In yesterday’s post I mooted the idea that radishes must be due to become restaurant-trendy again, and also included brief mention of the use of radish seed pods as a substitute for capers. Now, I am pretty sure that capers themselves are staging a come-back. I feel sure they are sneaking up in restaurant dishes more frequently than they used to. If this is the case, will the mock caper return to the scene too?
The caper bush is a prickly shrub (Capparis spinosa) which thrives in the most unfertile-appearing locations. It grows in poor soil and in the crevices of stone walls and rocky outcrops, in the salty sea air in places where it is hot and dry such as the Mediterranean coastline.
Culinary capers are the immature flower buds of this bush which have been pickled in vinegar or preserved in salt. They have been used in cookery since the time of the Ancient Greeks, and became important to cooks in the cooler areas of Britain and Europe in the eighteenth century for the making of caper sauce, then an essential accompaniment to mutton.
The caper gets its pungency from the same components as are in mustard oil, and it is not to everyone’s taste. My favourite caper-quote is from Nora Ephron and appears at the end of the post, but here is another opinion from Encyclopaedia Americana (1830)
‘To persons unaccustomed to it, the taste of capers is unpleasant; but after a little while the palate becomes perfectly reconciled to it.
If one has become accustomed and thence reconciled to capers to the point where one must have caper sauce to one’s mutton, in the absence of the real thing one can, as we have learned, make a substitute caper. The most popular is made from the buds of the colourful nasturtium flower, but in addition to the radish buds mentioned yesterday, other plants can fake them too. I have found mention of the berberry ( Pepperidge Tree) and the marsh marigold, and in The Cook and Housekeeper’s Complete and Universal Dictionary, (1822) Mary Eaton suggests that ‘An excellent substitute for capers may be made of pickled green peas, nastursions, or gherkins, chopped in similar size, and boiled with melted butter.’ Mrs. Eaton also provides today’s recipe for genuine caper sauce:
Caper Sauce
Add a tablespoonful of capers to twice the quantity of vinegar, mince one third of the capers very fine, and divide the others in half. Put them into a quarter of a pint of melted butter, or good thickened gravy, and stir them the same way as the melted butter, to prevent their oiling.
In the absence of capers, one could presumably use one of the mock alternatives to make one’s ‘caper’ sauce. The other alternative would be to take faking it to a greater level altogether and serve the following:
An excellent substitute for Caper Sauce.
Boil, slowly, some parsley, that may become a bad colour, cut it, but do not chop fine; put it to melted butter, with a dessert-spoonful of vinegar, and a tea-spoonful of salt. Boil, and serve.
A New System of Domestic Cookery (1826), by Maria Rundell.
Quotation for the Day.
Nobody really likes capers no matter what you do with them. Some people pretend to like capers, but the truth is that any dish that tastes good with capers in it, tastes even better with capers not in it.
Nora Ephron.
Showing posts with label mock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mock. Show all posts
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Monday, October 04, 2010
How to Fake an Oyster.
I have talked about ‘mock’ food in many previous blog posts, but it seems that the topic is inexhaustible. Today’s post was triggered by finding the following recipe, which, I would hazard a guess, would not find much favour in our modern, offal-averse society.
Mock Oysters.
Take brains from the heads of hogs, as whole as possible; remove the skin and throw them into salt and water; let them remain in this two hours; then boil them, until done, in sweet milk; take them up in an earthen bowl or dish, and pour over weak vinegar to cover them; prepare sufficient vinegar to cover them, by adding it to cloves, allspice, and cinnamon to taste; season well with pepper, using part red pepper; scald this vinegar; pour off the weak vinegar, cover with the spiced vinegar. Eat cold, or stewed with crackers as oysters.
Mrs Hill’s Southern Practical Cookery and Receipt Book, 1867.
I wondered what else has been used in the past to imitate the oyster. A more obvious, and conveniently vegetarian option would be to use the ‘oyster plant’ or salsify – so called because of its supposed flavour similarity with the shellfish.
Mock Oysters.
Scrape salsify roots and throw each one as you scrape it into cold water. Cover with boiling water and boil gently three-quarters of an hour. They will then be tender. Mash the roots and put through a colander. Then season with salt and pepper to taste and stir in beaten eggs, allowing one egg to two heaping tablespoons of salsify pulp. Have on a griddle or in a saucepan hot fat. Drop the mixture from a spoon and fry. When one side is brown, turn the salsify cake and brown on the other side. Serve hot.
The Home Cook Book – a collection of practical receipts by expert cooks, 1905.
A further degree of separation from the real thing is achieved by using the parsnip, which presumably is itself standing in for the salsify.
Mock Oysters.
Use three grated parsnips, three eggs, one teaspoonful of salt, one teacupful of sweet cream, butter half the size of an egg, three tablespoonfuls of flour. Fry as pancakes.
Vaughan’s Vegetable Cook Book; how to cook and use rarer vegetables and herbs, fourth edition, 1919.
If one is going to imitate something rare, one might as well use something which is common, which in one large part of the world means – corn. Corn fresh from the cob, corn canned, and corn ground into hominy can all be used to mimic the oyster – or at the very least the oysters generally blobby shape.
Mock Oysters.
Grate the corn, while green and tender, with a coarse grater, into a deep dish. To two ears of corn, allow one egg; beat the whites and yolks separately, and add them to the corn, with one tablespoon of wheat flour and one of butter, a teaspoonful of salt and pepper to taste. Drip spoonfuls of this batter into a frying pan with hot butter and lard mixed, and fry a light brown on both sides.
In taste they have a singular resemblance to fried oysters. The corn must be young.
White House Cook Book, by Fanny Lemira Gillet (1889)
But would anyone really be fooled by fried green tomatoes as a stand-in?
Mock Oysters.
Wash green tomatoes, remove stems, and cut in half inch slices or thicker. Dip in barley four to coat thoroughly. Sauté in hot frying pans containing cooking oil or salt pork drippings to the depth of one-fourth inch. They should be well browned on both sides, but not burned. Sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper while cooking. Arrange on hot platters; serve with Brown Sauce. To make the latter, add sufficient drippings to the pan in which the tomatoes were cooked, stir in flour, cook until brown; add hot stock, and when thickened and well cooked, strain and pour over tomatoes, or serve in separate dishes.
More Recipes for Fifty, by Frances Lowe Smith, 1918
Here is my recipe pick for mock oysters, on account of its more determined attempt to reproduce the fishy flavour and soft texture of the real oyster.
Oysters, Mock.
Wash and scrub well a dozen deep oyster shells. Mince the flesh of a Dutch herring very finely, divide it into twelve parts and put one part into each of the shells. Place upon it a iece of boiled sweetbread, the size and shape of a small oyster, which has been dipped in egg and breadcrumbs. Sprinkle breadcrumbs thickly over the mock oyster, lay a piece of butter on each, and bake them in the oven, or put them before the fire for a few minutes until they are lightly browned. Serve very hot.
Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery, London, c1870s
Quotation for the Day.
Mock Oysters.
Take brains from the heads of hogs, as whole as possible; remove the skin and throw them into salt and water; let them remain in this two hours; then boil them, until done, in sweet milk; take them up in an earthen bowl or dish, and pour over weak vinegar to cover them; prepare sufficient vinegar to cover them, by adding it to cloves, allspice, and cinnamon to taste; season well with pepper, using part red pepper; scald this vinegar; pour off the weak vinegar, cover with the spiced vinegar. Eat cold, or stewed with crackers as oysters.
Mrs Hill’s Southern Practical Cookery and Receipt Book, 1867.
I wondered what else has been used in the past to imitate the oyster. A more obvious, and conveniently vegetarian option would be to use the ‘oyster plant’ or salsify – so called because of its supposed flavour similarity with the shellfish.
Mock Oysters.
Scrape salsify roots and throw each one as you scrape it into cold water. Cover with boiling water and boil gently three-quarters of an hour. They will then be tender. Mash the roots and put through a colander. Then season with salt and pepper to taste and stir in beaten eggs, allowing one egg to two heaping tablespoons of salsify pulp. Have on a griddle or in a saucepan hot fat. Drop the mixture from a spoon and fry. When one side is brown, turn the salsify cake and brown on the other side. Serve hot.
The Home Cook Book – a collection of practical receipts by expert cooks, 1905.
A further degree of separation from the real thing is achieved by using the parsnip, which presumably is itself standing in for the salsify.
Mock Oysters.
Use three grated parsnips, three eggs, one teaspoonful of salt, one teacupful of sweet cream, butter half the size of an egg, three tablespoonfuls of flour. Fry as pancakes.
Vaughan’s Vegetable Cook Book; how to cook and use rarer vegetables and herbs, fourth edition, 1919.
If one is going to imitate something rare, one might as well use something which is common, which in one large part of the world means – corn. Corn fresh from the cob, corn canned, and corn ground into hominy can all be used to mimic the oyster – or at the very least the oysters generally blobby shape.
Mock Oysters.
Grate the corn, while green and tender, with a coarse grater, into a deep dish. To two ears of corn, allow one egg; beat the whites and yolks separately, and add them to the corn, with one tablespoon of wheat flour and one of butter, a teaspoonful of salt and pepper to taste. Drip spoonfuls of this batter into a frying pan with hot butter and lard mixed, and fry a light brown on both sides.
In taste they have a singular resemblance to fried oysters. The corn must be young.
White House Cook Book, by Fanny Lemira Gillet (1889)
But would anyone really be fooled by fried green tomatoes as a stand-in?
Mock Oysters.
Wash green tomatoes, remove stems, and cut in half inch slices or thicker. Dip in barley four to coat thoroughly. Sauté in hot frying pans containing cooking oil or salt pork drippings to the depth of one-fourth inch. They should be well browned on both sides, but not burned. Sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper while cooking. Arrange on hot platters; serve with Brown Sauce. To make the latter, add sufficient drippings to the pan in which the tomatoes were cooked, stir in flour, cook until brown; add hot stock, and when thickened and well cooked, strain and pour over tomatoes, or serve in separate dishes.
More Recipes for Fifty, by Frances Lowe Smith, 1918
Here is my recipe pick for mock oysters, on account of its more determined attempt to reproduce the fishy flavour and soft texture of the real oyster.
Oysters, Mock.
Wash and scrub well a dozen deep oyster shells. Mince the flesh of a Dutch herring very finely, divide it into twelve parts and put one part into each of the shells. Place upon it a iece of boiled sweetbread, the size and shape of a small oyster, which has been dipped in egg and breadcrumbs. Sprinkle breadcrumbs thickly over the mock oyster, lay a piece of butter on each, and bake them in the oven, or put them before the fire for a few minutes until they are lightly browned. Serve very hot.
Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery, London, c1870s
Quotation for the Day.
Oysters are the most tender and delicate of all seafoods. The stay in bed all day and night. They never work or take exercise, are stupendous drinkers, and wait for their meals to come to them.
Hector Bolitho, The Glorious Oyster (1960)
Hector Bolitho, The Glorious Oyster (1960)
Friday, January 15, 2010
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
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
Thursday, January 14, 2010
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 ‘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!)
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!)
Friday, April 18, 2008
Mock Food No. 5
April 18 ...
I have saved the best till last for you this week. I have had to make some tough choices. Sadly, in the morning rush (I have been writing on the fly this week, not in organised-ahead fashion), my computer has mislaid the recipe for Mock Tapioca that I know you would have loved.
Firstly, I give you a mock chicken recipe using up all those fish sounds you probably have languishing in your freezer, as you are probably tired of Eliza Acton’s recipe for them by now.
Cod Sounds to look like small Chickens.
A good maigre-day dish. Wash three large sounds nicely,, and boil in milk and water, but not too tender; when cold, put a forcemeat of chopped oysters, crums of bread, a bit of butter, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and the yolks of two eggs; spread it thin over the sounds, and roll up each in the form of a chicken, skewering it; then lard them as you would chickens, dust a little flour over, and roast them in a tin oven slowly. When done enough, pour over them a fine oyster-sauce. Serve for side or corner dish at the first course.
[From Mrs Rundell’s A New System of Domestic Cookery. 1824]
Secondly, a consolation prize from our source of yesterday, Richard Bradley’s The Country Housewife and Lady’s Director (1732) – a method of making artificial Cocks-Combs. Although there may not be much call today for them today, and most of us can no longer find our Jagging Irons, the truth of his final sentence still stands – that “the Eye must be pleased before we can taste any thing with Pleasure”.
To make Artificial Cocks-Combs.
Take Tripe, without any Fat, and with a sharp Knife pare away the fleshy Part, leaving only the brawny or horny Part about the Thickness of a Cock’s Comb. Then, with a Jagging-Iron, cut Pieces out of it, in the Shape of Cock’s Combs, and the remaining parts between may be cut into Pieces, and used in Pyes, and serve every whit as well as Cock’s Combs; but since those cut in Form please the Eye best, and as the Eye must be pleased before we can taste any thing with Pleasure, therefore in Fricassees we should ever be careful to put in those which are cut according to Art.
If you would like more to add to your Mock Food repertoire, may I point you to previous stories?
Ritz Cracker ‘Apple Pie’
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2006/11/better-soda-cracker.html
White Mock Turtle Soup
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2007/06/may-harrods-suggest.html
Mock Turtle Soup, assembled from very convenient canned ingredients.
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2006/02/extracting-goodness.html
Mock Mock Turtle Soup (the name is not a typo!), and Mock Arrack
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2006/09/drop-of-toddy.html
Mock Brawn. [1792]
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2007/11/on-belly-cheare.html
Mock Chicken (
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2006/05/mission-menu.html
Mock Asses’ Milk (2 recipes)
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2006/09/koumiss-cure.html
Monday’s Story …
Curry Crime.
Quotation for the Day …
I prefer milk because I am a Prohibitionist, but I do not go to it for inspiration. Mark Twain.
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