I am almost equally interested in and terrified by old methods of food preservation. A few centuries ago, according to the cookery books of the time, the thick hard pastry ‘coffin’ of a meat pie would keep the contents edible for a year. I don’t think I am unadventurous with food, but I am pretty sure I would not try a twelve month old unrefrigerated pie. Knowledge of ‘germs’ and their role in the useful processes of fermentation as well as in producing disease did not come about until the mid-nineteenth century, but centuries before the scientific explanation was known, cooks had used the empirical knowledge that excluding air from the container kept foods edible for a longer period.
The exclusion of air method is behind most of the old ways of preserving eggs, and a number of these were explored in a previous post. Other common alternatives for preserving eggs are drying them to a powder, and pickling them. I thought these methods pretty well covered all the options for keeping eggs, but yesterday’s source, Eggs: Facts and Fancies about them (Boston, 1890) suggested another, supposedly ‘Australian’, idea. I really don’t see how this would exclude enough air to make it work. It seems to me to be a formula for a very foul sulphurous explosion of the preserving jar, but I await your valuable opinions.
Australian Method of Preserving Eggs.
Glass jars with patent stoppers having vulcanised India rubber joints, making them perfectly air-tight, are used.
These jars are placed in hot water until the air in them is warm and rarefied.
As soon as the eggs are collected they are wrapped in paper to prevent knocking, and are placed in the warm jars, with the pointed ends up. The jars are immediately closed up, and removed from the hot water.
If this process is skilfully carried out the eggs will be fit for the table months afterward. The secret is to heat the air in the jars thoroughly; the papers may be baked and used warm.
Any stopper will do that excludes the air.
Quotation for the Day.
I bet you think an egg is something you casually order for breakfast when you can't think of anything else. Well, so did I once, but that was before the egg and I.
Claudine Colbert.
Showing posts with label preserving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label preserving. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
More Notable Food Things.
Today I am going to share with you some ideas on keeping food “fresh” for longer, from our source for the week - A Thousand Notable Things. The edition I am using is from 1815, but the original version was written in the late sixteenth century. Some of these techniques sound very scary today, when we are obsessed with staleness, germs and disease. The fact that so many survived such undoubtedly contaminated food should perhaps give us pause to give credit to the human gastro-intestinal and immune systems. (But I don’t recommend that you test your own out with the following ideas for meat and fish preservation!)
Easy Method of preserving Animal Food sweet for several days in the heat of Summer.
Veal, mutton, beef, or venison may be kept for nine or ten days perfectly sweet and good in the heat of summer, by lightly covering the same with bran, and hanging it in a high and windy room; therefore a cupboard full of small holes, or a wire safe, so as the wind has passage through, is recommended to be placed in such a room, to keep away the flies.
The method was apparently also used to preserve fish.
To keep Dead Fish long.
Roll them in Wheat Bran, and lay them on a stone pavement in a cool cellar, or underground kitchen, cover them lightly with flags, grass, or rushes, and they will keep sweet a week, evne in the summer season.
Another suggested method of preserving (and tenderizing) fowl flesh is:
To keep Fowls long, and make them tender.
Have a White Wine or Rhenish Cask set up on end in a cool cellar, cut it so that the Fowl may be hanged up in it, and they will keep many days longer than otherwise.
And as for fruit and nuts, the following ideas might still work today.
Whosoever will preserve Chestnuts, and keep them safe and sound, let them lay and mix them with Walnuts; for they will drink up and consume such humours whereby they corrupt; and they will not suffer them to wax mouldy. Mizuldus.
To Preserve Apples or Pears from specking or rotting.
Dip their stalks in melted Pitch, and rub the fruit over with the Juice of Spearming, and hang them up by their stalks, that they touch not each other, and so that he air may freely come at them, but no rain or damp mists, and so they will keep very long.
Quotation for the Day.
The difference of a single day is perceptible. Vegetables can only be tasted in perfection, gathered the same day.”
John Pintard (1759-1844)
Easy Method of preserving Animal Food sweet for several days in the heat of Summer.
Veal, mutton, beef, or venison may be kept for nine or ten days perfectly sweet and good in the heat of summer, by lightly covering the same with bran, and hanging it in a high and windy room; therefore a cupboard full of small holes, or a wire safe, so as the wind has passage through, is recommended to be placed in such a room, to keep away the flies.
The method was apparently also used to preserve fish.
To keep Dead Fish long.
Roll them in Wheat Bran, and lay them on a stone pavement in a cool cellar, or underground kitchen, cover them lightly with flags, grass, or rushes, and they will keep sweet a week, evne in the summer season.
Another suggested method of preserving (and tenderizing) fowl flesh is:
To keep Fowls long, and make them tender.
Have a White Wine or Rhenish Cask set up on end in a cool cellar, cut it so that the Fowl may be hanged up in it, and they will keep many days longer than otherwise.
And as for fruit and nuts, the following ideas might still work today.
Whosoever will preserve Chestnuts, and keep them safe and sound, let them lay and mix them with Walnuts; for they will drink up and consume such humours whereby they corrupt; and they will not suffer them to wax mouldy. Mizuldus.
To Preserve Apples or Pears from specking or rotting.
Dip their stalks in melted Pitch, and rub the fruit over with the Juice of Spearming, and hang them up by their stalks, that they touch not each other, and so that he air may freely come at them, but no rain or damp mists, and so they will keep very long.
Quotation for the Day.
The difference of a single day is perceptible. Vegetables can only be tasted in perfection, gathered the same day.”
John Pintard (1759-1844)
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Food for Journeys, Part 3.
As you read this I will be somewhere in the air, en route home to Australia after a wonderful few weeks in the UK. I continue with the theme of food for travelling, and, technology-willing, this story will reach you about the usual time.
In yesterday’s post, we considered the sorts of new food that travellers eat in new places, courtesy of the land and its existing inhabitants. Of course, sensible travellers go prepared with supplies from home, and they take their preferences with them too. Here is a novel idea for preserving fish.
Russian Method Of Preserving Fish.
When the Russians desire to keep fish perfectly fresh, to be carried a long journey in a hot climate, they dip them into hot beeswax, which acts like an air-tight covering. In this way they are taken to Malta, sweet, even in summer.
Practical American Cookery and Domestic Economy, Elizabeth M. Hall; 1860
There are numerous recipes for preserving milk for long journeys – and presumably for infants and children this may have been important. It is difficult however, to imagine the necessity or desire for cream to be so great that an American or European traveller would wish for a recipe – but here is one example:
To Preserve Cream.
Take four quarts of new cream; it must be of the richest quality, and have no milk mixed with it. Put it into a preserving kettle, and simmer it gently over the fire; carefully taking off whatever scum may rise -to the top, till nothing more appears. Then stir, gradually, into it four pounds of double-refined loaf-sugar that has been finely powdered and sifted. Let the cream and sugar boil briskly together half an hour; skimming it, if . necessary, and afterwards stirring it as long as it continues on the fire. Put it into small bottles; and when it is cold, cork it, and secure the corks with melted rosin. This cream, if properly prepared, will keep perfectly good during a long sea voyage.
Miss Leslie's Complete Cookery; Eliza Leslie, 1831.
As for dripping (the fat collected from roasting meat), it is nowadays totally shunned by the nutrition police. Once upon a time the very quality that makes us discard it - its greasy calorie count - made it extremely desirable, particularly for pastry-making (encasing meat in a dense ‘coffin’ being another great preserving method). The book The Housekeeper's Instructor, Or, Universal Family Cook, by William Augustus Henderson (1805) has an entire section devoted to food for long voyages, and includes this recipe (note the suggestion to minimise its pilfering by rats!)
To preserve Dripping.
This is one, among many other useful articles at sea, and in order that it may properly keep for that purpose, it must be made in the following manner: Take six pounds of good beef dripping, boil it in some soft water, strain it into a pan, and let it stand till it is cold. Then take off the hard fat and scrape off the gravy which sticks to the inside. Do this eight times, and when it is cold and hard take it off clean from the water, and put it into a large saucepan, with six bay-leaves, twelve cloves, half a pound of salt, and a quarter of a pound of whole pepper. Let the fat be all melted, and just hot enough to strain through a ceve into a stone-pot. Then let it stand till it is quite cold, and cover it up. In this manner you may do what quantity you please. It is a very good maxim to keep the pot upside down, to prevent its being destroyed by the rats. It will keep good any voyage, and make as fine puff-pafte crust as any butter whatever.
Quotation for the Day.
Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own country-men, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untraveled minds.
Caleb Colton
In yesterday’s post, we considered the sorts of new food that travellers eat in new places, courtesy of the land and its existing inhabitants. Of course, sensible travellers go prepared with supplies from home, and they take their preferences with them too. Here is a novel idea for preserving fish.
Russian Method Of Preserving Fish.
When the Russians desire to keep fish perfectly fresh, to be carried a long journey in a hot climate, they dip them into hot beeswax, which acts like an air-tight covering. In this way they are taken to Malta, sweet, even in summer.
Practical American Cookery and Domestic Economy, Elizabeth M. Hall; 1860
There are numerous recipes for preserving milk for long journeys – and presumably for infants and children this may have been important. It is difficult however, to imagine the necessity or desire for cream to be so great that an American or European traveller would wish for a recipe – but here is one example:
To Preserve Cream.
Take four quarts of new cream; it must be of the richest quality, and have no milk mixed with it. Put it into a preserving kettle, and simmer it gently over the fire; carefully taking off whatever scum may rise -to the top, till nothing more appears. Then stir, gradually, into it four pounds of double-refined loaf-sugar that has been finely powdered and sifted. Let the cream and sugar boil briskly together half an hour; skimming it, if . necessary, and afterwards stirring it as long as it continues on the fire. Put it into small bottles; and when it is cold, cork it, and secure the corks with melted rosin. This cream, if properly prepared, will keep perfectly good during a long sea voyage.
Miss Leslie's Complete Cookery; Eliza Leslie, 1831.
As for dripping (the fat collected from roasting meat), it is nowadays totally shunned by the nutrition police. Once upon a time the very quality that makes us discard it - its greasy calorie count - made it extremely desirable, particularly for pastry-making (encasing meat in a dense ‘coffin’ being another great preserving method). The book The Housekeeper's Instructor, Or, Universal Family Cook, by William Augustus Henderson (1805) has an entire section devoted to food for long voyages, and includes this recipe (note the suggestion to minimise its pilfering by rats!)
To preserve Dripping.
This is one, among many other useful articles at sea, and in order that it may properly keep for that purpose, it must be made in the following manner: Take six pounds of good beef dripping, boil it in some soft water, strain it into a pan, and let it stand till it is cold. Then take off the hard fat and scrape off the gravy which sticks to the inside. Do this eight times, and when it is cold and hard take it off clean from the water, and put it into a large saucepan, with six bay-leaves, twelve cloves, half a pound of salt, and a quarter of a pound of whole pepper. Let the fat be all melted, and just hot enough to strain through a ceve into a stone-pot. Then let it stand till it is quite cold, and cover it up. In this manner you may do what quantity you please. It is a very good maxim to keep the pot upside down, to prevent its being destroyed by the rats. It will keep good any voyage, and make as fine puff-pafte crust as any butter whatever.
Quotation for the Day.
Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own country-men, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untraveled minds.
Caleb Colton
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