Honorary Potatoes.

January 11 ...

It is sad that chefs no longer seem to create and name dishes in honour of celebrities. Do they not realise that they are depriving future food historians of great fun? Why are they shirking their responsibilities and not developing future classics such as Raspberries à la Bush and Gruel à la Paris Hilton ?

There are disputed claimants for the inspiration of many eponymously named dishes, and the search for authenticity can be difficult, even impossible. Who really was the Benedict in Eggs Benedict, or the Newburg in the lobster dish? There is consensus on some however, and intriguing mystery with others, and as it is our week of potatoes in celebration of the International Year of the Potato, we will look at a few of them. Other ideas are welcome, please use the comments section!

Potatoes Anna.
Myth and history collide on this one, and the ‘Anna’ is said to be a Anna Deslions, a nineteenth century Parisian celeb and member of the world’s oldest profession – although I am sure she did not see herself that way as it is said that she never charged her clients, she merely accepted trinkets such as diamonds and beautiful apartments from them. Her favourite meeting place was the famous Café des Anglais, and it appears that she brought much royal and imperial and aristocratic business to the restaurant by way of her guests. No wonder the chef of the time saw fit to create a dish in her honour. He was Adolphe Duglère, famous in his own right, and no doubt if he were alive today he would have his own TV show and his own adoring fans. Unfortunately, Adolphe did not leave one single cookbook, so the ‘authentic’ recipe is not certain. It very rapidly became a classic however, and other cookbook authors made sure they included it. Here is a version from another French chef, Charles Ranhofer, who moved to America and became famous as the chef of Delmonico’s in New York, and did write a cookbook called The Epicurean (1894).

Potatoes Anna (Pommes de Terre Anna)
Select long-shaped potatoes; they must be peeled and cut into the form of a large cork; mince them finely, and soak in water for a few moments; drain and wipe on a cloth. Butter and bread the inside of a thick copper pan, having a well-fitted cover; range on the bottom and sides a thin layer of the potatoes, one overlapping the other, then fill entirely with the remaining ones in separate layers, covering each with butter free from moisture, softened by working in a napkin; mask the upper layer with the same, and close with the lid. Cook the potatoes for three-quarters of an hour in the oven; a quarter of an hour before serving take from the fire, drain off the butter and cut a cross through the potatoes yet in the sautoir, and turn each quarter over with the aid of a palette; put back the drained-off butter and return to the oven until ready, and invert on a dish to serve. These potatoes may be made in a smaller pan; in this case they should not be cut but turned over whole before putting in the oven the second time.

A dish can be named in honour of a place or event too, and Delmonico’s restaurant became the home of several eponymously named dishes, including Delmonico Potatoes. This dish was not invented by Ranhofer however, and does not appear in his book. It was the creation of an earlier chef, Alessandro Filippini, who did include it in his own book published many years later in 1906.

Delmonico Potatoes.
Place four good-sized boiled and finely hashed potatoes in a frying pan with one and a half gills cold milk, half gill cream, two saltspoons salt, one saltspoon white pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg; mix well and cook on the range for ten minutes, lightly mixing occasionally. Then add one tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese, lightly mix again. Transfer the potatoes into a gratin dish, sprinkle another light tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese over and set in the oven to bake for six minutes, or until they have obtained a good golden colour; remove and serve.

There are so many more dishes, but so little time (today) to include them. I hope to gradually add them to the Fun With Potatoes recipe archive. I do leave you with one puzzle. Who was the ‘O’Brien’ in O’Brien Potatoes? The honour goes by default almost to the only person found with that name to have a significant association with potatoes – William Smith O’Brien (1803-1864) an Irish nationalist and leader of a post-famine revolt who was eventually transported to Australia for his sins. I do hope this story is true. I would love to know more about the man and the dish. Please help if you can.

Monday’s Story …

The Pope comes to dinner.

Quotation for the Day ...

I appreciate the potato only as a protection against famine; except for that I know of nothing more eminently tasteless. Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Poorhouse or Prison?

January 10

When improvements to the prison food ration were mooted in England in the mid-nineteenth century, there was a “strongly expressed opinion” on the part of some members of the judiciary, that “the increased scale of dietary recommended by the government would operate as a direct premium to crime.” In spite of these fears, the improvements were ratified, and “the most depraved characters in the country” did get better prison food.

The justice of this decision was demonstrated in an article in The British Farmer’s Magazine in 1849 that contrasted the fare in the workhouse and in the prisons. At that time the attitude to the poor was based on the principle that most of them were ‘undeserving’ – that is, were idle or indolent, and not truly deserving of charity. The management of them was therefore punitive, and the conditions in the poorhouses (as sanctioned by the Poor Laws) were deliberately kept severe as a disincentive to the lazy individuals disinclined to work, who, it was feared, would flock there in droves. The conditions were so bad that there were many reports of inmates of these ‘houses of industry’ committing crimes so as to be sentenced to gaol for a few days R&R on the better food. It is easy to see the attraction when the two dietaries are compared, as in this article. Today being Thursday, this was the fare in one set of institutions:

Workhouse:
Breakfast (same every day): 8 oz bread and half pint of broth, gruel, or milk.
Dinner: 8 oz. bread and 4 oz. cooked meat.
Supper (same every day) 7 oz. bread and an ounce and a half of cheese.

Prison:
Breakfast: 1 pint of oatmeal gruel and 6 oz. of bread.
Dinner: 4 oz. Cooked meat without bone, 1 lb potatoes, and 6 oz of bread.
Supper: 1 pint of oatmeal gruel, and 6 oz. of bread.

The workhouse diet varied hardly at all from day to day – and the food was very poor quality and often diluted and adulterated. In the prison there was a little more variety - some days there was cocoa (1 pint, sweetened with ¾ oz of sugar or molasses) for breakfast, and soup at dinner, with the ingredients specified, and including vegetables.

There is something punitive-sounding in the word ‘gruel’, isn’t there? I have never quite understood why ‘gruel’ was also a food for invalids. It would not get you better as quickly as ‘broth’, now would it?

As this is the week of potatoes in honour of The International Year of the Potato, I give you a couple of recipes for invalids from yesterday’s book, The Potato: A compilation of Information from every available source. They are from the famous venue for the wealthy unwell, the Battle Creek Sanitarium of the Kellogg brothers.

Potato Meal Gruel.
1 ½ quarts water
1 cup potato meal.
Mix, heat, and serve.

Savory Potato Meal Gruel.
1 cup water, in which is steeped two stalks of celery
½ cup water
½ cup strained tomato
2 ½ tablespoons baked potato meal
¼ cup cream
¼ teaspoonful salt.
Mix ingredients and heat.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Honorary Potatoes.

Quotation for the Day …

This root, no matter how much you prepare it, is tasteless and floury. It cannot pass for an agreeable food, but it supplies a food sufficiently abundant and sufficiently healthy for men who ask only to sustain themselves. The potato is criticised with reason for being windy, but what matters windiness for the vigorous organisms of peasants and labourers? Denis Diderot in 1767

Leprosy in the time of Potatoes.

January 8

Gilbert White (1720-1793) was an English cleric and naturalist whose home was Selborne in Hampshire. Much of his detailed observation of the natural world (and the human one) was recorded in letters he wrote to other naturalists and scientists, and these were compiled in a book called The Natural History of Selborne. In a letter he wrote on this day in 1778, he mused on the possible causes of leprosy (particularly the dietary) – and in the course of this gives us a strong clue as to the timing of the acceptance of the potato as a useful crop in England.

To The Honourable Daines Barrington

Selborne, Jan. 8, 1778.

Dear Sir,
In all ages the leprosy has made dreadful havoc among mankind…. Some centuries ago this horrible distemper prevailed all Europe over; and our forefathers were by no means exempt, …. It must therefore, in these days, be, to an humane and thinking person, a matter of equal wonder and satisfaction, when he contemplates how nearly this pest is eradicated … This happy change perhaps may have originated and been continued from the much smaller quantity of salted meat and fish now eaten in these kingdoms; from the use of linen next the skin; from the plenty of better bread; and from the profusion of fruits, roots, legumes, and greens, so common in every family. … Three or four centuries ago, before there were any enclosures, sown-grasses, field-turnips, or field-carrots, or hay, all the cattle which had grown fat in summer, and were not killed for winter-use, were turned out soon after Michaelmas to shift as they could through the dead months; so that no fresh meat could be had in winter or spring…. But agriculture is now arrived at such a pitch of perfection, that our best and fattest meats are killed in the winter; and no man need eat salted flesh, unless he prefers it, that has money to buy fresh…. One cause of this distemper might be, no doubt, the quantity of wretched fresh and salt fish consumed by the commonalty at all seasons as well as in Lent; …. Potatoes have prevailed in this little district, by means of premiums, within these twenty years only; and are much esteemed here now by the poor, who would scarce have ventured to taste them in the last reign.

It was an interesting turnaround for the potato – to be given as an example of the profusion of healthy vegetables available for the poor, and thereby contributing to the disappearance of leprosy. One of the things that delayed the adoption of the potato in Europe was the belief that it might cause leprosy - although this may well have been propaganda on the part of clerics who feared that what it would really do would be to precipitate a distracting lust amongst their flock. Many fruits and vegetables introduced from the New World were initially accused of being aphrodisiacs (the tomato and chocolate also for example) - the motto seemed to be ‘If in doubt, don’t trust it.’

Cookbooks of the eighteenth century do contain recipes for ‘potatoes’, but often this means the sweet potato. It is not always possible to be certain which potato is being referred to in a recipe. Sometimes the ‘ordinary’ white potato was referred to as the Virginia potato, or Irish potato or white potato – but ‘Spanish potato’ could mean either variety.

Which type of potato do you think Mrs Elizabeth Raffald expects you to use in this recipe from The Experienced English Housewife (1769)?

To scollop Potatoes.
Boil your potatoes, then beat them fine in a bowl with good cream, a lump of butter and salt. Put them into scolloped shells, make them smooth on top, score them with a knife. Lay thin slices of butter on the top of them, put them in a Dutch oven to brown before the fire. Three shells is enough for a dish.
[P.S. There are more historic potato recipes HERE.]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Polite Potatoes.

Quotation for the Day …

What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow. A.A. Milne.

A Special Day for Fanny.

January 7

The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook by Fannie Merritt Farmer was first published on this day in 1896 in the USA. It rapidly became a best-seller, and in fact has been constantly updated and is still in print, becoming one of the best selling cookbooks in history. I wonder how many celebrity chef-authors of today will still be in print in a hundred years’ time?

What was the secret of Fannie's success?

Fannie was the child of enlightened parents, and was destined for college until a stroke at the age of 16 left her an invalid for several years, with a permanent limp. At the age of 30 she enrolled in the already famous Boston Cooking School where she studied nutrition and related food sciences as well as cookery and household management. She was a star pupil and almost immediately became principal of the school, and her book was published a few years later.

Fannie was required to pay for the first print run, in return for which she retained ownership of the copyright. The publishers paid dearly for their lack of faith, for the success of the book delivered the proceeds largely to her, not themselves. A story to warm the hearts of many authors, I would say!

No doubt the association with the famous cooking school helped with the first few sales, but the book would not have become a best-seller on that basis alone. Fannie’s book succeeded because she took a lot of the guesswork out of cookery. She explained the science behind cooking processes, and standardised the system of measurements – there was no ‘dash of this’ or ‘little of that’ in her book. Fannie became known as the ‘mother of level measurement’, and The Boston Cooking School Cookbook was referred to as The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

As the United Nations has declared this the International Year of the Potato, I intend to give you more potato recipes – and perhaps even get on with that Potato Timeline I have previously promised. From Fannie’s book, a classic recipe:

Shadow Potatoes (Saratoga Chips)
Wash and pare potatoes. Slice thinly (using vegetable slicer) into a bowl of cold water. Let stand two hours, changing water twice. Drain, plunge in a kettle of boiling water and boil one minute. Drain again, and cover with cold water. Take from water and dry between towels. Fry in deep fat until light brown, keeping in motion with a skimmer. Drain on brown paper and sprinkle with salt.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Leprosy in the time of Potatoes.

Quotation for the Day …

Cookery is the art of preparing food for the nourishment of the body. Prehistoric man may have lived on uncooked foods, but there are no savage races today who do not practice cookery in some way, however crude. Progress in civilization has been accompanied by progress in cookery. Fannie Merritt Farmer.

San Francisco dining, 1920.

Today, August 3rd ….

Today I am taking you back to enjoy luncheon at the famous St Francis hotel in San Francisco in 1920. Life must have seemed pretty good back then. Secure in the knowledge that the War to end all Wars had made life safe forever, this is what the wealthy inhabitants and visitors enjoyed at the hotel on this day eighty-seven years ago.

Luncheon.
Dishes marked with Star (*) are Ready.

*Mixed Melon Supreme, Parisienne 25
*Giblet a l’Anglaise 35
*Consomme, Marconi 35

*Fried Smelts, Remoulade 60
*Fillet of Halibut, Bonne Femme 65
Broiled Fresh Mackeral, Maitre d’Hotel 50
Terrapin, Maryland 135
Boiled Salmon Belly, Hollandaise 60

Egg Bienvenu (1) 30

*Spring Lamb Irish Stew 50
*Exposition Sausages, Potato Salad 45
*Tripe and Potato, Family Style 50
*Cold Capon, Tongue, Lima Bean Salad 125
Broiled Imperial Squab with Bacon 200
Top Sirloin Steak, Bordelaise 100

*Broiled Fresh Mushrooms 100
*Stewed Celery in Cream 35

*Potato O’Brien 30
--
Fresh Peach Pie 25 Huckleberry Tarte 35
Vanilla Pudding Souffle 35 Peach Moussee 50
Frozen Caramel Pudding 60
Strawberry a la Ritz 60

What would have been your choice from the menu? The chef to the hotel, Victor Hertzler, had published a cookbook the year before this dinner, and recipes for a number of the dishes are included. Here is what I have chosen for your lunch today:

Salted salmon belly, melted butter.
Soak a salted salmon belly in cold water over night. Then place in vessel and cover with fresh cold water, bring to a boil, and then set at side of the range for twenty minutes. Dish up on a napkin on a platter, garnish with parsley in branches and quartered lemons. Serve melted butter separate.

Potato salad.
Slice three boiled potatoes while hot. Add one small onion chopped fine, some chopped parsley, salt and pepper, two spoonsful of olive oil, and one each of boiling bouillon, or boiling water, and vinegar. Mix carefully so as not to break the potatoes , and serve in salad bowl with lettuce garnishing.

Monday’s Story …

From the Savoy.

Quotation for the Day ….

I would rather live in Russia on black bread and vodka than in the United States at the best hotels. America knows nothing of food, love or art. Isadora Duncan, America dancer (1878-1927)

Spanish Potatoes.

Today, July 27^th

William Eden, a British diplomat in Spain, wrote to his mother on this day in 1788, and mentioned the food:

“I must not forget to mention that we find here two excellent articles for the table – good bread, and as fine potatoes as I ever saw”

Was he referring to the potato, or the sweet potato? The potato was certainly being grown in England at that time but it was hardly popular, particularly on the tables of the well-to-do. One writer of the time (David Davies, in The Case of the Laborers in Husbandry, 1795) said:

“Today the whole laboring people have neither meat nor cheese nor milk nor beer in sufficient quantities, they eat white bread where everybody else eats it. Though the potato is an excellent root, deserving to be brought into general use, yet it seems not likely that the use of it should ever be general in this country.”

One of the problems in unravelling the early history of the potato in Europe is that many of those who wrote about the new exotic plant had not actually seen it and confused it with other roots. Botanists were no exception to this, and even the famous Gerard added to the confusion by mistakenly believing it came from Virginia, and giving it the name Batata virginiana in 1597. The potato already had the botanical name which it still bears today - Solanum tuberosum, which was given to it in 1596. By naming the plant Batata, Gerard also confused the actual plant with the sweet potato, which is Batata edulis.

There is confusion too in early cookbooks, which sometimes refer to the ‘Spanish Potato’ – which we take today to mean the sweet potato. It is not always so clear-cut however, and even the OED is not sure. Here is what it says on the two species:

- A plant, Batatas edulis, family Convolvulaceæ, having tuberous roots, for which it is cultivated for food in most tropical and subtropical regions of the world; = BATATA. Its native region is unknown, but it appears to have been seen by the Spaniards first in the West Indies c1500. Now distinguished as sweet or Spanish potato.

- The plant Solanum tuberosum (family Solanaceae), a cultigen of South American origin, now grown commercially worldwide for its starchy underground stem tubers. Originally more fully potato of Virginia, Virginia potato. Also called white potato and (formerly) Carolina potato, Spanish potato, Chilian potato, Irish potato.

It is not always possible to be certain which ‘potatoes’ are being referred to in early cookbooks, and sometimes it does not matter from a culinary point of view, as they can be substituted.

The first recipe almost certainly means the sweet potato:

Potato-Pye.
Your crust being ready, lay in Butter, then your Potato boil’d tender, then some whole Spice, and Marrow, Dates, and the yolks of hard Eggs, blanch’d Almonds, and Pistacho Nuts, candied peels of Citron, Orange, and Limon, put in more Butter, close it and bake it; then cut it open, and put in Wine, Sugar, the Yolks of Eggs and Butter.
[Salmon, William. The family dictionary: or, houshold companion. London 1710]

As does this one:

Potato, or lemon cheesecakes.
Take six ounces of potatoes, four ounces of lemon-peel, four ounces of sugar, four ounces of butter; boil the lemn-peel till tender, pare and scrape the potatoes, and boil them tender and bruise them: beat the lemon-peel with the sugar, then beat all together very well, and let it lie till cold: put crust in your pattipans, and fill them a little more than half full: bake them in a quick oven half an hour, sift some double refin’d sugar on them as they go into the oven; this quantity will make a dozen small pattipans.
[Carter, Charles. The London and country cook: …London, 1749]

But what about this one?

To make Potato Fritters.
Boil and beat half a dozen of potatoes; mix them with four beat eggs, about a gill of thick cream, some sugar and nutmeg, a little salt, a bit of fresh butter oiled, and a dram; beat them all well together, and drop them in the boiling dripings; fry them a light brown. Dish them hot, and strew sugar over them.
[Cookery and pastry, as taught and practised by Mrs MacIver; Susanna MacIver; 1789]

If you still want more historic potato recipes, you can go over to the Potato Recipe Archive.

P.S Now that my pie book is off to the publishers (it is in the mail today!!) I just might amuse myself part of this weekend by starting to put together a Potato Timeline. What do you think?

Monday’s Story …

Eating Camel.

Quotation for the Day …

Pray for peace and grace and spiritual food. For wisdom and guidance, for all these are good. But don’t forget the potatoes. John Tyler Petee.

Monroe and Potato.

Marilyn (when she was only Norma) may have been Artichoke Queen of 1947, but my friend Peter (who has a bit of a thing for beautiful ladies, especially when they are naked, and to potatoes in any form) pointed me to Marilyn (when she was a Star) dressed in an Idaho potato sack. The famous picture was taken in 1952 as a publicity shot for 20^th Century Fox, the idea apparently germinating from the idea that she would look good even in a potato sack. Which she did, of course.

There is no evidence that Marilyn had anything else to do with the potato industry, but I cannot post without giving you a recipe. I have chosen again from the Lily Wallace New American Cook Book (1946), to show you that Hashed Browns can be beautiful too, when properly made.

Hashed Brown Potatoes.
Melt 2 tablespoons fat in a frying pan. Add 2 cups finely chopped boiled potatoes, 1 tablespoon chopped parsley, ½ teaspoon salt, and a few grains pepper. Mix thoroughly, then allow the potatoes to brown on the under side. Fold over like an omelet. Serves 6.

If you want more potato recipes, please go to the Potato Archive.

A new potato.

Today, March 7th …

The famous American horticulturalist Luther Burbank was born on this day in 1849. During his career he developed new varieties of more than 800 plants from poppies to plums (and the plumcot), but it is for the potato that now bears his name that he is best known. The potato story is a magnificent example of the occasional reward of great curiosity and patience.

Potato plants are usually grown from seed potatoes – potatoes from a previous crop saved for replanting - the new plant sprouting from the ‘eyes’. The problem with planting potato seeds is that there is no way of predicting how the potatoes will turn out – the plant from each seed can vary enormously from every other plant in the patch, which makes for great anxiety on the part of potato farmers. Burbank decided to plant the 23 seeds he found one day in a seed ball on an “Early Rose” potato plant, and he succeeded in getting all of them to germinate. As expected, there was a wide variety in the quality of the resulting potatoes, but the best of them was to change the scale of potato production in the USA. The Burbank potato (and its natural offspring the Russet Burbank) is high yielding, stores well, and has become the premier processing potato in the country, which makes for very happy potato farmers. If you ever eat fries from that place with the yellow arches – you are eating Burbank’s babies.

Burbank didn’t make money from his potato. Plant varieties could not be patented in the USA until 1930, and the only money he got for his painstaking gardening experiment was the $150 for selling the rights to the new variety. He was otherwise rewarded by having it named for him, and for being inducted posthumously into the National Inventors Hall of Fame

Burbank’s birthday gives us a great opportunity to add to our Historic Potato Recipe Collection.

The following recipes were chosen for no better reasons than they come from cookbooks of the first decade of his life, and because I thought they sounded fun.

Potato Omelette.
It may be made with a mashed potato or 2 ounces of potato-flour and 4 eggs, and seasoned with pepper, salt, and a little nutmeg. It should be made thick, and, being rather substantial, a squeeze of lemon will improve it. Fry a light brown.
[The Ladies' New Book of Cookery: A Practical System For Private Families In Town And Country; With Directions For Carving, And Arranging The Table For Parties, etc. Also Preparations Of Food For Invalids And For Children. Sarah Josepha Hale. New York, 1852.]

Potato Sandwiches.
Saute the slices of beef as directed for bubble and squeak, cover one side of each piece with mashed potatoes a quarter of an inch in thickness, egg and bread-crumb over, then proceed the same with the other sides; fry in hot fat of a light brown color, as you would a sole, and serve. Any kind of fresh meat may be used the same way.
[The Practical Housekeeper; A Cyclopedia of Domestic Economy ... Ellet, E. F. 1857]

Both books can be found at the Feeding America site.

Tomorrow’s Story …

A little hunting lodge.

A Previous Story for this Day …

Food related to the singer Jenny Lind was the topic.

Quotation for the Day …

Nor do I say it is filthy to eat potatoes. I do not ridicule the using of them as a sauce. What I laugh at is, the idea of the use of them being a saving; of their going further than bread; of the cultivating of them in lieu of wheat adding to the human sustenance of a country. ... As food for cattle, sheep or hogs, this is the worst of all the green and root crops; but of this I have said enough before; and therefore, I now dismiss the Potato with the hope, that I shall never again have to write the word, or see the thing. William Cobbett (1763-1835)

Not your usual Parisian fare.

Today, December 5th …

The city of Paris was under siege by the Prussians between September 19th 1870 and January 28th 1871. The intention of Prussia was no different from any other besieging force throughout history – to force the enemy to heel by starvation. One Henry Labouchère - with the by-line “Besieged Resident of Paris” - regularly reported to the Daily News in England, his correspondence being forwarded by balloon or “by messengers who promised to 'run the blockade.' " His letters are a lively record of how the citizens of the City of Light dealt with the siege conditions, and in particular, how they coped with the increasing shortages of food.

On this day in 1870, his report read:

The following is a list of the prices of "luxuries" - Terrines of chicken, 16f; of rabbit, 13f; a fowl, 26f; a rabbit, 18f; a turkey, 60f; a goose, 45f; one cauliflower, 3f; one cabbage, 4f; dog is 2f. a lb.; a cat skinned costs 5f.; a rat, 1f., if fat from the drains, 1f. 50c. Almost all the animals in the Jardin d'Acclimatation have been eaten. They have averaged about 7f. a lb. Kangaroo, however, has been sold for 12f. the lb. Yesterday I dined with the correspondent of a London paper. He had managed to get a large piece of mufflon, an animal which is, I believe, only found in Corsica. I can only describe it by saying that it tasted of mufflon, and nothing else. Without being absolutely bad, I do not think that I shall take up my residence in Corsica, in order habitually to feed upon it.

Labouchère ate many of the things on the list as the siege progressed, and his narrative was sprinkled with throw-away phrases clearly designed to shock his English readers. He eats a salmi of rat one day, but notes that the proprietor of the restaurant’s “heart failed him” when the moment came to present the bill, and he wrote the name of the dish as salmi of game. He admits to a little guilt at eating “man’s best friend” when he eats “a slice of spaniel” one day, but another day determines that “cat served up for dinner is the right animal in the right place”.
M. Labouchère may have been underwhelmed by the Mouflon (a species of feral sheep thought to be one of the ancestors of the domesticated animal), but perhaps it was not cooked imaginatively. Surely any good Parisian cook could have prepared an entirely acceptable Haricot Mouflon from feral sheep flesh?

Rat or Cat would have been more of a challenge. What garnish would be appropriate? Today seems to be a good day to consider dishes styled “à la Parisienne”, does it not? According to the Larousse Gastronomique à la Parisienne refers to a garnish “the elements of which vary sometimes, but should always include Potatoes à la Parisienne” – a description which seems a bit circular. There does not appear to be absolute consensus on the details of the garnish, as you will see.

The description/recipe from Larousse is:

Potatoes à la Parisienne.
Like Noisette potatoes, but smaller in size. As soon as the potatoes are cooked, toss them in greatly concentrated veal gravy or dissolved meat jelly. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

The interesting Baron Brisse, whose book “366 Menus and 1200 recipes” was published a couple of years before the siege, gives this method:

Potatoes à la Parisienne.
Chop up some onions very fine, and brown in equal quantities of butter and lard; when a good colour, moisten with either water or stock, add your potatoes, season with a bouquet of herbs, salt and pepper. When cooked, serve very hot.

A third version from an ocean away and a decade later is from Miss Parloa's New Cook Book (Boston Cooking School, 1882) . She makes them in the fashion of globular French fries:

Potatoes à la Parisienne
Pare large uncooked potatoes. Cut little balls out of these with the vegetable scoop. Six balls can be cut from one large potato. Drop them in ice water.
When all are prepared, drain them, and put in the frying basket. This can be half full each time—that is, about three dozen balls can be put in.
Put the basket carefully into the fat, the same as for thin fried potatoes. Cook ten minutes.
Drain. Dredge with salt, and serve very hot.
These are nice to serve with a fillet of beef, beefsteak, chops or game. They may be arranged on the dish with the meats, or served in a separate dish.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Encyclopaedic Food.

A Previous Story for this Day …

The story for December 5th 2005 was "The Long Experiment" - on the topic of Prohibition in the USA.

Quotation for the Day ...

Why is not a rat as good as a rabbit? Why should men eat shrimps and neglect cockroaches? Henry Ward Beecher.

Another sort of shipboard victuals.

Today, December 20 …

In 1853, the good ship “Sir Edward Parry” left Plymouth on this day, bound for South Australia, its passengers hungry for the gold recently discovered in the colony. They were usually pretty hungry on the three month voyage too.

The recommended ration for adults aboard emigrant ships run by “respectable shipowners” was:

Every day: 8oz. of “ships’ biscuit”, 6 oz. flour, 3 oz. oatmeal, and 3 Quarts of water.
Meat: Saturdays: 8 oz. Beef ; Monday, Wednesday and Friday: 6 oz. pork; Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday: 8 oz preserved meat.
Weekly: Coffee: 2 oz.; Tea 1 ½ oz; Treacle 8 oz.; Raisins 8 oz; Suet 6 oz; Pease 2/3 pint; Rice 12 oz; Butter 4 oz; Cheese 4 oz; Preserved Potatoes 8 oz.
Also each week: mixed pickles one gill; mustard, ½ oz., salt 2 oz. and pepper ½ oz.

Many passengers supplemented the ration with personal supplies, but it was still pretty grim fare for most, particularly when you take into account that the flour and biscuit would almost certainly have been weevily, and the meat so heavily salted and tough as to be uneatable except by the very hungry.

The preserved potatoes were almost always hated. One emigrant to New Zealand in 1879 wrote “We had preserved potatoes today for the first time. None of our Mess could eat them so we threw them overboard”. Many preserving methods were tried, but the usual method for use at sea involved covering them with quicklime, which must certainly have added something to the flavour. A simple drying method would have kept them more palatable, but keeping them dry on board ship would have been impossible.

If you have a bumper crop, you could try the recipe from the very useful book “Enquire Within Upon Everything” (1894).

Preserving Potatoes
The preservation of potatoes by dipping them in boiling water is a valuable and useful discovery. Large quantities may be cured at once, by putting them into a basket as large as the vessel containing the boiling water will admit, and then just dipping them a minute or two, at the utmost. The germ, which is so near the skin, is thus destroyed without injury to the potato. In this way several tons might be cured in a few hours. They should be then dried in a warm oven, and laid up in sacks, secure from the frost, in a dry place.

Tomorrow: Drowning in Armagnac.