If the bread left over yesterday from your experiment with ‘bust-coat’ is now cool and less appetising, you could make yourself a nice dish of ‘braughwham’ for your supper - if we can work out what that is, of course. Using your leftovers from yesterday's recipe would not be quite authentic, as braughwham is supposed to be made from clap-bread, not wheaten bread, but why not give it a try anyway?
According to the source that introduced us to ‘bust-coat’ - Nathan Bailey’s Etymological Dictionary (1675) – ‘braughwham’ is “A dish made of Cheese, Eggs, Clap Bread and Butter, boiled together.” Sometimes dictionary definitions are not quite definite enough for clarity, and I remain unsure as to the exact nature of ‘braughwham.’ Is it a sort of savoury bread custard? A cheesy bread pudding in a cloth? Some form of coarse scrambled eggs? Or maybe a dish of dumplings? It sounds like a dish guaranteed to continue to bust you out of your coat, however.
I give you a basic recipe for bread dumplings (‘light’ dumplings, too, if there is such a thing), to get your creative juices flowing. This recipe begins with the raw dough, so as it turns out it will not help you use up your leftover bust-coat bread – sorry about that, but I am moving house in two days and have run out of recipe-search time!
Light Bread Dumplings.
Take as much lightened dough as will make a loaf of bread. Work into it half a pound of stemmed raisins tie it up in a cloth, and boil it an hour and a half.
Domestic Cookery, Elizabeth Lea, 1859
Quotation for the Day
“I am the Emperor, and I want dumplings.”
Emperor Ferdinand I.
Showing posts with label dumplings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dumplings. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Thursday, October 07, 2010
Changing the Recipe.
There is no doubt that the housewives of WW II had to be resourceful. Rationing was in force, to some degree or other, in all the involved nations, and ingredients for favourite recipes could not necessarily be obtained, or afforded. In Britain, the Ministry of Food was there to help, however, and every week for a decade, starting in mid 1940, they turned out a single-page ‘Food Facts’ leaflet full of good ideas and practical advice.
I have often featured recipes from these leaflets in previous posts, but today I give you the whole spiel from No. 406, issued in April 1948 - well after the war finished. Rationing did not cease completely in Britain until July 1954, and in many ways the situation was more difficult, as resources were diverted to the restoration of Europe. There is much to learn from this wartime attitude of ‘waste-not, want-not, and try to make it nutritious and tasty while you are at it’, methinks.
Quotation for the Day.
That's something I've noticed about food: whenever there's a crisis if you can get people to eating normally things get better.
Madeleine L'Engle
I have often featured recipes from these leaflets in previous posts, but today I give you the whole spiel from No. 406, issued in April 1948 - well after the war finished. Rationing did not cease completely in Britain until July 1954, and in many ways the situation was more difficult, as resources were diverted to the restoration of Europe. There is much to learn from this wartime attitude of ‘waste-not, want-not, and try to make it nutritious and tasty while you are at it’, methinks.
FOOD FACTS
When you have to change your mind …
You can change the recipe too!
Sometimes you shop in vain for a certain vital ingredient, and have to change your mind at the last moment. So it’s useful to have a basic recipe all ready; one that can be varied two or three ways according to what you find in the shops.
QUICK HOT POT.
Basic Recipe.
8 oz. sausage meat, 1 onion or leek (about 2 oz.) finely sliced, ¼ oz. dripping, ¼ pint boiling water, salt and pepper to taste, 1 level teaspoon mixed herbs, 4 oz. apple, diced, 8 oz.cabbage, shredded.
Divide the sausage meat into 8 portions and form into balls. Fry the onion or leek in the dripping for a few minutes, add the sausage balls and brown all over. Add the water, seasoning, herbs, apple and cabbage, and simmer for 15 minutes. Turn onto a hot dish and serve immediately.
THE VARIATIONS.
1.When you are unable to get sausage meat, this recipe is just as good with corned beef – to prevent the corned beef from breaking too much, dice it and add to the hot-pot only 10 minutes before serving.
2. Instead of onions you can use 6 spring onions chopped, or one clove of garlic finely chopped.
3. Instead of apple use 4 oz finely sliced carrot or two level tablespoons of apple chutney, or two tomatoes, sliced.
4.Instead of mixed herbs, use one level teaspoon dried parsley, or one tablespoon of chopped fresh parsley.
SWEET DUMPLINGS.
Basic Recipe.
8 oz plain flour and 4 level teaspoons baking powder, or 8 oz. self raising flour, ½ - 1 level teaspoon salt, 1 level tablespoon sugar, about 6 tablespoons milk and water, or water to mix.
Mix flour, baking powder if used, and salt. Add sugar. Mix to a soft dough with the liquid and shape into small balls. Drop into boiling liquid and boil for 15-20 minutes with the lid on. Serve with syrup.
And Some VARIATIONS
1.Add ½ level teaspoon cinnamon, nutmeg, or mixed spice to dry ingredients. Serve with custard.
2. Cook in boiling sweetened fruit juice, stewed fruit, or diluted fruit squash and serve in the liquid in which they were cooked.
3. Use the recipe for the dumplings, roll out the dough into an oblong. Spread with 1 level tablespoon syrup, roll up like a Swiss roll and place in a greased pie-dish. Pour over ½ pint of sweetened fruit juice (or 4 tablespoons orange squash and 2 level tablespoons syrup made up to half a pint with water) and bake in a hot oven for 25-30 minutes. Serve hot with syrup.
Each recipe serves four and has been kitchen tested.
Quotation for the Day.
That's something I've noticed about food: whenever there's a crisis if you can get people to eating normally things get better.
Madeleine L'Engle
Monday, October 12, 2009
The original junk food.
It is time for us to talk about junk food – and if you need any convincing that the English language is a dynamic, ever-evolving thing – constantly co-opting old words to new uses, then here is the evidence.
‘Junk food’ is modern food with a ubiquity and popularity far beyond what it deserves on the basis of its nutritional value – Yes?. It is usually high in calories, fat, salt and/or sugar, and low in fibre and vitamins. It has the apparent virtues of cheapness, convenience, and availability. It is is ‘fast’ to prepare and eat, and ‘fast’ to consume - meaning that it bypasses the satiety centre in your brain, leaving you (the purchaser) wanting more a short time later. It not only has no inherent health-giving properties, it is actively blamed for causing the obesity, heart disease, and diabetes epidemics.
‘Junk’ is a generic word for rubbish, right? Let us to the Oxford English Dictionary for confirmation of our assumption.
It turns out that we are correct, but only from a relatively recent perspective. The word junk is in the uncomfortably, intriguingly, large cohort of words with ‘obscure origins’. In medieval times it apparently referred to prickly rushes, similar to those used for making mattresses; it also referred (in a predominantly seafaring sense) to old, damaged rope (I do wonder if that is where our phrase ‘money for old rope’ comes from, but I digress.)
By the eighteenth century ‘junk’ had another nautical meaning. ‘Junk’, or ‘salt junk’ was the inevitable, indestructible, salt beef (or ‘salt horse’, to use another less than affectionate term) that was the mainstay of the sailors’ diet. The supporting quotation used by the OED for this usage comes from the novelist Tobias Smollett, who gave ‘… old junk, pork-slush, or stinking stock-fish … ’ as a metaphor for something of poor value.
By the mid-nineteenth century ‘junk’ had extended to include anything of poor quality or low value. It was not for another century (into the 1970’s) that it was specifically applied to food.
But the plot thickens here. There is one other old food-related meaning of the word ‘junk’. According to the Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English: Containing Words from the English Writers (By Thomas Wright, 1857) in the South it could mean (1) A lump, and in Gloucestershire it was (2) A favorite dish. Unfortunately I have been unable (so far) to find out any more about this favourite Gloucestershire dish called ‘junk’, as Mr. Wright’s attribution is the only one which pops up.
Mr. Wright’s book gives another example of the creative use of language – at least, that is how I interpret the dish he describes as Lumpy-Jumms (from the North), which will function as our ‘recipe’ for the day. I really don’t know anything else about this dish - I have found no other references at all – but it seems to me that it might be an example of adding value to a food of necessity, or perhaps a culinary error, by glorifying it with its own name. The cook who perhaps under-boiled the oatmeal dumplings was in a similar situation to the one who forgot to reheat the soup, so served it chilled (one of the explanatory myths about vichyssoise), or more recently to the one who underbaked the chocolate puddings and served them with magnificently molten centres. What to do? Pre-empt the complaints or comments, and serve a ‘new’ dish, of course!
Lumpy-jumms.
A dish made of oatmeal, sprinkled with water, and boiled in lumps of about the size of a nut, which, when eaten, are found to be dry meal in the inside. North.
Quotation for the Day.
Luck is like having a rice dumpling fly into your mouth.
Japanese Proverb.
‘Junk food’ is modern food with a ubiquity and popularity far beyond what it deserves on the basis of its nutritional value – Yes?. It is usually high in calories, fat, salt and/or sugar, and low in fibre and vitamins. It has the apparent virtues of cheapness, convenience, and availability. It is is ‘fast’ to prepare and eat, and ‘fast’ to consume - meaning that it bypasses the satiety centre in your brain, leaving you (the purchaser) wanting more a short time later. It not only has no inherent health-giving properties, it is actively blamed for causing the obesity, heart disease, and diabetes epidemics.
‘Junk’ is a generic word for rubbish, right? Let us to the Oxford English Dictionary for confirmation of our assumption.
It turns out that we are correct, but only from a relatively recent perspective. The word junk is in the uncomfortably, intriguingly, large cohort of words with ‘obscure origins’. In medieval times it apparently referred to prickly rushes, similar to those used for making mattresses; it also referred (in a predominantly seafaring sense) to old, damaged rope (I do wonder if that is where our phrase ‘money for old rope’ comes from, but I digress.)
By the eighteenth century ‘junk’ had another nautical meaning. ‘Junk’, or ‘salt junk’ was the inevitable, indestructible, salt beef (or ‘salt horse’, to use another less than affectionate term) that was the mainstay of the sailors’ diet. The supporting quotation used by the OED for this usage comes from the novelist Tobias Smollett, who gave ‘… old junk, pork-slush, or stinking stock-fish … ’ as a metaphor for something of poor value.
By the mid-nineteenth century ‘junk’ had extended to include anything of poor quality or low value. It was not for another century (into the 1970’s) that it was specifically applied to food.
But the plot thickens here. There is one other old food-related meaning of the word ‘junk’. According to the Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English: Containing Words from the English Writers (By Thomas Wright, 1857) in the South it could mean (1) A lump, and in Gloucestershire it was (2) A favorite dish. Unfortunately I have been unable (so far) to find out any more about this favourite Gloucestershire dish called ‘junk’, as Mr. Wright’s attribution is the only one which pops up.
Mr. Wright’s book gives another example of the creative use of language – at least, that is how I interpret the dish he describes as Lumpy-Jumms (from the North), which will function as our ‘recipe’ for the day. I really don’t know anything else about this dish - I have found no other references at all – but it seems to me that it might be an example of adding value to a food of necessity, or perhaps a culinary error, by glorifying it with its own name. The cook who perhaps under-boiled the oatmeal dumplings was in a similar situation to the one who forgot to reheat the soup, so served it chilled (one of the explanatory myths about vichyssoise), or more recently to the one who underbaked the chocolate puddings and served them with magnificently molten centres. What to do? Pre-empt the complaints or comments, and serve a ‘new’ dish, of course!
Lumpy-jumms.
A dish made of oatmeal, sprinkled with water, and boiled in lumps of about the size of a nut, which, when eaten, are found to be dry meal in the inside. North.
Quotation for the Day.
Luck is like having a rice dumpling fly into your mouth.
Japanese Proverb.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)