelve sous. - Red anise, one pound, eight sous. - Rose-sugar, one pound, ten sous. - White sugared almonds, three pounds, ten sous a pound. - Of hippocras, three quarts, ten sous a quart, and all will be needed.

These spices amounted to twelve francs, including returns on the torches, and a few spices left over; this works out to half a franc per bowl

At Pierre-au-Lait, a sixth of full-cream milk without water added, to make the frumenty.

In the Place de Greve, a hundredweight of coal from Burgundy, thirteen sous two sacks of charcoal, ten sous.

At the Forte-de-Paris: may, green herb, violet, bread-crumbs, a quarter of white salt, a quarter of coarse salt, a hundred crayfish, a half-litre of loach, two clay pots, one of six quarts for the jelly, and the other of two quarts for the cameline.

The Menagier includes a large number of recipes. What to chose? This one, on the basis of its name, wins for today.

STUFFED CHICKS.
A chick should be suffocated while it is still alive, and it is suffocated at the neck; then bind its neck and let it die: then scald, pluck, gut, put it back together and stuff.
Item, or else, when it is all ready to put on the spit, at the hole where it was gutted, you can separate with your finger the skin from the flesh, then stuff it using the end of your finger, then sew it back up with a whip-stitch, at the hole, sewing the skin with the flesh, and put it on the spit.
And note that the stuffing is made of parsley and a little sage with hard-cooked eggs and butter, all chopped up together, and powdered spices too. For each chick you need three eggs, whites and all.

Quotation for the Day …

Marriage is not merely sharing the fettuccine, but sharing the burden of finding the fettuccine restaurant in the first place. Calvin Trillin.

The Natural Diet of Man.

John Harvey Kellogg of cornflake fame was a serious vegetarian (he had some other rather strange ideas too, which we have considered previously.) He was not just a vegetarian, he was an evangelical vegetarian, and like all good evangelists he lost no opportunity (and probably created quite a few) to promote his cause. In his book The Natural Diet of Man ( 1923), one of his theories was that vegetarians were physically stronger. He published a list, compiled by ‘Russell’ (I don’t yet know who this is) of thirty-nine examples of races capable of great strength and endurance which showed (he said) that only three (less than 8 per cent) were associated with ‘flesh eating’. A further 14 examples (one third) ate meat occasionally, and the remaining 25 had completely flesh-free diets.

The list and conclusions would hardly be accepted as having much scientific validity today (which goes for a lot of modern ‘health’ claims too), but it is an interesting insight into ….. something. An interesting insight into the opinions of a nineteenth century evangelically vegetarian teetotal anti-sex American on the diet and strength of ‘others’, I suppose.

EUROPE.
DALECARLIAN SWEDE
Grain, milk, cheese, etc, probably fish also.
LAPLANDERS (SOME)
Flesh, blood, barley, coffee, alcohol.
FINNS (SOME)
Rye, barley, potatoes, fruit
RUSSIAN GRENADIERS
Eight lb. black bread, 4 lb. oil, 1 lb. salt, for eight days.
RUSSIAN LABORERS AT A PORT
Rye bread, garlics, etc.
ASIA
SIBERIAN SOLDIERS
Rye bread, soup
GREEK BOATMEN
Black rye or wheat bread, raisins or figs, etc
TURKISH SOLDIERS
Bread, mutton, beans, rice, butter, salt.
PART OF OTTOMAN ARMY
Vegetarian generally, water drinkers
BOATMEN, ETC., AT CONSTANTINOPLE
Bread, cucumbers, sherries, figs, dates, or other fruit, a little fish.
PORTERS AT SMYRNA
Vegetables, grain, or fruit.
KOLASHIN (MONTENEGRO)
Maize, milk, oil, onions, mutton
MONKS OF CYPRUS
Beans and barley bread; flesh rarely
CHINESE LABORERS (COUNTRY)
Rice, vegetables; sometimes a little fish or flesh; in some parts, rice, millet, sweet potatoes, beans etc.
KOREAN COUNTRYMEN (SOME)
Rice, eggs, dried fish, flesh; or rice, beans, spice, vinegar, radishes, occasional flesh.
JAPANESE SOLDIERS
Rice, 36 oz. vegetables, some fish, barley and beans at times.
SAMURAI
Unhulled rice chiefly, some fish or eggs, dried fruit, tea, cool, not cold, water.
TARTARS OF THE CHIN HILLS
Flesh, alcohol, etc
MADRAS MESSENGERS
Boiled rice, etc.
HIMALAYANS
Rice, etc.
SIKHS
Vegetarian chiefly, wheat flour.
ARMENIAN PORTERS
Bread, olives, cheese, onions, salad.

AFRICA
JENNA PEOPLE (CENTRAL AFRICA)
Chiefly yams and maize
ARAB TRIBES IN NORTH AFRICA
Dates, milk etc
CONGO SLAVES
Vegetarian
CANARY ISLAND LABORERS
Coarse vegetables, fruit, grain
SOME NATIVE RACES OF SOUTH AFRICA
Millet, sour milk.

AMERICAS
TOBASCO INDIANS (MEXICO)
Maize, sugar, etc
MEXICAN INDIANS AND MINERS
Maize, sugar, omelets, vegetables.
CHILIAN LABORERS (FROM DARWIN)
Two small loaves, 16 figs, boiled beans, roasted wheat.
YAQUIL MINERS (FROM DARWIN)
Boiled beans and bread
RIO SALADE SPANIARDS
Vegetarian
BOLIVIAN TROOPERS
Maize, cocoa, water.
BRAZIL SLAVES
Rice, fruit, bread, roots.
OPON INDIANS
Maize, sugar-cane, game, bananas, bread-fruit, mangoes, oranges.
FRIENDLY ISLANDERS
Bread-fruit, potatoes, taro, fruit, fish.
IPALAOS ISLANDERS
Bread-fruit, vegetables, fish, yams, potatoes, taro, bananas, coconuts, birds, eggs, turtles, etc.
COMANCHES (RED INDIANS)
Animal, chiefly; buffalo, piñon-nut, etc.
OSAGES (RED INDIANS)
Buffalo, maize, beans, pumpkins, wild plums.

Well, there you are. Glean what you may from that list. Start your own health-fad industry from it. Drink cool, not cold water. Revel in the idea that Cypriot Monks are amongst the strongest men in the world. Find out where the Ipalaos Islands are (and let me know).
John Kellogg’s wife Ella Eaton Kellogg assisted him in his work, and in 1893 published a book on diet and nutrition called Science in the Kitchen. I have to say there is not much in there that is fun. I have given you recipes from it before, so instead today I give you a recipe from Favorite dishes, by Carrie V. Shuman, published the very same year but with a different attitude.

Chicken Croquettes.
From MRS. SARAH H. BIXBY, of Maine, Alternate Lady Manager.
Chop one-half pound chicken quite fine; add one teaspoonful salt; one saltspoonful pepper; one saltspoonful celery salt; one teaspoon lemon juice; one tablespoon chopped parsley and a few drops of onion juice; moisten with the thick cream sauce.
Thick Cream Sauce --Melt two tablespoons butter; add two heaping tablespoons cornstarch; one teaspoon salt and one saltspoon pepper; add slowly one pint hot cream and beat well.
[The Alternate Lady Manager did not feel the need to spell it out, but these croquettes would probably have been crumbed and fried.]

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

Entertaining the Queen.

July 9 ...

Queen Elizabeth I arrived at Kenilworth, the home of her favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester on this day in 1575. It was the highlight of her summer ‘progress’ (Royal Tour): the visit, the feasting, and the pageantry lasted eighteen days. Impressing the Queen was an expensive exercise and the honour cost Dudley an unbelievable thousand dollars a day.

There was morris dancing, ‘sundry kinds of very delectable music’, play-acting, stag-hunting, bear-baiting, and all sorts of other frolicsome pastimes in addition to many extravagant dining experiences. The details of this fine little holiday were recorded by one Robert Laneham. He hints at the vast quantities of dainty viands and says that there were ‘full cups everywhere, every hour all kinds of wine’, but unfortunately for us does not give any detailed bills of fare. We must be satisfied with a general description of one of the banquets:

“After the play, out of hand followed a most delicious and (if I may so term it) an ambrosial banquet: whereof, whether I might more muse at the daintiness, shapes, and the cost; or else, at the variety and number of the dishes (that were three hundred), for my part, I could little tell then; and now less, I assure you. Her Majesty eat smally or nothing; which understood, the courses were not so orderly served and sizely set down, but were, by and by, as disorderly wasted and coarsely consumed; more courtly, methought, than courteously : But that was no part of the matter : it might please and be liked, and do that it came for, then was all well enough.”

I have chosen a chicken recipe for you from the Elizabethan era. Simple, but quite good enough to serve a Queen.

To bake a Capon with yolkes of Egges.
When the Capon is made redi, trusse him in to a Coffyn: then take .viii. yolks of egges sodden hard, a pick into every one of them, .v. Cloves, and put the yolks into the Coffyn with the Capon. Then take a quantitie of gynger and salt, and cast it upon the Capon and bake it .iii. houres. Then take .ii. raw yolkes of egges beaten into a Gobbett of veriuce, with a good quantitie of sugre sodden togither, put it into ye Coffyn and so serve it.
[A Treasurie of commodious Conceits, & hidden Secrets. John Partridge, published in 1573.]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Gravy, Part 1.

Quotation for the Day …

I never see an egg brought on my table but I feel penetrated with the wonderful change it would have undergone but for my gluttony; it might have been a gentle, useful, hen leading her chickens with a care and vigilance which speaks shame to many women. St. John de Crevecoeur.

Waterloo Food.

June 18 ...

On this day in 1815 the British defeated Napoleon Bonaparte (and hence their traditional enemy, the French) once and for all near a Belgian town called Waterloo, and they (the British, that is) have celebrated the event ever since. The Duke of Wellington - he who was responsible for the victory - held a banquet on the anniversary every year at Apsley House (his London mansion) until his death. It was a grand affair, and only the elite (including King George IV in 1821) and one was only invited if one was from the elite of society, or was one of his old military comrades.

Other less grand celebrations went on, each individual or community commemorating the day as they could. The villagers of Denby Dale in Yorkshire in 1815 made the second of their famous giant pies, calling it The Victory Pie. In 1845, the explorer Ludwig Leichhardt and his team in deepest Australia had been saving their sugar bags for just this day. The starving men boiled them up with their tea, dissolving out the last sweet fugitive grains as a delicious treat.

So how shall we celebrate the day? Surprisingly, there is little named for the battle iself, so we must be content to celebrate the man who made it all happen.

There is of course, Filet of Beef Wellington, the beef covered in foie gras and truffles, the whole wrapped in golden puff pastry, and the absolute dinner party dish of the 60’s . Apocryphal stories abound as to its naming. The reality is that beef wrapped in pastry has been around for as long as there has been pastry. The particular incarnation that we refer to may indeed have been named in his honour – or is it in honour of his highly polished boots, as some say?

Nineteenth century chefs often named their dishes after famous people (living or dead) or famous events. Here is one from Queen Victoria’s chef, Francatelli – a dish which also looks to Wellington’s legs.

Legs of Fowl à la Wellington.
In this case also the legs of fowls whose fillets have already been used will serve the purpose : the legs, wings, and back-bones should be separated and neatly trimmed, placed in a deep sautapan with two tablespoonfuls of salad-oil, a sprig of thyme, one bay-leaf, a clove of garlic, a little pepper and salt. Fry the members of fowls over a sharp fire until they are done of a light-brown colour, and then, after removing the bay-leaf and thyme, shake in two tablespoonfuls of flour, and one of Crosse and Blackwell's Indian Chutnee; stir all together, moisten with half a pint of good gravy, simmer the whole over the fire for ten minutes, and serve.
[The Cook’s Guide, Charles Elmé Francatelli, 1863]

Tomorrow’s Story.

Superdreadnought food.

Quotation for the Day.

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event. Oscar Wilde.

Mock Food No. 5

April 18 ...

I have saved the best till last for you this week. I have had to make some tough choices. Sadly, in the morning rush (I have been writing on the fly this week, not in organised-ahead fashion), my computer has mislaid the recipe for Mock Tapioca that I know you would have loved.

Firstly, I give you a mock chicken recipe using up all those fish sounds you probably have languishing in your freezer, as you are probably tired of Eliza Acton’s recipe for them by now.

Cod Sounds to look like small Chickens.
A good maigre-day dish. Wash three large sounds nicely,, and boil in milk and water, but not too tender; when cold, put a forcemeat of chopped oysters, crums of bread, a bit of butter, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and the yolks of two eggs; spread it thin over the sounds, and roll up each in the form of a chicken, skewering it; then lard them as you would chickens, dust a little flour over, and roast them in a tin oven slowly. When done enough, pour over them a fine oyster-sauce. Serve for side or corner dish at the first course.
[From Mrs Rundell’s A New System of Domestic Cookery. 1824]

Secondly, a consolation prize from our source of yesterday, Richard Bradley’s The Country Housewife and Lady’s Director (1732) – a method of making artificial Cocks-Combs. Although there may not be much call today for them today, and most of us can no longer find our Jagging Irons, the truth of his final sentence still stands – that “the Eye must be pleased before we can taste any thing with Pleasure”.

To make Artificial Cocks-Combs.
Take Tripe, without any Fat, and with a sharp Knife pare away the fleshy Part, leaving only the brawny or horny Part about the Thickness of a Cock’s Comb. Then, with a Jagging-Iron, cut Pieces out of it, in the Shape of Cock’s Combs, and the remaining parts between may be cut into Pieces, and used in Pyes, and serve every whit as well as Cock’s Combs; but since those cut in Form please the Eye best, and as the Eye must be pleased before we can taste any thing with Pleasure, therefore in Fricassees we should ever be careful to put in those which are cut according to Art.

If you would like more to add to your Mock Food repertoire, may I point you to previous stories?

Ritz Cracker ‘Apple Pie’
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2006/11/better-soda-cracker.html

White Mock Turtle Soup
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2007/06/may-harrods-suggest.html

Mock Turtle Soup, assembled from very convenient canned ingredients.
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2006/02/extracting-goodness.html

Mock Mock Turtle Soup (the name is not a typo!), and Mock Arrack
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2006/09/drop-of-toddy.html

Mock Brawn. [1792]
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2007/11/on-belly-cheare.html

Mock Chicken (Columbia War Papers)(1918)
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2006/05/mission-menu.html

Mock Asses’ Milk (2 recipes)
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2006/09/koumiss-cure.html

Monday’s Story …

Curry Crime.

Quotation for the Day …

I prefer milk because I am a Prohibitionist, but I do not go to it for inspiration. Mark Twain.

Pi(e) No. 4

March 13 ...

Something that continues to intrigue me is the vast difference between the interpretation of the unqualified word ‘pie’ in America and Australia. In the States, ‘a pie’ is unequivocally a sweet dish. In Australia a ‘pie’ is indisputably a savoury meat item – and more. The meat pie is Australia is an iconic dish – although the edible reality often falls short of the dream, which is why it (the commercial variety which is the default fodder at sports games) is affectionately referred to as a ‘maggot bag’ or ‘fly cemetery’.

The sweet-or-savoury discussion would have been meaningless in medieval times when sugar was an expensive imported luxury and was used in the same way as a spice, and added to almost every dish in a rich man’s house. The echo remains in the name of our Christmas ‘mincemeat’ pies, which now don’t contain meat at all. ‘Sweet’ and fruit additions to all sorts of savoury recipes was still common in the eighteenth century, and in ways that would seem quite adventurous and cutting edge if we saw the ideas on a restaurant menu today. The first cookery book to be published in Scotland was Mrs McLintock’s Receipts for Cookery and Pastry-Work in 1736, and she gives an interesting recipe for Chicken Pye, with several variations involving fruit, and with two different ‘pastes’ for the bottom (the ‘coffin’) and top of the pie.

To make a Chicken Pye.
Lay your Chickens in your Pye, lay the bottoms of Artichokes with them if they can be got, take Nutmeg, black Pepper, Jamaica Pepper, and good Store of Fresh Butter, so close your Pye: you may have a Caudle* ready to put in at the Lumb, when it comes out of the Oven. If you make your Pye with Gooseberries, let the Butter and Spices be the same with the former; give good Store of Sugar. If it be not the Time of Gooseberries, take Currans and Rasins, and let your Liquor by White Wine and Vinegar. Take 2 lib. of Butter and a Peck of Flour, melt the Butter in boiling Water, and work it very well for all sorts of raised Past: for cold Paste, take 3 lib. and a half of Butter for each Peck of Flour, and wet the Flour with cold Water, then roll in your butter. For Puff-Paste, for each Peck of Flour take 4 lib. and an half of sweet Butter, and the Whites of 4 Eggs and beat them a little, take a little of the Flour and mix it with the Eggs and cold Water, and work them well together, till it comes to a Paste thick for rolling out, then roll it out, put Flour beneath that it may not stick to the Table, and put on the Butter, strawing a handful of Flour over the Butter, then fold it together, and roll in out 6 or 7 Times, always strewing Flour upon it every Time it is rolled out, and so apply it to the Use you desire.

*A caudle was a sort of pre-prepared sauce or ‘liquor’ that was poured in via the ‘lumb’ or hole in the top of pie, after it was cooked.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Pi(e) No. 5

Quotation for the Day …

I am convinced that digestion is the great secret of life and that character, talents, virtues, and qualities are powerfully affected by beef, mutton, pie-crust and rich soups.
Sydney Smith, in The Smith of Smiths by Hesketh Pearson (1934)

The Pope comes to dinner.

January 14 ...

Over a thousand people, including Queen Christina of Sweden attended a banquet give for Pope Innocent XI in Rome on this day in 1687. Mine host was His Excellency the Earl of Castelmaine, English Ambassador to Rome, and he put on a fine spread indeed – so fine that the feast remained set out “for two whole days, (according to the Roman way) that everyone's curiosity might have some share in the Entertainment”.

The event was recorded by the Ambassador’s steward, John Michael Wright, and he left some details about the food.

“This large table, having (as is said) these adornments in the middle, had between them, and the napkins, (which were also most artificially folded) two rows of Assiets, or Intermesses, on either side, fill'd with all sorts of relishing bits, whether salt, sweet or soure; as Pickles, Butter, slices of delicate Bacon, Bologna-Sausiges, Taratufoli, Composts, &c., all which, stood in the abovesaid order, for two whole days, (according to the Roman way) that everyone's curiosity might have some share in the Entertainment."

The art of napkin-folding had impressed Samuel Pepys a few decades earlier, so it seems that it was a relatively new fashion in England. The ‘adornments’ were the incredibly elaborate food ‘sculptures’ – like the medieval subtelties or illusion foods that were not necessarily eaten but served as messages of propaganda or symbols of religious devotion, or simply – as in this case – to impress the guests with the wealth and status of the host. These ‘adornments’ were given to eminent ladies to take home – so no doubt they did second duty in eminent homes as symbols of rank and influence.

Mr. Wright’s inclusion of ‘composts’ in his list seems a little old-fashioned for the time. It was already an old word to describe a ‘composition’ or combination of ingredients – as in the modern use of the word to describe a mix of garden refuse in the process of melting down into rich soil. We do still use it in a culinary sense too – although we use the Frenchified version: the little accent mark over the second ‘o’ in compôte indicates the loss of a letter ‘s’. So there you are – next time you have a fruit compote you are really having a modern version of compost.

Composts were not exclusively made of fruit in medieval and early modern times. Here are a couple of versions from Englands first printed cookbook, A Noble boke off cookry ffor a prynce houssolde or eny other estately houssolde (1500)

Peres in composte.
To mak peres [pears] in composte tak a good quantite of canelle [cinnamon] and sugur and set it on the fyer to boile and draw yt throughe a stren then lesk [slice or chop]dates thyn and put them ther to in a pot and boille wardens [pears] and pair them and put them in the ceripe [syrup] put ther to sanders [red sandalwood, used to color the dish] and boile them and alay them up with chardwins and salt it and mak yt doucet [sweet] and chargaunt and put it out of the vesselle in to a treene vesselle and let it boille then pare smalle raisins and tried guinger and temper it ij dais or ij nyghtes with wyne then lay it in clarified hony cold a day and nyght then tak the raisins out of the hony and cast ther to peres in composte and serue it furthe with a cold ceripe.

To mak compost.
To mak composte tak chekins [chickens] and halve them then tak saige parsly lekes and other good erbes and chop them small then tak a pint of hony and som of the erbes and lay in the botom of the pot and som of the chekyn then tak lard of pork smale mynced and lay it on and cast ther to pouder of guingere and canelle and boille it and serue it.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Living on Parmesan.

Quotation for the Day …

Monsieur Guizot assures us that while he was ambassador in London, his cook was more useful to him politically than his secretaries.
Lucien Tendret (1825-1896) great-nephew of Brillat-Savarin.

The Third Day of Christmas.

Today, December 28 …

“On the third day of Christmas my true love sent to me: "Three French hens ….".

Why French? I guess because “Three Bresse chickens” doesn’t have the right ring to it? To the English, a “French Hen” was an alternative name for a particular variety of bantam chicken with frizzled (i.e upcurled) feathers. I have no idea why. Does the rhyme mean three of these little birds? But why hens? Old laying hens are not much use for anything other than making chicken stock – mind you, that’s a pretty noble end. What would we do without chicken stock? Live on ice-cream I suppose.

Once upon a time, recipes and bills of fare specified the type of fowl that made up the dish – capon, pullet, hen, rooster etc. Now we mostly just get “chicken”, because mostly the bird is factory reared to standard specifications, and is culled at a standard age. Chicken-rearing practices would have to be drastically re-discovered for us to regularly see these old names on menus – but in case it does happen, here is a short summary:

Hen: the female of the “common domestic barnyard fowl” i.e Gallus domesticus; usually refers to a bird beyond its pullet stage.

Pullet: a young female, at the beginning of her egg-laying life (about 20 weeks) but has not yet moulted.

Rooster, Cockerel: the male of the “common domestic barnyard fowl”, most usefull in the household to make Cock-Ale (a useful beverage to restore your fighting spirit).

Capon: A castrated cock. Capons are bigger, fatter and more docile than their intact brothers, so desirable on all counts to farmers and the first two to cooks (they make the best roasters, apparently).

In case the chicken-rearing revival does not become widespread, but you have a yen for roast capon on Sundays, here is how to caponize your birds, as told by William Ellis in his marvellous Country Housewifes Companion (1750)

To make Capons. This operation belongs to the country housewife. I know a yeoman living near Hempstead in Hertfordshire, whose estate is but about fifty pounds a year, that makes (as it is credibly reported) fifteen pounds a year by the sale of capons; his wife and daughter cut the young dunghill cocks, but I don't suppose they were all bred on his farm, for some for this purpose make it their business after harvest-time to go to markets for buying up chickens, and between Michaelmas and Allhollantide caponize the cocks, when they have got large enough to have stones of such a bigness that they may be pulled out, for if they are too little, it can't be done; and to know when a cock is fit for it, he should be pretty well grown, have a good comb, and be well fleshed, for these signs shew they are bigger than those of leaner fowls. To cut them, the cock must lie on its back, and held fast, while with a very sharp knife she cuts him only skin-deep about an inch in length, between the rump and the end of the breast-bone, where the flesh is thinnest; next she makes use of a large needle to raise the flesh, for her safer cutting through it to avoid the guts, and making a cut here big enough to put her finger in, which she thrusts under the guts, and with it rakes or tears out the stone that lies nearest to it. This done, she performs the very same operation on the other side of the cock's body, and there takes out the other stone; then she stitches up the wounds, and lets the fowl go about as at other times, till the capon is fatted in a coop, which is commonly done from Christmas to Candlemas, and after. Now if the stones are but big enough, as they lie to the back, they may be safely taken out with a greased fore-finger, without much danger of killing the creature, but when they are too small there is danger. This way of caponizing a cock, I have had done at my house for my information, by a woman deemed to be one of our best capon cutters, else it would have been a difficult matter for me to give a description of it; for they that never saw such an operation, and venture at it, must expect to kill one or more, before he or she gets master of the science. And indeed it is for want of this knowledge that the art of caponizing fowls is not so much practised as formerly; but as I have given a pretty good account I hope of it, I am of opinion the art will be revived, and capons sold in greater plenty than ever.

I stand firmly by my statement about the indispensibility of chicken stock, so our foodie Twelve Days of Christmas now reads:

“On the third day of Christmas, my good friend sent to me
Three boiling hens,
Two chocolate tarts,
And a partridge in a pear tree.”

Susanna Kellet, whose book A complete collection of cookery receipt… was the source of yesterday’s recipe, knew some other things to do with boiling hens.

A dish of Boiled Hens.
Dress your hens for boiling, fill their bellies with the yolks of hard boiled eggs, and boil the hens; when enough, lay them in order on a dish, then pour sauce over them, and thin slices of bacon round.

Sauce for Boiled Hens.
Take some good turnips, pare them, cut them into square small dices, and boil them in milk and water, but don’t boil them too much; then drain them, and have some bacon boiled and cut like turnips, and lay them together; then shred some lemon and oysters, and melt some butter; when it is ready, put all into it, and pour it over your hens; you may boil square pieces of bacon, to lay in the middle of the dish.

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Fourth Day of Christmas.

Quotation for the Day …

The dinner table is the center for the teaching and practicing not just of table manners but of conversation, consideration, tolerance, family feeling, and just about all the other accomplishments of polite society except the minuet. Judith Martin (“Miss Manners”)

A Birthday Dinner.

October 31 …

It is hard to believe, but The Old Foodie is two years old today. The actual body is considerably older of course, but what is a paltry few decades between life forms?

I want to thank you all for accompanying me on this cyber-journey. I had no idea when I started that I would accumulate so many friends along the way, and that it would be so much fun. I do hope you continue to keep reading .

Birthdays mean birthday dinners, so I looked around for a virtual celebrity chef to cook for me today. In spite of the fact that she was neither a celebrity (merely married to one) nor a cook (one had staff to do that sort of job in her day), and her style of food is not to my taste (being very BV – or British Victorian), I settled on Lady Maria Clutterbuck.

Lady Maria Clutterbuck was not her real name of course. She was Catherine Dickens, the wife of Charles, and her life was sad, in the end. She was very young (only 21) when she married Charles in 1836, just as he was about to become very famous. Their marriage appears to have been happy in the early years when she hosted dinner parties and travelled with him on his literary tours. Bearing him ten children and probably suffering post-natal depression took their toll however, and the marriage faltered and eventually they separated. I chose Lady Maria/Mrs. Dickens as my hostess because I thought it would be fun to hear the inside gossip on Charles Dickens, by One Who Knows.

In 1851 she published a little book called What Shall we Have for Dinner? Satisfactorily Answered by Numerous Bills of Fare for from Two to Eighteen Persons. Eventually I chose the following menu for my virtual dinner – a modest repast for four persons – and you can will see what I mean by it being very BV.

Salmon. Asparagus Soup. Smelts.
Fore Quarter of Lamb. Fricassee Chickens.
New Potatoes. Peas.
Lobster Patties.
Noyau Jelly. Ice Pudding.

The menu is even more solidly BV when you read her recipe for Asparagus soup, which turns out to be a meal in itself.

ASPARAGUS SOUP.
Take two quarts of good beef or veal broth, put to it four onions, two or three turnips and some sweet herbs, with the white part of a hundred of young asparagus, but if old or very large at the stem half that quantity will do, and let them all simmer till sufficiently tender to be rubbed through a tammy, which is not an easy matter if they be not very young ; then strain and season it, have ready the boiled tops which have been cut from the stems, and add them to the soup ; or poach half-a-dozen eggs rather hard, have ready a hundred of asparagus heads boiled tender, boil three quarts of clear gravy soup, put into it for a minute or two a fowl just roasted, then add a few tarragon leaves, season with a little salt, put the eggs and asparagus heads quite hot into the tureen and pour the soup over them without breaking them ; the fowl will he just as good as before for made dishes.

Tomorrow’s Story …

An Examination in Domestic Economy.

Quotation for the Day …

There is no such passion in human nature, as the passion for gravy among commercial gentlemen. Charles Dickens; Martin Chuzzlewit.

Lunchwrap.

September 27^th …

The Dow Chemical Company filed a patent application on this day in 1940 for a thermoplastic synthetic resin which was to be used to provide a protective coating to military equipment being transported to various theatres of war. What has this to do with food, you ask?

By the end of the war there was a huge infrastructure geared up to the production of plastics of various kinds, and no-one in the industry was going to simply give up on that sort of investment. The plastic patented on this day by the Dow company was called Saran. Military strength Saran was modified after the war so that it could form thin transparent, self-adhering sheets, and, along with many other similar plastics, was quickly given the appelation GRAS (meaning “Generally Recognised As Safe”) in respect of their association with food. Tupperware had a similar origin. Voila! – a by-product of the war effort was rapidly converted into a myriad indispensible products for every post-war kitchen.

What on earth did we use to wrap up our lunch before we had the convenience of “thermoplastic synthetic resins comprising polymers and co-polymers derived from vinylidene chloride”? We used leaves, baskets, paper, pots, glass jars, and pieces of cloth – none of which ever needed an official GRAS label. I feel confident that our ancestors came to little harm from their food wraps – but I am not so confident about plastics, particularly in view of the fact that we now don’t just wrap or package but actually cook in plastic containers in our microwave ovens.

Perhaps I should review the once-fashionable art of cooking in paper. Nicolas Soyer, the grandson of Alexis Soyer, published a book called Paper Bag Cookery in 1911. The preface to the American edition is enthusiastic:

“M.Soyer’s system of Paper-Bag Cookery has made a great furor in England, and the English press have everywhere given it the attention it deserves.”

Naturally, Nicolas noted that “specially prepared bags should be used” – so there was clearly a commercial enterprise behind the book. The concept was, however, an old one – traditionally known as cooking en papillote. I am sure some carefully folded kitchen paper would work just as well in the following recipe from the book.

Entrée of Chicken.
Cut up a chicken in pieces, dust with salt and pepper. Add one tablespoonful of flour, tomato or mushroom (if desired), or a little tomato ketchup. Add a small chopped onion, according to taste, and a little bunch of bay leaf, parsley, and thyme. Place all in the middle of the bag. Add three tablespoonfuls of water, stock, or wine, according to taste. A little chopped ham or bacon (if desired) will add to the flavour. Seal bag up and place on the broiler, and allow 45 minutes in a hot oven.
Any other poultry treated in the same way will give the same satisfactory result. The seasoning and garnish can be left to the taste of the cook. The viands will not spoil if left a little longer than 45 minutes.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Eating African

Quotation for the Day …

The benevolence of wrapping the partridge in a vine leaf brings out its quality, just as the barrel of Diogenes brought forth the qualities of the great thinker." Des Essarts; French actor 1740-1793.

Fruit with Meat.

Today, September 12^th ….

I am in transit today, on my way home from England and the Symposium. I may not get chance to post for another two whole days, unless the wireless connection at Narita airport (12 hour stopover - I wonder how much I can see in that time?) is hassle-free.

My musings on the “there is nothing really new, culinarily speaking, under the sun” theme of yesterday got me thinking of other recipes that serve as examples. Here are a couple of my favourites – a fourteenth century German recipe for chicken and quinces or pears, and a seventeenth century French recipe for turkey with raspberries. Any modern chefs care to adapt these and let us know about it?

Ein gut spise (A good food)
[Chicken and Quinces or Pears]
Take hens. Roast them, not very well. Tear them apart, into morsels, and let them boil in only fat and water. And take a crust of bread and ginger and a little pepper and anise. Grind that with vinegar and with the same strength as it. And take four roasted quinces and the condiment thereto of the hens. Let it boil well therewith, so that it even becomes thick. If you do not have quinces, then take roasted pears and make it with them. And give out and do not oversalt.
[Ein Buch von guter spise; about 1350; trans.by Alia Atlas]

Turkie with Raspis.
When it is dressed, take up the brisket, and take out the flesh, which you shall mince with suet and some little of Veal-flesh, which you shall mince together with yolks of Eggs & young Pigeons, & all being well seasoned, you shall fill your Turkie with it,and shall season it with Salt, Peper, beaten Cloves and Capers, then you shall spit ti, and turn it very softly; When it is almost rosted, take it up, and put it into an Earthen pan with good Broath, Mushrums, and a bundle of Herbs which you shall make with Parsley, thime, and Chibols tied together; for to thicken the sauce, take a little Lard sliced, pass it in the pan, and when it is melted, take it out and mix a little flower with it, which you shall make very brown, and shall allay it with a little Broath and some Vinegar; then put it into your Earthen pan with some Lemon juice and serve. If it be in the Raspis season, you shall put a handfull of them over it, if not, some Pomegranate.
[The French Cook; la Varenne; 1653]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Mumbled or Scrambled.

Quotation for the Day …

Travel has a way of stretching the mind. The stretch comes not from travel's immediate rewards, the inevitable myriad new sights, smells and sounds, but with experiencing firsthand how others do differently what we believed to be the right and only way. Ralph Crawshaw

The Baron Brisse Menu 3.

Today, August 15th …

Baron Brisse had quite clear ideas on hospitality. Here is his advice on being a good host.

DUTIES OF THE HOST TO HIS GUESTS.

You must welcome your guests with effusion, so that they may feel quite at home before sitting down to dinner. Try if possible to introduce your guests to each other before dinner, particularly if you think that there are two people who will sympathize with each other. The decision how to place the guests at table must always be a troublesome business for the host; in fact, I consider this the most difficult part of giving a dinner; if you wish it to go off well. The host must always have his eye on his guests’ plates and glasses, to make sure they have all they require; and if a guest refuses a dish, the hot must try to persuade him to change his mind. A host whose guest has had to ask for anything is a dishonoured man.

Hmm. I’m not too convinced that a good host tries to persuade a guest to change his mind about a dish that he has refused. The guest hates it? Is allergic to it? Has eaten too much already? Is saving room for dessert? I would have seriously considered refusing the tapioca soup on yesterday’s menu. Today’s menu suggestion is fairly inoffensive, apart from the calorie count.

Menu for August 15.

Potage au macaroni avec parmesan.
(Macaroni soup with Parmesan cheese).
Saumon au bleu
(Salmon boiled in court-bouillon)
Fritot de poulets.
(Chicken fritters)
Rosbif rôti.
(Roast beef)
Petits Pois au lard.
(Green peas and bacon)
Flan de poires.
(Pear tart).

Chicken Fritters.
Cut up the chicken into joints, and soak for an hours in olive oil, seasoned with slices of lemon, onions, parsley, salt and pepper; drain, sprinkle them with flour, and fry until a good colour; dish up in a pyramid, cover with tomato sauce, and garnish with fried parsley.

Fried Chicken? Not crumbed. Less than “eleven different herbs and seasonings.” But with tomato sauce (presumably not bottled ketchup). The Colonel or The Baron. Who wins?

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Baron Brisse Menu 4.

Quotation for the Day ….

Food: Part of the spiritual expression of the French, and I do not believe that they have ever heard of calories. Beverley Baxter