Authentic Mexican?

I would love to be more knowledgeable about ‘real’ Mexican cuisine. I understand that what is commonly claimed as ‘Mexican’ cuisine outside of Mexico itself is more accurately described as ‘Tex-Mex.’ I also must confess confusion about the definition of ‘fusion cuisine.’ Who coined that phrase, anyway? Some cuisines have been fused for so long that they can surely claim an authenticity all of their own - Anglo-Indian and Pennsyvania Dutch, for example - and Tex-Mex too, perhaps?

I am equally confused about the definition of ‘authenticity’ too, as regular readers will know. Regular readers will also probably note that I have used a couple of particular examples previously, but without shame at repeating myself, I would like to know why tomatoes (a New World food, not known in Europe until the early sixteenth century) are considered an indispensible ingredient in ‘authentic’ Italian food, or potatoes (also from the New World) are essential to Irish stew.

I have no trouble actually living with paradoxes, dichotomies or a myriad other inconsistencies however, and can state without (much) fear of contradiction that the following ‘Mexican’ recipes are hardly authentic – the first on account of the inclusion of the very English ingredient of Worcestershire sauce, the second because of its liberal topping of cheese. The recipes come from Fifty choice recipes for Spanish and Mexican dishes (1905)

Mexican Chili Stew.
Four medium-sized potatoes, four large tomatoes, one good-sized onion. Cut all in small pieces; two pounds of lean beef cut in dice. Put beef in pot with two tablespoonfuls of heated butter and the onion, and stew half hour; then add rest of vegetables with one quart of hot water, one tablespoonful of chili powder and three of Worcestershire sauce; salt and pepper to taste with one clove of garlic; cook on slow fire until thoroughly done.

Mexican Round Steak.
BAKE in oven for half hour a two-pound slice of the tender side of round steak, in half -pint of water, basting often; season with salt and pepper; take from oven, cover top of meat with finely chopped onion; cook again for fifteen minutes, then add a covering of tomatoes, cut fine. Cook a quarter of an hour, then cover with grated cheese; put back in oven until cheese melts. This must be cooked in moderate oven. The meat will be very tender, and have a delicious gravy.

Quotation for the Day.
If I moved away, I would definitely miss the Mexican food. Every region has its own Mexican food, and they're very chauvinistic - they believe their food is the real Mexican food.
Russ Parson.

The Aussie Barbecue.

Australia was alive with barbecues yesterday (which is still today for some of you), as many good citizens burnt all manner of proteins in the name of patriotism (it being our national day and all.)
I rather belatedly wondered when the Australia Day barbecue ‘tradition’ became established. The short answer arrived at from my short search is - not many decades ago. I did come across a few interesting ‘barbecue’ recipes in my search, which I have put away for a future historical barbecue event.

The first one was under the heading ‘Breakfast Dishes’, and I see no good reason not to start the national day next year with “Ham on the Barbie.”

Barbecued Ham.
Fry slices of cold boiled ham; keep warm while you stir into the gravy left in the pan four teaspoonfuls of vinegar, mixed with a teaspoonful of mustard, a teaspoonful of sugar, half a teaspoonful of catsup or chilli sauce and a little pepper. Boil up once and pour on the fried ham. This dish is sometimes called "devilled ham," and is a good spur to appetite.
Western Mail (Perth, WA) March 3, 1894

Barbecued ham appeared again in an article on how to cook ham in The Brisbane Courier of December 10, 1913.

Barbecued Ham.
Slice cold boiled ham, and fry it in its own fat. Remove the slices into another dish, and keep it hot while there is added to the fat a teaspoonful of white sugar, a little pepper, and a second teaspoonful of made mustard and three tablespoonfuls of vinegar. Let this boil up once and pour it over the ham. Serve hot.

Of course, seriously dinky-die Aussies won’t eat anything other than our national meat on our national day. I give you a recipe from The Australian Women’s Weekly of October 20, 1934 for the sort of barbecued lamb you have when you don’t have a barbecue.

Barbecued Lamb.

Slices of cold roast lamb reheated in a sauce made as follows: 2 tablespoons butter, 1 tablespoon vinegar, ¼ cup redcurrant jelly, ¼ teaspoon French mustard, salt, and cayenne to taste. Serve with mashed potato and moulds of spinach.

And what would a barbecue be without burgers? Here is a nice idea from The Australian Women’s Weekly of February 19, 1944.

Barbecued Patties (With Apple Rings.)
One pound minced meat, 1 tablespoon chopped onion, ½ teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, 2 tablespoons flour, 2 cooking apples, 1 tablespoon melted dripping or cooking oil, mixed spice, parsley.
Pound together meat, onion, salt, sauce, and flour, and form into patties. Dry fry or grill, turning frequently. Peel, core, and slice apples into ½ inch rings. Saute in dripping or brush with melted fat and grill. Sprinkle lightly with spice while hot. A brushing with brown sugar mixed with spice gives a good glaze and flavour. Serve patties on apple rings, brush with parsley and serve at once. For four.

Quotation for the Day.

The barbecue has endured as an institution because nobody has been allowed to put on an apron and begin monkeying with it.
Columnist in The Queenslander, Brisbane, June 26, 1930.

Casserole or Stew?

Once upon a time, I used to think that a ‘stew’ was a utilitarian family dish that was cooked on the top of the stove, and a casserole was a posher dish suitable to serve to guests that was cooked in the oven. The older I get and the more I learn the less I know, it seems, for today I am unable to distinguish between the two – as exemplified in a previous post in which we had a recipe for 'Baked Irish Stew’.

The origin of both words is interesting however. ‘Casserole’ (a word derived from French or Spanish) originally referred to a ‘kind of stew-pan’. During the eighteenth century in England, it came also to refer to the contents (which ultimately necessitated the changing of the name of the container to casserole dish.) Sometimes ‘casserole’ also means ‘the edging or outer portion of certain dressed dishes.’

‘Stew’ is much older old word with many meanings, as we have discussed previously. To recap: in the fourteenth century it meant ‘a pond or tank in which fish are kept until needed for the table’, ‘a stove, heated room’ and ‘a vessel for boiling’; to make matters more amusing, it also meant a bath house, and as these were often used for ‘immoral purposes’, a ‘stew’ also meant ‘a brothel.’ Think on that next time you make a nice stew for the family. The word came into its modern meaning of ‘a preparation of meat slowly boiled in a stew-pan, generally containing vegetables, rice, etc’ round about the same time as the casserole was adapted to English use – somewhere in the eighteenth century.

Here is a nice early recipe for ‘casserole’, which is eminently doable today.

To Dress Rabbets in Casserole
Divide the rabbits into quarters. You may lard them, or let them alone, just as you please, shake some flour over them and fry them with lard or butter, then put them into an earthen pipkin with a quart of good broth, a glass of white wine, a little pepper and salt, if wanted, a bunch of sweet herbs, and a piece of butter as big as a walnut rolled in flour; cover them close and let them stew half an hour, then dish them up and pour the sauce over them. Garnish with Seville orange, cut into thin slices and notched; the peel that is cut out lay prettily between the slices.
The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747)

And as an example of a ‘casserole’ as an edging for another dish, I give you the following rather tricky recipe from The Practice of Cookery, adapted to the business of everyday life, by Mrs Dalgairns (1830)

Casserole of Rice.
Having cleaned and drained about half a pound of rice, moisten it in a stew-pan, with some fat - that which gathers on the top of liquor in which meat has been boiled; strain some broth or soup, add to it a large quantity of grease, some pieces of fat bacon, and a little salt, and mix it with the rice, to make it swell as much as possible; stir it frequently over a slow fire to keep it from sticking; when it is soft strain it through a cullender, and press it well with a wooden spoon. The mould being selected for the casserole, rinse it with the fat drained from the rice, taking care that every part of the inside of the mould be well greased, then cover it with rice, and place a piece of the crumb of bread in the middle, and cover it with rice also; press it in equally with a spoon, and let it cool. When the rice has become firm, dip the outside of the mould into boiling water; put a covering of paste made with flour and water; flatten it all round with a spoon, and make an opening in the top with a knife, then put it into the oven, which cannot be too hot for a casserole, baste it with the grease, and when it has become of a fine colour, take it out of the oven, remove the crust, and take out the bread carefully, so that the casserole may not be injured ; next remove some of the rice from the inside; taking care to leave enough to resist the weight of whatever may be put inside of it. Fill it with minced meat, ragout, blanquette, fricassee of chickens, macaroni, or scollops of fish, that have been already served at table; return it to the oven, and when nicely browned, serve it.

Quotation for the Day.
This is not that, and that is certainly not this, and at the same time an oyster stew is not stewed, and although they are made of the same things and even cooked almost the same way, an oyster soup should never be called a stew, nor stew soup.
M.F.K. Fisher (1908-1992)

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.

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

Puptons and Pulpatoons.

In a post last week we had a recipe for a Pupton of Apples. It consisted of a heavily sweetened apple puree to which egg yolks, bread crumbs, and butter were added, the mixture then being baked, and after baking it was turned out onto a serving dish. Many of us were left confused as to what qualified this dish as a ‘pupton.’

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a pupton as deriving from the French poupeton - a ‘kind of ragout or pâté made with minced meat’. Further etymological explanation is limited. The word may related to the Italian polpettone (a large meatball or rissole), or the French poulpe (fleshy tissue), but other confusions are hinted at elsewhere in the dictionary. The Italian polpettone became pulpatoon in English, and the OED defines this as ‘a dish made of rabbits, game birds, etc., in a crust of forcemeat’, and notes that it is ‘apparently sometimes confused with pupton.’

There is nothing in any of the explanations so far that hints of our apple dish, although by the early eighteenth century a pupton or poupeton was broadly interpreted as ‘a baked dish made with meat or fruit.’ Sometimes it could be described as ‘a Mess made in a Stew-pan, as it were a Pie, with thin slices of Bacon laid underneath; Pigeons, Quails, or other sorts of Fowl dress'd in a Ragoo in the middle; and a peculiar Farce or Dish of stuff'd Meat called Godivoe on the top; the whole to be bak'd between two gentle Fires’, and sometimes it was a fruit dish, thickened with breadcrumbs as in the Pupton of Apples which started this discussion.

I admit to still being confused, and will prove it by giving you a recipe for a pulpatoon – or maybe it is a pupton?. It is from The Compleat Housewife, by E.Smith (1736)


To make a Pulpatoon of Pigeon.
Take mushrooms, palates, oysters, sweetbreads, and fry them in butter; then put all these into a strong gravy; give them a heat over the fire, and thicken with an egg and a bit of butter; then half roast six or eight pigeons, and lay them in a crust of forc’d meat, as follows: scrape a pound of veal and two pounds of marrow, and beat it together in a stone mortar; after it is shred very fine; then season it with salt, pepper, spice, and put in hard eggs, anchovies, and oysters; beat all together and make the lid and sides of your pie of it; first, lay a thin crust in your pattipan, then put in your forc’d-meat, then lay an exceedingly thin crust over it, then put in your pigeons and other ingredients, with a little butter on top.


Quotation for the Day.

Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war?
Georg C. Lichtenberg

Sydney Snippets.

Today I am heading off for a few days in Sydney, to cheer on my daughter as she competes in a half-marathon. And to have some peripheral fun too, of course (shopping, eating, etc). I thought I would start the fun by keeping to a ‘Sydney’ theme this next couple of days, and the first thing my memory turned up was a recipe for ‘Veal-Sydney’ from Eliza Acton’s classic Modern Cookery for Private Families, published in 1845.

I have long been intrigued by the name of the dish, but have absolutely no idea where it comes from, or what it means. Miss Acton’s exact recipe is repeated in a couple of other nineteenth century cookery books, but the only other version I have come across is in the Manchester Times (Manchester, England) in May, 1886 – and it is essentially an abbreviated version of the former. I have also seen the dish is listed on one menu from 1897. Other than these miserable gleanings, it remains a mystery.

Anyone out there have any ideas? Cockney rhyming slang for ‘steak and kidney’ is ‘Kate and Sydney’, but there is no kidney in this dish, and even if there were, it would be a bit of a credibility stretch to think that was the basis for the name. Here is the recipe. I eagerly await your insightful comments, informed opinions, and wild guesses as to the origin of the name.

Veal-Sydney (good)
Pour boiling on an ounce and a half of fine bread crumbs nearly half a pint of good veal stock or gravy, and let them stand till cool; mix with them then, two ounces of beef suet shred very small, half a pound of cold roast veal carefully trimmed from the brown edges, skin, and fat, and finely minced; the grated rind of half a lemon, nearly a teaspoonful of salt, a little cayenne, the third of a tea-spoonful of mace or nutmeg, and four well beaten eggs. Whisk up the whole well together, put it into a buttered dish, and bake it from three quarters of an hour to an hour. Cream may be used instead of gravy when more convenient, but this last will give the letter flavour. A little clarified butter put into the dish before the other ingredients are poured in will be an improvement.
Bread crumbs 1 ½ oz; gravy or cream, nearly ½ pint; beef suet 2 oz; cold veal ½ lb; rind of ½ lemon; salt, small teaspoonful; third as much mace and nutmeg; little cayenne; eggs 4 large or 5 small; ¾ to 1 hour.

Veal Sydney.
Mix one and a half ounce of breadcrumbs with half a pint of gravy, two ounces of beef suet, half a pound of cold veal, half the grated rind of a lemon, a small teaspoonful of salt, one-third as much each of mace and nutmeg, and a fourth of cayenne pepper, and four eggs. Bake one hour.
Manchester Times, 1886


Quotation for the Day.

God sendeth and giveth both mouth and meat.
Thomas Tusser (1524-1580)

Prisoner’s Beans.

On this day in 1934, the first civilian prisoners arrived at Alcatraz. The prison had previously been purely for military miscreants, but in this year the island was converted into a Federal hold-all for the most difficult and dangerous inmates of other prisons around the country. It was a maximum security, minimum privilege jail and it was said that no-one got sent to Alcatraz - each had to earn the privilege by his behaviour.

Warden Johnson was no softie. Punishment, not rehabilitation, was the philosophy – but there were a couple of advantages to life there, over life in other penal institutions. There were individual cells, and a decent library – and the diet was the best in the Federal system, for the very practical reason that bad food was a common trigger for prison revolt.

A Prisoner got three meals a day, served cafeteria style, and second helpings were allowed so long as the prisoner finished all the food he took. The range of food was good, for the place and time, with luxuries such as salads and fresh fruit being on the menu.

Sadly, I have not been able to find an actual Alcatraz menu from the 1930’s, but to give you a general idea of prison fare of the time, here is one from the Dallas County Jail, on June 29, 1934.

BREAKFAST

Bacon             Syrup

Bread

Coffee           Cream

Sugar

NOON

Veal           Stew

Onions

Irish          Potatoes

Bread

SUPPER

Chilie          Beans

Stewed          Peaches

Bread

Ice         Tea

The format of the menu makes it unclear whether the supper dish was ‘chilie, plus a side of beans’, or just ‘chile, including beans’. I suspect the latter, but am treading carefully here, being aware that in Texas, opinions on chile (and the inclusion of beans, or not) run very high.

There is one school of thought that says that ‘chile’ (the spicy meat dish, not the chilli pepper) was ‘invented’ in the Texas prison system in the mid-nineteenth century, as a way of making cheap, tough, meat go further and taste better. I don’t know about that, but I like the story.

From a 1930’s Texas newspaper, a very simple recipe for chili suitable for both bean-adders, and no-beaners:

Chili Recipe.
The Gebhardt Chili Powder Company, of San Antonio, Teas, offers a very simple recipe to make chili at home. Here is all you have to do.
2 lbs of beef.
2 Tablespoons of Gebhardt’s Chili Powder
3 Tablespoons of Flour.
4 Tablespoons of Shortening.
2 Teaspoons of salt.
1 ½ Quart hot water.
One can of Gebhardt’s Spiced Beans (if desired).
Chop or cut the meat into small chunks. Sear well in shortening. Add Gebhardt’s Chili Powder, salt, and water. Simmer until tender. Add flour to thicken the gravy a few minutes before serving. Serve hot.
This recipe may disappoint you unless you use Gebhardt’s Chili Powder. Gebhardt’s Chili Powder is a complete flavoring, containing the necessary spices, etc, in combination with a blend of imported and domestic chili peppers to give you the perfect Mexican flavor of chili.
The Gebhardt Chili Powder Company has been a Texas institution for 41 years.
The Panola Watchman,[ Carthage, Texas] January 6, 1938

Quotation for the Day.
The only thing certain about the origins of chili is that it did not originate in Mexico.
Charles Ramsdell

Inky Pinky.

My current favourite phrase for using up leftovers is ‘repurposing food’ (my previous favourite was ‘secondary cookery.’) A large part of the skill involves disguising the original ingredient by creatively naming the new-from-old dish, and I came across a lovely example the other day. It is ‘Inky-Pinky’, and I want to share it with you.

I discovered Inky-Pinky in an article in an English newspaper - The Leeds Mercury - of October 1879. The article was in the Household Department of the paper, and the subject was ‘gathering up the fragments’ – fragments of cold meat, that is. Just before a recipe called ‘Encore Roast Beef’ was this gem:

Inky-Pinky is simply cold roast beef or mutton hashed. Do it as follows:- Slice down some boiled carrots, likewise the cold meat, adding a small onion or two, and pepper and salt to taste. Simmer all these in a gravy made from the bones and trimmings of the beef, thicken with a little flour, and serve with a border of nicely mashed potatoes. The carrots should be put on in advance of the beef, which only requires to be thoroughly heated. Season with catchup if liked.

An almost identical recipe appears in another 1870’s source - Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery. The name of this dish greatly intrigues me. If the phrase has been around since at least the 1870’s, what does the Oxford English Dictionary have to say about it? 

The OED gives inky-pinky (or inkie-pinkie or hinkie-pinkie) a Scottish origin and defines it as ‘small beer’. No mention of leftover roast beef or mutton. That it is indisputably Scottish is supported by Mr. Google – although he usually turns up the meat version.

I went therefore to the Dictionary of the Scots Language, and again, it gives several quotations to support the definition of small beer – then, suddenly, in 1827, in that marvelous Scottish cookery resource, the Cook and Housewife’s Manual by Mistress Dods (aka Christian Isobel Johnstone), there is a recipe for repurposing leftover roast beef with carrots and gravy! OED editors please take note.

Perhaps the beer version got its name on account of its colour or taste? I would love some ideas or wild guesses as to how this name got transferred to a dish of leftover roast beef – so please, go right ahead and comment!

Quotation for the Day.

As to those things called hashes, commonly manufactured by unwatched, untaught cooks, out of the remains of yesterday's repast, let us not dwell too closely on their memory, - compounds of meat, gristle, skin, fat, and burnt fibre, with a handful of pepper and salt flung at them, dredged with lumpy flour, watered from the spout of the tea-kettle, and left to simmer at the cook's convenience while she is otherwise occupied.
Christopher Crowfield (Harriet Beecher Stowe) ‘House and Home Papers’ (1865)

In the Fashion.

Food is no less subject to fashion (at least amongst those that can afford to be choosy) than are frocks and footwear. In late nineteenth century America, to serve apple pie ‘in the fashion’ was to serve it with ice-cream. As the fashionable menu language was still French, this was to serve it ‘a la mode.’ No knowledge of the French language was required to have a comfortable certainty that one would get ice-cream if one ordered pie a la mode – and this was the case right up until …well, almost if not definitely the present time.

It was not always so. Once upon a time (the seventeenth century) a dish styled ‘a la mode’ (often spelled alamode) referred to a meat (usually beef) dish. The certainty ended there however. There was a huge variation in recipes for Alamode Beef. To many, including the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, alamode beef consisted of ‘scraps and remainders of beef boiled down into a thick soup or stew’ – in other words it is a dish of recycled leftovers glamorized with a fancy French name. At one time or another, in England and America, other cooks and cookbook writers have given the name to virtually any beef stew or pot-roast – each individual no doubt determined that theirs is the ‘real’ dish.

Alamode Beef was a common café and take-out item, and major cities in the English speaking world had ‘Alamode Beef Shops’ where no doubt the version sold was not always the most savoury – metaphorically speaking.

The author of an article in The Ladies Literary Cabinet (New York, 1819) was quite adamant on the subjects of alamode beef shops (the English variety) and the definitive recipe – in this case a rather elegant dish of beef larded with fat bacon and cooked slowly, slowly, in a sealed pot.

Real Beef Alamode.
Though what are called alamode shops swarm in London, there is not, perhaps, one place under that denomination in the city where the real beef alamode is sold. What passes under this name in England is nothing more than the coarsest pieces of beef stewed into sort of seasoned soup, not at all superior to those of ox cheek or leg of beef, and often by no means so good. The real alamode beef is well known to be thus made. Take some of the veiny piece or a part of the thick flank, or rather a small round, commonly called the mouse buttock, of the finest ox-beef, but let be at least five inches thick. Cut thick slices of fat bacon into proper lengths for lardings of about three quarters of an inch thick; dip them first into vinegar and then into a mixed powder of finely beaten mace, long pepper, nutmeg, a clove or two, and double the united weight of salt. With a small knife or larding pin cut holes in the beef to receive the bacon thus prepared; the lardings tolerably thick and even; rub the beef over with the remainder of the seasoning; put it into a pot or pan just sufficiently large to contain it, and add a gill of vinegar, a couple of large onions, some sweet herbs, a few chives, a little lemon peel, some truffles and morels, and half a pint of wine. It should be very closely covered up and have a wet cloth round edge to prevent the steam from evaporating. It must be dressed over a stove or very slow fire, and will require six hours to do it properly. When half done it should be taken off, turned, and again closed up as before. If thick flank or the veiny piece be used, it may necessary to tie up the beef with tape, on putting it into the pan or pot; which of course must be taken off when meat is dressed.

Quotation for the Day.

Smell brings to mind … a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years.
Diane Ackerman.

Rations for one.

The amazing work of the British Food Ministry during World War II continues to provide much food for thought over half a century later. Week after week throughout the war and for years afterwards (rationing did not end completely until 1953) they churned out information and advice to the general public on rationing and many other war-related food issues. We could with advantage heed some of that advice today – particularly the advice relating to avoiding waste, reducing our meat consumption, and growing as much as possible of our own food.

Weekly Food Facts leaflets put out by the Ministry were reproduced in the newspapers, and today I want to share with you the advice in one edition from mid 1944. Food Facts leaflet number 231 gave good advice about using leftovers and spreading out the meat consumption, but it was particularly addressed to those living alone. It was a lot less common for someone to live alone at this time than it is now – and we are told that the number of solo households is increasing dramatically, so perhaps reviewing this advice is timely.

Upon receipt of a postcard request, the Food Ministry would send, free of charge, “ideas for a week’s menu for one person living alone, with recipes for many of the dishes mentioned,” but Food Facts leaflet 231 had some good advice in itself.

“It’s less easy to manage on a single ration than it is to cater for a family when one has three or four Ration Books to juggle with, but given imagination and ingenuity, it is possible for those with one Ration Book to avoid monotony and eat well. Sometimes you will buy your meat ration on one piece, pot-roast it, and eat the remainder cold with some appetising trimming. Sometimes you will grill or stew your three chops, or make pie, pudding, and casserole out of your 1s.2d. worth of stewing steak. A vegetable stew with dumplings, or a cheese and vegetable pasty will provide you with another main meal. Bacon Hash, a risotto of diced liver sausage, a Pilchard salad, or Scotch eggs or Mock Hamburgers are other good dishes for the man or woman who lives alone.”

Most of the Food Facts leaflets included recipes, and number 231 was no exception. I give you two of them for your interest today.

Bacon Hash.
Ingredients: 2 slices bacon, ½ lb potatoes, sliced, ½ lb mixed vegetable slices, 1 onion, sliced, pepper and salt, ½ pint stock or water.
Method: Remove rinds from bacon and cut into small pieces. Cut bacon into larger pieces and fry all together until fairly crisp. Remove from pan. Put in layers of sliced potatot, vegetable and onion and bacon, finishing with potato. Season well. Pour over liquid. Bring quickly to boiling point then simmer gently for one hour.

Mock Hamburger.
Ingredients: 1-2 oz.mince, 2 oz. grated raw potato, 1 oz. oatmeal, seasoning, 1 chopped onion, 1 teaspoon chopped parsley.
Method: Mix all the ingredients together and fry spoonfuls in shallow fat for 10-15 minutes.

Quotation for the Day.

We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink, for dining alone is leading the life of a lion or wolf.
Epicurus

The Mayor and Mayoress at Dinner.

Mr. J. Skeat, the eighteenth century author of our inspiration for the week appears to have been an important member of the catering community in Norwich, England. He details the bills of fare and the table settings for two important civic events – not dated but presumably not too distant from the time of publication of his book (The Art of Cookery and Pastery … ) in 1769. One of these bills of fare – that for the “Mayor’s Feast at Lynn”, is our topic for the day.

In previous times, the bill of fare served to you at an important dinner depended on your rank. Greater choice and finer food went to the most important folk, with fewer dishes and sometimes fewer courses going to those lower down in the pecking order (those “below the salt”, so to speak.) At the Mayor’s Feast at Lynn, all guests received two course, but different choices were offered to the Mayor’s table, the Mayoress’s Table, the Common-Council Table, the Middle Table, the Large Table in the Assembly Room, and the Short Table in the Assembly Room.

Interestingly, there was a greater variety of dishes at the Mayoress’s table than at the Mayor’s table at this feast. Here is the first course for both those tables (the lists also indicate the position of the dishes on the table).

The Mayor’s Table.

Carp &c.

Pigeons Fricandoe. M. Pudding [ Marrow]

Bombard Veal

Haunch of Venison.

Partridge Pye.

Chickens.

*

Callipee.

Roast Turkey.

Ham.

Venison Pasty.

Roast Pig.

Greens.

Tench.

The Mayoress’s Table.

Pike, &c.

Veal Sweetbreads. Italienne.

Haunch of Venison.

Chickens.

Greens.

Ham.

Partridge Pye.

Ducks A-la-Brazed.

*

M.Pye.

Callipee.

Roast Pig.

M.Pudding.

Veal Olives.

Roast Goose.

*

M.Pyes.

Tench.

Roast Turkey.

Tongue. Udder.

Greens.

Fowls.

*

Pidgeons Fricandoe.

Venison Pasty.

White Collops.

M.Pudding.

Bombard Veal.

Hash.

Tench.

White Collops.
Take a clean stewpan with a piece of butter, when melted have some small cutlets of veal, and just warm them through in the butter; dredge in a little flour, and keep shaking it about; season them to your liking; then add a little cream, a little white gravy, and the juice of a lemon; shake them all together, and serve them up with egg balls.


Quotation for the Day.

Banquet: a plate of cold, hairy chicken and artificially coloured green peas completely surrounded by dreary speeches and appeals for donations.
Bennett A. Cerf, Laughing Stock (1945)

Lost and Found.

There are some regular themes in this blog that are beautifully illustrated in this week’s source (The Art of Cookery and Pastery … by J.Skeat, 1769). Some of them are:

- That there are dishes which were once desirable, popular, and common which are now unfashionable, unpopular, or just plain unavailable.

- Other dishes which seem wonderful and elegant and are still eminently do-able even in our time-poor, economically anxious, and servant-free lives - yet have inexplicably disappeared and should be considered for reinstatement.

- There are many dishes which we think are modern, yet can be found alive and well hundreds of years ago, their only disguise being a different name.

I would like to give you an example from each category, from Mr.Skeat’s book.

No one eats lamb’s ears anymore – at least not in recogniseable form (no doubt they get into sausage meat). The following recipe makes no attempt to disguise the ears, indeed, it flaunts their useful anatomical shape.


Ragou’d Lamb’s Ears.
Take care to have them well cleaned, and kept as whole as possible; fill the hollow part with good forcemeat; wash them over with an egg, and send them to the oven: have ready a rich gravy for the dish against they come from the oven, with stew’d sorrel around it.

The following recipe is a very glorious take on the humble rice pudding. May I suggest individual servings for a very elegant dinner-party dessert?

To force Oranges.
Fill two preserved oranges full of rich whole rice pudding boil’d in cream, eggs, sugar, nutmeg and wine, and stir in a piece of butter and some sugar; then have a set custard, and fill the dish; put the oranges in the middle, and garnish with sweetmeats and flowers.

And finally, the humble meat patty, rissole, or burger in a very superior pre-incarnation. Served with the recommended spinach it becomes Burgers Florentine, does it not?


Savoury Cakes.
Take a pound of the lean of veal, half a pound of beef suet, a quarter of a pound of bacon, and cut them small; then mix well together the yolks of six hard eggs, some crumbs of bread, half a shallot, nutmeg, pepper, and salt; and break up an egg to mix them to a sort of paste; make them up in round cakes, and fry them brown; lay them before the fire whilst the sauce is making, which is stew’s spinnage, melted butter, or a good ragout sauce in the dish; for either way is good.


Quotation for the Day.

"Offal" is used about 67 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language
Webster’s Online Dictionary

Culinary Puzzles.

There are several dishes in our eighteenth century source for the week (The Art of Cookery and Pastery … by J.Skeat, 1769) about which I am mystified, and look forward to your input.

As I discussed yesterday, the rather puzzling names of some of the dishes in this book can be explained as an English cook’s interpretation of the classic French names (‘calf’s foy’ being calf’s foie, or liver). A few have really defeated me, and I ask for your suggestions. First, we have this intriguingly-named dish:


Beef Troublon.
Take a brisket piece of beef, tie it up, and put it into a brazen pot, with the fat of bacon, four bay leaves, three whole onions, a fagot of sweet herbs, two turnips and two carrots; just cover your beef with liquor, and put in a handful of salt, half a pint of vinegar, some mace, cloves, allspice, and pepper; set it over a slow fire, and when tender, which will be in four or five hours, make your sauce for it thus:
Take scooped turnips, carrots, and a few capers, have a clean stewpan,with some good gravy, and be sure to let it be of a high colour; then put in your ingredients, and thicken it with a little flour, and some of the gravy that is cold; for in all things where thickening is required, this method is better than rubbing flour and butter together. Season it to your taste.

Why ‘Troublon’ for a simple dish of boiled beef with caper sauce?

The other puzzling dish I want to give you today is this:


Ragou’d Mela.
Take sweetbreads, and cut them in large pieces, then add artichoak bottoms, cocks-combs, beef palates, forcemeat balls, truffles, and morels; toss them up the same as a fricasey; do this white, then make a leasing, which is cream, nutmeg, lemon, the yolks of egg, and a little flour. When you put in your leasing, serve it up as soon as possible. Garnish with patties.

It is unlikely that you will see a dish such as this on the menu of your local restaurant soon, but in the eighteenth century these were all the most delicate and desirable ingredients. A pie containing these delicious tidbits would have been called a Battalia Pie, the word coming from beatilles, or beautiful little things. I am stumped as to the name ‘mela’. The Oxford English Dictionary gives mela as being ‘Hindu religious or cultural festival. Also more generally in South Asian communities: a fair’, and ‘ In Carnatic music: a scale type around which a raga is formed’. Neither of these seem likely. Is it somehow related to the French miele for honey?

Quotation for the Day.

On ‘Escargot’ - Nobody is sure how this got started. Probably a couple of French master chefs were standing around one day, and they found a snail, and one of them said: 'I bet that if we called this something like "escargot," tourists would eat it.' Then they had a hearty laugh, because 'escargot' is the French word for 'fat crawling bag of phlegm.'
Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need, (1991)

Cook, Author, Publisher, Bookseller.

This week I thought we might have some fun exploring just one historic cookery book. I have chosen the book I used for last Thursday’s post on ‘Sham Tortoise’- for no better reasons than I have a print-out of the pdf (sorry to the dead trees) which remains beside me on my desk, and because apart from the serendipitous find of the tortoise recipe, I am completely ignorant as to its other offerings.

The book is The Art of Cookery and Pastery Made Easy and Familiar, in upwards of two hundred different receipts and bills of fare, never before made public, by J.Skeat, published in England in 1769. I hope to discover some new/old ideas and at least one mystery, have some fun with words, and of course, give you some interesting recipes.

The author (who styles himself “Cook”) must be a Norwich man, for there are several references to the city in the book. The frontispiece notes that the contents include ‘an exact representation of the Tables of the Guild-Feasts of Norwich and Lynn’, and below the brief glossary the author has inserted a footnote saying:

‘Any Gentleman or Lady, in or near Norwich, that chooses to have a proper set of stew-pans, sauce-pans &c, in exchange for those that are old and of no use, by applying to the Author of this Book, may be furnish’d therewith, as he has the opportunity of having them made in the most serviceable manner, and as cheap as in London.’

Mr. Skeat must have been busy. As well as being cook, cookbook author, and retailer of kitchen equipment, he appears to have not only self-published his work but sold it from his own home. The footer at the bottom of the front page says:

‘Printed for the Author and Sold by him at his House next Door to the Maid’s Head, in St. Simon’s; and by J.CROUSE, at the Back of the Inns, NORWICH.’

Sadly, I have not been able to find out anything about Mr. Skeat (I am assuming the author is male) in the brief amount of time I allocated to the search. I wonder if any Norwich residents can offer any ideas ? Is there still a house next door to the Maid’s Head pub? Is there even a pub (tavern, inn, whatever) with that name still there? What about a Skeat family?

For today’s choice of extract from the book, I go no further than the author’s preface. The advice is still pretty sound, over two hundred years later.

DIRECTIONS.

For all Cooks to be govern’d by, in the Management of their Business.

FIRST, be sure to have all saucepans, stewpans, coppers and whatever else is made use of in cooking, in very neat, clean, and good order. Provision for entertainments of all kind is very expensive, and frequently spoil’d for want of proper care. Again, cleanliness and a good fire are two excellent requisites in cooking, without which no ordinary progress can be made, nor any thing in that branch effectually completed. I would also strictly recommend it as a rule, to lay down to the fire to roast, or put in the pot to boil, any thing of meat, or a large fowl, half an hour sooner that the time allow’d for its being ready, thinking it rather better to wait for company, than they should wait, though sometimes it will happen either on one side or the other, but I think ‘tis best to keep everything in forwardness, and to have all sauces ready at least half an hour before you dish up.

N.B If these rules are properly observ’d, I doubt not but they will meet with their desired effect.

The recipe I have chosen for the day is also very adaptable to modern times.

Stew’d Beef.

After your beef hath been in salt two days, take and bone it, have some bards of bacon rowl’d in sweet herbs, pepper, salt, and nutmeg, and force your beef with the bacon across the grain of the meat; after you have larded it as thick as possible in reason, lay it in a doubing pot [as in a pan suitable for making a daube?], with some vinegar, a pint of red wine, some mace, plenty of shallots, the lean of ham, a fagot of all sorts of herbs, parsley, turnips, carrots, and a parsnip; let this stand all night; the next day almost cover it with broth, and let it stew as gently as possible, when done, serve it with a good ragout sauce, in the dish. The sauce must be made very high [i.e.highly seasoned] with Chian [Cayenne] pepper, and lemon.

Quotation for the Day.

Talk of joy: there may be things better than beef stew and baked potatoes and home-made bread - there may be.
David Grayson, Adventures in Contentment (1907)

Near Possum.

Today I want briefly to carry on yesterday’s theme of mock food. One common reason for substituting one main ingredient for another, while trying to maintain the illusion of the original recipe is, of course, economy. Seventeenth and eighteenth century English cookery books are full of recipes for cooking beef to appear (and hopefully taste) like venison, for example, and in Australia ‘Colonial Goose’ was made from lamb. The motive here is fairly easy to understand.

The opposite substitution can be found occasionally in old cookery books – the case of a “good” meat being substituted for one of lesser reputation. I have not read too many reports which eulogize possum flesh, for example, and suspect that the intense desire to try to mimic its delights does not figure too commonly in the breasts of cooks around the world. The only reason I can think of that anyone would want to do this is not related to the delights of the dish itself, but the wish to recreate an experience – a huntin’, shootin’, fishin’ style of experience in the wilderness perhaps? A tough, manly, campfire sort of experience, to be remembered fondly back in civilization, where at times life seems just a little too soft?

From The All American Cook Book; being a collection chiefly of recipes of the favorite dishes of famous Americans, by Gertrude Frelove Brebner, (Chicago, 1922), the proceeds of which were to go to “the relief of disabled, needy, and unemployed ex-servicemen and their dependent families”, I give you a recipe from a military man - Brig.-General D.E.Aultman, Camp Knox, Kentucky.

Near Possum.
This is a Dixie recipe that tastes just as good when made north of Mason’s and Dixon’s line. For this toothsome dish take a pound slice of pork steak and roll it about the following dressing: Boil and peel two medium sized sweet potatoes and press through a colander. Season them with 2 tablespoons of brown sugar, 2 tablespoons of cane syrup, 1 egg, salt, red pepper, and a touch of ginger. Tie the dressing securely in the steak, rub with salt and pepper and put in dripping pan with 1 pt. of hot water. Bake 1 ½ hours and serve garnished with halved, baked apples.

Quotation for the Day.

It scored right away with me by being the smooth, fine-grained sort, not the coarse, flaky, dry-on-the-outside rubbish full of chunks of gut and gristle to testify to its authenticity. I sometimes feel that more lousy dishes are presented under the banner of pâté than any other.
Kingsley Amis, discussin the pâté at London’s Simpson's-on-the-Strand restaurant, in the London Illustrated News May 1986

Sham Tortoise.

Regular readers will be aware that one of my particular amusements is the concept of ‘mock’ food. There are a number of things that intrigue me about this topic. One is the sheer ingenuity demonstrated by some of the ideas – chicken and cheese to make “mock crab”, or crackers biscuits to make “apple pie”, for example. Another is the variety of motives for wanting to do it in the first place.

Sheer unavailability of the original ingredients are possible reasons for clever substitutions of course. I can understand how, if in the grip of severe nostalgia for the homeland, an emigrant or expatriate might try really hard to make mock sole en papillote out of a sow’s ear. I just cant quite appreciate how the resulting dish could ever be close enough to appease the longing.

I guess not too many of us are sufficiently nostalgic about tortoise flesh to feel the need to mimic it - but if we were, the following recipe might do a passable job of at least recreating the shape of the beast. Of course, a valid reason for mock food is sheer fun, and there is always the possibility that this dish might convince the kids to eat up their liver and bacon with relish.

From The Art of Cookery and Pastery Made Easy and Familiar, in upwards of two hundred different receipts and bills of fare, never before made public, by J.Skeat, Cook (1769), I give you a recipe for “Sham Tortoise.”

A sham tortoise is made of a calf’s liver. There is a small nut of liver that hangs to it, which serves for the head; the thickest part of the liver must be stuff’d with a good forcemeat, and the back larded with bacon. Have a tin that will hold it, with plenty of bacon fat; then was your tortoise over with egg, and send it to the oven. Be sure not to let it be set in when the oven is hot, and an hour will do it. The milt of the calf is to be stuffed also, and that is to serve for feet. When done, lay your tortoise in the dish, and a ragout sauce made high with it. Rub it all over with a glossee*.

*A ‘glossee’ is a glaze, or, in the words of the author ‘Strong gravy boil’d down to the consistence of treacle.’


Quotation for the Day.

Our forefathers did without sugar until the 13th century, without coal fires until the 14th, without buttered bread until the 16th, without tea or soup until the 17th, without gas, matches or electricity until the 20th.
Anonymous (until I track it down!)

Cod Cakes and King Cakes.

The traditional fare today, which is ‘Twelfth Day’, or the Feast of the Epiphany (according to the Christian church calendar) – is one or other variation of a Twelfth Cake. The author of Books and My Food, our source for the week, chose a rather different ‘cake’ for her entry on January 6th.

“Said he, ‘Upon this dainty cod

How bravely I shall sup.”

HOOD (“Poems”)

Croquettes of salt codfish are a pleasant variation of the familiar codfish cake. Make a thick cream sauce. Stir into it a pound of salt codfish shredded with the fingers after it has soaked two hours in warm water. Add a dash of red pepper.Do not cook the fish and the sauce, but allow the mixture to get cold and firm. Then shape into croquettes, dip each in beaten eggs, then in fine cracker-crumbs, and fry in very hot fat.

I have long been confused as to the difference between a croquette and a kromesky. Much as I love it, I am not totally convinced of the authority of The Oxford English Dictionary as a culinary reference tool, but here is what it says about the two.

Croquette: The word comes from the French croquer, ‘to crackle under the teeth, to crunch.’ The first reference cited is from 1706, ‘In Cookery, Croquets are a certain Compound made of delicious Stuff’d Meat, some of the bigness of an Egg, and others of a Walnut.’

Kromesky: is derived from the Polish kroméczka, meaning ‘a little slice.’ The OED defines it as ‘A croquette made of meat or fish minced, rolled in bacon or calf’s udder, and fried’, and gives as its first source the one-time chef for Queen Victoria, Charles Elmé Francatelli’s Modern Cook (1846).

I always thought that the essential difference was that kromeskies were dipped in batter before being fried, but it appears that this is not essential to the definition. What do you think?

A random thought on battered things: does ‘Mars Bar Kromesky’ sound more tempting than ‘Deep Fried Battered Mars Bar’?


Quotation for the Day.

Oh, who can hold a fire in his hand,
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite,
By bare imagination of a feast?
Shakespeare, King Richard II, Act I, Sc. 3

Potted Beef.

On this day in 1802, Dorothy Wordsworth, the sister of the famous poet, travelled from their home in Grasmere in the beautiful Lake District of England to the nearby town of Keswick. They had a nice snack along the way, without getting off their horses.

“…I went to K. Wm rode before me [ie she sat behind him, on the same horse] to the foot of the hill nearest Keswick. … We ate some potted Beef on Horseback, and a sweet cake…”

Well before the understanding of germs (in the mid-nineteenth century), people were aware that if air was excluded from the container, then food could be kept for longer periods of time. The earliest way in which this was achieved was to enclose the food in a very thick, hard pastry crust or ‘coffin’, the resulting dish being called a bake-mete – an early form of pie. As the seventeenth century progressed, the earthenware pot began to be used as an alternative to the pastry. The meat or fish was cooked slowly and then often pounded to a paste with various seasonings before being placed in the pot and sealed with a good quantity of butter. The following recipe allows a nice deceit too.


Potted Beef As Venison.
Choose a piece of lean beef from the buttock, or other part that has no bone in it; rub it all over with saltpeter, and let it lie twelve hours, then salt it thoroughly with bay salt and common salt in equal parts, well blended. Place it in a pot that will only just contain it; let it be completely covered with water, and remain thus four days; then wipe it well with a cloth, and rub it with pepper beaten to a powder; lay it into a pot without any liquor; put over it a crust of brown flour, and let it bake like large loaves six or seven hours; then take it out, and when it is cool enough pick out all the strings and skins, and beat it in a stone mortar finely. The seasoning must be mace, cloves, and nutmeg reduced to a fine powder; and add a little melted butter in which flour has been absorbed; put it down in pots as closely as you can, and pour clarified butter over it.
The Whole Art of Curing, Pickling, and Smoking Meat and Fish, by James Robinson (Practical Curer), 1847.


Postscripts.

(1) Dorothy Wordsworth has appeared in previous stories on this blog: they are HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.


(2)  It is also the 5th Day of Christmas, which was the topic of the post HERE.


Quotation for the Day.

Nor is it the act of a sinner,
When breakfast is taken away,
To turn your attention to dinner;
And it’s not in the range of belief,
That you could hole him as a glutton,
Who, when he is tired of beef,
Determines to tackle the mutton.


W.S Gilbert, from Songs of a Savoyard.

The Scullery.

It has taken until this, day four of our exploration of ‘kitchen’ words, for me to fully realise the extent to which modern technology has enabled entire rooms to be omitted from modern house design. Food processing, transport, and supermarkets have allowed the pantry room(s) to be replaced by a glorified cupboard and the larder has been made obsolete by the refrigerator. Today we are considering the scullery – also long since gone, albeit with no-one mourning its demise.

The scullery has disappeared thanks to modern plumbing, cleaning products, and especially the dishwasher. Originally it was ‘the department of a household concerned with the care of the plates, dishes, and kitchen utensils … also the room or rooms in which the work of this department is carried on’. By the eighteenth century it was no longer a ‘department’ but merely ‘a small room attached to a kitchen, in which the washing of dishes and other dirty work is done; a back kitchen.’

The scullery was occasionally separate from the main house, presumably in order to distance the dirty and noisy work from the Master and Mistress, thus avoiding offending their aristocratic sensibilities. Sometimes it was where the laundry and brewing were carried out, but primarily it was the place where the big cleaning jobs got done. A large and wealthy household might even have a ‘silver scullery’ where the good cutlery and plate was cleaned and polished.

The first reference for ‘scullery’ cited in the OED is from 1330 – and as with ‘pantry’ and ‘larder’, the word has French connections. The word has its roots in the Latin scutella, meaning a salver or dish-stand. In French this gave rise to esculier ( escuillier, esquelier)- a maker or seller of dishes. The word was further adapted in English to give squiller – the name for a servant in charge of the scullery.

In the servant hierarchy of big houses, the scullery maid was the lowest of the low. Her job (it was always a ‘her’) was to clean, clean, clean. Hannah Woolley in her Gentlewoman’s Companion (1673) has this to say about her duties (although it is highly unlikely that a seventeenth century scullery maid would have been literate, so presumably the instructions would be passed on verbally).

To Scullery-maids in great Houses.

There are several Rooms that you must keep sweet and clean, as the Kitchen, Pantry, Wash-house, &c.

That you wash and scowre all the Plates and Dishes which are used in the Kitchen, also Kettles, Pots, Pans, Chamber-pots, with all other Iron, Brass, and Pewter materials that belong to the Chambers or Kitchen; and lastly you must wash your own Linnen.

The recipe for the day has to be something in a large pot, methinks, to give the scullery maid something to work on. I am returning to my promise of a seventeenth century recipe, and give you the following, from one of the most important cookbooks of the time – William Rabisha’s The Whole Body of Cookery Dissected (1661)

To make Stewed-Broth.

Take your shins of Beef or Mutton, otherwise what meat is allowed, being washed and set on, scum it clean; then slice your brown bread and soak it in the said Broth; when it is so soaked, rub it through a strainer with your hands, put in as much as you judge will make your Broth thick in the boyling; when it is half boyled, at thereto your Raisons, Currans, and Pruins, according to the quantity of your Broth, with beaten Cloves, Mace, and Cinamon, and Ginger; taking a good quantity of your Pruins up when they are boyled, mash them together, and strain them as you did the bread with the Clarret; so let it continue till its boyled, then season it further with sugar and Rose-water, and serve it up with some of the best of your meat.

Quotation for the Day.

Have you any idea how many kids it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen? Three. It takes one to say, "What light?" and two more to say, "I didn't turn it on."
Erma Bombeck

The Pantry.

This is our week of ‘kitchen’ words, and today it is the turn of the pantry. There is no need for scholarly research here, an educated guess about the word’s origins will suffice. The word ‘pantry’ is related to the French word pain for bread, and pain was stored in a paneterie.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) gives the first reference in English to ‘pantry’ as being in 1325, and defines it as: 'Originally: a room or set of rooms in a large household in which bread and other provisions are kept. Later also: a room used for storing china, silverware, table linen, and glass ...'

The pantry now finds itself in much reduced circumstances, the ‘room or set of rooms’ now more usually a mere glorified cupboard – certainly no longer sufficient to require its own management person. In a large medieval household, the pantry was the domain of the pantler (or panter) – an officer whose role was later absorbed into that of the butler (more on the butler later in the week.)

By the mid-nineteenth century, the housekeeper/cook was in charge of the pantry, and she would be overseen by the Mistress herself. In a well-regulated household, the Mistress would make it her duty to inspect the kitchen each day, as per the following advice given in The Housekeeper’s Guide (1838)

At least twice a week there will be a thorough clearing of the pantry, and in summer this must not be allowed to pass the second day. Habit and experience will teach the housekeeper to provide a sufficiency and no more, according to the style of table required, and humanity will impel her to give to the poor any remaining surplus while it is still palatable and wholesome.

The salt-pan must be daily attended to,- that meat is properly salted, turned daily, and dressed in due time; and if the servant be young and thoughtless, it may be necessary for the mistress daily to look into the bread-pan and cheese-pan also, at least until she has got into the habit thoroughly inwrought in her, of daily wiping those pans with a dry cloth, and scalding them once a week …

This careful attention to food hygiene and to minimising waste was a hallmark of efficient kitchens in the past, and one that perhaps we would do well to reinstate.Safe methods of food preservation (particularly refrigeration) have obviated the need for many of these old kitchen routines, but there is surely another factor operating today too. We are distant from our food sources, and as a result have developed an ‘easy-come, easy-go’ attitude to the provisions that find their way into our pantries and refrigerators – to the extent (we are told,) that one fifth of the food that we purchase is thrown away. Is that not a disgrace?

The following recipe, from the source of the above insights into nineteenth century kitchen management, even recycles the water (now broth or stock) in which salt meat has been boiled.

Ox Heart Stewed.
Cut it up lengthways into thin long pieces. Put them into a stew-pot with a table-spoon of salt, and as much liquor as will cover them. (If the liquor has boiled salt meat, little or no salt must be added). It will throw up a great deal of scum or blood,which clear off as fast as it rises; then add six or eight moderate sized onions, a stick or two or celery cut up, and a dozen of parboiled potatoes; let them stew gently together till all is tender and well incorporated. A quarter of an hour before serving, rub up an ounce of butter with as much flour as it will carry, and a wine-glassful of catsup or walnut pickles.

Quotation for the Day.

My curse upon your whunstane hearts, Ye Enbrugh Gentry! The tythe o' what ye waste at cartes Wad stow'd his pantry!
Robert Burns