39 Ways to Save Food.

In 1946, President Truman’s Famine Emergency Committee issued a list of 39 ways in which American’s could save food, thus enabling resources (especially wheat) to be diverted to assist post-war Europe.

I can think of a number of reasons why some of these suggestions are valid today, so I thought it might be interesting to look at them with modern eyes. Many of the suggestions involve reducing waste – something which should be a perennial hot topic. Some involve relatively painless changes to portion size – which might be helpful to the bottom line in a restaurant as well as the line of the bottom in all of us. Most will surely offer some general health benefits - replacing pastries with fruit, avoiding frying foods, and taking thinner slices of bread, for example. The suggestion to eat seasonal food too, is thoroughly modern advice.

1. Discontinue during the emergency abroad the use of toast as a garniture with meat, poultry, egg, and other entrees.
2. Discontinue the practice of placing baskets of rolls and bread on dining room tables. A single roll or slice of bread should be served with the entrée, and later as requested.
3. Eliminate the custom of trimming toast and sandwich crust.
4. Substitute open sandwiches for many closed or two-bread slice sandwiches in hotels.
5. Use potatoes in place of certain wheat and rice garnitures.
6. Use single crust or open pies in place of two-crust pies whenever practicable.
7. Serve corn and buckwheat cakes in place of wheat cakes where possible.
8. Serve oatmeal, bread, cakes, and cookies as alternatives for products made from wheat.
9. The size of rolls and thickness of toast and bread should be reduced. Bread size could be reduced by not filling the pans as deeply as at present.
10. Substitute fruits and other desserts for pastries and cakes whenever practicable.
11. Limit the number of crackers in individual packages or served with soups, cheeses, and so forth.
12. Eliminate three-layer cakes.
13. Whenever possible induce customers to only order what is needed. Whenever side dishes are included in the meal, the customer should request those side dishes and salads he will eat.
14. Use boiled dressings instead of oil dressings on salads where possible.
15. Use alternates for wheat cereal wherever possible.
16. Encourage re-use of food fats and grease salvage.
17. Develop methods for saving and use of bread ends, many of which are wasted at the present time.
18. Carry back all economies to employees’ meals. Employees should cooperate to the same extent customers are asked to cooperate.
19. Boil or broil rather than fry fish so as to save fats.
20. Eliminate serving of extra dressings on salads already prepared with oil or dressing.
Recommendations for the baking industry follow.
1. (21) Reduce by at least 10 per cent the weight of bread and bakery products.
2. (22) Wherever practicable, bakers should feature smaller weight and size loaves.
3. (23) Bread should be sliced thinner to provide more slices per loaf.
4. (24) Partial loaves of bread should be offered for sale as a waste preventing measure.
5. (25) Save flour and fats and oils by avoiding spoilage and waste.
Recommendations to food distributors and manufacturers were:
1. (26) Promote the use of alternate and more plentiful foods in the diet, such as – currently – potatoes, fish, eggs, poultry, citrus fruits, and seasonal vegetables.
2. (27) Assist customers by providing recipes using the more plentiful foods.
3. (28) Adopt measures for greater conservation and prevention of waste in food distribution channels.
4. (29) Encourage customers to conserve and prevent waste of food and to re-use food fats and salvage waste fats.
5. (30) In the manufacture of food items use alternate ingredients whenever possible in lieu of ingredients in short supply.
Recommendations to consumers follow:
1. (31) Prevent waste of bread. It is estimated that 5 per cent or one slice out of every loaf baked every day goes into garbage.
2. (32) Use less bread at each meal. Use potatoes, for example, as alternates for bread. One small serving of potatoes replaces a slice of bread, nutritionally.
3. (33) Use less wheat cereals and other wheat products.
Suggested ways for saving fats and oils at home included:
1. (34) Make better use of meat drippings for cooking and seasoning food.
2. (35) Serve fewer fried foods.
3. (36) Save and re-use fats and oils for cooking purposes.
4. (37) Render excess fats on meats, and save bacon grease for cooking purposes.
5. (38) Salvage all fats that cannot be re-used, and turn them in to your butcher or grocer.
6. (39) Go easy on oils and salad dressings. A teaspoon of fat a day saved by every person in the United States will mean a total saving of at least one million pounds of fat daily.

The potential to help save a million pounds of fat a day is too great a mission to resist. I therefore give you a recipe for a boiled salad dressing from The Royal Baker and Pastry Cook, a promotional recipe book from a baking powder company, published in 1911.

Boiled Dressing.
3 beaten eggs, 1 cup rich milk, 2/3 teaspoon dry mustard, 2 teaspoons salt, 2 dashes cayenne, 2 tablespoons olive oil or melted butter, ½ cup vinegar. Cook in double boiler till thick as custard. Strain and keep in a cool place.

Quotation for the Day.

You can have your cake and eat it: the only trouble is you get fat.

Julian Patrick Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot, ch.7.

How to make a good Oxoleum.

You probably don’t need a recipe for oxoleum - I am sure you already make it regularly- but I thought you might be interested in a seventeenth recipe, to compare with your own version. An oxoleon (oxoleum, oxelam) is simply a mixture of oil and vinegar used to flavour food – in other words, it is a salad dressing – something we would nowadays call vinaigrette.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word oxoleum (in its alternative spelling of oxelam) is recorded in English usage in 1575. If I understand the etymology correctly, the word derives from a fourth century Hellenistic Greek word, and came to English via sixth century Latin. I am curious, now, and wonder at what point did the English abandon this perfectly good word with its ancient and illustrious heritage - a heritage inextricably linked with the history of Britain - for the indisputably French vinaigrette? Nor is it just a question of word usage. At some point for the mass of Britons, the idea of a simple oil and vinegar dressing for salads became viewed as a slightly nasty Continental Idea, to be eschewed, if one had a patriotic bone in one’s body, for a boiled salad dressing or a commercial ‘salad cream.’ I know this to be true, growing up in post-war northern England, where the only use for olive oil was for medicinal purposes (I seem to remember for sore ears), for which it was purchased in tiny bottles from the pharmacy (I mean ‘the chemist’)

As for vinaigrette, originally it simply meant vinegar-sauce. In seventeenth century England – French things being very fashionable at the time – a vinaigrette was a ‘a condiment prepared with vinegar’ such as pickled cucumbers. It did not become vinaigrette dressing until the second half of the nineteenth century in England. The supporting reference cited by the OED for this change in English usage is from one of my favourite sources – Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery (1877).

The dictionary (which does not list oxoleum) certainly attributes the idea of an oil and vinegar dressing to the French:

Vinaigrette, Sauce à la: This sauce is much used in Paris for cold viands. Sauce à la Vinaigrette is composed of salad oil, vinegar, finely chopped parsley, and shallots, onions, or chives, with pepper and salt to taste.
The dictionary goes on to discuss the uses and variations of this sauce, but as this post is about oxoleum, I thought I would give you the earliest recipe for it that I know – from Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets, by John Evelyn, 1699.

Then, for the Oxoleon; Take of clear, and perfectly good Oyl-Olive, three Parts; of sharpest Vinegar, (sweetest of all Condiments), Limon, or Juice of Orange, one Part; and therein let steep some Slices of Horse-radish, with a little Salt; Some in a separate Vinegar, gently bruise a Pod of Guinny-Pepper, straining both the Vinegars apart, to make Use of Either, or One alone, or of both, as they best like; then add as much Tewkesbury, or other dry Mustard grated, as will lie upon an Half-Crown Piece: Beat, and mingle all these very well together; but pour not on the Oyl and Vinegar, 'till immediately before the Sallet is ready to be eaten: And then with the Yolk of two new-laid Eggs (boyl'd and prepar'd, as before is taught) squash, and bruise them all into mash with a Spoon; and lastly, pour it all upon the Herbs, stirring, and mingling them 'till they are well and throughly imbib'd; not forgetting the Sprinklings of Aromaticks, and such Flowers, as we have already mentioned, if you think fit, and garnishing the Dish with the thin Slices of Horse-Radish, Red Beet, Berberries &c.

Note, That the Liquids may be made more, or less Acid, as is most agreeable to your Taste.

The French are notoriously protective of their language, to an extent which seems to many of the rest of us to represent nationalism gone down a ridiculous blind alley. Also it seems pointless - languages are dynamic things, ever adapting and changing, and the meaning of individual words not constant across time. I would hate to be thought to be one of the frozen language crowd, but nevertheless, there is something sad about the complete loss of a lovely word such as oxoleon, when the actual thing still remains – leaving no option but the substitution of a ‘foreign’ word – especially one with a slightly different meaning, such as vinaigrette.

I think I will start the Society to Save Old Food Words.

From henceforth, my salads will be dressed with oxoleum.


Quotation for the Day.

To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist – the problem is entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one’s vinegar.
Oscar Wilde.

Picalilli - Picalillo

I have always loved the word piccalilli. I have always loved the condiment too. I like the many variations of the word, but am particular about the actual recipe. My preferred form of piccalilli is thickish, bright yellow, mustardy, and has slightly crunchy vegetables. It is close to a chutney, except not so sweet, and my personal version is definitely not a clear pickle.

Historically, there are almost as many variations of the actual pickle as there are of the word itself – which is of ‘uncertain origin’, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. I love words of uncertain or obscure origin. There is the air of mystery, for one thing, plus the sneaky delight that the wordsmiths don’t know it all after all, and of course there is the secret hope that I myself might discover a new clue.

Piccalilli has been known as paco-lilla, peccalillo, piccalillo, pickalilly, and pickylilly – to name but a few. The OED defines it as ‘A pickle made from a mixture of chopped vegetables, mustard, and hot spices’, and tells us that it was ‘formerly also called Indian pickle.’ The first reference given by the OED is from Hannah Glasse’s Art of Cookery (1758 edition), but today I am going to give you a version from The Court and Country Confectioner, published in England in 1770, because I love the description of the author – ‘An Ingenious Foreigner, now lead confectioner to the Spanish Ambassador in England’

TO MAKE PICALILLO
Take colliflower, radish pods, white cabbage, cucumbers or any fruit in season, put them on a sieve , throw salt on them and set them in the sun or before the fire two or three days to dry; when the water is out, put them in layers in a pot, and between the layers put a handful of mustard seed; take as much vinegar as you think will cover them, to every four quarts put an ounce of gum arabick boil them together and pour it on them quite hot; let it stand ten or twelve days upon the hearth, or till it is all of a bright yellow and the liquor soaked up; then take two quarts of vinegar, one ounce of mace, one ounce of white pepper, a quarter of an ounce of cloves, a quarter of an ounce of long pepper, and a quarter of an ounce of nutmeg beat together; boil it ten minutes and pour it hot on your pickle, with four ounces of garlic peeled.


Quotation for the Day.

The next time you feel like complaining, remember that your garbage disposal
probably eats better than 30 percent of the people in the world.
Robert Orben

Mustard Many Ways.

This day in 1758 was not, as I pointed out in a post on the same day a couple of years ago, the first time that mustard was advertised in America. The perpetual myth is a good enough excuse, however, to use the day to again pay homage to that most ancient of condiments.

Just how long has mustard been used by humans? Since long, long before we started recording our dinners, for sure. The word is Anglo-Norman, so a legacy of 1066 and all that. The first reference noted by the Oxford English Dictionary dates to the year 1289, in a list of the Household Expenses of Bishop Swinfeld – the entry noting the purchase of four pence worth..

Mustard plants grew easily throughout Europe, and long before the ready availability of imported pepper it provided the main condiment to meat, and certainly in medieval times, it was an obligatory accompaniment to brawn.

Originally, mustard was made by grinding the seeds to an oily paste before mixing this with must (the pulp of grapes crushed for wine-making.) A sea-change in the preparation of mustard for the table occurred in 1720, when Mrs Clements of Tewkesbury developed a way to produce a dry mustard powder (or ‘flour’) – thus simplifying its preparation for the table, and allowing cooks and housewives to let loose their creative powers and produce a multitude of different mustards.

It is difficult to think of anything that has not been added to mustard in the name of ‘gourmet’ or ‘artisan’ specialties. It can be made hotter with pepper, ginger, horseradish, wasabi, or chilli. It can be mellowed down with honey, mayonnaise, milk, cream, or wine. The basic flavour can be enhanced with anchovies, truffles, any spices, herbs, or vinegars that you wish, as well as garlic, ‘curry’, and even chocolate.

The recipe I give you today is most unusual in that it uses the broth from corned beef in making up the mustard. It is from a source I used last week - The House Servant's Directory, or A Monitor for Private Families: Comprising Hints on the Arrangement and Performance of Servants' Work by the African-American Robert Roberts (1827)

A Great Secret to Mix Mustard, by M.B. of London

Take one quart of water that corned beef has been boiled in, skim off any fat that may remain,
then strain it and when cool put it into a junk bottle, then grate some horseradish, about two dessert spoonsful, and put into the bottle and shake it well up, and cork it tight. When you want to mix your mustard, take whatever quantum you think necessary, but you should never mix more than half your mustard pot full at once, as it is better when first mixed; first put the flour of mustard in a tea-cup, add to it half a teaspoonful of salt, mix well together, then put in your liquor, by degrees, that you may not make it too thin, mix extremely well together, until it becomes quite smooth; this method of mixing mustard is absolutely the best I have ever met with, as it much surpasses any other, both in strength and flavour.

Quotation for the Day.
His wit's as thick as Tewksbury mustard.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) 'King Henry IV'

A Bill of Fare for ‘Colored Patrons.’

An interesting article in the New York Times of March 21, 1886 made ponder on the various and devious ways in which the determinedly subversive can get around anti-discrimination legislation. It made me wonder too, how much progress we have really made in well over a century. The article outlined the not-so-subtle way in which one Chicago restaurateur managed to find a way to keep ‘colored folk’ out of his establishment in spite of the new State racial discrimination laws.

AN EXPENSIVE BILL OF FARE

PROVIDED BY A CHICAGO RESTAURANT FOR

ITS COLORED PATRONS.

CHICAGO, March 20. – “Billy” Boyle, a restaurant keeper, has found a novel method of evading the State civil rights law, which gives to colored people the same privileges in hotels, restaurants, and public places that white people enjoy. When a negro sits down at one of Boyle’s tables, he is handed politely a special bill of fare from which the following prices are culled: Porterhouse steak $3.75, the same with oysters for $3.90; a sirloin with mushrooms for $2.65; pork sausage only $3.35; fried chicken with cream sauce, whole, $4.20; picked up codfish, $4.25; and fried apples and salt pork $4.35. Fried eggs cost $2.25, tomato omelet, $4.30, brook trout $ 5.60, frogs’ legs 5.75, broiled prairie chickens $6.75; buckwheat cakes $1.10; oatmeal mush $1.25; pickled pigs’ feet $3.80; fried oysters $5.80 for half a dozen; buttered toast $1.10; corned beef hash $4.25, and liver and bacon $3.25, and the whole can be washed down with tea, coffee, or milk at 50 cents. The guest is calmly invited to call for wine, liquors, ales, and cordials.

The object of this, of course, is to drive the colored guest from the restaurant, and it seldom fails. Often pride would bid them stay, but pride must be backed by money or it will have a fall. It is a question if this discrimination against one class of people is not illegal.

In honor of my African-American friends, I have chosen today’s recipe from The House Servant's Directory, or A Monitor for Private Families: Comprising Hints on the Arrangement and Performance of Servants' Work by Robert Roberts (1827) – the first book written by an African-American to be published in the United States of America*. The book contained over one hundred ‘receipts’ – many for household cleaners and the like, but a few for foodstuffs.

*UPDATE - see the comments below.


A Most Delicious Lemonade, to be Made the Day Before Wanted.
Take and pare two dozen of good sized lemons as thin as you possibly can; put eight of the rinds
into three quarts of hot water, but not boiling, cover it close over for four hours, then rub some sugar to the rinds to attract the essence, and put it into a bowl, and into which squeeze the juice of the lemons; to which add one pound and a half of fine sugar, then put the water to the above, and three quarts of boiling milk, mix and run through a jelly bag until clear; bottle it, if you choose, and cork close; this will be most excellent, and will keep.


To Make Raspberry Vinegar Most Delicious.
Put one quart of clean picked raspberries into a large bowl, pour on them one quart of best white wine vinegar, the next day strain off the liquor on one pound of fresh raspberries, and the following day do the same, but do not squeeze the fruit, but drain the liquor as dry as possible from the fruit; the last time pass it through a cloth wet in vinegar, to prevent any waste, then put it into a stone jar, with a pound of sugar to every pint of juice, let your sugar be in large lumps, as it is much better; when dissolved stir it up well, put your jar in a pot of hot water, let it simmer, skim well, and when cold bottle and cork close.


Quotation for the Day.

When I'm at a Chinese restaurant having a hard time with chopsticks, I always hope that there's a Chinese kid at an American restaurant somewhere who's struggling mightily with a fork.
Rick Budinich

Eat Texan Today.

When I first started this blog, the theme was a very broad interpretation of “What Happened on this Day in Food History”. The source of inspiration each day was what, in my head, I grandly call my Food History Almanac (a computer file so large that even in cyberspace it is too heavy and unwieldy ever to be published – although, being the eternal optimist, I do live in perpetual hope.)

Methinks I shall return to this theme for the next week or so. OK?

Today, December 29th, is Texas Admission Day. That is, the anniversary of the admission of the state of Texas to the Union in 1845. So, today is a fine opportunity to address my neglect of this particular corner of the good old US of A.

My difficulty is that I know nothing about the food of Texas apart from what I have learned from watching cowboy movies. I do admit to being greatly intrigued by this dish called ‘chili’, as I love any dish containing ‘chillies’ (or is that ‘chiles’?).

A love of dishes containing chillies hardly, however, qualifies me to enter the ongoing debate about what constitutes an authentic recipe. I assume it is an interpretation of chili con carne? I can say that the dish was already a local delicacy (if anything containing chillies can be said to be delicate) by 1893, when a State chili booth was set up at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

To compensate for the void that is my knowledge of Texan food, I give you a small collection of other people’s thoughts on the topic, and I eagerly await feedback from those of you better informed.

“Texas does not, like any other region, simply have indigenous dishes. It proclaims them. It congratulates you, on your arrival, at having escaped from the slop pails of the other 49 states.”

Alistair Cooke.

“To the goggling unbeliever (Texans) say - as people always say about their mangier dishes – “but it's just like chicken, only tenderer.” Rattlesnake is, in fact, just like chicken, only tougher.”

Alistair Cooke

[On Texas chilli] “It can only truly be Texas red if it walks the thin line just this side of indigestibility: Damning the mouth that eats it and defying the stomach to digest it, the ingredients are hardly willing to lie in the same pot together.”

John Thorne, Simple Cooking

“Congress should pass a law making it mandatory for all restaurants serving chili to follow a Texas recipe.”

Harry James (band leader and trumpeter.)

To give an ‘authentic’ historic recipe for Texas chili clearly puts this little Aussie at far too great a risk of offending a large percentage of her readers. May I compromise, and instead give you a recipe for Chili Sauce, taken from a Texan newspaper (The Hearn Democrat) of October 7, 1927?

Chili Sauce.
5 quarts chopped ripe tomatoes.
2 cupfuls chopped red pepper.
2 cupfuls chopped green pepper.
1 ½ cupfuls chopped onions.
3 tablespoonfuls salt.
1 cupful sugar.
3 cupfuls vinegar.
1 teaspoonful cloves.
1 teaspoonful allspice.
1 teaspoonful cinnamon.
Combine the chopped vegetables, the salt, the sugar, and simmer this mixture until it begins to thicken. Then add the vinegar and spices and cook the mixture down until it becomes a thick sauce. Pour into hot sterilized jars and seal. Or bottle the sauce and seal with wax. This recipe yields about three quarts of sauce.

For dessert, may I suggest Texas Pecan Pie?
http://www.theoldfoodie.com/2008/11/thanksgiving-pie-no2.html

Postscript.

Today is also the 4th Day of Christmas: to read a previous blog post on this, go HERE.
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2007/12/fourth-day-of-christmas.html

Yellow today.

Colouring food with various things natural and unnatural has a long history, and not just to give an entire dish a new colour. Sometimes food colouring has been used like paint. There are many references in medieval records of feast dishes decorated to look like heraldic symbols for example. Moving forward to the nineteenth century, in 1846 Alexis Soyer greatly impressed the visiting Pasha of Egypt with an edible portrait on a pineapple cream.

Cream of Egypt à l’lbrahim Pacha … an elegant cream à l’ananas, … What was his Highness's astonishment however, on again looking at the spot, to observe in the cream, as under a glass, a highly-finished portrait of himself, surrounded by a very carefully-executed frame. … “The portrait in the cream is drawn on wafer-paper, which being placed on the damp jelly representing the glass, dissolves, and nothing remains of the wafer-paper but the appearance of the portrait painted in light water-colours. Tbe imitation of the gilt frame is made with the eau de vie of Dantzic and gold water mixed with the jelly, the gold leaf of which forms the frame.” … Though everything was eatable in it, this magnificent dish was respected, and remained untouched until the end of the banquet, though everybody tried to partake of the fruit which surrounded it.

A chef with a truly artistic touch! I do wonder if the ‘light water-colors’ were truly edible however.

Yesterday it was cochineal that caught my eye, but other red colourings that have been used in the past are sandalwood, brazilwood, red fruits such as redcurrants, barberries, and pomegranate juice, or beets, crushed red roses, and alkanat or orchanet (a plant of the borage family). All very natural, as is a another red called vermilion, which comes from the natural mineral cinnabar, and consists of mercuric sulphide, which is a very dangerous natural toxin. Think on this sort of thing next time you find yourself attracted to a package that says ‘all natural’ ingredients. It is a marketing phrase, my friends, nothing more. I doubt that vermilion is used anywhere in food today, as we have Allura Red (E129) instead, and probably others, which is quite unnatural and may or may not be harmful.

It was red yesterday, so it is yellow today. Yellow colourings used in the past are safron, yellow lily, and things such as ‘yellow smalt’ made from natural minerals and used as paint pigment. Today, saffron is so prohibitively expensive that we would not be likely to use it just for colour, and I shudder to think how much this recipe for yellow colouring would cost.

Yellow Colour.
Yellow Colour for the ornamentation of pastry must be prepared by placing an ounce of hay-saffron in a sugar-pan with a gill and a half of water, a small quantity of alum, and half an ounce of sugar. Se the pan on the fire, let the liquid boil for ten minutes, then pass it through a napkin.
Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery. London. c1817.

(Hay saffron is the crocus stigmas dried in their loose state, not compressed into cakes. It is the most desirable, partly because it is more difficult to adulterate.)

Nowadays, turmeric is a cheaper substitute when a yellow is wanted, and here it is in pickle. - where it very advantageously also adds its flavour. Or is it that it coincidentally adds its colour?

Yellow Pickle.
Take six firm heads of cabbage, take off all the loose leaves, quarter them and dip them separately in a kettle of boiling water; lay them in dishes, and sprinkle them well with salt; lay them in the sun until the water is pretty well drained from them, then dip them separately in strong, boiling vinegar; let them be well saturated. Prepare your spice; an ounce of cinnamon, an ounce of cloves, one of mace, black pepper, orange-peeling, and ginger; let them be all well pounded. Three ounces of white mustard-seed, scald them in vinegar and let them stand and soak at least two hours; a half pound of horseradish, nicely sliced in long narrow pieces, these must be scalded also, as you do the mustard-seed. Then take a stone jar, put in a layer of cabbage, a layer of spice, horseradish, and mustard-seed, and a bag of tumerick, about as large as a hickory nut, then another layer of cabbage, then one of spice, horseradish, mustard-seed, and another bag of tumerick. On the top layer put a bag holding a half ounce of tumerick, then fill up with cold vinegar; have your jar air-tight, and do not disturb it for at least three months; they are always best when undisturbed, for at least a year. I have seen pickles made by this receipt, seven years old, which were delicious. Pickles should always be kept a long time before using them.
The Great Western Cook Book, or Table Receipts, Adapted to Western Housewifery.
New York. 1857.

Quotation for the Day …

I'm frightened of eggs, worse than frightened, they revolt me. That white round thing without any holes ... have you ever seen anything more revolting than an egg yolk breaking and spilling its yellow liquid? Blood is jolly, red. But egg yolk is yellow, revolting. I've never tasted it. Alfred Hitchcock.

Primrose Day.

February 5

The flower of the day, according to the much quoted but perhaps mythical medieval monks’ calendar, is the primrose (Primula vulgaris), and it is dedicated to the saint of the day, St. Agatha.

The only common culinary use of flowers nowadays seems to be a few tossed into a salad for colour. A number of things have contributed to the decline in the use of edible flowers – the habitat of wild flowers is shrinking, cultivated flowers have been sprayed with pesticides, roadside flowers are tainted with vehicle exhaust fumes, and they are not generally sold in supermarket produce departments. ‘Tis a pity, for they were once used widely to make wine and spirits, pickles and jams and confections; they were added to composed salads and to 'made dishes' for both their flavour and colour. It seems unlikely that flowers will ever have such widespread culinary use again.

Flowers also used to be used medicinally. The primrose was a veritable panacea for a wide range of problems including rheumatics, paralysis, gout, wounds, headaches, insomnia, chest problems and hysterical disorders. Sadly or otherwise, its value in these complaints has long since been superceded by modern medicine - but modern medicine offers no substitute for one other very important attribute of the primrose.

It used to be said that eating primroses enabled you to see fairies, and surely we need more fairies to be more visible in our lives? Certainly there are other substances known to give the gift of seeing fairies (or little green elephants, or perfumed music, or Elvis leaving the building etc), but these are associated with other risks, not the least of which are toxicological and legal. Those of you who live in temperate primrose-growing countries are very lucky. If you have access to huge amounts you can make:

Primrose Vinegar.
To fifteen quarts of water put six pounds of brown sugar; let it boil ten minutes, and take off the scum; pour on it half a peck of primroses; before it is quite cold, put in a little fresh yeast, and let it work in a warm place all night; put it into a barrel in the kitchen, and when done working, close the barrel, still keeping it in a warm place.
[The Mysteries of Trade, Or, the Source of Great Wealth … David Beman, 1825]

If a handful of primroses is all you can manage, you can make a tart, and perhaps it will be enough for a single fairy visitation. The recipe (a variation of a ‘Tansy’*) uses only the leaves, so you can use the pretty flowers in an accompanying salad.

To make a Spring Tart.
Gather such Buds, in the Spring of the Year, that are not bitter, also the Leaves of Primroses, Violets, and Strawberries; take also a little young Spinage, boil them, drain them in a Colander; then chop them very small, and boil them over again in Cream; add to them Naples Bisket grated, and so many Yolks and Whites of Eggs as will make the Cream very thick, colour all green with the Juice of Spinage; season with Salt, Nutmeg, Cinnamon and Sugar, and bake it in Puff-paste or otherwayes.
[The cook’s and confectioner’s dictionary, 1733]

*There are other flowers in other stories:

Marigolds are HERE
Lime Flowers are HERE
Violets are HERE
Woodruff is HERE
A conserve of Flowers is HERE
Borage flowers (and marigolds and cowslips) are HERE

Tomorrow’s Story …

Air Force One.

Quotation for the Day …

How many flowers there are which only serve to produce essences, which could have been made into savory dishes. Charles Monselet (1825-1864)

Hot Roots.

December 3 …

Some random “on this day” browsing turned up a piece of apparently un-food-related trivia: today is the anniversary of the admission of Illinois as the 21^st state in 1818. On the principle that there is food a degree or three away in every story, I set out on an Illinois food-fact finding mission.

It is difficult to get the head around, but Illinois (a small part of it around Collinsville) grows almost all of the horseradish (Cochlearia armoracia) used in the United States. Thousands and thousands of tons of it, and none is exported. What on earth is it all used for? I mean, I like horseradish, but a very little goes a very long way. And what does it look like – thousands of acres of horseradish as high as a billy-goat’s eye (or a buffalo’s eye? Or a mouse’s eye)?

Horseradish belongs to the Brassica family of vegetables, so is related to the cabbage, although its more recogniseable cousins are mustard and the ‘ordinary’ radish. It is not the same as wasabi (which I am sure is not neon-green in its natural state, is it?). It most certainly has nothing to do with horses. The linguistic theory is that the name came about because German migrants were responsible for bringin their beloved meerrettich into the country, and ‘meer’ was mistaken to mean ‘mare’ and ‘mare’ is a horse. It is a good enough theory until a better one comes along. The ‘radish’ part of the name is more obvious, because it shares the same pungency – the same nose-assaulting sensation (from the ‘mustard oil’) that is quite different from the mouth-assaulting capsaicin in the chilli pepper, and which gives it one of its old names – stingnose.

Horseradish has been known and cultivated since ancient times, and was valued for its medicinal properties. Samuel Pepys drank horseradish ale for medicinal reasons, being advised it “for the stone”, which he had had unpleasant experience of. The sixteenth century English herbalist John Gerard provides its first use in English in 1596, and gives the Germans the credit for its culinary “for sauce to eate fish with and such like meates as we do mustarde”.

The first recipe I can find that uses horseradish is from Eliza Acton’s classic Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845), although I am sure it was in use long before this time. The most common use in England is still to jazz up roast beef.

Excellent Horseradish Sauce.
(To serve hot or cold with roast beef.)
Wash, and wipe a stick of young horseradish, grate it as small as possible on a fine greater, then with two ounces (or a couple of large tablespoonful) of it, mix a small teaspoonful of salt, and four tablespoonsful of good cream, stir in briskly and by degrees, three dessertspoonsful of vinegar, one of which should be Chili vinegar when the horseradish is mild. To heat the sauce, put it into a small and delicately clean saucepan, hold it over, but do not place it upon the fire, and stir it without intermission until it is near the point of simmering, but do not allow it to boil, or it will curdle instantly.
Horseradish pulp, 2 ozs. (or, 2 large tablespoonsful) ; salt, 1 teaspoonful; good cream, 4 tablespoonsful; vinegar, 3 dessertspoonsful (of which one should be Chili when the root is mild).
Obs.—Common English salad-mixture is often added to the grated horseradish when the sauce is to be served cold.

Tomorrow’s Story …

A Patient Diet.

Quotation for the Day …

This stuff tastes awful; I could have made a fortune selling it in my health-food store.
Woody Allen, 'Sleeper'

Tamarinds, by Twain.

November 30 ...

Today is Mark Twain’s one hundred and seventy second birthday. I am not sure, but I think he is the third most often quoted writer who has ever been in the world (after William Shakespeare and Dr Samuel Johnson). His food quotations alone would last a long time as blog-fodder. I like what he has to say about tamarinds: “strangers eat tamarinds, but they only eat them once” – a witty enough one-liner, but the paragraph it springs from (from his story Roughing It) explains why no-one goes back to the tree for a second bite.

“I thought tamarinds were made to eat, but that was probably not the idea. I ate several, and it seemed to me that they were rather sour that year. They pursed up my lips, till they resembled the stem-end of a tomato, and I had to take my sustenance through a quill for twenty-four hours. They sharpened my teeth till I could have shaved with them, and gave them a "wire edge" that I was afraid would stay; but a citizen said "no, it will come off when the enamel does" - which was comforting, at any rate. I found, afterward, that only strangers eat tamarinds - but they only eat them once.”

The tamarind (Tamarindus indica) originated in Africa and from there found its way first to India and the Pacific islands and thence to many other parts of the world with a tropical climate. The mouth-puckering qualities of the tamarind are due to its intense sourness – even when it is ripe it is very sour – and generally speaking it is not eaten from the tree but prepared in some way – as a drink, a sauce, a chutney or pickle etc. Medicinal qualities are attributed to it wherever it is known, and this was the first use of it in the West. It is particularly used in fevers – and no doubt the idea of a hot lemon drink for a cold derived from it, lemons being a more easily accessible sour flavour than the foreign tamarind.

A beverage or infusion of tamarind crosses both borders – the medicinal and the culinary. One gentleman by the name of William Vincent Wells visited Honduras in the mid-nineteenth century, and found it made a very refreshing drink in that hot climate. He called it Tamarind Ambrosia, and described how it was made:

"He [his host, Olancho] also possessed the art, from long practice, of concocting certain delicious drinks. Among these was one to which I invariably paid my respects. It was made from tamarinds, and usually served about noon from earthen jars, wrapped in several thick swaths of flannel, and placed in the draft as a cooling process. The preparation of this beverage was simple enough. From a cask of the fruit, which seemed to have been crushed to a pulp and liberally mixed with the coarse sirup of the country, a quantity of thick liquor was drawn off, in a partly fermented state, and diluted to a drinking consistency, which, when settled, was turned into jars. To this was added powdered cinnamon, allspice, or some fragrant herb (gathered in the neighboring hills), to suit the taste. The liquor, without the spices, is often used during and after fevers."

Most of us in the West know the tamarind as an ingredient in dishes from India, Thailand, and other parts of the mysterious East. Here is a recipe for tamarind preserve “from India” from a little book translated by the Oriental Translation Fund in 1831.

Tamarind Preserve.
Take raw Tamarind, ¼ ser ( ½ Ib.)
Loaf sugar, ½ ser (l Ib.)
Lemon, 1 chittank (2 oz.)
Having removed the skin of the raw tamarind and extracted the seeds, take ¼ ser and make a syrup of the sugar in half a pao (4 oz.) of water, and remove its impurities.
When it settles, throw in the tamarind and cook it, and when it acquires a consistency add lemon- juice, and take it off the fire and cool it ; and keep it, and take it out and use it when required.

Monday’s Story …

Hot Roots.

Quotation for the Day …

Cooking Rule... If at first you don't succeed, order pizza. Anonymous.

Stinking Garlic.

November 20 ...

Sir John Harington, the “saucy godson” of Queen Elizabeth I, and the man who first got the idea of the flush toilet died on this day in 1612. The idea never came to anything in Harington’s lifetime – the idea was well ahead of its time, and he was also perhaps too busy being what we would call in Australia “a larrikin”, getting into various scrapes that did not impress his godmother. It was over two hundred years before Thomas Crapper in nineteenth century England made the concept real (Victorian England was exactly the right time and place for such an invention), for which we will all be forever grateful.

Harington is not featuring in today’s story on account of his method of disposing human excrement - although one could argue its relevance to a food blog – but because of the quotation attributed to him on the topic of garlic.

"And scorn not garlic like some that think, it only maketh men wink and drink and stink"

Harington was an author and poet, and in between bouts of being “a bit of a lad”, he translated the famous Medical Poem of Salerno. The Medical School of Salerno in Italy was founded in the ninth century, and associated with it (although possibly not written there), is a long poem called the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitatem. The poem discusses general health measures such as diet and exercise, bowel habits, wine-drinking and so on, and it became enormously popular and was expanded numerous times and translated into many languages.

Harington’s work was the first English translation, and the garlic quotation comes from the verse which relates to protection from poisoning. It clearly explains the belief behind the inclusion of garlic in the famous plague-protecting ‘Vinegar of the Four Thieves.’

Six things, that here in order shall ensue,
Against all poisons have a secret power,
Pear, Garlic, Radish-roots, Nuts, Rape, and Rue,
But Garlic chief; for they that it devour,
May drink, and care not who their drink do brew:
May walk in airs infected every hour.
Sith Garlic then hath powers to save from death,
Bear with it though it make unsavory breath:
And scorn not Garlic, like to some that think
It only makes men wink, and drink, and stink.

For our recipe today we jump ahead again to the Victorian era. Mrs Beeton was not a fan of garlic. She says “The smell of this plant is generally considered offensive. … It was in greater repute with our ancestors than it is with ourselves, although it is still used as a seasoning herb. On the continent, especially in Italy, it is much used, and the French consider it an essential in many made dishes.”

Garlic does appear in a few of “her” recipes (she collected, she did not author them), and there is a prodigious amount in her recipe for Mango ‘Chetney’. I picked out this recipe as the mango season has started in earnest here in Queensland, and I thought that local readers might particularly enjoy it. Strangely however, the recipe contains no mango. There is no formal acknowledgement of the use of apples as the subsitute – an obvious and convenient substitute given that mangoes would have been difficult to source in England. The recipe was supplied to her by an “English lady, who had long been a resident in India, and who, since her return to her native country, has become quite celebrated amongst her friends for the excellence of this Eastern relish” – presumably this Lady used mangoes while she was in India? Why is this recipe not called Apple Chetney?

Bengal Recipe For Making Mango Chetney.
1 ½ lbs. of moist sugar, ¾ lb. of salt, ¼ lb. of garlic, ¼ lb. of onions, ¾ lb. of powdered ginger, ¼ lb. of dried chilies, ¾ lb. of mustard-seed, ¾ lb. of stoned raisins, 2 bottles of best vinegar, 30 large unripe sour apples.
The sugar must be made into syrup; the garlic, onions, and ginger be finely pounded in a mortar; the mustard-seed be washed in cold vinegar, and dried in the sun; the apples be peeled, cored, and sliced, and boiled in a bottle and a half of the vinegar. When all this is done, and the apples are quite cold, put them into a large pan, and gradually mix the whole of the rest of the ingredients, including the remaining half-bottle of vinegar. It must be well stirred until the whole is thoroughly blended, and then put into bottles for use. Tie a piece of wet bladder over the mouths of the bottles, after they are well corked.
This chetney is very superior to any which can be bought, and one trial will prove it to be delicious.
[Use green mangoes, my local friends, it will be delicious]

Tomorrow’s Story …

School Food.

Quotation for the Day ..

Chutney is marvelous. I'm mad about it. To me, it's very imperial. Dianna Vreeland.

Devil's Dung Sauce.

October 24 ...

William Makepeace Thackeray, the author of Vanity Fair, was enthusiastic about food, as we can surmise from his ode to Bouillabaisse, which he sampled while in Europe in the 1830’s. He recorded in detail a meal he tackled in true trencherman-style during his stay in Brussels:

“In the matter of eating, dear sir, which is the next subject of the fine arts, a subject that, after many hours’ walking, attracts a gentleman very much, let me attempt to recall the transactions of this very day at the table-d’-hote. 1, green pea-soup; 2, boiled salmon; 3, mussels; 4, crimped skate; 5, roast-meat; 6, patties; 7, melons; 8, carp, stewed with mushrooms and onions; 9, roast-turkey; 10, cauliflower and butter; 11, fillets of venison piques, with asafoetida sauce; 12, stewed calf’s-ear; 13, roast-veal; 14, roast-lamb; 15, stewed cherries; 16, rice-pudding; 17, Gruyere cheese, and about twenty-four cakes of different kinds. Except 5, 13, and 14, I give you my word I ate of all written down here, with three rolls of bread and a score of potatoes.”

The dish that surprised me here was the venison with asafoetida sauce. There is very little mention of asafoetida in nineteenth century European cookbooks, although it had been a popular spice in Ancient Rome.

Asaofoetida comes from Ferula assafoetida, a flowering plant related to fennel, which is native to Iran. The resinous sap of the plant has a pungent sulphurous smell and when dried has been prized since ancient times as a flavouring spice and a medicine. It is still commonly used in Indian food, particularly by those who for religious reasons eschew onion and garlic, because it mellows somewhat when cooked and provides a similar undercurrent of flavour.

To those who are not afficionados, the smell is foul, offensive, disgusting, and – well, foetid, hence one of its popular names of “Devil’s Dung.” The famous Victorian chef Alexis Soyer was not a fan:

“This plant, which we have excluded from our kitchens, and whose nauseous smell is far from exciting the appetite, reigned almost as the chief ingredient in the seasoning of the ancients. Perhaps they cultivated a kind which in no way resembled that of modern times. If it were the same, how are we to explain the extreme partiality which Apicius shows for it and which he says must be dissolved in luke-warm water, and afterwards served with vinegar and garum? It is certain that the resin drawn by incision from the root of this plant is still much esteemed by the inhabitants of Persia and of India ; they chew it constantly, finding the odour and taste exquisite.”

[From: The Pantropheon, Or, History of Food, and Its Preparation (1853)… Alexis Soyer]

There were others however who were not only prepared to use it, but to use it raw, as in this recipe when it is desirable to imitate ‘moutarde de maille’.

The [Salad] mixture or dressing.
For 4 persons bruise only the yolk of 1 hard-boiled egg (leaving out altogether the white), with some salt, and make it into a paste with 2 large teaspoonfuls of moutarde de maille; or, if obliged to use common mustard, add to it a drop or two of asafoetida, which will impart to it a slight flavour of garlic. Then add oil and vinegar in the following proportions, without using so much as to make the sauce thin, and taking care to have the finest Provence or Lucca oil, and the very strongest species of real French vinegar : namely, to every one spoonful of vinegar add two of oil; 1 spoonful of the vinegar being impregnated with chilis, which will add warmth to the salad, much more agreeably than cayenne. A little of tarragon may be an improvement, and a spoonful of Quihi or walnut ketchup is not objectionable; but mushroom ketchup will destroy the pungeney of flavour, and both may be left out without inconvenience. When this is done, mix the sauce well, but lightly, with the salad, to which a few slices of boiled beetroot, and the white of the egg sliced, will be a pretty addition.
[Murray's modern cookery book … 1851]

Tomorrow’s Story …

A side-effect of chocolate.

Quotation for the Day …

One man's meat is another man's poison. Proverb

Apple Chutney, 1946: A Guest Blog.

I was delighted to receive an email from Colleen in Sarasota, Florida - English-born but a long-time resident of the States, married to an American of Italian heritage, and with a sister in Sydney, Australia. You are a truly global citizen, Colleen.

With Colleen's permission, I give you her snippet of family culinary history. Here it is:-

I have my mother's old Official Handbook of the National Training School of Cookery, Buckingham Palace Road, SW, in London where she enrolled after serving as a District Commander in Q.M.A.A.C. in the first World War. In the back of my mind, I have the feeling she referred to it as Berridge House, but I could be wrong.

What I want to offer you today is the text of a handwritten letter to my mother from a lady in Devon dated Nov. 10, 1946:

"Dear Madam,

As a resilt of my advertisement in the Herald & Express of homemade chutney for sale I had a visit of an inspector from the Food Office. He told me I was overcharging, the price allowed only being 7d for 10oz container irrespective of quality. Yet, grocers are selling chutney for 1/10 a jar and such rubbish that it is not fit to eat. As you can understand from this I am not now able to sell my chutney. Instead I pass on my own recipe and it is well worth making while there is still apples in the shops.
With good wishes,
Yours faithfully
(Miss) E. Abr....(not legible)

Apple Chutney:
7 lbs apples
2lbs onions
1 lb. gran. sugar
2 tbsp salt
2 tbsp curry powder
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp mustard (dry)
2 pints best malt vinegar (Parsons)

Thanks Colleen for being my Sunday Guest Blogger. If any other readers would like to contribute a Sunday post, please email me! It could be fun.

A-Brambling We Will Go.

Today, July 17^th

Dorothy Wordsworth, sister of the poet William Wordsworth kept a journal of day to day life with her brother in Grasmere in England’s Lake District, and we have peeked into it before on this blog. On this day in 1828, she was in the Isle of Man, and her diary notes read:

July 17th, Thursday. … Fine evening, beautiful, sunset, walked with Mrs. Putnam to the Crescent and above on the green craggy steep. Beautiful sea views and the cliffs charmingly adorned with green gorse, purple heather, brambles. Mrs. P. hurried home to salt her fish.

Dorothy does not mention picking the brambles, but she was not in her own home with the attendant obligations to bake for the little household, or presumably she would have taken advantage of the free fruit (or would they not have been ripe yet?) ‘Brambles’ can refer to a number of fruits from the Rose family that grow on thorny shrubs with long canes – but in England (particularly in the North) it almost always refers to the blackberry. In earlier times the bramble buds and leaves were often used in medicinal preparations for such old time illnesses as ‘inward bruises’, but the fruit can be used as any other berry, and it marries particularly well with apple.

The commonest recipe in cookbooks of the eighteenth century seems to be for blackberry wine, which sounds like a fine beverage indeed. Today they are far more likely to be used to make jam (‘jelly’, if you are in the USA), or pies (especially with apple) – and you can adapt any berry recipe for these. In search of something a little different for those of you who are lucky enough to have a bumper blackberry crop, I found this recipe from The Times, in 1938. It sounds like a wonderfully fruity ketchup.

Blackberry Pickle.
Take a quart of large blackberries. Put them into the preserving pan with two pounds of white sugar, an ounce and a half of all-spice, half an ound of ground sugar*, and the juice of a lemon. Pour over it a pint of white vinegar. Bring to the boil and let it simmer for about an hour and a half, then pass it through a sieve, and bottle.
The flavour of the pickles naturally depends considerably upon the aromatic vinegar in which they are cooked. Here is an old-fashioned recipe.
Spiced Vinegar.
Put half an ounce of whole cloves and the same quantity of allspice, celery seed, mustard seed, whole mace, chopped white ginger, a pound and a half of sugar, and an ounce and two thirds of pepper into bags of strong but thin muslin. Lay in the preserving pan. Pour over six pints of wine vinegar. Bring to the boil. Stand for four hours. Remove the bags, strain and bottle. These vinegars should be stored for at least a month before using.

[*This sounds like an error to me, should it be nutmeg or something similar? Presumably also if the spiced vinegar is used, the spices are not needed in the pickle]

Tomorrow’s Story …

In praise of Bouillabaisse.

Quotation for the Day …

O, blackberry tart, with berries as big as your thumb, purple and black, and thick with juice, and a crust to endear them that will go to cream in your mouth, and both passing down with such a taste that will make you close your eyes and wish you might live forever in the wideness of that rich moment. Richard Llewellyn.

Humble Gleaners.

Today, July 4^th

Today being The Fourth of July, for no particular reason other than I find its title oddly appealing, I decided to feature a little community cookbook compiled by the Ladies’ Aid Society of the First Congregational Church of Oakland, California in 1883.

The book is called “Still another," a book of choice recipes, and it is a collection of ‘favourite cooking recipes of those ladies of our Society who have long been recognized as authorities amongst us in all matters connected with housekeeping.’ The vaguely apologetic tone of the title is continued in the Preface, as the ladies admit that they ‘…claim no place among the grand compendiums of Housewifery; we have been humble gleaners in the field of culinary art.’

Many individual recipes bear the name of the particular humble culinary gleaner (or authoritative housekeeper) who supplied it, but the little ‘poem’ at the end is completely unacknowledged (and untitled).

Grate Gruyere’s cheese on macaroni,
Make the top crisp, but not too bony.

Roast veal with rich stock gravy serve;
And pickled mushrooms too, observe.

Roast pork, sans apple sauce, past doubt,
Is Hamlet with the Prince left out.

Your mutton chops with paper cover,
And make them amber brown all over.

Broil lightly your beefsteak – to fry it
Argues contempt of Christian diet.

Buy stall-fed pigeons; when you’ve got them
The best way to cook them is to pot them.

It gives true epicures the vapors,
To see broiled mutton minus capers.

To roast spring chickens is to spoil ‘em
Just split them down the back and broil ‘em.

Boiled turkey, gourmands know, of course,
Is exquisite with Challenge Sauce.

Egg sauce – few make it righ, alas! –
Is good with blue fish, or with bass.

Nice oyster sauce gives zest to cod;
A fish, when fresh, to feast a god.

Shad, stuffed and baked, is most delicious,
‘Twould have electrified Apicius.

Methinks the good ladies should have stuck to recipe writing.

Its artistic qualities aside, this poem did throw up one challenge. What is Challenge Sauce? There is no recipe for it in the book. It turns out that it was a commercial sauce produced by Messrs Durkee, supposedly in an attempt to mimic the very popular English Worcestershire Sauce made by Messrs Lea & Perrins’. Messrs Durkee did not hold their advertising copywriter back from promoting its unsurpassed ‘piquancy and richness of flavor’, nor its superiority over its competitors. One advertisement for it in 1873 read:

‘Pronounced by connoisseurs unqualifiedly the best, and at the same time a "perfect Sauce" for table use. It is cheaper than the English, and no dearer than the disgusting trash put up in this country and sold as Sauces.’

There are other questions raised by the ‘poem’ of course, as there always are. Just why is frying your steak an un-Christian act? How does covering your mutton chops with paper make them ‘amber brown all over’? And what, pray, is so difficult about Egg Sauce, a recipe for which is given in the book?

Egg Sauce.

Boil two or three eggs hard, cut them fine, and stir them into your drawn butter; if too thick, add a little cream or rich milk.

Happy culinary gleaning to you all!

Tomorrow’s Story …

Lobster, two cents apiece.

Quotation for the Day …

Another peculiarity of this country is the absence of napkins, even in the homes of the wealthy. Napkins, as a rule, are never used and one has to wipe one's mouth on the tablecloth, which in consequence suffers in appearance. Baron Ludwig von Closen (on American eating habits) (1780)

May Harrods Suggest … ?

Today, June 22^nd ...

Once upon a time, Harrods of London ran a series of newspaper advertisements in which they gave suggested menus for the day. Naturally, the ingredients could all be sourced at Harrods. I give you the menu for this day in 1914. Check out those prices, and weep. Don’t weep too hard over the canned peaches. Weep very hard over the champagne.

TO-NIGHT’S DINNER

May Harrod’s Submit This Menu?
-
Hors d’œvres.
Prawn and Olive Salad
(Prawns 1s. and 2s. a doz. in Fish Dept;
Olive, 11d. a bottle, Grocery Dept)
-
Clear Mock Turtle Soup.
-
Grilled Soles with Anchovy Butter.
(Soles, 2s. a lb. in Fish Dept; Anchovy
Paste, 9 ½ d. a pot in Grocery Dept.)
-
Roast Gosling. Apple Sauce.
Green Peas. New Potatoes.
(Gosling, 6s. 6d. each, Poultry Dept; Green Peas,
1s. a peck; New Potatoes, 10lbs a 1s. Veg. Dept)
-
Pêches à la Royale.
(Lemon Cling Peaches, 1s. 3d.
a tin, in Grocery Dept.)
-
Bénédictine
(7s. 7d. in Wine Dept.)
-
And with it
Harrods advise
A glass or so of Champagne
Eugene Laroche
Grand Imperial, extra dry, 5s. 5d.
A bottle, vintage 1906.

The ingredients will cost you more today, but here are a couple of recipes to fit this menu, from Soyer's Standard Cookery, 1912.

Anchovy Butter.
Take the bones from six anchovies, wash the fillets and dry them upon a cloth, pound them well in a mortar; add six ounces of fresh butter, mix well together, and proceed as in the last.

White Mock-Turtle Soup.
Procure half a calf's head, (scalded, not skinned), bone it, then cut up a knuckle of veal, which put into a stewpan, well buttered at the bottom, with half a pound of lean ham, an ounce of salt, a carrot, a turnip, three onions, a head of celery, a leek, a bunch of parsley and a bay-leaf, add half a pint of water; set it upon the fire, moving it round occasionally, until the bottom of the stewpan is covered with a white glaze; then add six quarts of water, and put in the half head, let simmer gently for two hours and a half, or until the head is tender, then take it out, and press it between two dishes, and pass the stock through a hair sieve into a bowl; then in another stew-pan have a quarter of a pound of butter, with a sprig of thyme, basil, marjoram and bay-leaf, let the butter get quite hot, then add six ounces of flour to form a roux, stir over a sharp fire a few minutes, keeping it quite white; stand it off the fire to cool, then add the stock, stir over the fire until boiling, then stand it at the corner, skim off all the fat, and pass it through a hair sieve into another stewpan; cut the head into pieces an inch square, but not too thick, and put them into the soup, which season with a little cayenne pepper; when the pieces are hot, add a gill of cream and pour it into your tureen.
The above quantity would make two tureens of soup, and will keep good several days, but of course half the quantity could be made.

On this Topic ...

A recipe for Mock Turtle Soup, assembled from very convenient canned ingredients, is HERE.

A recipe for Mock Mock Turtle Soup (the name is not a typo!) is HERE.

Monday’s Story …

First Fork.

Quotation for the Day …

If the soup had been as warm as the wine, if the wine had been as old as the turkey, if the Turkey had had a breast like the maid, it would have been a swell dinner. Duncan Hines.

On Worcestershire Sauce.

Today, May 31^st …

Worcestershire Sauce, an essential ingredient in a Bloody Mary (and even more essential in a Virgin Mary) was trademark registered by Lea & Perrins on this day in 1892. Lea & Perrins had been manufacturing the famous sauce since the 1830’s, but Trademark legislation was not enacted in Britain until 1875. Why did they wait so long to patent their product? They must have been confident that imitations of their sauce would not have been serious competition, which means that they must have been confident that they could maintain the secrecy of the recipe.

The recipe has a mysterious disputed past. The original Worcestershire Sauce bottle label stated that it was “from the recipe of a nobleman of the country”. Most versions say the ‘nobleman’ returned from India with a recipe which he asked the local apothecaries (Lea & Perrins) to make up. They did. It was awful. They all forgot about the idea. They literally forgot about it, and left the barrels in the cellar. Some time later (months? years?) the barrels were rediscovered, and were about to be disposed of when someone thought to taste the contents and Lo! and Behold! – fermentation had improved the brew no end. The rest is marketing history.

The sauce became a standard ingredient in savoury dishes, even in America (although the American version contains white, not malt vinegar), as this recipe from School And Home Cooking By Carlotta C. Greer (1920) demonstrates. Note: it is a text book, so questions will follow. Please pay attention.

Veal Cutlets (Steak)
Clean the meat; then remove the bone and tough membranes. Cut the meat into pieces for serving. Cover the bone and the tough pieces of meat with cold water and cook at a low temperature. (This stock is to be used in the sauce.) Small pieces of meat may be put together by using wooden toothpicks for skewers. Season the veal with salt and pepper. Roll in dried bread crumbs, dip in beaten egg, then in crumbs again. Put 2 tablespoonfuls of drippings or other fat in a frying pan. Brown the cutlets in the fat. Remove the veal; in the frying pan prepare the following:

Sauce for Cutlets.
3 tablespoonfuls drippings
1/4 cupful flour
1/2 tablespoonful salt
1/8 teaspoonful pepper
2 cupfuls stock or water
2 tablespoonfuls chopped parsley
1 teaspoonful Worcestershire sauce
Make a brown sauce, using all ingredients except the Worcestershire sauce (see Brown Sauce). Add the cutlets to the sauce, and cook them at simmering temperature for 1 hour or until tender. Just before serving, add the Worcestershire sauce.

Beef may be prepared in the same way.

QUESTION:
Why is it desirable to use parsley and Worcestershire sauce with veal? Is it desirable to use Worcestershire sauce with beef or mutton? Explain your answer. Why is Worcestershire sauce not cooked with the brown sauce?

I fail. I am unable to answer Ms Greer’s questions. Are you?

Although the exact recipe for Lea& Perrins’ Worcester Sauce remains a secret, there seems to be consensus that it contains salted anchovies, tamarind, molasses, garlic, vinegar, chillies, cloves, shallots, and sugar. As with the famous drink that once contained real Cola, its popularity has ensured that imitators will keep trying. The useful and comprehensive Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery (1870’s) gave a recipe for it, using its original name of Worcester Sauce.

Worcester Sauce, To Make.
Mince two cloves of shallot, put the mince into a dry bottle, and pour over it a pint of Bordeaux vinegar. Add three table-spoonfuls of essence of anchovy, three tablespoonsful of walnut ketchup, two tablespoonfuls of soy, and as much cayenne as is approved: the quantity cannot be given as cayenne varies so much in quality. Cork the bottle, keep it in a cool place, and shake it well twice a day for a fortnight. Strain the sauce, put in small bottles, cork closely, and store for use.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Queen of Artichokes.

This Day, Last Year …

We had a story about the Australian explorer, Edward John Eyre

Quotation for the Day …

The English have only three sauces - a white one, a brown one and a yellow one, and none of them have any flavor whatever. Guy de Maupassant, French author.

Suffragette Food.

Today, May 23^rd …

The state of South Australia was the first in the world to give women the right to vote. One of the pioneers of the feminist movement in the country was Louisa Lawson, the mother of the famous bush poet Henry Lawson, and a poet and publisher in her own right. On this day in 1889 she addressed the founding meeting of the Dawn Club in Sydney, which she had started – a women’s club which encouraged debate and discussion on a variety of issues relating to women’s rights. The first meeting was at Forresters Hall, but subsequent meetings were held at a variety of tea rooms around the city. Many of the tea rooms were owned by a Chinese immigrant called Quong Tart – a man who understood discrimination all too well, but who ultimately became ‘as well known as the Governor himself’ for his business and philanthropic activities in Sydney.

Louisa Lawson’s sisters around the globe were fighting the same fight, and a major fund-raiser for many groups was the production and sale of cookbooks – an idea that would have made many militant feminists half a century later shudder in horror. Thankfully, the movement has moved on, and it is perfectly possible to be a feminist who cooks today. Not that Louisa would have had a choice (and feminism is about choice after all). Her life was not luxurious – at times it was very hard, and she undoubtably knew how to cook. I do not know if she contributed to any cookbooks, but she would surely have admired her sister-publishers who did. In her honour I give you three recipes from The Suffrage Cookbook, published in America in 1915.

Pie for a Suffragist's Doubting Husband.
1 qt. milk human kindness
8 reasons:
War
White Slavery
Child Labor
8,000,000 Working Women
Bad Roads
Poisonous Water
Impure Food
Mix the crust with tact and velvet gloves, using no sarcasm, especially with the upper crust. Upper crusts must be handled with extreme care for they quickly sour if manipulated roughly.

Suffrage Angel Cake (a la Kennedy)
11 eggs
1 full cup Swansdown Flour (after sifting)
1 ½ cups granulated sugar
1 heaping teaspoon cream of tartar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 pinch of salt
Beat the eggs until light - not stiff; sift sugar 7 times, add to eggs, beating as little as possible. Sift flour 9 times, using only the cupful, discarding the extra flour; then put in the flour the cream of tartar; add this to the eggs and sugar; now the vanilla. Put in angel cake pan with feet. Put in oven with very little heat. Great care must be used in baking this cake to insure success. Light the oven when you commence preparing material. After the first 10 minutes in oven, increase heat and continue to do so every five minutes until the last 4 or 5 minutes, when strong heat must be used. At thirty minutes remove cake and invert pan allowing to stand thus until cold.

Suffrage Salad Dressing
Yolks of 2 eggs
3 tablespoons of sugar
2 tablespoons of tarragon vinegar
1 pinch of salt
Beat well ; cook in double boiler. When cold and ready to serve, fold in ½ pint of whipped cream.

I particularly like the first recipe.

Tomorrow's Story ...

The Gentlemen's Club.

This Day Last Year …

We featured Seville oranges.

Quotation for the Day …

There are plenty of women capable of choosing good husbands (or, if not good when chosen, of making them good); yet these same women may be ignorant on the subject of making good pie.
[From Recipes Tried and True. Compiled by the Ladies' Aid Society of the First Presbyterian Church, Marion, Ohio; 1894

Garlic Day.

Today, April 19th …

The plant of the day according to the medieval calendar is garlic (Allium sativum*), dedicated to St Leo. I have no idea why he should have garlic dedicated to him, but I am grateful as it gives us an excuse to have bloggy fun with garlic.

Garlic probably has more folklore associated with it than any other plant food, which is not surpising due to its ancient origins (more myth-making time), widespread distribution (more myth-making people) and its strong smell and pungent taste (more provocative of opinion).

Ancient and smelly plants inevitably end up with medicinal and mystical attributes (which may be the same thing), and garlic is no exception. Historically it has been claimed to cure a whole alphabet of diseases from asthma, baldness, consumption and dropsy to at least as far as leprosy and plague, and to be useful to ward off the evil eye, evil spirits, evil snakes, and evil vampires.

As for its culinary use, the world seems to be divided into two camps – the camp that uses it with frantic abandon, and the camp that, if it uses it at all, uses it in the Victorian English way of wiping a single clove over the bottom of the pan (twice only) before adding the other ingredients, then throwing away the clove. I am of the former camp myself.

The medicinal, mythical, mystical, and culinary uses come together nicely in something called ‘Four Thieves Vinegar’. The story is that during an epidemic of the plague in Marseilles in 1722, four thieves made a good living from plundering the bodies of plague victims but escaped contagion themselves. They attributed their protection to the liberal application or ingestion (the stories vary here) of a special vinegar infused with herbs and garlic. There are many recipes for the vinegar, which is eminently adaptable to the fragrant ingredients on hand, but they do all include garlic. Here is one version of it from The Virginia Housewife (1860) by Mary Randolph. I cannot vouch for its efficacy in treating the plague, I would suggest you seek medical advice in that instance, but with the proper selection of herbs along with the garlic, it would make a fine base for a salad dressing.

Vinegar Of The Four Thieves.
Take lavender, rosemary, sage, wormwood, rue, and mint, of each a large handful; put them in a pot of earthen ware, pour on them four quarts of very strong vinegar, cover the pot closely, and put a board on the top; keep it in the hottest sun two weeks, then strain and bottle it, putting in each bottle a clove of garlic. When it has settled in the bottle and become clear, pour it off gently; do this until you get it all free from
sediment. The proper time to make it is when the herbs are in full vigour, in June. This vinegar is very refreshing in crowded rooms, in the apartments of the sick; and is peculiarly grateful, when sprinkled about the house in damp weather.

[* thanks to Judy (see the comments) for correcting me on this, I had Allium ursinum, which is the wild form of garlic]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Ella’s Book.

Last Year on this Day …

We had a story about coffee substitutes during the American Civil War.

Quotation for the Day …

The emotional content of garlic almost equals its culinary value. Arthur E Grosser.

Hanging around on the tree.

Today, January 19th …

Since the ratification of the twentieth amendment in 1933 the traditional day for the inauguration of the President of the USA has been January 20th, and the obligatory dinners and lunches are usually on that day. In 1945 however, for reasons known only to the planners of such events, the Inaugural dinner for Franklin D. Roosevelt, was held (at the usual venue of the Mayflower hotel, a few blocks from the White House) on the 19th.

The menu was:

Terrapin Soup with Sherry en Tasse
Fried Puff Pastry

Celery Olives Nuts

Filet of Sole, Belle Meuniere

Breast of Capon on Smithfield Ham, Southern Style
alternate
Baked Half Lobster Thermidor
New Stringless Beans Sweet Potato with Apples, Winchester

Salade Rose Marie
(Hearts of Romaine with Alligator Pear and Grapefruit, Lorenzo Dressing)

Cheese Wafers

Coupe Tortoni with Chocolate Mousse

Moka Cream Cake

Demi Tasse

What I find interesting is that the salad dish, unlike the other items, was described in detail, suggesting that it was a creation of the chef. I wonder, who was “Rose Marie”? The other interesting thing is the “alligator pear”. The chef meant of course, the avocado.

The avocado has had many names. Some describe its texture and use : midshipman’s butter, butter-pear and butter-fruit, for example. The “pear” part is also obvious, but why “alligator”? It is supposedly a very tortured derivative, like the word “avocado” itself, of its original Aztec name “ahuactl”, which makes sense as the fruit originated in South America and has been cultivated there for over 7000 years.

And, most deliciously – this is my favourite food name explanation in the world - the Aztec name means “testicle” and so it is the “testicle fruit”! This makes the best sense of all, as the fruit hangs in pairs on the “testicle tree” - one slightly lower than the other of course. Check it out.

“Sauce Lorenzo” is supposedly named after the waiter at the famous “21 Club” in New York who invented it. It is a variation on the vinaigrette theme, the essential ingredients being chilli sauce and chopped watercress. This is the “genuine” recipe:

Lorenzo Dressing 2 tablespoons red-wine vinegar1/2 teaspoon dry mustard dissolved in 1 tablespoon water 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1/3 cup olive oil2 tablespoons bottled chili sauce2 tablespoons finely chopped watercress leaves2 tablespoons chopped cooked bacon

Tomorrow: Clubs, cabbages, and cannonballs