Green peas from Adam and Eve.

Today, November 3rd …

Today is the anniversary in 1952, of the introduction of frozen peas by the Birdseye company, which set me thinking about pease, peas, and petits pois, as well as food preservation and food snobbery.

Freezing is only a modern way of keeping the crop after all, and I am told that a lot of chefs prefer to use them over the fresh variety. I’ll bet they don't admit it though. As for canned peas, they say the French prefer them over frozen, which is either malicious gossip or a dirty little Gallic secret.

From ancient times, “pease”, or field peas were grown specifically for drying, and provided basic sustenance for the poor. Garden peas were developed and perfected later, and by the second half of the seventeenth century, the French court was in raptures over petits pois. Eating fresh peas from the pod was so ridiculously extravagant, they became à la mode almost overnight with the rich and powerful, or at least their mistresses. The Marquise de Maintenon, secret second wife of Louis XIV summed it all up in a letter in 1695:

" There are some ladies who, after having supped with the King, and well supped too, help themselves to peas at home before going to bed at the risk of indigestion. It is both a fashion and a madness."

Here is my favourite old recipe for peas (although the “Green Peas Tart” nearly won), from a little book called “Adam’s luxury, and Eve’s cookery; or, the kitchen-garden display’d …”, published in England in 1774. An intriguing title, is it not? The sisterhood would say that some things haven’t changed for centuries.

Peas the Portuguese Way.
Wash your Peas, cut in some Lettuce, with a Lump of Sugar, some fine Oil, a few Mint Leaves cut small, with Parsley, Onions, Shallots, Garlick, Winter Savory, Nutmeg, Salt, Pepper, and a little Broth; put them over the Fire, and when ‘tis almost ready, poach some new Eggs in it, making a Place for each Egg to lie in; then cover your Stew pan again, and boil your Eggs with a little fire upon the Cover; then slide them into your Dish, and serve them.

Makes Eggs Florentine look a bit wimpy, doesn’t it?

Tomorrow … Marmalade, madams, and maladies.

An old take on seafood extender

Today, November 2nd …

If you were a second-class citizen in 1911, and were aboard the SS “Majestic” on this day, this would have been your dinner:

Consomme Diablotins

Boiled Cod, Cream Sauce

Salmi of Ducking with Turnips

Roast Lamb, Mint Sauce
Sirloin of Beef, Browned Potatoes

String Beans, Fried Oyster Plant
Boiled Potatoes

Plum Pudding
Scotch Shortbread

Ice Cream

Oranges Plums Assorted Nuts

Would the hoi-polloi in first class get real oysters? The “vegetable oyster” served to you in second class was salsify, or perhaps its black-skinned Italian cousin, scorzonera, which taste like oysters (a bit, with a touch of asparagus, or maybe coconut?), and which were popular root vegetables until they became victims of food fashion. Or perhaps it was our need/desire for all foods quick to prepare that pushed it off the dinner list, for salify needs to be peeled (and immediately dropped in acidulated water to stop it discolouring) then pre-boiled before being used.

Once all that kitchen-hand labour was out of the way, salsify could be sent to the table in a number of guises. Most easily, this would be “with whatever sauce you think proper”, but battered and fried rounds were particularly popular. They were “often served round boiled fish”, where the chef presumably hoped they would have looked, as well as tasted, for all the world like fried oysters. Was anyone fooled?

If you want to test out the theory of taste, here is a recipe from Cassell’s “Dictionary of Cookery”, published in the 1870’s.

Salsify, Fried, or Salsify Fritters.
Boil the salsify till tender, or, if preferred, take the remains of dressed salsify. Drain and dry the roots by pressing them in a soft cloth. Make a little frying batter, dip each root separately into this, throw them into the hot fat, and fry them till they are lightly browned. … No sauce will be needed for them when dressed in this way. Sometimes the salsify is dipped into egg and bread-crumbs instead of batter before frying.

Maybe vegetable oyster isn’t such a nuisance after all: it can be prepared in advance (keep in the acidulated water), pre-boiled in advance (keep in the water), and the leftover boiled bits can be recycled as mock oysters next day.

How useful is that?

Tomorrow … Green peas from Adam and Eve.

Eating the flower of death.

Today, November 1st …

Today is the first of the “Days of the Dead” in Mexico, and bright yellow marigolds – “the flowers of death” - are everywhere. Their strong smell supposedly guides the dead back to their earthly homes for this few days each year, when they are especially honoured by their descendants over two days of fun-filled celebration – a strangely incongruous idea to those of us with an Anglo-Saxon heritage.

Marigolds are everywhere except in the food, even though they are very edible, and have a long history of use in Europe for medicinal and culinary purposes. So, if you are unable to get to Mexico for the fun, but have a few pesticide-free edible marigolds in your garden, you can at least get into the spirit of the day (pun intended) - European-style - by simply putting them in your salads, or cooking the leaves like spinach. If you feel more culinary energy coming on, you could even make marigold conserve or wine. Another very popular use was in “pease soope” and broths, particularly mutton-broth, and dried flowers used to be sold for that particular purpose.

There is far too much “past tense” in these discussions of ingredients, don't you think? One writer in 1841 was already bemoaning the fact that “The use of marigold flower in soup, or broth, has for some reason gone out of fashion with modern cooks”.

Marigolds have sometimes been called “poor man’s saffron” because of their colour. Which would you rather eat (real saffron I know, but lets assume for the purposes of this discussion that you cant afford it right now) – “natural marigold” or artificial yellow colours E102, E104, E107, E110?

Here is an almost modern recipe from “The Gentle Art of Cookery” (1925) by two very English ladies, Mrs Leyel and Miss Hartley.

Eggs cooked with Marigold

Blanch and chop some marigold flowers; poach as many eggs as are required, and while they are cooking sprinkle them thickly with chopped marigolds and season them with nutmeg, pepper and salt. They should be poached very slowly.
Fry some bread first steeped in milk. Strew the croutons with powdered marigolds; serve the eggs on the top with fried parsley, and garnish them with fresh marigold flowers.

Gives a new slant on the idea of “sunny-side up”, doesn’t it?

Tomorrow … An old take on seafood extender.

Sellery from Italy.

Today, October 31st …

Is the first day of stories by The Old Foodie, who hopes you enjoy them each Monday to Friday.

Sellery from Italy.

John Evelyn, writer, gardener, and salad enthusiast extraordinaire was born on this day in 1620. Salad Enthusiast Very Extraordinaire actually, raw veges being viewed with great suspicion in the seventeenth century. His fellow diarist Samuel Pepys had attributed the death of at least one neighbour to “eating cowcumbers” in 1663. The anxiety was not unjustified, water quality being what it was at the time, boiled vegetables were much safer.

It was the golden age of the English kitchen garden when Evelyn published “Acetaria: A discourse on sallets” in 1699. He listed 73 main salad ingredients, plus “sundry more” (including tulip bulbs), which he said should be “exquisitely cull’d, and cleans’d” and blended “like the Notes in Music, in which there should be nothing harsh or grating”. The dressing should be made with smooth, light oil from Lucca olives, the best wine vinegar infused with herbs and flowers, the brightest Bay grey-salt, the best (Tewkesbury or Yorkshire) mustard, sugar and pepper, “the yolks of fresh and new-laid eggs, boil’d moderately hard”, and various other “Strewings and Aromatizers”.

Ingredient number 59 in Evelyn’s list was “Sellery”, newly introduced from Italy, with the “high and grateful Taste” of its tender leaves and “whiten’d stems” making it, he said, eminently suitable for the grandest salads at the greatest feasts.

Within a few decades, celery was commonplace in cooked dishes as well as salads. One of its most popular uses was as an accompaniment to turkey, as in this recipe, from Hannah Glasse’s “The Art of Cookery made plain and easy …” (1747).

To make Sellery-Sauce either for roasted or boiled Fowls, Turkies, Partridges, or any other Game.

Take a large Bunch of Sellery, wash and pare it very clean, cut it into little Bits, and boil it softly in a little Water till it is tender; then add a little beaten Mace, some Nutmeg, Pepper and Salt, thicken’d with a good Piece of Butter roll’d in Flour, then boil it up, and pour into your dish.

What I want to know is this: what happened to celery? We don’t put the leaves in salads, and we don’t serve it as a side dish anymore. What a waste.

Could celery leaves be the new parsley?
Could braised celery be the new roasted beetroot?

Tomorrow… Eating the flower of death.

My Photo and My Life.

Here I am:

My Life, in Brief:

I was born in Yorkshire (on December 28, 1947, if you must know), as the oldest of five children. My family migrated to Brisbane (in Queensland, Australia) when I was fifteen. My real job is as a health professional. I am married to a man who likes food, which has played no small part in my obstinate interest in all things food-related. I have two adult children who have wonderful partners, and live nearby. I am going to become a grandmother in June 2009. I have wonderful friends. I am very lucky.

How it all began.

It began with a problem. I became a Food History Information Junkie.

It began innocently enough, many years ago when my children were quite small ….. It was one of the regular post-party whinges of “But WHY cant we have Christmas pudding/ Easter eggs/ Birthday cake/ Anzac biscuits/ EVERY day?” that triggered it. I couldn’t answer the question immediately (I was too tired from the party cooking), but something was set in motion.


The idea that evolved was along the lines of: “Well, just as surely as the sun is always over the yardarm somewhere in the world, it is just as surely rising somewhere else on a feast or a festival.” It seemed like a good idea at the time - a single project with a dual purpose: educational fun for my children, and culinary fun for me.


Well, my children are grown up now, and I don’t know if the first goal was ever achieved, but the second one certainly was. I started with national days, and saints’ days (only the ones with a foodie relevance of course), and then I could not stop. It grew like yeast on steroids. I collected all sorts of food history events, menus, recipes, biographies, articles, quotations – anything at all, as long as it applied to a specific day of the year.
Before I realised it I had thousands of entries to what my head was now calling my “Food History Almanac”. Things were clearly getting out of control when I started to have a fantasy of it all being published one day. However, a mass of data does not a published volume make. Bridging the gap between the two requires (apart from talent), a lot of time and an interested publisher – which are several fantasies in themselves. And I do also have several “real” jobs.


So, I decided to shrink the project down, and just concentrate on finding a historic menu for each day of the year. I did this. But I did not stop collecting. I now have information on well over 4000 menus, not including the Christmas ones which are in a separate file. I also confess that I could not quite, exactly, stop “finding” bits for the Almanac. It was crying out for a glossary too, and contemporary recipes to add interest to the menus. And if there is to be a menu for each day, why not a historic recipe published for each day of the year?


I made one problem into two problems.


So what did I do about my problem? Being a pragmatic person, I thought that some redemption, or at least relief, might be obtained by putting this pile of “stuff” to use. Fun is useful, right? Not to sound too kinky though, I thought some discipline was in order, so I decided to write 400 words every weekday on a food history topic related to the actual day, and ending with a historic recipe - because ultimately eating is what it is all about, isn’t it?


I began writing these little stories on October 31, 2005. I emailed them to friends, who passed them on, and it seemed that they were enjoyed. One of the YoungFoodies (son) nagged and nagged at me to “blog” them, and eventually I gave in – fully expecting that (a) I could not manage the technology and (b) no-one would read it.

To my astonishment and delight, it all worked and I am as addicted to keeping up with my blog as are many of my loyal readers. I think I have proven that food history can be accessible and interesting to “the general reader.”

UPDATE: December 2008.

Along the way this Food History Information Junkie became a Food Historian, and the blogger became a Food History Writer.

The most amazing thing is that the discipline of regular writing, and the great exposure have meant that although the Food History Almanac itself remains unpublished, I have indeed graduated formally, I think, as a food history writer. I write a regular column in a bakery trade magazine, have been on radio talking about food history, and now have two books about to be published, and a third in the pipeline.

The books are The Pie: a Global History, by Reaktion Press in the UK – to be released about mid-March 2009, and Menus from History: menus and recipes for every day of the year, by Greenwood Publishing in the USA – to be published in May 2009.

The book that is pending is also part of Reaktion Press’ Edible series, and is on Soup.