An All-Australian Meal.

December 10 …

The Melbourne Punch gave a menu for an “All Australian Meal” on this day in 1925, by way of some sort of patriotic statement. Every ingredient was sourced from the country, and each choice was justified by the newspaper. All states except Western Australia and the Northern Territory were represented. We would take some issue now with Hunter Valley (N.S.W) red wines being referred to as “Burgundy”, and I cannot see Bêche de Mer Soup becoming frantically popular in the near future, but otherwise the menu holds up pretty well.

Salted Almonds, Olives
Oysters on the Shell
Bêche de Mer Soup
Fresh water blackfish, Maitre d’Hotel
Fillet of Beef Pique, Sauce Bernaise
Roast Teal, Port wine sauce Orange Salad
Ice Pudding
Devilled Prawns
Dessert Coffee
Sauterne or Chablis Burgundy
Champagne Cognac

There are some quaintly ancient themes in this menu: the ‘devilled’ dish to end the formal part of the meal, and the ‘dessert’ course which used to mean the final dishes of fruit and sweetmeats – apparently in this case a representative selection of the finest fruits.

For recipes for this menu I turned to a little Australian cookbook that I haven’t used before. It is one of Wiggs’ Useful Books (and I do like books that are useful), and is called The Australian Home Cookery (there should surely be ‘Book’ on the end of that title?). The book is not dated, but an inscription on the flyleaf says “Evelyn L. Teagle, Sep 16, 1917”. If she is your relative, let me know!

I particularly wanted to find a recipe for devilled prawns, but we have to make do with curried prawns (or ‘shrimp’ to those of you over the big water). There are a lot of recipes for curried prawns in English and Australian cookbooks of the era – many of them contain chopped apple and/ or dessicated coconut, and are too frightful to consider. This one sounds OK, if you use good curry powder (or better, mix your own) – but cooking the prawns for an hour is, to understate it somewhat, a bit too long for fresh prawns.

Prawns, Curried.
Take about 20 prawns; take off the heads and tails, and put them into a stewpan with a little less than a pint of fish purée, and a small tablespoonful of curry (previously mixed with ½ cupful of water). Let all simmer gently with the lid off for about 1 hour, and then add 2 tablespoonfuls of cream, and pepper and salt to taste. Serve in the middle of a hot dish, with boiled rice as a border.

Tomorrow’s Story …

The invention of “American Cheese”.

Quotation for the Day …

What will be the death of me are bouillabaisses, food spiced with pimiento, shellfish, and a load of exquisite rubbish which I eat in disproportionate quantities. Emile Zola, (1840-1902)

Not bacon, not ham.

December 7 ….

The English smallgoods company T.Wall and Sons introduced their new product ‘macon’ – at a brunch (which the newspaper pointed out was a ‘combination of breakfast and lunch’) at the Savoy Hotel in London on this day in 1939. ‘Macon’ is pronounced with a hard ‘c’, as in bacon, because it was ‘bacon’ made from mutton. Marketing genius, yes? Apparently mysterious marketing genius, because the spokesperson for the company admitted to not knowing how the name came into being, “it just happened.” It was also said at the event that “everybody could do some home curing if they secured a fat sheep” – which would seem to be an optimistic view even of the very resourceful British of the war years, and quite counter-productive to the bottom-line of the company.

Cured mutton had actually been around for a long time, the idea appears to have originated in Scotland, where the land was more suitable to sheep than pigs .The the driving force behind its commercial production was the looming war – “mutton was a home-produced food which ate grass, while pigs food had to be imported” (an idea which must have come as a surprise to many pig-farmers and cottagers). It was hoped that it would eke out the wartime shortage of bacon, but within a few months the wartime food situation had become more dire, and macon-making was ceased in order to save mutton.

T.Wall and Sons had been experimenting with six different cures, which were all successful but not all to everyone’s taste (as if anything ever is!). It was presented in a number of ways – in “the raw” (it resembled streaky bacon, but with darker fat), in a variety of ‘kickshaws’, and in breakfast dishes, and would cost ‘somewhat less than bacon.’

Naturally there were some samples available, thanks to the culinary efforts of Miss M. Baron Russell. She advised that macon could be cooked in the same way as bacon but it must be well done. She also gave a recipe for mutton ‘ham’ or, as it was obviously designated – ‘mam.’

There were many ways to eke out the precious small ration of bacon during the war years. Here is one idea to make two rashers feed four.

Bacon Fritters.
Fry two bacon rashers then cut into small pieces. Make a batter with 2 oz. self-raising flour, a pinch of salt, 1 reconstituted dried egg or a fresh egg and 5 tablespoons of milk or milk and water. Add the bacon and season to taste. Drop spoonfuls into a little hot fat and fry until crisp and brown on either side.

Monday’s Story …

An All-Australian Meal

Quotation for the Day …

I've long said that if I were about to be executed and were given a choice of my last meal, it would be bacon and eggs. There are few sights that appeal to me more than the streaks of lean and fat in a good side of bacon, or the lovely round of pinkish meat framed in delicate white fat that is Canadian bacon. Nothing is quite as intoxicating as the smell of bacon frying in the morning, save perhaps the smell of coffee brewing. James Beard.

Tea for Christmas.

December 6 ...

Much to the delight of the tea-loving British, the tea ration was temporarily doubled in 1942, as a concession to the Christmas season. There were many other privations, but being forced to restrict their tea intake was one of the hardest things for the British people to tolerate during World War II.

Rationing in Britain reached its most stringent towards the end of 1942, and for one adult for one week, the allowance was:

One shilling and tuppence's worth of meat.
Eight ounces of sugar
Eight ounces of fat (butter, margarine or lard)
Four ounces of bacon or ham
Two ounces of tea
Two ounces of cheese
One egg

Restricted tea meant that something had to go, and it was the ‘teaspoon for the pot.’ The action was officially sanctioned by the Ministry of Food in Food Facts Leaflet No. 126:

TEA SAVERS
Tea strong enough “for a mouse to dance on” may be a nice drink when you are tired, but it isn’t really good for you. Strong tea makes cheese and meat much more difficult to digest. Try making it this way: it is an economy and an aid to digestion. Allow for 1 teaspoonful of tea per person, but not one for the pot. Warm the teapot first. Pour on the water as soon as it boils. Give the tea three minutes to brew.

It must have been a huge treat, to get a whole FOUR ounces of tea in the weeks leading up to Christmas. No doubt much of it was used to wash down Christmas Cake and Mince Pies. There are many recipes for these in the Christmas Recipe Archive however, so today (knowing that most of you love the baking recipes best) I thought I would give you wartime cake recipes from three countries.

From England, using golden syrup (see yesterday’s post) and leftover bread (must not waste it).

Golden Bread.
6 oz self-raising flour
3 tablespoonsful golden syrup
3 oz stale breadcrumbs
1 oz shelled walnuts
2 oz sultanas
½ gill milk
2 oz Stork margarine
1 egg
pinch of salt.
Brush a bread tin with melted Stork and dust with flour. Sift the self-raising flour and salt into a basin, rub in the Stork, add the breadcrumbs, walnuts roughly chopped, and sultanas, cleaned in a little flour. Beat the egg, add the milk and the golden syrup to it, stir into the mixture and beat well. Put into the prepared tin and bake for ¾ hour in a moderate oven. Serve hot for tea.
[The Stork Wartime Cookery Book]

From Australia, using stewed pineapple in the cake batter.

Pineapple Cake.
Simmer a teacupful of finely shred pineapple and juice with quarter cup sugar for 15 minutes, then cool it. Cream three tablespoons clarified codfat [similar to suet, not from fish!] with one cup of sugar, and when smooth and thick, beat in the stewed pineapple and the grated rind of one lemon. Now sift some plain flour, and measure four teacupfuls into the sifter. Add three level teaspoons baking powder and sift together twice. (It is most important that the flour be sifted before being measured.) Use a glass teacup for measurements.
Measure out quarter cup tepid water. Whisk three egg whites very stiff. Add one-third of the flour to the pineapple cream and then half the water. Blend well.Fold in half the remaining flour and the rest of the water. Then use the egg whites to work in the remaining flour. Don’t beat once the eggs are in – just stir and fold. Moisten at the end with the juice of the lemon. It will be a fairly thick mixture. Turn into a well-greased tin. Bake in a moderate oven 45 to 60 minutes. When cold ice all over with a soft frosting of icing sugar, flavoring, and a few drops hot water.

From America, a popular marble cake.

Marble Cake
⅓ cup butter or other shortening
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, well beaten
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 ¾ cups cake flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup milk
1 ounce (1 square) chocolate, melted.
Cream shortening, add sugar gradually and cream until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and mix thoroughly. Sift dry ingredients together 3 times and add alternately with milk to creamed mixture, beating until smooth. To ⅓ of the batter add chocolate and blend thoroughly. Place by spoonfuls in a greased tube pan, alternating light and dark mixtures. Bake in a moderate oven (350F.) 1 hour.
[The American Woman’s Cook Book, 1939]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Not bacon, not ham.

Quotation for the Day …

Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind. Mary Ellen Chase

Sugar and Syrup.

December 5 …

Sir Henry Tate died on this day in 1899, leaving two great bequests to Britain. The grandest is the Tate Gallery in London, which he founded in 1897, and to which he gave his own fine collection of paintings.

His second legacy comes in a distinctive green tin with a small golden lion logo and is available in supermarkets: it is Tate & Lyle Golden Syrup, without which British pudding production would be severely diminished.

Henry Tate was born the son of a Lancashire clergyman, and was apprenticed to a grocer in his teens. He was ambitious and entrepreneurial, and soon built up a chain of his own shops which he sold to buy into the sugar refining business. In 1872 he found his niche when he patented a method for making sugar cubes. Meanwhile, Abram Lyle, a Scot by birth, was also running a successful sugar refinery (on the Thames, as was Tate’s) specialising in syrup. There were many sugar refineries in Britain at the time, and competition was intense, but it appears that the two men had some sort of understanding: Tate would not make syrup and Lyle would not make cubes. The understanding is surprising when you find out that the two men apparently never met – the merger did not take place until 1921, long after both were dead.

No half-serious British home-baker would be without Golden Syrup in the pantry. It is almost inconceivable to a British housewife that there are bakers around the world that do not know its golden caramelly delights. Those who don’t bake still keep it – to put on toast, or scones, or pancakes. It just about saved Britain when sugar was rationed during World War II.

Here is a WWII sugar-conserving, bread-saving, steamed pudding recipe from a booklet produced by the Stork margarine company:

Coffee Toffee Pudding.
4 oz self-raising flour
4 oz stale breadcrumbs
2 oz sultanas
2 tablespoonsful golden syrup (or 4 oz sugar)
1 tablespoonful coffee essence
1 egg beaten up into 1 teacupful milk
3 oz Stork margarine.

Brush a pudding basin and a doubled paper with melted Stork. Melt the Stork, add the golden syrup or sugar and the coffee essence and warm gently. Set aside to cool. Sieve the self-raising flour into a basin, add the breadcrumbs and the sultanas, cleaned in a little flour. Pour the coffee mixture on the beaten egg and milk, and pour this liquid on to the flour etc, beating well. Put the mixture into the prepared basin, cover with prepared paper and steam for 2 ½ hours. Serve with Custard Sauce.
[The Stork Wartime Cookery Book]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Tea for Christmas.

Quotation for the Day …

Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza. Dave Barry.

A Patient Diet..

December 4 …

The most enduring and likely theory of hospital food is that it is based on sound economic theory. It is designed to get you out of there as quickly as possible.

In the nineteenth century (and before), there were sound (for the time) nutritional principles underpinning hospital dietaries. A shoemaker called Joseph Bennett made note of the “common diet” for patients of the Devon and Exeter hospital on this day in 1829.

Mon. Wed. Fri.
Breakfast. One pint of water gruel. Bread for day 15oz.
Dinner. One pint of rice milk.
Supper. One pint of milk pottage on Monday. Cheese 2oz on Wednesday and One oz butter on Friday.

Tues. Thur. Sat. Sun.
Breakfast. One pint of water gruel with 11oz of bread.
Dinner. One pint of broth, 4 oz. Mutton, 1lb potatoes.
Supper. Cheese 2oz.

A great deal was written in the nineteenth century on the subject of hospital diets, and they are summed up in a book entitled The elements of materia medica and therapeutics, by Jonathan Pereira (1842). Here is an extract:

Animal diet: composed exclusively or principally of animal food. [He only recommends it in diabetes.]

Vegetable diet: the exclusive employment of a vegetable diet has been very rarely adopted …. Sometimes called the spare or abstemious diet … occasionally ordered in cases of threatened apoplexy, gout etc.

Milk diet: includes farinaceous substances (such as arrow-root, sago and tapioca) … when we are desirous of affording support to the system with the least possible stimulus or excitement [which is probably why it was often used in cases of venereal disease!] … inflammatory diseases …. preventing and curing gout … diseases of children, especially those of a strumous or scrofulous nature.

Low Diet: in acute inflammation, fever and after serious accidents, surgical operations and parturition …. Consisting principally of the use of slops (as tea, toast water, barley water, and weak broth)

Full or Common Diet: … when it is desirable to restore or support the powers of the system, patients are permitted to satisfy their appetite for plain vegetable and animal food … Wine, and even ardent spirit, are sometimes required.

There are many recipes for Soup de Santé (Soup for Health) in early books, and they sound much more restorative than water gruel or milk pottage, which sound like they would frighten anyone into good health. I give you an eighteenth century recipe – I am not sure if it was intended to keep you well, or restore you to wellness. It is a really robust dish which would require a robust cook and a robust appetite.

To make Soop de Sante, as they do in France.
Season ten or a dozen Pound of Beef, with salt and Spices, blanch a good Knuckle of Veal, and when your Beef has boil'd 'till the Broth is strong, strain it; then put the Knuckle of Veal into the Beef Broth, and also your Pullet that is to be ferv'd up in it; boil these in the Broth 'till it comes to the Consistence of a Jelly; while it is boiling put in a bit of good Bacon stuck with Cloves. In the mean time make a Pan of good Gravy in the Manner following: lay a Pound of Bacon cut into Rashers, in the Bottom of a stew Pan, and a bit of Butter as big as half an Egg, half a dozen Pound of Filet of Veal, or Buttock of Beef cut into flices of the Thickneds of Scotch Collops; lay these upon your slices of Bacon, covering the Bottom of the stew Pan all over; set your Pan over a moderate Fire for an Hour and a half, and let it Colour gently, when it begins to crack, put to it a little of the Fat of your boiling Broth, but take Care not to stir it much, because it will make it thick; then put in three or four Onions cut into flices, a couple of Turnips, a Carot, Pepper, whole Cloves, a little Thyme and Parsley, and if in Summer time put in a few Mushrooms; fry all these together till they are of a good brown Colour, then put to it as much of the Broth of the Knuckle of Veal and Pullet as you can spare, to leave so much as will keep your Veal and Pullet white, and soak your Bread in it for your Soop, &c. when your Broth and Gravy are enough, wash and pick a Cabbage Lettuce, or a little Charvil,with Sorrel, Endive and Celery, cut them a little, squeeze the Water from them; put them into a Sauce-pan, with as much of your Broth and Gravy as will just cover them, boil them till they are tender ; then boil the Crufts of two French Rolls, with three Pints of Gravy, and when they are boil’d strain them through a Sieve, and put it to your boil'd Herbs; or instead of French bread you may thicken it with a piece of Butter of the Bignefs of an Egg, and brown'd over the Fire with a little handful of Flour, and a small Onion minc'd; then put some Gravy to your brown, and when they have boil'd a little, strain them through a Sieve to your Herbs: When your Herbs are pretty tender, put in your thickning; let all boil together for half an Hour, then skim off all the Fat; lay in the Bottom of your Soop Dish, either slices of French Bread, or Crufts dry'd before the Fire, or in an Oven, let the Dish over a Chafing-Dish of Coals, boil it up in some of your Broth; lay your Pullet and Herbs upon the Bread, garnish with a Rim on the outside of it, of Endive or Celery boil’d in good Broth, and cut in pieces about three Inches long, or else garnish it with forc’d meat and boil’d Carot; let there be no Fat upon it, and serve it up hot.
[From John Nott’s The Cooks and Confectioners Dictionary ….. (1723)]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Sugar and Syrup.

Quotation for the Day …

Drink a glass of wine after your soup and you steal a ruble from your doctor. Russian proverb

Hot Roots.

December 3 …

Some random “on this day” browsing turned up a piece of apparently un-food-related trivia: today is the anniversary of the admission of Illinois as the 21^st state in 1818. On the principle that there is food a degree or three away in every story, I set out on an Illinois food-fact finding mission.

It is difficult to get the head around, but Illinois (a small part of it around Collinsville) grows almost all of the horseradish (Cochlearia armoracia) used in the United States. Thousands and thousands of tons of it, and none is exported. What on earth is it all used for? I mean, I like horseradish, but a very little goes a very long way. And what does it look like – thousands of acres of horseradish as high as a billy-goat’s eye (or a buffalo’s eye? Or a mouse’s eye)?

Horseradish belongs to the Brassica family of vegetables, so is related to the cabbage, although its more recogniseable cousins are mustard and the ‘ordinary’ radish. It is not the same as wasabi (which I am sure is not neon-green in its natural state, is it?). It most certainly has nothing to do with horses. The linguistic theory is that the name came about because German migrants were responsible for bringin their beloved meerrettich into the country, and ‘meer’ was mistaken to mean ‘mare’ and ‘mare’ is a horse. It is a good enough theory until a better one comes along. The ‘radish’ part of the name is more obvious, because it shares the same pungency – the same nose-assaulting sensation (from the ‘mustard oil’) that is quite different from the mouth-assaulting capsaicin in the chilli pepper, and which gives it one of its old names – stingnose.

Horseradish has been known and cultivated since ancient times, and was valued for its medicinal properties. Samuel Pepys drank horseradish ale for medicinal reasons, being advised it “for the stone”, which he had had unpleasant experience of. The sixteenth century English herbalist John Gerard provides its first use in English in 1596, and gives the Germans the credit for its culinary “for sauce to eate fish with and such like meates as we do mustarde”.

The first recipe I can find that uses horseradish is from Eliza Acton’s classic Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845), although I am sure it was in use long before this time. The most common use in England is still to jazz up roast beef.

Excellent Horseradish Sauce.
(To serve hot or cold with roast beef.)
Wash, and wipe a stick of young horseradish, grate it as small as possible on a fine greater, then with two ounces (or a couple of large tablespoonful) of it, mix a small teaspoonful of salt, and four tablespoonsful of good cream, stir in briskly and by degrees, three dessertspoonsful of vinegar, one of which should be Chili vinegar when the horseradish is mild. To heat the sauce, put it into a small and delicately clean saucepan, hold it over, but do not place it upon the fire, and stir it without intermission until it is near the point of simmering, but do not allow it to boil, or it will curdle instantly.
Horseradish pulp, 2 ozs. (or, 2 large tablespoonsful) ; salt, 1 teaspoonful; good cream, 4 tablespoonsful; vinegar, 3 dessertspoonsful (of which one should be Chili when the root is mild).
Obs.—Common English salad-mixture is often added to the grated horseradish when the sauce is to be served cold.

Tomorrow’s Story …

A Patient Diet.

Quotation for the Day …

This stuff tastes awful; I could have made a fortune selling it in my health-food store.
Woody Allen, 'Sleeper'

Gingerbread Additions.

It is getting to be quite a challenge to find gingerbread recipes to add to the archive that have a different 'spin' on them!

Here are a couple of offerings. In the interests of completeness they have also been added to the Through the Ages with Gingerbread archive.

The first one is from Charles Elme Francatelli who was briefly chef to Queen Victoria. Presumably it is "Swiss" because it is rolled up like a traditional Swiss Roll, but with almonds as the filling. The second is from the American cookbook author Sarah Josepha Hale, and it is an easily remembered "cup" formula.

Swiss Gingerbread.
Ingredients: 1 ½ lb. of flour, 6 oz. of skinned almonds, 1 lb. of warm honey, 1 oz. of ground coriander seeds, 1 oz. of ground ginger, ½ oz. of ground cinnamon, ½ oz. of ground cloves, ½ gill of orange flower water, 1 oz. of carbonate of soda.
Work all the ingredients (except the almonds) into an elastic paste, allow it to rest till the next day, covered over in a cold place ; then roll it out, place the whole almonds in rows upon the paste, roll it up in the form of a bolster, bake it in a long shaped buttered tin mould, and when done, and cold, cut it in slices with a sharp knife.
[Francatelli, Charles Elmé; The Royal English and Foreign Confectioner: A Practical Treatise…; 1862]

Cup Gingerbread.
Mix together 6 cups of flour; 1 cup of butter; 1 cup of sugar; 1 cup of molasses; 1 cup of milk; 4 eggs well beaten; 1 nutmeg, grated; 3 table-spoonsful of ginger ; some grated orange-peel; 1 dessert spoonful of pearl-ash.
Bake it quickly.
[The Ladies' New Book of Cookery: A Practical System for Private Families; Sarah Josepha Buell Hale; 1852]

Tamarinds, by Twain.

November 30 ...

Today is Mark Twain’s one hundred and seventy second birthday. I am not sure, but I think he is the third most often quoted writer who has ever been in the world (after William Shakespeare and Dr Samuel Johnson). His food quotations alone would last a long time as blog-fodder. I like what he has to say about tamarinds: “strangers eat tamarinds, but they only eat them once” – a witty enough one-liner, but the paragraph it springs from (from his story Roughing It) explains why no-one goes back to the tree for a second bite.

“I thought tamarinds were made to eat, but that was probably not the idea. I ate several, and it seemed to me that they were rather sour that year. They pursed up my lips, till they resembled the stem-end of a tomato, and I had to take my sustenance through a quill for twenty-four hours. They sharpened my teeth till I could have shaved with them, and gave them a "wire edge" that I was afraid would stay; but a citizen said "no, it will come off when the enamel does" - which was comforting, at any rate. I found, afterward, that only strangers eat tamarinds - but they only eat them once.”

The tamarind (Tamarindus indica) originated in Africa and from there found its way first to India and the Pacific islands and thence to many other parts of the world with a tropical climate. The mouth-puckering qualities of the tamarind are due to its intense sourness – even when it is ripe it is very sour – and generally speaking it is not eaten from the tree but prepared in some way – as a drink, a sauce, a chutney or pickle etc. Medicinal qualities are attributed to it wherever it is known, and this was the first use of it in the West. It is particularly used in fevers – and no doubt the idea of a hot lemon drink for a cold derived from it, lemons being a more easily accessible sour flavour than the foreign tamarind.

A beverage or infusion of tamarind crosses both borders – the medicinal and the culinary. One gentleman by the name of William Vincent Wells visited Honduras in the mid-nineteenth century, and found it made a very refreshing drink in that hot climate. He called it Tamarind Ambrosia, and described how it was made:

"He [his host, Olancho] also possessed the art, from long practice, of concocting certain delicious drinks. Among these was one to which I invariably paid my respects. It was made from tamarinds, and usually served about noon from earthen jars, wrapped in several thick swaths of flannel, and placed in the draft as a cooling process. The preparation of this beverage was simple enough. From a cask of the fruit, which seemed to have been crushed to a pulp and liberally mixed with the coarse sirup of the country, a quantity of thick liquor was drawn off, in a partly fermented state, and diluted to a drinking consistency, which, when settled, was turned into jars. To this was added powdered cinnamon, allspice, or some fragrant herb (gathered in the neighboring hills), to suit the taste. The liquor, without the spices, is often used during and after fevers."

Most of us in the West know the tamarind as an ingredient in dishes from India, Thailand, and other parts of the mysterious East. Here is a recipe for tamarind preserve “from India” from a little book translated by the Oriental Translation Fund in 1831.

Tamarind Preserve.
Take raw Tamarind, ¼ ser ( ½ Ib.)
Loaf sugar, ½ ser (l Ib.)
Lemon, 1 chittank (2 oz.)
Having removed the skin of the raw tamarind and extracted the seeds, take ¼ ser and make a syrup of the sugar in half a pao (4 oz.) of water, and remove its impurities.
When it settles, throw in the tamarind and cook it, and when it acquires a consistency add lemon- juice, and take it off the fire and cool it ; and keep it, and take it out and use it when required.

Monday’s Story …

Hot Roots.

Quotation for the Day …

Cooking Rule... If at first you don't succeed, order pizza. Anonymous.

With the foxhounds.

November 29 ...

Yesterday’s post reminded me of a great lady and a little gem of a book that I met while I was in Norfolk, England, in September. I stayed for a few days with my cousin, who – knowing my interest in all things to do with food – invited her neighbour over one day for a cuppa. This lady is of fine Norfolk stock, and the local cooking guru it seems. She was a fund of knowledge about Norfolk specialties, and brought a bundle of little old local cookbooks which she loaned to me for my stay.

One of the books was “The West Norfolk Foxhounds Cookery Book”, and it was quite amusing. Most of us don’t tend to associate foxhunters with humour, but I assure you this book is quite funny, in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way. It starts by describing fox-hunting as “… Not unlike adultery. Hours of hanging around punctuated by moments of high passion. Both highly immoral and very expensive.”

I learned that provisioning for a fox-hunt is quite a different thing from that of shooting parties, which we learned about yesterday. There are no picnic niceties like folding chairs and brass centrepieces full of fruit, because fox-hunters are serious about hunting - refreshment is for sustenance only and is taken on the run (or should that be on horseback?) so to speak. The repast consists solely of sandwiches.

“Hunting sandwiches are eaten under vigorous conditions and they should be prepared with that in view. They should be cut, formed, and packed so that they can be eaten on the back of a runaway mustang in a hurricane of wind and cold rain by a man who has recently broken his right wing.

In cut, the repast should favour the practical rather than the aesthetic. Too small a sandwich involves too many incursions of the gloved hand into the pocket: too large a sandwich may involve the jettisoning of the major part of the unconsumed portion of the day’s ration should the pack be so inconsiderate as to find a fox while the meal is in progress. … the sandwich should be packed with more thought for accessibility than for hygiene …. the ideal package should be capable of being opened by one numbed, gloved, hand withoug being removed from the pockets.”

Naturally there was a list of suggested fillings for robust sandwiches in the book. They are to be made “after breakfast” – which explains the ingredients of my favourite idea:

Bacon and Marmalade Sandwiches.
Excellent to stuff your pocket for Cub Hunting.
Fry bacon until crisp and cut to bits. Toast two thick slices of bread and then split horizontally. Spread marmalade on the untoasted side, put bacon on top and place the other piece [of toast] on top. Squash down and cut off crusts and repeat with other slices.

Stomach not up to it? “For those whose digestions sneer at solid food taken during strenuous exercise, the only solution may be egg beaten up in port, carried in a flask of vast dimensions.”

Tomorrow’s Story …

Tamarinds, by Twain.

Quotation for the Day …

Bread that must be sliced with an axe is bread that is too nourishing. Fran Lebowitz

A Shooting Luncheon.

November 28 …

If you are a member of the Idle Rich in the Northern Hemisphere, at this time of the year your thoughts may well be turning to a little pre-Christmas shooting party. If so, you must do a little advance planning if it is to be an occasion of ‘unruffled enjoyment.’ Your luncheon party will consist of about a dozen people – the shooters of course, and the ladies who will join them at the appropriate time. In addition, some preparation will have to be made for the keepers, beaters, and loaders, without whom a shooting party would be a lot of work, and likely not very successful. Those “whose daily fare is often rough and meagre” will be most appreciative of the meat sandwiches and bread and cheese which you will provide. The shooters and their ladies of course will need finer fare than these rough yokels. What a conundrum. Two picnics to pack.

I am so glad that an English newspaper article of this week in 1921 gives us some hints as to how to cater for such a range of requirements, as I find modern magazines sadly lacking in assistance to the grouse-hunters of the world. Portable foldable camp furniture is necessary. A proper fitted luncheon basket (or two) is ideal, and a cloth is essential (a length of bright French cotton check will do): napkins to match of course, but don’t worry about dainty table linen or silver.

For the comestibles, the hardy sportsman is no longer expected to make his frugal luncheon from the remains of his ample breakfast. Some suggestions are:

Main Course: “A big brown marmite, piping hot from a haybox, or warmed up on the cottage fire, the contents fresh neck of mutton or lamb, with potatoes and small pickling onions, or alternatively, a hot-pot of game or poultry,, with celery, peeled chestnuts, and a milky gravy, flavoured with Worcestershire sauce or mushrooms, together with a bowl of jacketed potatoes, and a casserole of baked Boston beans.”

Second Course: “Jam or spiced apple puffs, covered-in cheesecakes or mince pies are an easy second course to serve and consume, while a little truckle cheese or wedge of gruyere with butter and lettuces or celery, and a tin of mixed plain biscuits made hot and served from their tin home, and a sportsman cake, should be included. A brass dish of apples and pears makes the perfect centrepiece, and to comfort the chilly, slip in perhaps a box of dry Chinese ginger, or some peppermint sweets.”

I must confess to being a bit lax in the brass centrepiece department in the picnics I have catered for over the years, but perhaps they are not so important for mere picnics. I am not so sure how Boston baked beans got onto the menu of a very English outdoor luncheon: trying to impress those wealthy Americans with marriageable daughters I suppose.

The article does help us out with a suitable cake for a shooting luncheon – one with a very intriguing name.

Burnt House Cake.
Six ounces ground rice, 10 oz. flour, ½ lb. each of stoned raisins, sultanas, sugar, and butter. Beat butter to a cream with a 1d. packet of mixed spice. Dissolve one teaspoonful of bicarbonate soda in a quarter of a pint of milk, which should be added to the other ingredients boiling hot, and baked in a moderate oven for an hour.

Anyone have any ideas about the name of this cake?

Tomorrow’s Story …

With the foxhounds.

Quotation for the Day …

When we examine the story of a nation's eating habits, describing the changing fashions of preparation and presentation and discussing the development of ifs cuisine throughout the ages, then we find an outline of the nation's history, harking back to those distant days when a scattered tribe lurked in dismal caves, feeding on raw fish and plants and the hot. quivering flesh of wild beasts, lately slain with a rude spear. La Cuisine Francaise.

More Foreign Food.

November 27 ...

At risk of boring you, I could not resist staying with our cookbook of yesterday’s post, the Domestic Economy, and cookery, for rich and poor, by a lady (1827). The index alone is worth reading. It is full of fascinating and mysterious dishes which I have never seen in modern cookbooks. I was tempted by Caldomuchocaldo, but was eventually swayed by ‘cubbubs’ and assumed you might be too.

Ball Cubbub.
Pound the meat, fat and lean, with a sufficient quantity of onions, garlic, curry-powder, pepper, and salt; mix all well up together, make it up into balls, and fry them in butter; serve them in a heap upon buttered or curried rice, or in a curried sauce, on fried bread or parsley, or almost in any way, with plain boiled rice in another dish.

Cubbubs = Meatballs? Rissoles? Curried Hamburger Patties? I remained confused until I read the next recipe:

Curry Cubbub.
Cut the meat into small equal pieces, and thread them upon silver skewers, intermixed with garlic and onions, rub them over with ginger, sprinkle with vinegar, dust them over with a little curry-powder, and fry them in butter.

The skewers give the game away. Cubbubs are kebabs (or kebobs) and represent another phonetic interpretation of the original Arabic word meaning (according to the OED) small pieces of meat cooked on skewers. The first mention in English is in 1698, and sums them up pretty well – “Cabob is Rostmeat on Skewers, cut in little round pieces no bigger than a Sixpence, and Ginger and Garlick put between each.”

We might have Caldomuchocaldo another day, if you are interested.

Tomorrow’s Story …

A Shooting Luncheon.

Quotation for the Day …

When it comes to foreign food, the less authentic the better. Gerald Nachman, San Francisco Chronicle

Kedgeree, otherwayes.

November 26 ...

Kedgeree is a peculiarly Anglo-Indian concoction. It apparently began with khitchr – a dish based on a mixture of rice and pulses from the Indian subcontinent. In the hands of returning colonials it became a capital breakfast dish of rice, eggs and leftover fish.

Here is the wonderful Eliza Acton’s take on it (1845).

Kedgeree Or Kidgeree, An Indian Breakfast Dish.
Boil four ounees of rice tender and dry as for currie, and when it has cooled down put it into a saueepan with nearly an equal quantity of cold fish taken clear of skin and bone, and divided into very small flakes or scallops. Cut up an ounce or two of fresh butter and add it, with a full seasoning of cayenne, and as mueh salt as may be required. Stir the kedgeree constantly over a clear fire until it is very hot: then mingle quickly with it two slightly beaten eggs. Do not let it boil after these are stirred in; but serve the dish when they are just set. A Mauritian chutney may be sent to table with it.
The butter may be omitted, and its place supplied by an additional egg or more.
Cold turbot, brill, salmon, soles, John Dory, and shrimps, may all be served in this form.

The following early nineteenth century version from Domestic Economy, and cookery, for rich and poor, by a lady.(1827) is closer to its roots as a pulse and rice dish.

Indian Cutcheree.
Steep a pint of split peas, and add a large tea-cupful of rice, with an onion, ginger, pepper, mace, and salt; boil till the peas and rice are swelled and tender, but not
clammy ; stir them with a fork till the water is wasted. Serve it up in a dish garnished with hard eggs and whole boiled onions. The stirring it with a fork is to prevent the grains being broken.

But from the same book is this “American” variation, with an intriguing sub-variation which takes it about as far as it is possible to go from its essentially vegetarian origins.

American Cutcheree Soup.
Prepare and pulp some of the nicest dry green peas; put them into any nice seasoned white soup with coriander mint, or any determined sweet herb; to 1 lb. of peas, add 2 ounces of rice, and finish it with egg and cream, or keep out the egg, and add curry-powder, or make it of brown soup, with fried onions, all-spice, and sage, and thicken it with blood.

Tomorrow’s Story …

More Foreign Food.

Quotation for the Day ..

Eat what is cooked; listen to what is said. Russian Proverb

Oranges and Lemons Day.

November 23

Today is the feast day of St.Clement, the patron saint of blacksmiths and of the Worshipful Company of Bakers, and main star of the nursery rhyme and children’s game of “Oranges and Lemons”. The rhyme ostensibly refers to the ringing bells of a number of churches in the City of London, and there are two contenders for the “St Clement’s” – St. Clement Danes (in The Strand) and St Clement Eastcheap (near London Bridge).

There are many interpretations of the possible symbolism and meaning of the rhyme, but no convincing historic associations between either of these churches and citrus fruit. It was deemed a good enough connection however for the small seedless cross between an orange and a tangerine to be named a Clementine. Tenuous connection or not, the nursery rhyme itself is now the connection, so if we need an excuse to eat oranges and lemons, this is it. Which reminds me to ask (those of you on the other side of the ‘other’ pond) who is it that decides on these strange celebratory days with names such as Creamy Mashed Potato Day and Salad of Wild Rice with Pomegranate Seeds Day? Has anyone declared today officially Oranges and Lemons Day?

There is another food association with St Clement in addition to bread and citrus. A “Wayz-Goose” was often held on or around St Clement’s day: this does not mean that everyone got to cuddle a bird, the phrase was used more as we would refer to a Bean Feast, or an Annual Knees-Up – specifically one provided by an employer at the beginning of winter. No doubt goose was often served, for at this time of the year the remaining animals which were not required for breeding and could not be over-wintered would be slaughtered. For journeyman printers, the giving of the Wayz-Goose indicated that their employer would then allow them to work by candlelight (the days been short and dim by this time of year in the Northern hemisphere.)

Here is a lovely pudding, very suitable for those shortening days you are getting in the upper half of the world.

Orange Marmalade Pudding.
Mix six ounces of grated bread-crumbs with three ounces of finely-shred beef suet. Add a pinch of salt, a quarter of a tea-spoonful of powdered ginger, half a tea-spoonful of baking powder, half an ounce of candied lemon-peel chopped small, two tablespoonfuls of moist sugar, three well-beaten eggs, and a quarter of a pint of new milk. Take a well-buttered mould, spread a layer of the mixture at the bottom, then put a layer of orange marmalade, and repeat until the mould is full, being careful to let the mixture be at the top of the pudding. Bake in a moderate oven, and turn out before serving. Time – 2 hours to bake the pudding.
[Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery, 1870's]

Monday’s Story …

Kedgeree, otherwayes.

Quotation for the Day ..

Huge lemons, cut in slices, would sink like setting suns into the dusky sea, softly illuminating it with their radiating membranes, and its clear, smooth surface aquiver from the rising bitter essence. Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

P.S. To my American friends. I have not forgotten that today is also THANKSGIVING. Please have a happy safe day and eat yourselves almost to bursting point. If you feel the need to look back in history as you digest all that dinner, last year's historic Thanksgiving menus might just do the trick. They are HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE. I hope one day to join one of you for a genuine Thanksgiving Feast!

School Food Chapter II

November 22 …

Just in case your little darlings are still complaining about school and school food, here is a second story to use in a (probably futile) attempt to make them feel grateful.

It is taken from the writing of William Makepeace Thackeray (writing as Mr. A.M. Titmarsh) about his visit to Ireland, and in particular to the Agricultural Seminary of Templemoyle where seventy scholars “some young and some expounded into six feet and whiskers – all, however, are made to maintain exactly the same discipline, whether whiskered or not”, but which “is one of the very few public establishments in Ireland where pupils of the two religious denominations are received, and where no religious disputes have taken place.”

DIETARY.

BREAKFAST
Eleven ounces of oatmeal made in stirabout – one pint of sweet milk.
DINNER
Sunday-Three quarters of a pound of beef stewed with pepper and onions, or one-half pound of corned beef with cabbage, and three and one-half pounds of potatoes. Monday—One-half pound of pickled beef, three and a half pounds of potatoes—one pint of buttermilk.
Tuesday-Broth made of one-half pound of beef, with leeks, cabbage, and parsley, and three and a half pounds of potatoes.
Wednesday - Two ounces of butter, eight ounces of oatmeal made into bread, three and one-half pounds of potatoes, and one pint of sweet milk.
Thursday – Half a pound of pickled pork, with cabbage or turnips, and three and a half pounds of potatoes.
Friday—Two ounces of butter, eight ounces wheat meal made into bread, one pint of sweet milk or fresh buttermilk, three and a half pounds of potatoes.
Saturday—Two ounces of butter, one pound of potatoes mashed, eight ounces of wheat meal made into bread, two and a half pounds of potatoes, one pint of buttermilk.
SUPPER.
In summer, flummery made of one pound of oatmeal seeds, and one pint of sweet milk. In winter, three and a half pounds of potatoes and one pint of buttermilk or sweet milk.

I was intrigued by the idea of “flummery” made from oatmeal seeds and milk. Surely this sort of “flummery” represents a re-branding of “frumenty”- the ancient grain porridge that was the staple food of peasants for centuries. Did the students observe any discernable difference between this “flummery” and the daily breakfast stirabout?

Mostly today we think of “flummery” as being a light fruity jellied dessert without any grain at all, like this one from Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery (1870’s)

Flummery.
Melt two ounces of gelatine in a pint and a half of water; add a wine-glass of sherry and half a glass of brandy, with the juice of three lemons, and sugar enough to sweeten. Stir into the liquid when cold a pint of double cream which has been whisked until it began to thicken. If mixed while warm the lemon juice will curdle it. Moulds should be dipped in water or oiled, and the flummery should be allowed to set a day before turning out. Blanched almonds, slit lengthwise, stuck round the flummery, or preserved cherries, look well.
Sufficient for two moulds.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Oranges and Lemons.

Quotation for the Day …

The age of your children is a key factor in how quickly you are served in a restaurant. We once had a waiter in Canada who said, 'Could I get you your check?' and we answered, 'How about the menu first? Erma Bombeck.

School Food.

November 21 ...

Do you have, or do you know, any children who complain about school, food, life, the Universe, and Everything Else? Tell them this tale, as a gratitude-provoker.

In the nineteenth century, much effort on the part of the authorities was given over to considering the nutrition of its children. In particular, attention was paid to the food provided by its boarding schools. The professor of Clinical Therapeutics in King’s College, London, Dr Isaac Burney Yeo (who thought of the low-carb diet over a century ago) wrote a book called Food in Health and Disease in the 1890’s.

On the topic of school food, Dr Burney extensively quotes Dr Clement Dukes, the Medical Officer of Rugby School, author of his own book, Health at School.

Another highly important matter in the arrangement of meals at school is that the pupils should be allowed ample and sufficient time to eat them, and the master should see that the food is properly masticated, or, at any rate, that sufficient time is allowed for this process, as imperfect mastication is a common cause of indigestion, and may become an injurious habit, which, like other bad habits, should be corrected at school.

It seems that in certain schools, or with certain masters, boys are sometimes detained in school as a punishment during a portion of the dinner or breakfast time, so that the time available for feeding is seriously encroached upon. Such a system shows a lamentable absence, in the authorities, of the most elementary understanding of the conditions of health.

The practice of requiring a lesson at 7 a.m., on an empty stomach, and after a long fast, especially in winter, is indefensible. The pupils should be allowed hot milk, or hot coffee and milk, with a piece of bread, before going into school at all. This is most essential for the delicate or average boy or girl.

At 6.45 to 7.15 am there should be, then, a provision of hot coffee, with plenty of milk – a beverage both nutritious and stimulating.
At 8.30 a.m. - Breakfast, after the 1st lesson; this should be a good meal, with some animal food - ham, bacon, cold beef, fish, or eggs. Some porridge. Bread and butter,
or jam or marmalade. Hot milk and water, or coffee. (Everything should be provided for the boys, and they should not be required to buy anything for themselves.)
At 1.30 p.m. - Dinner, which should be a good meal of meat, pudding, potatoes or green vegetables, or haricot beans, peas pudding, etc. (School should cease at least 15 minutes before the meal, to give the boy time to wash and prepare himself for dinner.)
5 to 6 p.m. - Tea, with bread and butter, art egg, marmalade, jam, or potted meat.

As to supper, Dr. Dukes thinks boys should either not have any supper, so that they may go to bed without food in their stomachs, or that merely bread and butter, or bread and milk, or a glass of milk or water should be provided. He strongly objects to cheese, meat, beer or pastry at supper ; he considers a meat supper with beer as most objectionable in growing boys, as tending to excite their passions - and calculated to lead to immorality.

We cannot altogether accept these unqualified objections to supper. Our own view is that, instead of a meal at 5 or 6 p.m., only a few hours after a heavy dinner, it would be better to serve simply coffee or tea, or hot milk and water at that hour, and provide a fairly nutritious, but unstimulating, supper at 8 pm. Porridge made with milk would be excellent, or tapioca, or rice pudding, with marmalade, or, in winter, some good soup with farinaceous substance, or other light, but nourishing food.

Some nervous mothers of course made sure that their little darlings had a little store in reserve, in case of hunger.

Children’s Cake.
(Suitable for sending to children at school)
Mix thoroughly one pound of flour, two heaped tea-spoonfuls of baking powder, and a pinch of salt. Rub well in a quarter of a pound of butter or good beef dripping, and add a quarter of a pound of currants, a quarter of a pound of chopped raisins, a quarter of a pound of sugar, a little grated nutmeg, and two ounces of candied peel chopped small. Mix with water to a stiff paste, and bake it in a moderate oven. If preferred, caraway seeds may be substituted for the currants and raisins. Time to bake, 1 hour. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for a moderate-sized cake.
[Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery, 1870’s]

Tomorrow’s Story …

School Food Chapter II

Quotation for the Day ..

Speaking of food, English cuisine has received a lot of unfair criticism over the years, but the truth is that it can be a very pleasant surprise to the connoisseur of severely overcooked livestock organs served in lukewarm puddles of congealed grease. England manufactures most of the world's airline food, as well as all the food you ever ate in your junior-high-school cafeteria. Dave Barry.

Stinking Garlic.

November 20 ...

Sir John Harington, the “saucy godson” of Queen Elizabeth I, and the man who first got the idea of the flush toilet died on this day in 1612. The idea never came to anything in Harington’s lifetime – the idea was well ahead of its time, and he was also perhaps too busy being what we would call in Australia “a larrikin”, getting into various scrapes that did not impress his godmother. It was over two hundred years before Thomas Crapper in nineteenth century England made the concept real (Victorian England was exactly the right time and place for such an invention), for which we will all be forever grateful.

Harington is not featuring in today’s story on account of his method of disposing human excrement - although one could argue its relevance to a food blog – but because of the quotation attributed to him on the topic of garlic.

"And scorn not garlic like some that think, it only maketh men wink and drink and stink"

Harington was an author and poet, and in between bouts of being “a bit of a lad”, he translated the famous Medical Poem of Salerno. The Medical School of Salerno in Italy was founded in the ninth century, and associated with it (although possibly not written there), is a long poem called the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitatem. The poem discusses general health measures such as diet and exercise, bowel habits, wine-drinking and so on, and it became enormously popular and was expanded numerous times and translated into many languages.

Harington’s work was the first English translation, and the garlic quotation comes from the verse which relates to protection from poisoning. It clearly explains the belief behind the inclusion of garlic in the famous plague-protecting ‘Vinegar of the Four Thieves.’

Six things, that here in order shall ensue,
Against all poisons have a secret power,
Pear, Garlic, Radish-roots, Nuts, Rape, and Rue,
But Garlic chief; for they that it devour,
May drink, and care not who their drink do brew:
May walk in airs infected every hour.
Sith Garlic then hath powers to save from death,
Bear with it though it make unsavory breath:
And scorn not Garlic, like to some that think
It only makes men wink, and drink, and stink.

For our recipe today we jump ahead again to the Victorian era. Mrs Beeton was not a fan of garlic. She says “The smell of this plant is generally considered offensive. … It was in greater repute with our ancestors than it is with ourselves, although it is still used as a seasoning herb. On the continent, especially in Italy, it is much used, and the French consider it an essential in many made dishes.”

Garlic does appear in a few of “her” recipes (she collected, she did not author them), and there is a prodigious amount in her recipe for Mango ‘Chetney’. I picked out this recipe as the mango season has started in earnest here in Queensland, and I thought that local readers might particularly enjoy it. Strangely however, the recipe contains no mango. There is no formal acknowledgement of the use of apples as the subsitute – an obvious and convenient substitute given that mangoes would have been difficult to source in England. The recipe was supplied to her by an “English lady, who had long been a resident in India, and who, since her return to her native country, has become quite celebrated amongst her friends for the excellence of this Eastern relish” – presumably this Lady used mangoes while she was in India? Why is this recipe not called Apple Chetney?

Bengal Recipe For Making Mango Chetney.
1 ½ lbs. of moist sugar, ¾ lb. of salt, ¼ lb. of garlic, ¼ lb. of onions, ¾ lb. of powdered ginger, ¼ lb. of dried chilies, ¾ lb. of mustard-seed, ¾ lb. of stoned raisins, 2 bottles of best vinegar, 30 large unripe sour apples.
The sugar must be made into syrup; the garlic, onions, and ginger be finely pounded in a mortar; the mustard-seed be washed in cold vinegar, and dried in the sun; the apples be peeled, cored, and sliced, and boiled in a bottle and a half of the vinegar. When all this is done, and the apples are quite cold, put them into a large pan, and gradually mix the whole of the rest of the ingredients, including the remaining half-bottle of vinegar. It must be well stirred until the whole is thoroughly blended, and then put into bottles for use. Tie a piece of wet bladder over the mouths of the bottles, after they are well corked.
This chetney is very superior to any which can be bought, and one trial will prove it to be delicious.
[Use green mangoes, my local friends, it will be delicious]

Tomorrow’s Story …

School Food.

Quotation for the Day ..

Chutney is marvelous. I'm mad about it. To me, it's very imperial. Dianna Vreeland.

Pudding or Pie?

November 19 ...

I was planning to discuss the meaning of puddings today, but my bloggy friend Joe Pastry beat me to it with his wonderful exposé of puddings (or should that be series of exposées ?) last week. Joe covered several meanings of “pudding” - the concept of pudding meaning dessert/sweet, pudding in the sense of sausages, and the cusp between pudding and cake. He has even dared to bring tapioca into the pudding debate. I have no idea, Joe, what you have in store in Pre- and Proto-Puddings Part Two, so I will forge ahead anyway with a narrower pudding focus, and aim for perfect synchronicity but not duplication of our stories.

I wish to focus on the pudding that is also a pie, or the pie that is also a pudding - the “Pudding-pie”. There is a particular reason for focussing on this topic this month, for November was the time of the famous Dedington Pudding-Pie fair in Oxfordshire, England.

There are many different dishes called pudding-pies – including I understand some artificially coloured and flavoured commercial powder which becomes “pudding” with the mere addition of water. This post will not discuss that sort of “pudding” any further.

The oldest meaning of pudding-pies is a sort of custard or cheesecake (with or without a pastry crust) which was a popular Lenten dish. In various cookbooks across the ages the name has also been applied to baked dough puddings, boiled puddings, bread puddings, batter pudding (including one wonderful Norfolk variation – the Norfolk Pudding Pye Doll – which is the fen-folk’s name for Toad in the Hole). And the Dedington Pudding-pie, which is a category all of its own.

The origin of the Dedington pudding-pie is obscure. Perhaps the ancient Dedingtonians wanted to define their Martinmas fair in some way, and could not decide whether it would be with cake or plum pudding or pie, so they combined the ideas. We will never know, but whatever the story, the Dedington pudding-pie is a ‘raised’ pie filled with what to all intents and purposes is a plum-pudding mixture. The robustness of the crust is legendary - some reports say that the crust was put in the sun for a few days to harden before being filled. It is always possible, I suppose, that some ancient ones are still around and are the origin of the idea that every fruitcake has been around forever, and just gets re-gifted and re-gifted.

I give you Mrs. Beeton’s recipe (1861) for the ‘original’ variety of pudding-pie, most famously associated with the English county of Kent.

Folkestone Pudding Pies.
1 pint of milk, 3 oz. of ground rice, 3 oz. of butter, 1/4 lb. of sugar, flavouring of lemon-peel or bay-leaf, 6 eggs, puff-paste, currants.
Infuse 2 laurel or bay leaves, or the rind of ½ lemon, in the milk, and when it is well flavoured, strain it, and add the rice; boil these for ¼ hour, stirring all the time; then take them off the fire, stir in the butter, sugar, and eggs, and let these latter be well beaten before they are added to the other ingredients; when nearly cold, line some patty-pans with puff-paste, fill with the custard, strew over each a few currants, and bake from 20 to 25 minutes in a moderate oven.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Stinking Garlic.

Quotation for the Day …

As a rule they will refuse even to sample a foreign dish, they regard such things as garlic and olive oil with disgust, life is unliveable to them unless they have tea and puddings. George Orwell, "The English People"

Gingerbread for Voyages or Travelling.

There are so many gingerbread recipes now in the Through the Ages with Gingerbread archive that it is getting to be quite a challenge to find variations with a different spin. This one seems to meet the challenge.

It is a fruity version with almonds which is twice-baked in the manner of biscotti, making it suitable to take on long seafaring voyages.

Gingerbread for Voyages or Travelling.
Three pounds of treacle, four pounds of flour, half a pound of sugar, both well sifted, two ounces of pounded ginger, a quarter of an ounce of allspice, a quarter of a pound of orange-peel, two ounces of caraway-seeds, a quarter of a pound of citron, a quarter of a pound of almonds, a pound of butter; let the almonds be blanched and cut with the citron and orange-peel; it ought not to be much handled, but well mixed ; bake it in small cakes or nuts; give it a quick oven.
This bread, baked with the fruit pounded, is to be very well dried in a cool oven, and then to be rasped, and again kneaded, with as much butter and treacle as it will take ; knead up with more fruit and spices; bake it well, without burning; dip it in spirits of wine, with a few drops of the essence of caraway, cinnamon, or cloves; dry it in the oven; wash it over with isinglass and sugar, or white of egg ; dry it again, and wrap it up in writing- paper very close ; pack it in a lined box, exclude the air, and it will keep years in a dry, but not warm place. This is excellent for sea store.
[Domestic economy, and cookery, for rich and poor, by a lady; London; 1827]

Weapons-grade Chilli.

My friend P. sent me this response to my story on chilli-heat. I thought you would love it too.

"I have a couple of friendly neighbours, one half of whom is a senior police detective who has a pepper spray as part of his standard issue kit. He complained over drinks one night that he hopes it still worked if ever he needed it in a crisis, because his partner is in the habit of using it from time to time to pep up a curry or a chili con carne. She said a couple of squirts from the pepper spray is a lot easier than chopping fresh chillies by hand - and it tasted just fine. Shame to waste such a handy culinary item on felons and ne'er-do-wells, in her opinion.

Milk and Custard.

November 16 …

I saw a pseudo-historic article recently that referred to the “white meat” eaten by the peasants of a few hundred years ago – because they were too poor to own cows but could afford chickens. Well, I have news for that writer. Egg-producers (and I mean chickens, not chicken farmers) were also too valuable to eat until they died of old age. The “white meats” referred to meant milk, butter, cheese. They were the food of rural folk, and for a long time were considered too lowly for the rich. Lard was preferred in England for cooking purposes throughout medieval times, probably because its value was perceived as greater because the animal had to be killed to get it, and there were good reasons for eschewing milk in the cities. No refrigeration meant that any but a very short distance to from the cow and you got sour milk (and often adulterated or diluted milk.) One partial solution was to drink boiled milk, which was considered to have medicinal value. In his ‘secret diary’, William Byrd of Westover in Virginia, he frequently mentions having boiled milk for breakfast. On this day in 1711 he wrote:

“I rose about 7 o'clock and read two chapters in Hebrew and some Greek in Homer. I said my prayers and ate boiled milk for breakfast…. About 2 o'clock we dined at Marot's and I ate some fish for dinner. ..About 4 o'clock Jimmy Burwell and I resolved to go to the wedding at Mr. Ingles' and went away in his coach and found all the company ready to go to supper but we ate nothing with them but some custard.”

Ahh! Custard. What a great way to have your boiled milk. Custard is not what it used to be: the word comes from crustade (croustade) and – as it sounds – refers to a crust. In other words, custard used to be a pie (or a tart, if you will). The OED says that custard is “formerly, a kind of open pie containing pieces of meat or fruit covered with a preparation of broth or milk, thickened with eggs, sweetened, and seasoned with spices …now a dish made with eggs beaten up and mixed with milk to a stiff consistency, sweetened, and baked; also a similar preparation served in a liquid form.

Custard is a great way to get your boiled milk and your eggs too. It sounds like the perfect breakfast food. Why don’t we have custard for breakfast?

The other way to get your other white meats is in puddings. Here are two from Soyer’s Shilling Cookery for the People (1854)

Curd Milk Pudding.
Put in a basin three eggs, a little grated lemon-peel, three ounces of currants, one pint of curds, and one pound of bread-crumbs; boil in a cloth half an hour; turn out and serve.

Cocoa Nut Pudding.
Grate half a nut, add another egg to the milk, mix with the above. An ounce of flour may be added.

Monday’s Story …

Pudding or Pie?

Quotation for the Day …

There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies. Winston Churchill in a radio broadcast,1943.