The Master Confectioner and Master Pastryman.

The roles of Master Confectioner and Master Pastryman were too obvious to need explaining to seventeenth century readers of The Perfect School of Instruction for the Officers of The Mouth (1682). Elaborate pies (‘bake-meats’) and tarts, clever marzipan (marchpane) shapes, colourful sweetmeats and so on were prestigious dishes at great dinners, and royal and aristocratic households had no problem in keeping both departments very busy.

The Perfect School advised the Master Confectioner that he would be shown how to make ‘… all sorts of Sweetmeats, both wet and dry, with the Compounds of Fruits and Sallets, with the manner how to make all Delicious Drinks, very Pleasant and delightful to the Taste and Pallat. The Master Pastryman needed to know how to ‘… make all Bake-meats in Perfection, with the Composition of all Pastes, as Biskets, Makaroons, and Marchpains.’

Virtually everything in those times was made ‘from scratch’, including spice mixes and food colourings. The mortar and pestle got a great workout, as the following recipes (from The Perfect School) show:

How to prepare all Spices for a Pastry-man’s use, call’d Sweet Spice.
You should take two ounce of Ginger, one ounce of Pepper beaten to powder, and mingled together, then add Cloves, Nutmegs, and Cinnamon beaten, of each one ounce, this quantity of the Spices may serve to put to a whole pound of pepper, either more or less, these being mingled together must be kept in a Box, for use.
You may keep them each by himself, because some will use pepper only, but all together is more pleasant, and for your Spice and Salt you should put the weight of your Spice in Salt well bruised, and keep it in a dry place for your use.

[Green Colouring]
When you would prepare your green for colouring of either your Preserves or Paste, take the young leaves of a Pear-tree, beat them in a Mortar, strain out the juice into a dish, and set it upon the fire, and when it begins to boil put it into a strainer or cloath, and take the scum that stays upon the Cloath or Strainer, and keep it for your use when you would colour anything green, either Paste or Preserve.


Quotation for the Day.

Bad cooks – and the utter lack of reason in the kitchen – have delayed human development longest and impaired it most.
Freidrich Nietzche, Beyond Good and Evil

A peppercorn ransom.

Today, August 24^th …

History, they say, is written by the victors. In the case of ancient history, it is also often written long after the event, and therefore of dubious accuracy especially when it comes to such specific things as calendar dates. To clinch the pre-story disclaimer, I would like to remind you, faithful readers, that a real historian I am not. I do not know exactly if this is the anniversary of the final sacking of Rome by Alaric the Visigoth (damn fine name, that, for a conqueror) 1,597 years ago. Either history or legend says that it is, and either will serve us well enough for introducing the topic of pepper – and particularly its price and value.

By the year 410 the barbarian (Alaric) was literally at the gate of Rome, the hub of a now crumbling empire. His ransom, it is said was the usual victor’s demand of land, gold, silver etc – and also 3,000 pounds of pepper. Certainly, the Visigoths were hungry, but the pepper was not to spice up the spoils of their pillaging and foraging. Pepper was an enormously valuable spice (at times it was literally worth its weight in gold), and was often actually used as currency.

The love of pepper seems to be part of being human – and it has been suggested that we have learned to like spices because they are good for us. ‘Spice’ is a culinary term, not a botanical one, and the foods we call ‘spicy’ are plant foods, and it seems that the ‘spiciness’ we perceive comes from chemicals which plants have developed as defence mechanisms against insects and infecting agents. The theory is that when we eat these foods, we are ‘borrowing’ some of the protective ability, thus conferring an evolutionary advantage over our more culinarily-challenged human competitors. We are all familiar with the general theory of anti-oxidants, but here is also some tantalising (but as yet unconfirmed) evidence for specific foods being protective of specific diseases – cinnamon in diabetes and turmeric in dementia for example. So, if you needed any excuse to eat Indian food, there you have a new one: it may well be good for your health.

The intense desire for spices drove much if not most of the early voyages of discovery and conquest. Pepper originated in India, in what is now called Kerala, and it has been traded since very ancient times – to this day is the most widely traded spice in the world. Alaric would have been confident that the Romans would have had good stocks of pepper - they clearly loved the spice: in the only surviving Roman cookbook De re coquinaria it is used in 349 of 468 recipes. They even used it in sweetmeats.

Home-made Sweets (Dulcia Domestica)
Little home confections (which are called dulciaria) are made thus: Little Palms (or as they are ordinarily called) Dates are stuffed – after the seeds have been removed – with a nut or with nuts and ground pepper, sprinkled with salt on the outside and are candied in honey and served.

And we think that salted toffee is a new fashion!

Also from this cookbook: we have previously featured recipes from this book for Flamingo , and for Green Sauce for Fowl, and Stuffed Dormouse.

Monday’s Story …

Roots, by request.

Quotation for the Day ….

The army from Asia introduced a foreign luxury to Rome; it was then the meals began to require more dishes and more expenditure . . . the cook, who had up to that time been employed as a slave of low price, become dear: what had been nothing but a métier was elevated to an art. Livy (Titus Livius), Roman historian (59-17 B.C.)

Steak and Mustard in America.

Today, February 15th …

The myth refuses to go away. Mustard was NOT advertised for the first time in the USA on this day in 1758. Nor was the newspaper was containing the first advertisement the Philadelphia Chronicle. There are fragments of truth in the foundations of many myths however, and the first advertiser may indeed have been Benjamin Franklin, as is usually quoted.

There was an advertisement for mustard in Benjamin Franklin’s own newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette in April 1732. I do not know if it is the first advertisement for mustard in America, but feel compelled to give you a story based on facts not certain to me, in the hope that those of you who are mustard-historians will enlighten me.

The 1732 advertisement read:

Choice Flour of Mustard-Seed, in Bottles, very convenient for such as go to Sea; to a little of which if you put hot Water, and stop it up close, you will have strong Mustard, fit to use, in 15 minutes. Sold at the New Printing-Office near the Market, at 1s. per Bot.

This was hardly the first appearance of mustard in America of course. Mustard has been used by humans since before recorded history, and has always been popular – no doubt because it was easily grown in Europe and therefore cheap compared to exotic imported spices. There may however have been a resurgence in its use about the time of Benjamin Franklins advertisement, as an important new development in the mustard-making business had occurred in 1720 in England. Mustard seeds form an oily paste, not a powder or ‘flour’ when crushed. A Mrs Clements of Tewkesbury developed a way to dry mustard seeds in that year, and mustard history never looked back. Benjamin Franklin had the heart of an inventor and no doubt kept up with who was inventing what around the world, so it does seem likely that he played at least some small part in the mustard industry in America.

I went to America’s first cookbook – American Cookery: or, the Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables …., by Amelia Simmons, published in 1796, thinking that a nice ‘first recipe for mustard’ might be appropriate today. Alas, I found none, but this recipe was irresistible. It does rather seem like a recipe for a kitchen fire, so please take care, and do add mustard to make your steak even more grateful.

To dress a Beef-Stake, sufficient for two Gentlemen, with a fire made of two newspapers.
Let the beef be cut in slices, and laid in a pewter platter, pour on water just sufficient to cover them, salt and pepper well cover with another platter inverted; then place your dish upon a stool bottom upwards, the legs of such length as to raise the platter three inches from the board; cut your newspapers into small strips, light with a candle and apply them gradually, so as to keep a live fire under the whole dish, till the whole are expended when the stake will be done; butter may then be applied, so as to render it grateful.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Cod for the Queen.

A Previous Story for this Day …

"Alcohol and other food for Invalids"

Quotation for the Day …

And then you bit onto them, and learned once again that Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler could find a use for bits of an animal that the animal didn't know it had got. Dibbler had worked out that with enough fried onions and mustard people would eat anything. Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures.

Last Minute Historic Food Gift?

This recipe was a serendipitous Christmas Eve find. If you need a last minute gift for a friend who loves food or is a history nerd, this might just suit. The quantity will need to be scaled down - Durand clearly made this amount for restaurant use!

Spiced Salt.

The great cook, Durand, of illustrious memory, advocated the use of spiced salt, which he said had often stood him in good stead. The following are the exact quantities he gave in his recipe.
Take twenty ounces of salt, four heads of cloves, two nutmegs, six laurel [bay] leaves, a stick of cinnamon, four whole black peppers, half a quarter of an ounce of basil leaves [not a typo- he means an eighth of an ounce], and the same quantity of coriander seeds; pound in a mortar, pass through a tammy, pound any pieces that remain over, pass through the tammy, and keep in tightly corked bottles.

From: 366 Menus and 1200 Recipes; by the Baron Brisse (originally published in 1868, this was transcribed from the eighth edition of the English translation).