Food for Fool’s Day.

Naturally today’s story must have an April Fool Feel. Last year someone thought that the Old Foodie Joke was that I published the story a day early. I didn’t. It was already April Fool’s Day in this part of the world. I won’t tell you which country the person came from, but when I related the story to The Old Foodie Spouse, he rolled his eyes and said “Only in A….., Only in A….. ” . Sometimes (sigh) the rest of you need reminding that those of us down here Down Under have done a full day’s work before you have your first caffeine fix for the day. Think of me as an early-reminding system for special days, if you like.

I cannot send you back to 2006, because Fool’s Day fell on a Saturday, so no post. In 2007 there was a concession to the joking spirit of the day with a story on ‘Surprising Food’. In 2008 we had the Great Spaghetti Harvest - complete with 1950’s BBC footage (thankyou, You Tube) – still the best ever April Fool’s Day joke. Ever. Ever. Ever. No matter how Ba! Humbug! you feel about Fool’s Day, do yourself a favour and click on that link and laugh out loud. Only in Britain, folks, Only in 1950’s Britain could that joke have been played out so well.

The spaghetti harvest story is impossible to top. Today, at risk of appearing drearily obvious, I am going to talk about Fools. No, I don’t mean those of you who can’t think outside your own time-zone. I mean the very old-fashioned dessert dish. A food ‘fool’, according to the OED is “a dish composed of fruit stewed, crushed, and mixed with milk, cream, or custard”. The first supporting quotation given is from Florio’s Italian/English Dictionary of 1598 (so contemprary with Shakespeare), which is a curiously roundabout way of explaining an English dish. The definition is “Mantiglia, a kinde of clouted creame called a foole or a trifle in English.”

So, did a ‘fool’ always contain fruit? And what is the difference between a fool and a trifle? We would probably say today that a trifle has cake in it (the Old Foodie Spouse refers to trifle as ‘wet cake and custard’), but does that mean that a fool cannot have cake? And if not cake, what about ‘sippets’ (bread), as in this definition-that-is-almost-a-recipe, from Holme’s Armoury of 1688:

“Foole is a kind of Custard, but more crudelly; being made of Cream, Yolks of Eggs, Cinamon, Mace boiled: and served on Sippets with sliced Dates, Sugar, and white andred Comfits, strawed thereon.”

Mantiglia - the dish - remains a mystery to me. Google Translate tells me that mantiglia means mantilla. Someone with a good knowledge of sixteenth century Italian food please explain the food connection. Is it somewhat like the English ‘Cabbidge Cream’ in which the very thick cream is rippled and spooned and arranged like crinkly cabbage leaves? Is the cream made to suggest a lace mantilla?

P.S. There was a Rhubarb Fool from the 1870’s and Hannah Glasse’s Gooseberry Fool from 1747 in previous posts, should you want more substance to your recipes.

Quotation for the Day.

Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.
Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet.

Blancmange and Black Caps.

Our old friend Parson James Woodforde had a fine dinner and supper with friends on this day in 1783. As was his habit, he recorded the meals in his journal:

“…..went by appointment to Mr. Priests and there dined, supped and spent the Evening…. We had for Dinner some fresh Salmon and Oyster Sauce, a boiled Turkey and Oyster Sauce, a fore Qr. of London Lamb, mince Pyes, &c … We did not sup till near 10 at night – and then we had a very handsome supper – A Couple of boiled Fowls and Oyster Sauce, a rosted Hare wch. I sent them – one Duck rosted, a hot Tongue, Tarts, Italian Flummery – Blamanche [blancmange], black Caps and Sweetmeats. I did not get to bed till after 12 tonight.”

That was certainly a substantial supper for 10 o’clock at night! The Black Caps were a favourite eighteenth century dish of baked apples – the caramelisation of the sugar on top giving it its name. A dish worthy of reviving, I believe – especially with Orange-Flower water included. A nice homely dish after some of the more outlandish that we have had this week.


To make Black Caps.
Take a dozen large Pippins, or Golden-runnets, cut them in halves, and lay them single, with the flat sides downward in a pretty large Mazareen, as close by each other as they can lie; then squeeze a Lemon into two spoonfuls of Orange Flower-water, and pour over them; shred some Lemon-peel very fine, and shake between them; then grate over them some double refin’d Sugar; put them into a quick Oven, and they will be done in half an Hour.
Cook’s and Confectioner’s Dictionary, John Nott (1724)

The story of blancmange is a long and fascinating one, and I have covered it piecemeal in previous posts. Two fourteenth century versions are HERE and HERE, and there is a wonderfully artistic nineteenth century Coffee Blancmange from the Baron Brisse HERE. Methinks I must find some inbetween versions to properly demonstrate its evolution from a medieval sweetened and spiced chicken/rice/almond milk “porridge” to a bland, wobbly gelatinised and coloured modern dessert.


Quotation for the Day …

Happy and successful cooking doesn't rely only on know-how; it comes from the heart, makes great demands on the palate and needs enthusiasm and a deep love of food to bring it to life.
Georges Blanc, Ma Cuisine des Saisons

The Laws of Eating.

Today the only worries we have in relation to our daily meals are paying the grocery bill, and eating locally and ethically in a manner acceptable to the nutrition police. Mind you, the latter can be quite tricky – it must be low-fat, low-carb (I live in terror of a fashion for low-protein), high-fibre, low GI, additive-free (unless the additives be vitamins, minerals, good bacteria, natural flavours and colours). But I digress. The only real police you might have to worry about are the International Environment Police (I am sure they exist) if you tuck into someone from an endangered species. In the past, it was not always the case, and if you were unlucky or greedy you could fall foul of Sumptuary Laws.

Most sumptuary laws related to what you could or could not wear, but some determined what you could and could not eat. There are a number of reasons for the enactment of sumptuary laws. The moral, of course – to minimise the sins of pride, gluttony, or lust (the degree of neckline plunge has previously been legislated). The economic - to protect people from themselves by reducing the temptation to fall into debt; maybe also to provide jobs (enforcers) and raise revenue (fines)? And, perhaps most importantly - to reinforce the social structure in a very visible way, by ruling that only those of a certain rank could wear fur, or the colour scarlet for example, or have more than a couple of blackbirds in a dish.

In 1517, early in the reign of Henry VIII, to reduce the excessive fare at feasts (isn’t that the whole point of feasts?), it was proclaimed that the number of dishes served depended on the rank of the highest person present. A feast with a cardinal could have nine dishes, a parliamentary lord, lord mayor, or knight of the garter could have six, and (to prove that money also talks) anyone who could spend ₤40 a year or whose fortune was worth ₤500 could have three. The problem with enforcing laws of that kind is that the enforcers are from the same class who enjoy the feasting too, so it has rarely worked in practice.

In 1541, Archbishop Cranmer (the man who facilitated Henry VIII’s divorce so that he could marry Anne Boleyn, converted to Catholicism during the reign of Mary I, then recanted and was burned as a Protestant heretic) took his clergy to task on their indulgent lifestyles. His reforming regulations said that a meal for an Archbishop could include not more than six dishes of meat, and four of ‘second dishes’(what we would now call ‘dessert’ dishes), a bishop five of meat and three of second dishes, a dean or archdeacon four of meat and two of second dishes, and the ordinary clergy only two dishes of meat. The rule was honoured more in the breach than in the observance, and everyone gave up on it after a few months. The details are more interesting in their original language, so here they are, in the words of Henry VIII’s antiquary, John Leland (1506-1552)

“In the yeare of our Lord MDXLI it was agreed and condescended upon, as wel by the common consent of both tharchbishops and most part of the bishops within this realme of Englande, as also of divers grave men at that tyme, both deanes and archdeacons, the fare at their tables to be thus moderated.

“First, that tharchbishop should never exceede six divers kindes of fleshe, or six of fishe, on the fishe days; the bishop not to exceede five, the deane and archdeacon not above four, and al other under that degree not above three; provided also that tharchbishop myght have of second dishes four, the bishop three; and al others under the degree of a bishop but two. As custard, tart, fritter, cheese or apples, peares, or two of other kindes of fruites. Provided also, that if any of the inferior degree dyd receave at their table, any archbishop, bishop, deane, or archdeacon, or any of the laitie of lyke degree, viz. duke, marques, earle, viscount, baron, lorde, knyght, they myght have such provision as were mete and requisite for their degrees. Provided alway that no rate was limited in the receavying of any ambassadour. It was also provided that of the greater fyshes or fowles, there should be but one in a dishe, as crane, swan, turkey cocke, hadocke, pyke, tench; and of lesse sortes but two, viz. capons two, pheasantes two, conies two, and woodcockes two. Of lesse sortes, as of patriches, the archbishop three, the bishop and other degrees under hym two. Of blackburdes, the archbishop six, the bishop four, the other degrees three. Of larkes and snytes (snipes) and of that sort but twelve. It was also provided, that whatsoever is spared by the cutting of, of the olde superfluitie, shoulde yet be provided and spent in playne meates for the relievyng of the poore. Memorandum, that this order was kept for two or three monethes, tyll by the disusyng of certaine wylful persons it came to the olde excesse.”

To assist you to flout the old law, here are a couple of nice recipes from a cookbook of the time – A Proper newe Booke of Cokerye (about 1545)

To make a Custarde.

A Custarde the coffyn must be fyrste hardened in the oven, and then take a quart of creame and fyve or syxe yolkes of egges, and beate them well together, and put them into the creame, and put in Suger and small Raysyns and Dates sliced, and put into the coffyn butter or els marrowe, but on the fyshe dayes put in butter.

For to make wardens in Conserue. [Pears in Syrup]

Fyrste make the syrope in this wyse, take a quarte of good romney and putte a pynte of claryfyed honey, and a pounde or a halfe of suger, and myngle all those together over the fyre, till tyme they seeth, and then set it to cole. And thys is a good sirope for manye thinges, and wyll be kepte a yere or two. Then take thy warden and scrape cleane awaye the barke, but pare them not, and seeth them in good redde wyne so that they be wel soked and tender, that the wyne be nere hande soked into them, then take and strayne them throughe a cloth or through a strayner into a vessell, then put to them of this syrope aforesayde tyll it be almost fylled, and then caste in the pouders, as fyne canel, synamon, pouder of gynger and such other, and put it in a boxes and kepe it yf thou wylt and make thy syrope as thou wylt worke in quantyte, as if thou wylt worke twenty wardens or more or lesse as by experience.

Quotation for the Day …

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. Ernest Hemingway.

Condensed milk to go.

Today I am going to introduce you to The Milky Way Cookbook, published in 1914 by the Nestlé company to promotes its condensed milk. This is the Australian version, I don’t know if it appears elsewhere.

It is a very little book, measuring only a little over 11 x 14 cm (4 ¼ x by 5 ½ inches) – but what a powerhouse of wisdom it is! Some of the wisdom is a little scary – like the advice on how to prepare condensed milk for babies. I am pretty sure that whatever you do to condensed milk it is never suitable for babies, but Nestlé clearly disagree. The book is no mere recipe book. It includes ‘Hints on Etiquette’, plus ‘an amusing extract from a seventeenth century work called The Ladies Dictionary’ (also etiquette advice). There is an article on ‘Frauds and Swindles: Traps for Housewives: A number of the most widely practiced frauds by which swindlers seek to victimize the female occupants of the home’ by the well known writer Mr. G. Sidney Paternoster of the Truth newspaper (when did we stop using ‘swindler’ and start using ‘con-man’?). Every single page, in addition to a recipe has one or two household remedies or pieces of advice on such things as ‘Pores, to contract’, ‘Unpermissable Jests’, ‘Husbands, Treatment of’ and ‘Parental ignorance.’

There is yet more! Every page also has at its top and bottom, some little aphorism such as ‘Pleasure that comes too thick grows Fulsome’, and ‘Better a portion in a wife than with a wife’ and ‘Do in the Hole as you would in the Hall.’

This recipe sounds quite good.

Ginger Cream Ice.
½ pint Nestlé’s Milk [prepared to a formula of four tablespoons of the milk to three quarters of a pint of water.]
1 pint water
3 tablespoonfuls Ginger Syrup
6 oz. Preserved Ginger.
¼ pint Nestlé’s (whipped) Cream
6 eggs.

Heat the condensed milk and water together, pour on to the beaten eggs, strain into a jar standing in a pan of boiling water, and stir till the custard thickens. Pound the ginger and rub through a hair sieve, then add it to the custard with the syrup. When quite cold, stir in the stiffly beaten whipped cream, and freeze.

On the Naming of Dishes, Part 4.

It never ceases to amaze me – the sheer number of dishes named after clerical and other religious folk and the general religious life. Rather more than named after the local plumber or apothecary or doctor. The tradition is quite a few hundred years old, at least. Off the top of my head, there is La Varenne’s ‘Pie after the Cardinal’s Way’ in the mid-seventeenth century, and M. Menon a century later with Tenche au Pontiffe and Eggs à la Huguenotte (sometimes called Presbyterian Eggs), for starters. We have enjoyed some of them already on this blog – Pig White Monks Fashion, Nuns’ Cakes, Nuns’ Sighs, Macaroni à la Pontiffe, and Monastery Soup, for example. There are many more, and I have a couple up my sleeve for the near future.

The more recent ones, from Britain in the nineteenth century – seem to be predominantly sweet puddings. There are many variations of the Curate’s pudding, My lady abesses’ pudding, and The novice’s pudding just to give you the idea. Why is this? There are a lot of questions going begging here. Is the English vicar particularly sweet-toothed? Or poor and underfed? Is it a way of sweetening him up so he will pass on a good word about you?

Just to prove that it is not only the English that curry favour with their local heavenly advocates and advisors, here is an American version from Good housekeeping's book of menus, recipes, and household discoveries, published about 1922.

Caramel Bavarian Cream, Parsonage Style.
2 cupfuls milk , 4 egg yolks, 2 tablespoonfuls sugar 1 teaspoonful vanilla, ¾ cupful sugar 2 tablespooonfuls granulated gelatin, 2 cupfuls cream ½ cupful cold water.
Scald the milk and pour over the egg-yolks beaten slightly with the two tablespoonfuls of sugar. Caramelize the three-fourths cupful sugar and dissolve in the boiling water. Add to the soft custard. Add the gelatin which has been softened in the cold water. Strain into a bowl and set in ice water; when it begins to thicken add the vanilla and the two cupfuls of cream beaten stiff. Mold and chill. If cream is not at hand, the whites of eggs beaten stiff can be used in its place, the result being different, but still delicious.

Now, can anyone tell me (random guesses allowed) what makes this variation on the well-known theme of Bavarian Cream - ‘Parsonage Style’?

I eagerly await your examples from other religious persuasions. I can only think of the eggplant dish called something like ‘The Imam Fainted’ - supposedly on account of the profligate use of olive oil in its preparation. Do we have The Rabbi’s Rhubarb Tart? The Shaman’s Sherbet? The Pagan’s Popovers?

Quotation for the Day …

We plan, we toil, we suffer-in the hope of what? A camel-load of idol's eyes? The title deeds of Radio City? The empire of Asia? A trip to the moon? No, no, no, no. Simply to wake just in time to smell coffee and bacon and eggs. J.B.Priestley.

Food Signals.

July 23

I have a wonderful find for you today! Have you ever wondered about a quiet life? A very quiet life. Life in a silent monastic order? (I can hear a lot of my friends roaring with laughter at the thought of myself adhering to a no-speaking rule. But I digress.)

Lots of questions about the life. How would one communicate to Sister Bertha that she wais a miserable, nasty old biddy? That one’s cell was too austere, and could one please brighten it up with a pic of Brad Pitt? That one was not up to spending one more day on one’s knees in the herb garden – wasn’t there enough time on the knees already? An how would one get another ladleful of the delicious monastery gruel or morsel of hard monastery bread at dinner-time?

The sisters of the Monastery of Sion in Middlesex in the fifteenth century had a ‘Table of Signs’ to get around the rules of silence. I have searched the list, and cannot find the signs for the cursing, lusting, and work-avoiding issues that came immediately to my own mind (I am clearly not monastery material), but luckily a large percentage of the signs relate to dinner-table manners are there. I give you a selection, just in case you ever need them. They do also indicate that perhaps the dining life was not too austere.

Depending on whether you want white or brown bread:

BREDE: Make with thy two thombes and two forefyngers a roude compas. And if thou wole haue white make the sign thereof. And if brown, toche thy cowll sleue.

So if your desire is for ‘White’ bread you would:

Drawe thy two right fyngers by thy cheke douwarde.

Want butter on your bread?

BUTTUR OR OTHER FATNES. Draw thy two right upper fyngers to and fro on thy left palme.

Ale to wash it down?:

Make the signe of drynk and drawe thy hande displaied afore thyn eer dunwarde

The sign of drink being:

DRYNK. Bowe thy right fore fyngere and up it on thy neder lyppe.

For an Egg:

Bowe thy right fore fyngere’ upon they left thombe to and fro. As though thou should pill [peel] eggs.

And the fish or the meat today, sister?

FYSSHE. Wagge thy hand displaied sidelynges, in maner of a fissh taill.

FLESSHE. Reyse up with thy rigt fyngers the skyn of thy left hande.

And a nice piece of fruit to finish off?:

PERE. Joyne all thy fyngers in length of thy right hande and wagge douwarde.

I particularly love the fish request!

Perhaps more of these signs another day, if you are interested.

As for the recipe for the day, we have previously had Nun’s Sighs, Monastery Soup, Pig White Monks Fashion.

Today I give you:

The Lady Abbess’ Pudding.
Take the thin rind of a fresh lemon, and let it soak for half an hour in half a pint of new milk, then sweeten with two tablespoonfuls of sugar. Put the whole into a saucepan, and when well heated, add two large fresh eggs and the milk of a cocoa-nut, and put the custard aside to cool. Shred four ounces of beef suet very finely, grate two ounces of fresh cocoa-nut and stone and mince two ounces of Muscatel raisins. Cut four ounces of stale bread into thin slices. Butter a plain round mould, and stick raisins upon it in even rows. Put a slice of bread at the bottom, and place upon it a little suet, a few raisins, a little chopped lemon-rind and juice, three grates of nutmeg, and a little custard, and repeat until all the ingredients are used, being careful to place bread and custard on the top. Let the pudding soak for an hour, then lay a buttered paper on the top, tie in a floured cloth, plunge into boiling water, and let it boil quickly until done enough. Turn it out carefully, and serve with the following sauce in a tureen. Mix a teaspoonful of arrowroot very smoothly with two table-spoonfuls fo cocoa-nut milk. Pour over it a quarter of a pint of boiling syrup flavoured with lemon rind and cinnamong, stir all together until the mixture is nearly cold, then add two tablespoonfuls of cream, a few drops of vanilla essence, and a dessertspoonful of brandy.
[From: Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery. c1870]

Quotation for the Day ..

What an idiot is man to believe that abstaining from flesh, and eating fish, which is so much more delicate and delicious, constitutes fasting.
Napoleon Bonaparte ?

Yum-Yum

June 9 ...

Two years ago on this very day I told you about a banquet given by the Scottish Geographical Society one hundred and eighteen years ago to this very day. The banquet was given in honour of Henry Morton Stanley, the perpetrator of the famous words spoken in Africa in 1871 - ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume?’

One banquet, so many possible subjects to discuss. Executive decisions to be made on a daily basis. Such is the burden of a food history blogger. There was something called ‘Niam-Niam Cream’ on this menu, but I avoided the topic two years ago out of sheer ignorance of its composition. That ignorance remains, and will probably persist forever, unless the testing notes of the chef turn up in some dusty Scottish archive, but a story can be wrung from everything however, and I do believe I have found one in the name of this intriguing item.

The Niam-Niam area people of Central Africa of (according to the OED) ‘mixed Negroid descent’, whatever that means. More specifically, it appears that they come from the area that is now called the eastern Sudan. The name means ‘great eaters’, and history or legend say that this particularly refers to their cannibalistic tendencies. It is interesting, this story, in view of my blog post yesterday about the new book Human Cuisine. (Self-promotion Alert coming up!). I do not know if the Niam-Niam people feature in the book - I do not know what else features in it apart from my own contribution, until I receive my complimentary copy. But I digress.

The name of these peoples is apparently pronounced ‘Yum-Yum’. When I found this out (I am no longer sure of the route I took to this point), I hied me off to the Oxford English Dictionary. On yum, the OED says it is ‘echoic’, in other words it is ‘an exclamation of pleasurable anticipation, with implication of sensual or gustatory satisfaction; frequently reduplicated as yum-yum, etc.’

So, is the OED wrong, and the word and the word comes to us from this African tribe? Or is the OED partially right, and it is echoic – but it is globally echoic, because what ever tribe we come from in the world, we all make similar mouth-humming sounds when enjoying a delicious morsel?

I cannot provide a recipe for Niam-Niam Cream, as it must have been an invention of the chef in honour of the famous guest, or perhaps a simple tweaking of an existing ‘cream’ recipe. The following pudding is yummy enough, so it will do.

Cocoa-Nut Pudding.
A quarter of a pound of cocoa-nut, grated.
A quarter of a pound of powdered white sugar.
Three ounces and a half of fresh butter.
The whites only of six eggs.
A table-spoonful of wine and brandy mixed.
Halfa tea-spoonful of rose-water.
Break up a cocoa-nut, and take the thin brown skin carefully off, with a knife. Wash all the pieces in cold water, and then wipe them dry with a clean towel. Weigh a quarter of a pound of cocoa-nut, and grate it very fine, into a soup-plate.
Stir the butter and sugar to a cream, and add the liquor and rose-water gradually to them. Beat the whites only, of six eggs, till they stand alone on the rods ; and then stir the beaten white of egg, gradually, into the butter and sugar. Afterwards, sprinkle in, by degrees, the grated cocoa-nut, stirring hard all the time. Then stir all very well at the last.
Have ready a puff-paste, sufficient to cover the bottom, sides, and edges of a soup-plate. Put in the mixture, and bake it in a moderate oven, about half an hour.
Grate loaf-sugar over it, when cool.
[Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes and Sweetmeats, By Eliza Leslie, 1836]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Delicious.

Quotation for the Day …

It is, of course, entirely possible to cook without using wine. It is also possible to wear suits and dresses made out of gunny sacks, but who wants to?
Morrison Wood.

Tarts for Travellers.

May 20 ...

Viscount John Byng took to the English country road in the eighteenth century for a variety of reasons, and luckily for us he kept a meticulous record of his observations. We have met him a couple of times already - once to share his horrid meal of ‘raw, rank mutton chops and some cold hard potatoes’, and another time when he fared very sumptuously on ‘Cold Beef, Cold Veal, and Gooseberry Tart’. He had another gooseberry tart experience on this day in 1789, but it was not so pleasant.

“Wellwyn, May 20^th 1789. Mrs S. Talk’d about Mutton chops; but I stuck to my demand of cold meat, with a goosebery tart; and was right, for she instantly produced a cold Tongue, and a cold Fillet of Veal: as for her fusty old tart of last years fruit, I open’d the Lid, and closed it tightly down for the next Comer.”

The Viscount was, perhaps optimistic in expecting a pie of fresh gooseberries so early in the season? Or am I out of touch with the English seasons?

Gooseberry tart was a staple in inns and ordinary households at the time because the fruit grew without much effort on the part of humans, and it lent itself well to preserving. Since late medieval times gooseberries had been used to add a sour note to rich meat and fish (it was regularly paired with mackeral), along with barberries and lemon, but by the seventeenth century was firmly employed in the pies and tarts of the country. We could digress here into a discussion of was John’s ‘tart’ really a pie, as it clearly had a lid, and some would consider it therefore a pie, but such a crucial debate takes place in my upcoming book The Pie: A Celebratory History, and redundancy is, well – redundant.

Instead, we will consider the name ‘gooseberry’. A silly name. Nothing at all to do with geese, unless some long-forgotten method of force-feeding gooseberry pie instead of figs to geese to fatten their livers explains it. Even the Oxford English Dictionary gives up. They were ‘goosegogs’ to me as a child in the north of England, and in some parts they are called fea-berries, but the OED offers nothing there either. For a foolishly-named fruit the only suitable recipe is the foolishly-named fool, which is a trifling form of dessert like a trifle without the texture.

Gooseberry Fool.
Take two quarts of gooseberries, set them on the fire in about a quart of water. When they begin to simmer, turn yellow, and begin to plump, throw them into a cullender to drain the water out ; then with the back of a spoon carefully squeeze the pulp, throw the sieve into a dish, make them pretty sweet, and let them stand till they are cold. In the mean time take two quarts of new milk, and the yolks of four eggs beat up with a little grated nutmeg; stir it softly over a slow fire; when it begins to simmer, take it off, and by degrees stir it into the gooseberries. Let it sland till it is cold, and serve it up. If you make it with cream, you need not put any eggs in: and if it is not thick enough, it is only boiling more gooseberries, But that you must do as you think proper.
[The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. Hannah Glasse 1747]

Tomorrow’s Story …

A Prodigious Pike.

Quotation for the Day …

Avoid fruits and nuts. You are what you eat. Jim Davis (‘Garfield’)

Anzac Day.

April 25 ...

Today is Anzac Day in Australia, the day that we pay homage to the brave men who fought and died at Gallipoli. It is a public holiday, so there will be many picnics and BBQ’s later in the day.

Anzac biscuits are the food most associated with the day, and we have looked at their history on a previous Anzac Day (see the links below), so today I give you a couple of recipes with Aussie names, just for fun. They are proof of the idea that each nation re-names the classics in its own honour – the following could just as easily be Irish Stew and Fruit Bread.

They are from an undated version of The Coronation Cookery Book, compiled by the Country Women’s Association of NSW.

Drovers Dream.
Flour and season 6 thick shoulder chops, place in a casserole. Fry 1 medium sliced onion in butter, place in the casserole with the chops, add 12 small sliced turnips with sufficient water to cover. Bake in a moderate oven until chops are tender – about 1 hour. Remove cover the last 15 minutes. Serve with small new potatoes sprinkled with chopped parsley and melted butter.

Bushmens’ Brownie.
Use 4 cups of flour, 1 cup each of sugar, dripping, currants, and raisins, 1 teaspoon each of baking soda, cream of tartar, spice, and cinnamon, and sufficient milk to mix. Rub the dripping into the flour in which the soda, cream of tartar, spice, and cinnamon have been mixed and sifted. Add the sugar, currants, and raisins, and mix with milk to make a dough slightly stiffer than that of fruit cake. Place in a greased meat dish and bake for one hour.

Previous Aussie Food Stories.

Last Year’s Anzac Day Story:
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2007/04/aussie-war-cake.html

From Hardtack to Anzacs – on Companion site (about ANZAC BISCUITS).
http://companiontotheoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2006/04/from-hardtack-to-anzacs.html

Lamingtons: the first recipe (so far).
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2006/01/barons-hat-and-other-mysteries.html

The Pavlova: Aussie or Kiwi? The debate.
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2007/01/pavlova-story.html

Tinned Meats, Australian.
http://companiontotheoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2007/01/tinned-meats-australian.html

Australian Meat, English Pie.
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2007/01/australian-meat-english-pie.html

Damper
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2008/03/unconspicuous-consumption.html

and Damper 2.
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2008/03/yesterdays-promised-post-is-postponed.html

Monday’s Story …

Bread and Mutiny.

Quotation for the Day …

Always eat grapes downward -- that is eat the best grapes first; in this way there will be none better left on the bunch, and each grape will seem good down to the last. If you eat the other way, you will not have a good grape in the lot. Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

Pi(e) No. 5

March 14 ...

Pi day dawns. In gratitude to the mathematicians of the world who do mathematics ungrudgingly, leaving me free of the worry of it, I give a thanksgiving pie. A thanksgiving pumpkin pie of course, even though I am from the wrong continent(s) entirely for such a tradition. Or am I?

Once upon a time there was ‘a kynde of Melones’ called ‘pompones’ or ‘pompion’. Certainly the pompion was known in England by 1526, when it was described this way in the Grete Herball of Peter Treveris. The term may have been used fairly loosely for a number of edible gourds, but let us stay in the spirit of the day and consider a pompion was close enough to what we would call a pumpkin today (or maybe a squash). There are many recipes for pompion pie in English cookbooks, and when the early seventeenth century English went to the new colony across the Atlantic, they took their cookbooks with them. The pompion/pumpkin pie thrived in its new home so well - as it simultaneously slipped into an elegant decline in its ‘old’ - that it all but forgot its heritage.

Its heritage was not pure Anglo of course (but then the English are a mongrel race if ever we were one) – it seems it had an Italian parent. An ancestor of the pumpkin pie appears in a book published in Venice in the sixteenth century – an ancestor containing cow’s udder - but a recogniseable pumpkin pie nontheless. The first edition of Epulario was in 1516, but it is accepted to be a plagiarised copy of the work of Maestro Martino of Como at least half a century before. The recipe I give you today is from the 1598 English translation, grandly entitled Epulario, Or, The Italian Banquet; Wherein is shewed the maner how to dresse and prepare all kind of Flesh, Foules, or Fishes. As also how to make Sauces, Tartes, Pies, &c. After the Manner of all Countries. Translated out of the Italian into English..

To make a Tart of Pompeons.
Take Pompeons and make them cleane and grate them as you doe Cheese, and boile them a little in broth and milk, then take as much Cheese as aforesaid, adde to it also a little old Cheese, take also a pound of the panch [paunch] of a Hogge, or a Cowes Udder well sodden [boiled] and chopped small, and if you will you may use Butter instead of those two things aforesaid, or Suet, adding to it halfe a pound of Sugar, a little Saffron and Sinamon with a quart of milk, and Egges, as need requireth. And when you thinke the Pompeons are sodden, take them up and straine them, and colour it with Saffron, then make a crust of past under it, put it in a pan, and make a soft fire both under and over it, and being half baked, cover it with Wafers or such like stuffe instead of an upper crust, and being thorow baked, straw it with Sugar and Rosewater.

Monday’s Story …

A dispensation for St Pat’s Day.

Quotation for the Day …

Her washing ended with the day,
Yet lived she at its close,
And passed the long, long night away
In darning ragged hose.
But when the sun in all its state
Illumed the Eastern skies,
She passed about the kitchen grate
And went to making pies.
‘The Wife’ Phoebe Cary (1824-1871)