On Cloves.

September 24^th …

Samuel Pepys got himself a bargain on this day in 1665:

“…. And there, after breakfast, one of our watermen told us he had heard of a bargain of Cloves for us. And we went to a blind alehouse at the end of the town, to a couple of wretched, dirty seamen, who, poor wretches, had got together about 37 lb. of Cloves and 10 lb. of Nuttmeggs. And we bought all of them – the first at 5s. 6d. per lb and the latter at 4s. – and paid them in gold …..”

I get the distinct impression that our old friend Sam Pepys did not care to enquire too deeply into the source of the cloves. At least the poor wretches who sold them were a lot less poor at the end of the transaction:

- 5s. 6d. in 1665, is approximately equivalent today to ₤ 31.60 UK = $63 US = $75.8 AUD

- 4s. in 1665, is equivalent today to ₤ 23 = $45.8 US = $ 55 AUD

Which means, by my reckoning, the wretches made away with almost $2,800 U.S in today's money. No doubt Sam himself made a decent profit too when he on-sold them.

Cloves are the dried flower buds of Caryophyllus aromaticus, a tree originating in the Moluccas - the original Spice Islands, now part of Indonesia. The desire for them (and other spices) drove many of the early European voyages of exploration, and successful traders made fortunes. Their value lay as much if not more in their medicinal than their culinary use. To judge from the Household Dictionary of William Salmon (1695), they were a great panacea. He says:

They help Digestions, stay the Flux of the Belly, and are binding; they clear the sight, and the powder of them consumes and takes away the Web or Film in the Eye, as also Clouds and Spots: being beaten to Powder, and drunk with Wine or the Juice of Quinces they stay Vomiting, restore lost Appetite, fortifie the Stomach and Head, gently warm an over-cold Liver: and for this Reason they are given with success to such as have the Dropsie; the smell of the Oil of them is good against fainting Fits and Swoonings; and being chewed, they sweeten the Breath, and fasten the Teeth; the Powder of them in White-wine is given for Falling-Sickness, or Palsie, the distilled Water of Cloves is good against Surfeits and pestilential Diseases; receiving the Smoak of the Cloves into the Nostrils whilst they are burning on a Chafing-dish of Coals, opens the Pores of the Head.

Today’s recipe, inspired by the nautical location of the story, is from a famous cookbook of Pepys’ era – The Accomplisht Cook, by Robert May (1660). Naturally, it contains cloves. It is also quite do-able today.

To Stew a small Salmon, Salmon Peal, or Trout.
Take a Salmon, draw it, scotch the back, and boil it whole in a stew pan with white wine, (or in pieces) put to it also some whole cloves, large mace, slic’t ginger, a bay leaf or two, a bundle of sweet herbs well and hard bound up, some whole pepper, salt, some butter and vinegar, and an orange in halves; stew all together, and being well stewed, dish them in a clean scowred dish with carved sippets, lay on the spices and slict’t lemon, and run it over with beaten butter, and some of the gravy it was stewed in; garnish the dish with some fine searsed manchet, or searsed ginger.

Tomorrow’s Story …

On Corned Beef.

Quotation for the Day …

Salmon are like men: too soft a life is not good for them. James de Coquet.

Miserly Onions.

Today, July 3^rd
The fabulously wealthy Hetty Green - “The Witch of Wall Street” - died on this day in 1916 at the age of 80 years, leaving a legacy of over a hundred million dollars to her children. Hetty was born to money, married money, and very cleverly made money throughout her life (this was at a time when women were not supposed to bother their little minds about such a thing, never mind be good at it.) One thing she did not do well was spend money. Her penny-pinching was an expression of the Christian virtue of frugality (she came from Quaker stock), plain stinginess, or simple eccentricity, depending on the point of view of the teller.

Naturally, some of the tales of her meanness related to food, so these are the stories we will focus on today. They are all of the “it is said” variety. Rumour had it, for example, that Hetty would walk any distance to save a few cents on milk or other basics, that she would return berry boxes for the one cent deposit, and that she would ‘cook’ her oatmeal on the office radiator to save fuel. It is also said that on her 78^th birthday she attributed her health and longevity to eating baked onions.

Hetty could have done worse than develop a taste for onions. They are usually cheap and easily available for one thing. For another, there are many medicinal effects attributed to onions. One late 17^th C household manual says of them that they are ‘proper to such as are afflicted with cold vicious Humours, because they procure Sleep, and help Concoction, prevent sower [sour] Belchings, open Obstructions, force Courses, and the Urin, promote insensible Transpiration …. ’, which would make them extraordinarily useful if it is true.

Humans have been eating onions of one sort or another since ancient times, and it is almost impossible to imagine cooking without them. It is a rare savoury dish that does not include onions. I remember reading years ago an article by a cook or chef (I don’t remember any name) who said that as soon as he arrived home from work he would chop up an onion or two, and perhaps some garlic, and put these on to gently sauté while he decided what to have for dinner. There is something in that concept.

What is surprising about onions, given their long history in the human diet, is that this is their role – as an essential ingredient of a huge number of dishes, not a featured performer. I do not think that we give enough consideration to onions in their own right (I don’t include onion jam or caramelised onions here). There are relatively few historic recipes starring onions, but I have chosen a few for your enjoyment.

To butter Onions.
Beeing peeled, put them into boiling liquor, and when they are boil’d, drain them in a cullender, and butter them whole with some boiled currans [currants], sugar, and beaten cinnamon, serve them on fine sippets [toasts], scrape on sugar, and run them over with beaten butter.
[The Accomplisht Cook; Robert May; 1660]

To make an Onion Pye.
Wash, and pare some Potatoes, and cut them in Slices, peel some Onions, cut them in Slices, pare some Apples and slice them, make a good Crust, cover your Dish, lay a Quarter of a Pound of Butter all over, take a Quarter of an Ounce of Mace beat fine, a Nutmeg grated, a Tea Spoonful of beaten Pepper, three Tea spoonfuls of Salt, mix all together, strew some over the Butter, lay a Layer of Potatoes, a Layer of Onion, a Layer of Apple, and a Layer of Eggs, and so on, till you have filled your Pye, strewing a little of the Seasoning between each Layer, and a Quarter of a Pound of Butter in Bits, and six Spoonfuls of Water. Close your Pye, and bake it an Hour and a Half: A Pound of Potatoes, a Pound of Onion, and a Pound of Apples, and twelve Eggs will do.
[Art of Cookery made plain and easy; Hannah Glasse, 1747]

Baked Onions
Put six large onions into a saucepan of water, or water and milk in equal proportions, add salt and pepper and boil until tender. When done so they can be easily mashed work them up with butter to the consistency of paste, cover with breadcrumbs, and bake in a moderate oven. If preferred they may be boiled whole, put in a baking dish covered with butter and breadcrumbs, then baked.
[Good Things To Eat, As Suggested By Rufus … ; Rufus Estes... 1911]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Humble Gleaners.

Quotation for the Day …

Happy is said to be the family which can eat onions together. They are, for the time being, separate, from the world, and have a harmony of aspiration. Charles Dudley Warner, My Summer in a Garden, 1871

Eggs, 17th C Style.

Today, April 10th ...

As explained yesterday, this weeks posts will be minimalist - the recipes must speak for themselves. The first two speak strangely to us today, but the other two - minus the sugar - sound quite acceptable to the modern palate.

The manner how to make an Egge Tart with Apples.
Put into a Porrenger or Dish the bigness of two eggs, or a little more of the mellow part of a roasted Apple, adde thereunto two spoonfuls of fine flower, five or six eggs, and some salt at your own discretion, dissolve and beat all these together, until such time as the flower be well incorporated with the other ingredients, pour this mixture into a Tart-pan or Skillet, or in a Dish, in which you shall have dissolved the bignesse of an egge, or thereabouts of fresh butter; cover your Tart-pan, and put upon it some fire, and cover also the lid with a few embers, and after a quarter of an hour or a little more you must uncover your Tart-pan, to see whether your Cake be baked, and whether it be sufficiently coloured both above and below, and if you find it to bee so you may dish it up, and serve it to the Table, after you have powdered it with some sugar, and sprinkled it with some rose-water, & stuck into it some few slices of preserved Lemmon-peels.
Observe that instead of the mellow of Apples, to make a variety of the said Tarts, you may take the mellow of Pomkins, or of any other fruit you have a mind to, so you do first boyl or bake it before you make use of it to make your Tart or Cake withall, according to the former prescriptions in the foregoing Chapter.
[The Perfect Cook ( Patissier françois); Marnette; 1656]

To dress Eggs in the Spanish Fashion, called, wivos me quidos.
Take twenty eggs fresh and new, and strain them with a quarter of a pint of sack, claret, or white wine, a quartern of sugar, some grated nutmeg, and salt; beat them together with the juyce of an orange, and put to them a little musk, (or none) set them over the fire, and stir them continually till they be a little thick, (but not too much), serve them with scraping sugar being put in a clean warm dish, on fine toasts of manchet soaked in juyce of orange and sugar, or in claret, sugar, or white wine, and shake the eggs with orange comfits, or muskedines red and white.
[The accomplisht cook; Robert May; 1660]

To dress poached Eggs.
Take a dozen of new laid eggs, and the meat of four or five partridges, or any roast poultrey, mince it as small as you can, and season it with a few beaten cloves, mace, and nutmeg, put them into silver dish with a ladle full or two of pure mutton gravy, and two or three anchoves dissolved, then set it a stewing on a chafing dish of coals; being half stewed, as it boils put in the eggs one by one, and as you break them, put by most of the whites, and with one end of your egg-shell put in the yolks round in order amongst the meat, let them stew till the eggs be enough, then put in a little grated nutmeg, and the juyce of a couple of oranges, put not in the seeds, wipe the dish, and garnish it with four or five whole onions boild and broild.
[The accomplisht cook; Robert May; 1660]

To make an Amalet [omelet]
Take ten eggs, and more than half the whites, beat them very well, and put in a spoonful or two of cream, then heat some butter in your frying pan, and when it is hot, put in your eggs and stir them a little, then fry them till you find they are enough, and a little before you put them out of the pan, turn both the sides over that they may meet in the middle, and lay it the botome upwards in the dish, serve it in with verjuice, butter and sugar.
[Cook’s Guide; Hannah Wooley; 1664]

17th C egg recipes from previous posts:
Bacon Froise. (1695)
To dress Eggs called in French Ala Augenotte, or the Protestant way.(1682, Rabisha)

Last year on this Day ...

By co-incidence, the story last year was about a dinner held in the seventeenth century.

Spanish Stew.

Today, April 5th …

We meet Sam Pepys again today, this time in 1669 in the company of his colleague Henry Sheres who has spent some time at the embassy in Spain, and introduces Sam to a new dish on this day.

“To the Mulberry garden, where Sheres is to treat us with a Spanish Olio by a cook of his acquaintance that is there, that was with my Lord in Spain. And without any other company, he did do it, and mighty nobly; and the Olio was indeed a noble dish, such as I never saw better, or any more of….So we left other things that would keep till night for a collation..”

An Olio, or Olla Podrida is, according to the OED “a dish of Spanish and Portuguese origin, composed of pieces of meat and fowl, bacon, pumpkins, cabbage, turnips, and other ingredients stewed or boiled together and highly spiced.” The name comes from the cooking pot, much as we now use ‘casserole’ to refer to the dish rather than the container. They sometimes had a spectacular number of ingredients, as this recipe from Robert May’s Accomplish't Cook, published in 1660.

You may need to stop and rest half way through reading the instructions.

To Make an Olio Podrida.
Take a pipkin or pot of some three gallons, fill it with fair water and set it over a fire of Charcoals, and put in first your hardest meats, a Rump of Beef, Bolonia Sausages, Neats Tongues, two dry and two green, boiled and larded, about two hours after the pot is boiled and scummed: put in more presently after your Beef is scummed, Mutton, Venison, Pork, Bacon, all the aforesaid in gubbins, as big as Ducks Egg, in equal pieces, put in also Carrots, Turnips, Onions, and Cabbidge, in good big pieces as big as your meat, a faggot of sweet herbs well bound up, and some whole Spinedge, Sorrel, Burradge, Endive, Marigolds and other good Pot hearbs a little chopped, and sometimes French Barley, or Lupins green or dry.
Then a little before you dish out your Olio, put to your pot Cloves, Mace, Saffron &c.
Then next have divers Fowls; as first,

A Goose, or Turky, two Capons, two Ducks, two Pheasants, two Widgeons, four Partridges, four Stockdoves, four Teals, eight Snites, twenty four Quails, forty-eight Larks.

Boil the aforesaid Fowls in water and salt in a pan, pipkin or pot, &c.

Then have, Bread, Marrow, Bottoms of Artichocks, Yolks of hard Eggs, Large Mace, Chestnuts boil’d and blancht, two Collyflowers, Saffron.

And stew these in a pipkin together, being ready clenged with some good sweet butter, a little white wine, and strong broth.
Some other times for variety you may use Beets, Potato’s Skirrets, Pistaches, Pine Apple seed, or Almonds, Poungarnet, and Lemons.
Now to dish your Olio, dish first your Beef, Veal, or Pork; then your Venison, and Mutton, Tongues, Sausage, and Roots over all.
Then next your largest Fowl, Land Fowl, or Sea Fowl, as at first, a Goose or Turky, two Capons, two Pheasants, four Ducks, four Widgeons, sour Stock-doves, four Partridges, eight Teals, twelve Snites, twenty-four Quails, forty eight Larks, &c.
Then broth it, and put on your pipkin of Collyflowers, Artichocks, Chestnuts, some Sweetbreads fried, Yolks of hard Eggs, then Marrow boil’d in strong borth or water, large Mace, Saffron, Pistaches, and all the foresaid things being finely stewed up, and some red Beets overall; slic’t Lemons, and Lemon peels whole, and run over it with beaten butter.

What size pot must this have needed? Twenty different sorts of meat, if you include the marrow!

Tomorrow’s Story …

Good Friday Buns

Last Year on this Day …

The story was about the African explorer,

Pepys’ Pease Porridge.

Today, February 1st ...

Samuel Pepys had a simple dinner on this day in 1660.

“In the morning went to my office where afterwards the old man brought me my letters from the carrier. At noon I went home and dined with my wife on pease porridge and nothing else.”

Sam sounds vaguely disgruntled by his plain dinner, although we are given no hint of explanation. He makes no mention of illness. It wasn’t Lent, when all Christian folk would have been expected to eat meatless meals. It was hardly an economic necessity - although he had put on a ‘very fine dinner’ comprising “a dish of marrow bones; a leg of mutton; a loin of veal; a dish of fowl, three pullets, and two dozen of larks all in a dish; a great tart, a neat's tongue, a dish of anchovies; a dish of prawns and cheese” for several guests less than a week before, he was doing well enough for himself.

Sam doesn’t appear to dislike pease either, he makes several mentions of them, including specifically mentioning, in a May 1662 entry that “this day I had the first dish of pease I have had this year.” Perhaps this is the key. Perhaps he likes fresh pease, but not pease porridge?

Some sort of porridge/pottage has been the staple meal of peasants in many countries for many centuries. In its simplest form it is a sort of soup with a starchy base, with other additions depending on the circumstances of the time. On feast days, ale or wine and spices, sugar and dried fruit could be added to make this one-pot meal special, and Sam mentions ‘brave plum porridge’ with apparent relish, in another diary entry. All that was needed was the development of pudding cloths in the seventeenth century to enable Christmas (plum) porridge to evolve into Christmas (plum) pudding, and Pease porridge to Pease pudding.

Pease porridge/pottage seems to be associated particularly with Britain, and it is a dish we can recognise instantly today – we just call it pea soup.

Robert May published his very successful book The Accomplish’t Cook in the same year as Sam’s diary entry. He had four versions of Pease Pottage, two made with fresh pease, and two variations from the same starting batch of dried peas (and he appears to favour the ‘worm-eaten’ ones!)

Pease Pottage
Take green pease being shelled and cleansed, put them into a pipkin of fair boiling water; when they be boiled and tender, take and strain some of them, and thicken the rest; put to them a bunch of sweet herbs, or sweet herbs chopped, salt, and butter, being through boild dish them, and serve them in a deep clean dish with salt and sippets about them.

Otherwayes.
Put them into a pipkin or skillet of boiling milk or cream, put to them two or three sprigs of mint, and salt, being fine and tender boild, thick them with a little milk and flour.

Dry, or old Pease Pottage.
Take the choicest pease (that some call seed-way pease) commonly they be a little worm eaten (those are the best boiling pease) pick and wash them, and put them in boiling liquor in a pot or pipkin; being tender boild, take out some of them, strain them and set them by for your use, then season the rest with salt, a bundle of mints and butter, let them stew leisurely, and put to them some pepper.

Strained Pease Pottage.
Take the former strained pease pottage, put to them salt, large mace, a bundle of sweet herbs, and some pickled capers; stew them well together, then serve them in a deep dish clean scowred, with thin slices of bread in the bottom, and grated manchet to garnish it.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Wives’ Feast Day.

A Previous Story for this Day …

We had a story inspired by Robinson Crusoe on this day last year.

Quotation for the Day …

"I always eat my peas with honey; I've done it all my life. They do taste kind of funny but It keeps them on my knife." Anonymous.

One way to feed a crowd.

Today, December 7th …

If you have ever been in charge of feeding a crowd in a public space, or been a hungry member of that crowd wishing you could find your way to the food stalls, then you have cause to be grateful for an invention patented on this day in 1999 in the U.S.A.

The patent was for “A Process for Propelling Foodstuffs Or the Like Into a Crowd”, and the brilliant inventor who managed to solve this stubborn catering problem was Thomas Gerard Ryan. Mr Ryan solved it inadvertently, as it happens. His real goal was marketing. What he was really seeking was “A method of promoting a product or product brand at a public event that is safe, fun, and very entertaining … ”.

His safe, fun, and very entertaining idea was:

“ … (a) wrapping a product-in a wrapper that is designed not to come apart when flying through the air, that is relatively soft and without any hard or sharp edges, and that is flexible, compressible and relatively airtight; (b) placing the product and its wrapper within a tube in a manner such that the compressible, relatively airtight package forms a seal with an inner wall of the tube; and (c) ejecting the product and its wrapper out of the tube and toward an audience by applying a pressurized gas within the tube, whereby the flexible, compressible and relatively airtight wrapper both helps seal the wrapper to the tube in order to make the ejection process efficient, and acts to keep the package together as it travels toward the audience.”

Imagine, if you can, “a hot dog, a napkin and at least one condiment” hurling across the sky and over the heads of the rest of the hungry crowd towards your reaching hands ….

Food and fun do go together in an ideal world of course, and throwing food is a time-honoured nursery game. Most of us grow out of food-throwing by the time we reach university, although Yale university students in times past continued to throw their food containers in between writing learned treatises. As a result we now have the Frisbee flying disc derived from the Frisbie Pie Company’s metal pie-tins.

Food was even more fun in times past when banquet hosts would have pies made to contain live birds or frogs to jump out and “make the Ladies to skip and shreek”. Animal rights activists would not allow it now of course, so for purely historic interest here is how it was done:

…. make these pieces of course paste filled with bran, and yellowed over with saffron or yolks of eggs, gild them over in spots, … being baked, make a hole in the bottom of your pieces, take out the bran, put in your Frogs and Birds, and close up the holes with the same course paste …. by this time you may suppose they will desire to see what is in the pieces; where lifting the first the lid off one pie, out skips some Frogs which makes the Ladies to skip and shreek; next after the other pie, whence comes out the Birds; who by a natural instinct flying at the light, will put out the candles: so that what with the flying Birds, and skipping Frogs, the one above, the other beneath, will cause much delight and pleasure to the whole company.
[From Robert May’s Accomplish’t Cook, 1665]

Tomorrow’s Story …

In Memory of a Mistress.

A Previous Story for this Day …

The story for December 7th 2005 was “The story for December 7th 2005 was “Prayers in the Kitchen”.

Quotation for the Day …

Nothing spoils a good party like a genius. Elsa Maxwell (1883 – 1963)

The Roast Beef of Old England.

Today, November 23 …

Sam Pepys wrote in his diary in 1661 “This day I had a Chine of beefe sent home, which I bespoke to send and did send it, as a present to my Uncle Wight”. What a gift for an Englishman! A chine – a huge piece of cow consisting of the backbone and the loin meat each side, roasted to perfection, and the envy of visitors to England such as the Swede Pehr Kalm (1716-1779) who disguised his jealousy with scorn:

“Roast meat is the Englishman's delice and principal dish. .. The English men understand almost better than any other people the art of properly roasting a joint, which also is not to be wondered at; because the art of cooking as practiced by most Englishmen does not extend much beyond roast beef and plum pudding.”

You cant get more English than roast beef. Unless you have chicken tikka that is. Anyway, beef isn’t roasted anymore. Baked in ovens, yes, but not roasted on a spit in front of an open fire, turned all the while by little boys or ingenious mechanical devices, basted lovingly by the cook at regular intervals, the juice (none of your fancy jus) and drippings falling down into a pan of batter, transforming it into Yorkshire pudding.

Sadly, truth is often more prosaic than fiction. Contrary to popular belief, the sirloin did not get its name when a particularly splendid example of that “joint of goodly presence” was given a mock knighthood (“Sir Loin” – get it?) by either King Henry VII, James I, or Charles II. The name simply comes from “surlonge”, i.e above the loin.

In case you should be lucky enough to have the right sort of beef, fireplace, and small boy, here is a recipe from Robert May’s “Accomplish’t Cook” (1660).

To roast a Chine, Rib, Loin, Brisket, or Fillet of Beef,
Draw them with parsley, rosemary, time [thyme], sweet marjoram, sage, winter savoury, or lemon, or plain without any of them, fresh or salt, as you please; broth it, roast it, and baste it with butter: a good chine of beef will ask six hours of roasting.
For the sauce take straight tops of rosemary, sage leaves, picked parsley, time, and sweet marjoram; and stew them in wine vinegar, and the beef gravy; or otherwayes with gravy and juyce of oranges and lemons. Sometimes for change in saucers of vinegar and pepper.

Tomorrow ….Green butter and the Art of Sandwiches.