Vegetarian Delight.

Nineteenth century vegetarians were something of a mystery to most of the populace in the English-speaking world, whose ideal meal had contained meat, and preferably plenty of it, for hundreds of years. Vegetarian events were wonderful fodder for journalists, who reported the proceedings - particularly the bills of fare - with varying degrees of amusement and disdain.

When the Vegetarian Society of New York held a picnic in June 1899, it was reported in some detail the following day in the New York Times – the reporter seeing fit to include a recipe for one of the dishes. I give you the article in its entirety, and hope you enjoy the insight into the vegetarian movement of the time.

VEGETARIANS HAVE A PICNIC.

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It was a Red-Letter Day for Potatoes, Onions, Cabbages, and Fruit

– Consumption of Meat Denounced.

The Vegetarian Society enjoyed a picnic yesterday afternoon on the grounds surrounding the home of the Rev. George Donaldson, at Edgewater-on-Hudson, N.J. Mr. A. Haviland, the Secretary of the society, and the Rev. George Donaldson welcomed the vegetarians.
During the laying of the vegetable feast many opinions were advanced as to why man should not eat meat. One woman who had presented a new succotash of radishes, potatoes, and beets said, that according to the matured opinions of eminent scientists, the custom of flesh eating leads to the “setting apart of a whole class of the population for the disgusting, brutalizing, and unwholesome occupation of butchery.”
Another mentioned the theory that life can be prolonged and health and happiness enhanced by eating vegetables only, and again it was heard that neither justice nor benevolence nor compassion can sanction the “revolting cruelties that are daily perpetrated in order to pamper perverted appetites. Still another held that vegetarianism was a protest against luxury, intemperance, and vice, and finally, when it was absolutely decided that old roast beef and Spring lamb and kidney stew were responsible for the entire gamut of sin and destruction, the feast of the day was begun.
There were potatoes cooked in such a variety of styles that one could not remember the names of all. There was plenty of haricots, peas, cauliflower, asparagus, lettuce, onions, a great array of tempting fruits, assorted nuts, and pickled cabbages. One of the members brought a dish made of peas and asparagus tips. It was served cold, in small dishes, with sliced radishes on top and mayonnaise dressing. The dish was called “mayonnaise succotash.”
A woman from Brooklyn brought a dish which rejoiced in the name of “Potato Charlotte.” Her recipe was to take boiled new potatoes sliced. She stewed them in milk, adding a dash of vanilla. When cold she spread over the top some whipped cream and sprinkled it with cinnamon.
One young woman who was heard to remark that she “wouldn’t even eat a slice of chicken if her life depended on it” brought to the gathering a recipe which she called “Vegetarian Delight’. She wrote the following recipe for it.

Take one whole young white cabbage. Chop fine in a bowl; then sprinkle with pepper and salt and add a dozen young silver onions, also chopped fine. Boil the whole then let it stand till cool. Take a lump of butter the size of an egg, a cup of sugar, four tablespoonsfuls of cinnamon and mix well together. To this add the cabbage and onions, also some carrots chopped very fine, and a quart of mashed potatoes. Cook the whole slowly in milk till done, and then serve. Can be served hot or cold.

After discussing at length how humane men and women revolt at the “cruelty, degrading sights, distressing cries, perpetual bloodshed, and other attendant horrors” which surround the slaughter of sentient animals, the picnic was ended.

Quotation for the Day

Sure I want to win and smash records, but winning medals is not like going to the market and getting cabbage.
Ante Kostelic.

Thanksgiving Food: Mock Turkey.

As the vegetarian reformist movement gathered force in the nineteenth century, cookbook writers turned their attention to the production of meatless meals that still paid familiar homage to tradition. A great deal of effort and evangelical zeal went into producing and promoting dishes that still looked vaguely like the “real thing” - begging the question of why a committed vegetarian would ever want something with a superficial resemblance to a dead animal on their place, regardless of its actual ingredients. Perhaps it helped the transition for those newly converted to vegetarianism, but it still seems a strange idea.

Before the usefulness of soy protein was recognised and promoted in the West (thanks in no small part to, of all people, the automobile entrepreneur Henry Ford in the 1930’s), the major substitute for animal meat was nut meat. The other thing that had to be factored into recipe adaptation by the vegetarian cook at this time was that most adherents and promoters also eschewed the use of condiments and spices of all sorts, including vinegar.

The author of a small cookery book Guide for Nut Cookery (published by the staunchly vegetarian Battle Creek organisation) in 1899, had this to say on the troublesome topic of a vegetarian Thanksgiving.

"The Thanksgiving dinner has been a great puzzler to the vegetarian housewife. “How can we ever celebrate Thanksgiving without a turkey?” has been a question which it has been hard to solve. I propose that we do have a turkey for Thanksgiving,- not the corpse of a bird whose life was sacrificed to satisfy our perverted appetites, but something which, although it looks like a real turkey, with neck, wings, legs, and even the drum-stick bones protruding, is only one made of nuts and grains. Then let us have the pumpkin pie, chicken croquettes, and fish all stuffed and baked, the salads, and lettuce,-in fact, all that Thanksgiving calls for; but we will use only wholesome material. We will substitute nut foods for the different meats, lemon-juice will take the place of vinegar, and nuts the place of animal fats. With painstaking, we shall have a better dinner than our sisters who have their platters ladened [sic] with the remains of a barn-yard fowl, and with cakes and pies filled with animal fats and spices. Besides this, we shall have a clearer mind, as well as a clear conscience; while those who eat meat are taking poisons into the system which benumb the brain, cloud the conscience, and render man unfit to meet the vesper hour and hold communion with his God."

And here is the author’s alternative Thanksgiving centerpiece – a gloriously time-consuming sculpture resembling a turkey, and named as a turkey – but without the turkey.

Roast Turkey.
To make a good-sized turkey, take 20 heaping tablespoonfuls of zwieola, 20 tablespoonfuls of No. 3 gluten, 8 tablespoonfuls of pecan meal, 8 tablespoonfuls of roasted almond meal, 8 tablespoonfuls of black walnut meal, 2 tablespoonfuls of peanut butter, 3 heaping teaspoonfuls of ground sage, 2 tablespoonfuls of grated onion, 2 teaspoonfuls of salt, 6 hard-boiled eggs, and 3 raw eggs. Put the zwieola in a large
pan and pour over it 5 cups of hot water, and let it soak for fifteen minutes ; then put the hard-boiled eggs through a sieve and add them to the zwieola ; add also the nut butter dissolved in water, beat the eggs and add them to the mixture with the other ingredients. Mix all very thoroughly ; if it is so dry_that it is crumbly, add more water, being careful not to get it too soft or it will not hold in shape well. A piece of sheet iron is nice to bake it on, as it can be more easily slipped off. Oil it with nut oil, and place on top of it a thick piece of muslin saturated with oil; upon this cloth form a turkey, making the breast full and high, and leaving a little piece for the neck. Press it together with the hands, oiling them with nut oil to keep them from sticking. Then
take a large tablespoonful of the mixture into one hand, and press into the center of it a large-sized stick of macaroni, which is long enough to protrude about two inches, after running the length of the leg ; with the hands oiled, shape it into the form of a turkey leg, using the white of an egg to make it stick to the body, and secure it by sticking pieces of macaroni through the leg, just below the bone, into the body,
carefully covering the end of the macaroni with a little of the mixture. Form the wings and attach them to the body in the same way in which the legs were secured. When the fowl is all formed and smooth, brush it over with a cloth dipped in nut oil, then bring up the cloth around the turkey and pin it together tight enough to hold the wings and legs in position. Then place in the oven and bake for an hour and a half. Remove from the oven, unpin the cloth, and with the shears cut off as much of it as possible without moving the turkey; spread the turkey with a mixture of beaten egg and roasted almond butter with a little salt added. Return to the oven and bake to a nice brown. Again remove from the oven and slide it into the platter on which it is to be served. The garnishing, in the cut, is cubes of cranberry jelly and parsley.

Postscript.
To see an example of a historic vegetarian Thanksgiving menu, featured in this blog in 2006, go here.

Quotation for the Day.
What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?
Erma Bombeck.

Quotation for the Day.
What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?
Erma Bombeck.

Extreme Raw Food, Part 2.

Yesterday’s brief insight into the early uncooked food movement of the nineteenth century aroused some interest (or should I say disgust?), so today I give you another glimpse into the mind-workings of the perpetrators. One of those responsible was a man called Eugene Christian, who not only wrote a book on the topic, but promoted the cause by organising New York’s first ‘Uncooked Banquet’, in 1903. It was, apparently, a feast of ‘marvelous dishes’ (vegetarian, no condiments of any sort) prepared without the ‘relic of barbarism’ that was a cooking fire (or heat in any other form), by the only ‘elementary cook’ in the city. It also provided a journalistic feast for the newspapers, who, as you can imagine, reported the event with great amusement. The menu, which is astonishing in its awfulness, is detailed in my forthcoming book Menus from History, which is to be released later in the year.

From the Preface of Eugene Christian’s book, Uncooked Foods & How to Use Them: A Treatise On How To Get The Highest Form Of Animal Energy From Food With Recipes for Preparation, Healthful Combinations and Menus (1924), here is his explication.

WHY THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN.

SOME years ago we, the authors of this work, both became so impaired in health as to almost totally disqualify us for the performance of our daily work. A very exhaustive study of our condition convinced us that it was caused mainly, if not wholly, by incorrect habits in eating. This brought forth a very careful and studied series of experiments in diet which was confined entirely to cooked foods, because we at that time accepted implicitly the common theory that foods could be predigested and improved by heat.
Failing utterly in this, our attention was turned toward what have been called natural foods, but what in reality mean food in its elementary or unchanged state. Less than a year of study and experimenting with this system of feeding resulted in the total elimination of all stomach disorders and our complete restoration to perfect health. From scientific research, in addition to these failures and successes, we have studied out a system of both eating and drinking, which has been tried by many others under our direction, and in every instance health, strength and vitality have come to those who have obeyed our instructions.
In order to bring this theory more conspicuously before the public we gave a seven course dinner or banquet of uncooked foods, which was attended by many distinguished New York people. It received much attention by the New York press, and was widely commented on all over this and foreign countries through the press exchanges. A flood of inquiries concerning the use of uncooked food, especially referring to their remedial values, followed this publicity. This gave the first hint of the great interest that the public is now taking in this method of living.

The dedication to the book is also worth repeating.

To the Women of America
on whom depend the future greatness
of our glorious country,
we most affectionately dedicate
this work.

Which is followed by this abomination:

We may live without poetry, music and art,
We may live without conscience, and live without heart;
We may live without friends, we may live without books,
And civilized man can live without cooks.
(Apologies to Owen Meredith.)

After many pages of explanation and exhortation, there are in the book a selection of recipes – or should that be ‘assembly instructions’, given that there is no application of heat required (apart from a couple of heavily and reluctantly justified exceptions)? The salad and fruit recipes are reasonable enough, for the obvious reason that even non-reformers of health serve them uncooked. A few recipes include ‘warm milk’ – presumably because it is merely warmed, not ‘cooked’?

Here, for your delectation, are a couple of ideas from the book:

Sweet Potato Pudding.
Sweet Potatoes, Eggs,
Cream, Nutmeg,
Sugar, Gelatine,
Milk.
Grate potatoes on a large grater and then drain on a sieve. To six heaping teaspoonfuls of potato add two of cream, two of sugar, yolk and beaten white of one egg, nutmeg or vanilla extract. Prepare heaping teaspoonful of jelly powder. Add to mixture and set in cold place. Turn out of mold and serve with cream.

Pea Or Bean Soup.
There is a pea and bean flour in the market from which soup is easily made by adding to it warm milk or cream. It should be made and allowed to stand an hour or two before serving.

Quotation for the Day.

It is certain that the custom of flesh eating among the ancients began with the direst necessity, with the choice between that or death by starvation.
Uncooked Foods & How to Use Them

Extreme Raw Food.

There was something in the air in the nineteenth century – something that suggested the need for change. Not change for change’s sake, but change in a better moral direction. Many reformists belonged to more than one movement, and there were many to chose from: women’s rights, anti-slavery, anti-vivisectionist, temperance and vegetarianism (and no doubt a few others).

There was a particularly demanding form of vegetarianism which advised against the use of all condiments – not even salt, and certainly no vinegar or spices of any sort – it being believed by the adherents to that movement that they were too stimulating to the passions and therefore predisposing to moral degeneracy. For reasons that no doubt were crystal clear to its followers, there was also an uncooked food movement.

From: The new hydropathic cook-book, by Russell Thacher Trall, published in New York in 1854, I give you the following recipes for bread. These recipes require no comment from me - they speak eloquently enough for themselves.

Uncooked Bread Cake.

For this and the two following recipes I am indebted to Miss E.M. French, of New London, who has experimented considerably in preparing food without cooking. The idea is sufficiently radical; but I doubt not the time will come when methods for preparing various articles of food with very little cooking if not without any, will be much more highly appreciated than can be expected at present.

Mix with half a pound of figs sufficient ground wheat - coarse Graham flour - to form a dough like well kneaded bread. The figs should be softened a little with hot water, which will also cleanse them, when they will readily yield to the kneading process. No water is required except what is necessary to soften the figs. The cake or bread may be rolled or cut in the form of biscuit. It should be made fresh whenever wanted for eating.

Unbaked Bread Cake

In this kind of bread or cake the ingredients are cooked before mixing, but not subsequently. To one quart of ground parched corn add a teacupful of boiled rice; mix the ingredients well and form a loaf by placing them in a pan wet with cold water. It may perhaps be improved by adding uncooked rice flour to form the loaf when it need not be placed in the pan but may be rolled or cut in the form of biscuit.


Quotation for the Day.

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.

Meat From The Jungle.

Today, September 20^th

The Pulitzer-prize winning author Upton Sinclair was born on this day in 1878. Twenty-eight years later to the day his book The Jungle was published – and what a stir it caused! Sinclair was a passionate socialist and intended his book to expose the awful working conditions of ordinary wage-earners - the victims of expoitation by greedy capitalist bosses in the meat-packing industry. His novel also described the appalling public health problems posed by the slaughterhouses - and as it turned out, this was the issue picked up by the reading public, who were outraged and vocal. A couple of sentences will suffice as examples of the situation described by Sinclair:

“ … the first cattle of the morning were just making their appearance; and so, with scarcely time to look about him, and none to speak to any one, he fell to work. It was a sweltering day in July, and the place ran with steaming hot blood - one waded in it on the floor. The stench was almost overpowering …. ”

“ … In summer the stench of the warm lard would be nauseating …”

Animal activists got plenty of ammunition too from the book too:

“The shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing - for once started upon that journey, the hog never came back; at the top of the wheel he was shunted off upon a trolley, and went sailing down the room. And meantime another was swung up, and then another, and another, until there was a double line of them, each dangling by a foot and kicking in frenzy - and squealing. The uproar was appalling, perilous to the eardrums; one feared there was too much sound for the room to hold - that the walls must give way or the ceiling crack. There were high squeals and low squeals, grunts, and wails of agony; there would come a momentary lull, and then a fresh outburst, louder than ever, surging up to a deafening climax. It was too much for some of the visitors - the men would look at each other, laughing nervously, and the women would stand with hands clenched, and the blood rushing to their faces, and the tears starting in their eyes.”

There is no doubt that the public uproar over the public health issues exposed in The Jungle that contributed significantly to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. It is good to know that novelists can influence politics.

The book also did no harm to the vegetarian cause either – and after all that blood and squealing, the only suitable recipe for today is something gentle and vegetarian, don’t you think? From Mrs. Mills’ Reform Cookery (1909), here is an “instead of sausages” recipe, and it fits nicely into the Variations on a Theme of Yorkshire Pudding suggested by a recent post.

Toad-in-a-Hole.
Make the sausages the same as in previous recipe*, only using brown lentils instead of German lentils. Put in a buttered pie-dish and pour over the following

Batter.
Beat up one or two eggs. Add 3 tablespoonfuls flour, and by degrees two gills milk, also seasoning of grated onion, chopped parsley, white pepper, "Extract," &c.

*Sausages.
are made of the same ingredients as savoury brick**. Pound well in a basin, so as to have all the materials nicely blended, or put in a saucepan over gentle heat, and mash well with a wooden spoon. See that the seasoning is right. Some chopped tomatoes and mushrooms are an improvement, also some grated onion, ketchup, and "Extract." These should be put in saucepan with a little butter until lightly cooked, then the lentils, &c., should be added, the whole well mixed and turned out to cool. When quite cold, flour the hands and form into small sausages. Brush over with beaten egg and fry, or put on greased baking tin and bake till a crisp brown. They may need a little basting, or to be turned over to brown equally.

**Savoury Brick
Take about 2 teacupfuls cooked German lentils - not too moist. Put in a basin and add a cupful fine bread crumbs, and a cupful cold boiled rice or about half as much mashed potatoes. Add any extra seasoning--a little ketchup, Worcester sauce, Marmite or Carnos Extract, &c. - also a spoonful of melted butter. Mix well with a fork and bind with one or two beaten eggs, reserving a little for brushing. Shape into a brick or oval, and press together as firmly as possible. Brush over with beaten egg, put in buttered tin, and bake for half-an-hour. Or it may be put in saucepan with 1 oz. butter or Nut Butter that has been made very hot. Cover and braize for 10
minutes. Turn and cook for another 10 minutes. Add a little flour and seasoning to the butter, and then a cupful boiling water, stock, or diluted "Extract," and allow to simmer a little longer. Serve with garnish of beetroot or tomatoes.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Crime and Punishment in the Kitchen.

Quotation for the Day …

Veal is the quintessential Lonely Guy meat. There's something pale and lonely about it, especially if it doesn't have any veins. It's so wan and Kierkegaardian. You just know it's not going to hurt you. Bruce Jay Friedman, The Lonely Guy Cookbook.