A Special Day for Fanny.

January 7

The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook by Fannie Merritt Farmer was first published on this day in 1896 in the USA. It rapidly became a best-seller, and in fact has been constantly updated and is still in print, becoming one of the best selling cookbooks in history. I wonder how many celebrity chef-authors of today will still be in print in a hundred years’ time?

What was the secret of Fannie's success?

Fannie was the child of enlightened parents, and was destined for college until a stroke at the age of 16 left her an invalid for several years, with a permanent limp. At the age of 30 she enrolled in the already famous Boston Cooking School where she studied nutrition and related food sciences as well as cookery and household management. She was a star pupil and almost immediately became principal of the school, and her book was published a few years later.

Fannie was required to pay for the first print run, in return for which she retained ownership of the copyright. The publishers paid dearly for their lack of faith, for the success of the book delivered the proceeds largely to her, not themselves. A story to warm the hearts of many authors, I would say!

No doubt the association with the famous cooking school helped with the first few sales, but the book would not have become a best-seller on that basis alone. Fannie’s book succeeded because she took a lot of the guesswork out of cookery. She explained the science behind cooking processes, and standardised the system of measurements – there was no ‘dash of this’ or ‘little of that’ in her book. Fannie became known as the ‘mother of level measurement’, and The Boston Cooking School Cookbook was referred to as The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

As the United Nations has declared this the International Year of the Potato, I intend to give you more potato recipes – and perhaps even get on with that Potato Timeline I have previously promised. From Fannie’s book, a classic recipe:

Shadow Potatoes (Saratoga Chips)
Wash and pare potatoes. Slice thinly (using vegetable slicer) into a bowl of cold water. Let stand two hours, changing water twice. Drain, plunge in a kettle of boiling water and boil one minute. Drain again, and cover with cold water. Take from water and dry between towels. Fry in deep fat until light brown, keeping in motion with a skimmer. Drain on brown paper and sprinkle with salt.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Leprosy in the time of Potatoes.

Quotation for the Day …

Cookery is the art of preparing food for the nourishment of the body. 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.

The Twelfth Day of Christmas

January 6

“On the Twelfth Day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Twelve drummers drumming ”

I had to save the best till last, and present my dozen with a fanfare of drums (is that musicalogically correct?). Pies, of course.

I would like to offer you a dozen pies. Some you have met before, but may have forgotten. Some are new, just to delight you. They are all – lets say – a little unusual. Hard to find nowadays. Waiting to be rediscovered and molecular gastronomised.

1. Pie of Bull’s Testicles.

2. Pies with live birds and frogs.

3. Blood Pie.

4. Calf’s Head Pie.

5. Old Maid’s Pie

6. Parrot Pie.

7. Burr Pie.
… the rest [of the carcass after the main joints are removed] are brought to market with the hide, and are there taken out by poor women, who also cut off some bits of flesh that lie by the horns, called burrs, with these are made pyes … (Houghton, John . A collection for the improvement of husbandry and trade, 1727)

8. A Pan-pie made of Carps-roes and Tongues.
The Tongues and Roes of the Carps must be laid in order upon a piece of fine Paste, in the bottom of the Pan; season’d with Pepper, Salt, Nutmeg, fine Herbs, Chibbols, Morilles, common Mushrooms, Truffles and sweet Butter. Then, all being cover’d with a Lid of the same Paste, let the Pie be bak’d with a gently Fire, and serv’d up with Lemmon-juice.
[Massialot. Court and Country Cook. 1702]

9. Amblongus Pie.

Sadly, amblongusses don’t actually exist. They have not been eaten to extinction, they have never existed - apart from in the imagination of Edward Lear. Should they one day be made flesh, here is his recipe for them.

Take 4 pounds (say 4 ½ pounds) of fresh Amblongusses, and put them in a small pipkin.
Cover them with water and boil them for 8 hours incessantly, after which add 2 pints of new milk, and proceed to boil for 4 hours more.
When you have ascertained that the Amblongusses are quite soft, take them out and place them in a wide pan, taking care to shake them well previously.
Grate some nutmeg over the surface, and cover them carefully with powdered gingerbread, curry-powder, and a sufficient quantity of Cayenne pepper.
Remove the pan into the next room, and place it on the floor. Bring it back again, and let it simmer for three-quarters of an hour. Shake the pan violently till all the Amblongusses have become a pale purple colour.
Then, having prepared a paste, insert the whole carefully, adding at the same time a small pigeon, 2 slices of beef, 4 cauliflowers, and any number of oysters.
Watch patiently till the crust begins to rise, and add a pinch of salt from time to time.
Serve up in a clean dish, and throw the whole out of the window as fast as possible.

10. Seal-Fipper Pie.
When it was politically correct to eat baby seal flippers, these pies were a specialty of Newfoundland. Have seal-flipper pie-eaters now been forced underground?
As featured in (and apparently actually eaten by Kevin Spacey) in the movie The Shipping News.

11. Electric-eel pie.
Apparently eaten at a nineteenth century dinner of the London Electrical Society, at which they also drank Whitbread stout in order to “trace the galvanic action produced by the contact of the pewter pot with the moisture of the under lip.”

12. Tortoise or Mullet Pie.
Simmer the tortoises lightly in water with salt, then remove from the water and take a little murri, pepper, cinnamon, a little oil, onion juice, cilantro and a little saffron; beat it all with eggs and arrange the tortoises and the mullets in the pie and throw over it the filling. The pastry for the pie should be kneaded strongly, and kneaded with some pepper and oil, and greased, when it is done, with the eggs and saffron.
[From a 13^th century Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook, translated by Charles Perry]

“On the twelfth day of Christmas
My good friend gave to me
Twelve pies a-baking
Eleven puddings cooking
Ten beers a-brewing,
Nine loaves a-rising,
Eight cheeses ripening,
Seven fish a-swimming,
Six eggs a-poaching,
Five golden fruits,
Four keeping cakes,
Three boiling hens,
Two chocolate tarts,
And a partridge in a pear tree.”

Monday’s Story …

A Special Day for Fanny.

Quotation for the Day …

There are few articles of cookery more generally liked than relishing pies, if properly made. Mrs. Rundell, in her New system of domestic cookery. 1807.

The Eleventh Day of Christmas

January 5

.... well, it is a little late, but better late than never. And I think it is still January 5 in some parts of the world.

“On the eleventh day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Eleven pipers piping …”

One of the most important gigs that a piper gets is to pipe in the Chieftain o’the Pudding Race (haggis) on Burns Night (January 25). The Scots have certainly got the idea right, even if most of the rest of the world is confused and concerned about haggis. All of the other incarnations of ‘pudding’ should be equally valued and so honoured – and there are many incarnations indeed.

The word ‘pudding’ comes from the Anglo-Norman bodeyn or bodin (think modern French boudin), meaning entrails, hence is a legacy of 1066 and all that. The word may originally have referred to ‘a stuffed entrail or sausage’, but it pretty soon got applied to the reverse anatomical concept of ‘a stuffing made of a mixture of minced meat, suet, oatmeal, seasoning, etc, and roasted within the body of the animal (so that we can have a hare with a pudding in its bellye). I am not entirely sure of the difference between a boudin and a saucisson (clearly I need to spend more time in France), but I am quite certain that in English, not all puddings are sausages. The French, having an inadequate language to describe the sweet delights that the English consider ‘puddings’, were forced to borrow it back again, so that they can made plum poutinge at Christmas.

From its sausagy start the pudding was adapted fairly rapidly to ‘a sweet or savoury dish with a farinaceous base – boiled, steamed or baked, especially containing suet’, and in British hearts to any sweet dish at all, delicate or solid. The family also branched out to pudding-cake (cake which is boiled or steamed) and pudding-pie (pie without the crust). If you are onto a good thing, rename everything in its honour.

Today’s recipe is from My Daily Dinner Cookery Book: the work of a practical housewife, a little Australian book - not dated, but pre-decimal currency when the New Idea magazine cost 6 pence. Probably the late 1950’s I’d say, by the look of the cover and the recipes. The pudding (dessert, sweet, ‘afters’) for the Saturday of the first week of the Summer menus (it is summer here in ‘Down South’) is – Apple fritters, which, by a nice turn of serendipity and cross hemispherical co-operation are also entirely appropriate for those of you freezing in the Other Hemisphere.

Apple Fritters.
Four oz flour, pinch of salt, one egg and enough milk to make a thick batter. Put the flour and salt into a basin, make a hole in the centre, break in the egg, and mix the flour in gently from the middle, add the milk gradually till all the flour is in. Beat well till smooth. Allow to stand for an hour, if possible.
Peel and core two apples. Cut in fairly thin rounds, four to an apple. Cover each piece well with batter, and fry in boiling fat till a light brown. Turn and brown on the other side. Drain well on kitchen paper (or cheap blotting paper). Serve on a paper doyley, and dust with castor sugar. A squeeze of lemon is an improvement. Cut a lemon into quarters, put in a small dish, and hand around.

“On the eleventh day of Christmas
My good friend gave to me
Eleven puddings cooking
Ten beers a-brewing,
Nine loaves a-rising,
Eight cheeses ripening,
Seven fish a-swimming,
Six eggs a-poaching,
Five golden fruits,
Four keeping cakes,
Three boiling hens,
Two chocolate tarts,
And a partridge in a pear tree.”

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Twelfth Day of Christmas.

Quotation for the Day …

… good advice to all women is the READ their cookery books, and not just use them for one or two special recipes which taste their fancy. K. Balfour, editor of the above book.

The Tenth Day of Christmas

January 4

“On the tenth day of Christmas
my true love gave to me
Ten lords a-leaping”

Whatever has made the lords leap about has to be our choice for the day, and it seems reasonable to assume it is too much (or just enough?) Christmas spirit of the alcoholic beverage kind. Christmas does seem to be the time to gild the lilies, culinarily speaking, and beverages are no exception. Here in hot Queensland, the only requirement of a Christmas beer is that it be long and very very cold. It is amazing what can be done with a simple beer or ale however, if the weather makes you so inclined.

Egg nogs and egg flips are drinks that you have when you really want custard. They are sometimes warm, sometimes cold, and are an easy way to alcohol-enhance your beer (or ale).

Here are a few examples:

Egg Flip.
Put a quart of ale in a tinned saucepan on the fire to boil; in the mean time, beat up the yolks of four, with the whites of two eggs, adding four table-spoonfuls of brown sugar and a little nutmeg; pour on the ale by degrees, beating up, so as to prevent the mixture from curdling; then pour back and forward repeatedly from vessel to vessel, raising the hand to as great a height as possible - which process produces the smoothness and frothing essential to the good quality of the flip. This is excellent for a cold, and, from its fleecy appearance, is sometimes designated " a yard of flannel."
[How to Mix Drinks: Or, The Bon-vivant's Companion, Containing ... Directions ... Jerry Thomas, Christian Schultz; 1862]

Rum-Fustian.
A drink made with the yolks of twelve eggs, a quart of strong home-brewed beer, a bottle of white wine, half a pint of gin, a grated nutmeg, the juice from the peel of a lemon, a small quantity of cinnamon, and sugar sufficient to sweeten it.
[Dictionary of obsolete and provincial English, Thomas Wright 1857]

Or, you can leave out the beer altogether of course, and go straight for the spirituous drinking custard. I’m sure this recipe could be tweaked (don’t separate the eggs, and cook over a low heat until thick) to make a fine sauce for any remaining pudding.

Egg Nogg (For a party of forty)
1 dozen eggs
2 quarts of brandy
1 pint of Santa Cruz rum
2 gallons of milk
1½ lb white sugar
Separate the whites of the eggs from the yolks, beat them separately with an egg-beater until the yolks are well cut up, and the whites assume a light fleecy appearance.
Mix all the ingredients (except the whites of the eggs) in a large punch bowl, then let the whites float on top, and ornament with colored sugars. Cool in a tub of ice, and serve.
[How to Mix Drinks: Or, The Bon-vivant's Companion, Containing ... Directions ... Jerry Thomas, Christian Schultz; 1862]

“On the tenth day of Christmas
My good friend gave to me
Ten beers a-brewing,
Nine loaves a-rising,
Eight cheeses ripening,
Seven fish a-swimming,
Six eggs a-poaching,
Five golden fruits,
Four keeping cakes,
Three boiling hens,
Two chocolate tarts,
And a partridge in a pear tree.”

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Eleventh Day of Christmas

Quotation for the Day …

Merry Christmas, Nearly Everybody! Ogden Nash

The Ninth Day of Christmas

January 3 ...

“On the ninth day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Nine ladies dancing”

A ‘Lady’ is an elegant woman - aristocratic really - married to ‘a Lord’, who has no job and wears her pearls to breakfast and has servants so she never needs (or wants) to know what goes on in the kitchen – right? Without the capital ‘L’, a lady is a refined, well mannered female, married to a gentleman, who never discusses money, and is always perfectly groomed – never messy and besmirched with flour and eggs – right?

Originally a ‘Lady’ was the ‘loaf-kneader’, meaning in its larger context the one who is responsible for the household, as identified by its most important product - bread. The word comes from the Teutonic word hláf meaning a loaf, combined with the suffix meaning to knead. A ‘Lord’, on the other hand, means the ‘loaf-keeper’, and denotes his responsibility to provide ‘bread’ (in its larger context meaning ‘food’) to those dependent upon him – family, servants, tenants, guests, and the poor. So – the words lady, lord, and loaf all have the same origin, making our choice today quite obvious.

‘On the ninth day of Christmas,
My good friend gave to me
Nine loaves a-rising’

In my browsing to find an interesting recipe for today, I came across some fascinating old bread names, including – wait for it – ‘Bitchiness Bread’! Apparently it is (or was) made with a thin batter (unfermented) made with oats, and cooked into thin soft cakes on a griddle, and is a specialty of Lancashire in the North of England. If anyone can shed any light on the naming of this I would be delighted, as the OED is no help at all.

Realistically, most of us today feel that we don’t have the time or expertise to make bread - which is not realistic at all as the total human time involved in making bread is minimal, and bread dough is very forgiving. There are several ‘real’ breads in the recipe archive, so today, as I was unable to find a recipe for Bitchiness Bread (but Oh! How I would love to!), I give you another very simple unyeasted dough, from the Cookbook of Lady Clark of Tillipronie, whose book was published in 1909, after her death.

Corfu Buttermilk Bread (Mrs. Ellacombe)
This can be made when no yeast is to be got, but requires a very light hand. The proportions are: A small ½ teaspoonful bicarbonate of soda, or a whole teaspoonful of common bread soda, mixed with 1 lb. flour and as much buttermilk as will make it a proper consistency for bakin. The soda must be well bruised and thoroughly mixed into the buttermilk, and then stirred quickly into the flour. Shape into buns twice the size of an egg, then put at once into a quick oven and bake a light brown. This recipe also answers well for making small loves.
Buttermilk scones, made up size and thickness of a crumpet are the same mixture baked on a girdle. Being floured outside they look like untoasted muffins.

“On the ninth day of Christmas
my good friend gave to me
Nine loaves a-rising,
Eight cheeses ripening,
Seven fish a-swimming,
Six eggs a-poaching,
Five golden fruits,
Four keeping cakes,
Three boiling hens,
Two chocolate tarts,
And a partridge in a pear tree.”

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Tenth Day of Christmas.

Quotation for the Day …

I am going to learn to make bread to-morrow. So you may imagine me with my sleeves rolled up, mixing flour, milk, saleratus, etc., with a deal of grace. I advise you if you don't know how to make the staff of life to learn with dispatch. Emily Dickinson, American poet (1830-1886)

The Eighth Day of Christmas.

January 2

“On the Eighth Day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Eight Maids a-milking”

This one is easy. What would a food song be without cheese? Cheese, as Clifton Fadiman said, is milk’s leap toward immortality. It is one of the oldest ‘made’ foods in the world, and of infinite, wonderful variety. Only vegans can resist, and I truly don’t know how they do it.

Very few of us make our own cheese - it requires the time, space, attention, and constant environmental conditions that are all but impossible to achieve in the modern home. It is easy enough to make the yoghurt ‘cheese’ or labneh beloved of the Middle East; there are only three steps (1) place yoghurt in a sieve lined with muslin, or one of those thin disposeable cleaning cloths, or a coffee filter, (2) leave until the whey is mostly drained out, and (3) eat.

It should be possible to go a little bit further and make the little French cheeses called angelots at home. I have selected these for their angelic name, being suitable as it is, for the Christmas season. The name of the cheese comes, they say, from them being stamped with a gold coin called an angelot, whose name is a diminutive of angele, the French word for angel. The coin was originally struck by Louis XI, and got its name from the image it bore of St. Michael (of All Angels) and the dragon. Here is a seventeenth century recipe for this angelic cheese. You don’t have to embark on any great odyssey to find rennet - old fashioned junket tablets (the unflavoured ones) contain the same enzyme, and some supermarkets still stock them.

To make angellets.
Take a quart of new Milk & a pint of Cream, & put them together with a little Runnet, and when it is come well [ie curdled], take it up with a spoon & put it into the Vate softly and let it stand 2 days till it is pretty stiff, then slip it out & salt it a little at both ends, and when you think it is salt enough, set it a drying, an wipe them, and within a quarter of a year they will be ready to eat.
A True Gentlewoman’s Delights, 1671.

“On the eighth day of Christmas,
my good friend gave to me
Eight cheeses ripening,
Seven fish a-swimming,
Six eggs a-poaching,
Five golden fruits,
Four keeping cakes,
Three boiling hens,
Two chocolate tarts,
And a partridge in a pear tree.”

P.S. If you want to read further, an earlier story showed How to make Cheshire Cheese.

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Ninth Day of Christmas

Quotation for the Day …

Cheese has always been a food that both sophisticated and simple humans love. M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf (1942)

The Seventh Day of Christmas.

January 1 ....

“On the Seventh Day of Christmas,
My true love gave to me
Seven swans a swimming …”

Swans just wont do for the new version of the song – not legal, not tasty (they say) and too beautiful. If you really want to know how it used to be done, you can find out how to roast a swan from a previous story. It was usually served for effect rather than for taste – an expensive but not delicious bird stuffed back into its skin and feathers to impress the guests with the host’s wealth and power.

We might stick with the aquatic theme for the day with seven fish, brought to our kitchens swimmingly fresh.

Today is also New Years Day, the Day that the Eternally Optimistic (or Eternally Deluded) amonst us make Resolutions. Resolutions always have some sense of penance associated with them – I am not sure why this is. No-one seems to resolve to Eat More Chocolate or Drink Better Wine or Do More Shopping. A fairly universal resolution involves Getting Healthier – which involves Eating Less, or at least Eating Better, and Doing More Exercise. I therefore feel obliged to suggest a healthy (but historical) way of cooking fish. As it turns out, our source will also be appropriate if your Resolution has an Economic (i.e Save Money or Spend Less) theme.

Nicolas Soyer, grandson of the great Alexis Soyer, pioneered, or perhaps promoted Paper- Bag Cookery in a book written in 1911. There was a line of commercial paper bags sold for the purpose, but baking paper of the parchment kind folded bagwise around the food usually works pretty well.

Whitefish Fines Herbes.
Take two whitefish of fair size, get the fishmonger to bone them. Fill the cavity with half a teaspoonful of mixed finely minced chives or shallot and parsley, season to taste with salt and pepper and a tiny squeeze of lemon juice. Put into a well-greased bag, and bake for 15 minutes.
Then dish up on a very hot dish, pour the liquor from the fish into the center of each and serve at once. Haddock and fresh herrings are also excellent when cooked this way.

Soyer’s book has a chapter entitled A Weeks’ Dinners for the Working Man’s Home. In it he notes that the era of Paper-Bag Cookery introduces to the wife of the working man (who presumably is not a working woman, in spite of her prolonged daily slaving for her master) a dual advantage – better quality of dishes that she may prepare, and “more leisure for herself” (presumably because of less dishes to wash?). He does however acknowledge that some “frugal house-mothers” may be appalled at the prospect of needing to use several bags to prepare dinner itself, (not including the pudding). He addresses this by including some one-bag dinners, and (if the second bag for the bread pudding or plum porridge or whatever is too extravagant) suggesting the following recipe, for which he does not give a name, but which is essentially:

Stewed Fruit in a Jar.
If you would like a sweet for which no attention is needed, and do not wish to use another bag, try the following:
Place a layer of sugar at the bottom of a clean empty jam jar, add a pint of well-washed gooseberries or peeled and cut up rhubarb, half a pint of water and cook the same time as the beef. If cooked in a greased bag instead of a jar this will be doubly delicious. When done, serve it with sweet milk – i.e, half a pint of milk thickened with a tablespoonful of flour or cornstarch and sweetened to taste.

The lyrics for the foodie Twelve Days of Christmas now read:

“On the seventh day of Christmas, my good friend gave to me
Seven fish a-swimming
Six eggs a-poaching
Five golden fruits
Four keeping cakes,
Three boiling hens,
Two chocolate tarts,
And a partridge in a pear tree.”

Tomorrow’s Story ...

The Eighth Day of Christmas.

Quotation for the Day …

They say fish should swim thrice . . . first it should swim in the sea, then it should swim in butter, and at last, sirrah, it should swim in good claret. Jonathan Swift.

The Sixth Day of Christmas.

December 31 …

“On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Six geese a laying.”

The geese are “out” in our new version of our song, on three counts: we are birded out with the rhyme so far, goose is very expensive (at least it is here in Aus), and there is a lot of fat for a small amount of meat (making it not so economical to serve). It is what the geese are a’laying that interests me.

It is approaching the point where the only politically correct food to eat (for an omnivore) is eggs. I haven’t heard anyone expounding on the issues of methane emissions (what do chooks emit?), the inefficient ratio of conversion of animal feed into meat protein, or over-harvesting, in relation to fowl. Sure, there are ethical debates about inhumane methods used in huge chicken factories – but it is the common or garden barnyard fowl I am talking about here. Even the cholesterol police don’t seem to crack down on eggs too much anymore. They are fit for babies and grannies, from breakfast to supper, at formal or casual meals, from soup to crème caramel, crème brulée, egg custard tart, pavlova, pound cake, and – well, you get the idea.

Breakfast is the definitively eggy meal, when eggs are the feature not a mere ingredient. Usually we have our breakfast eggs fried, poached or scrambled – although those of you Over the Big Water confuse the rest of us when we are in your country with excessive additional choices such as ‘over-easy’ and ‘sunny-side up’ and other mysterious options. On most modern menus it is the additions that vary the breakfast meal – do you choose the sun-dried rhubarb with your poached egg, or the side of curried okra with your scramble? It seems to me that in previous times there were more options with the actual egg.

M. Marnette from France in his book The Perfect Cook (1656) not only gives “Five and twenty twenty several sorts of Omelets of egs, and Ten several manners or wayes of poaching of eggs, but also instructions on how To make fourteen several kinds of Marmalades of eggs. A marmalade of eggs sounds strange but it is another word for scrambled eggs – or mumbled eggs if you wish.

We will stick with the simple poached egg today – which in M.Marnette’s time was sometimes poached in wine, or milk, or even butter. I’ve never seen a modern breakfast menu giving a choice of poaching liquids, so there is an idea for those of you who open for breakfast. First, his basic instructions:

Describing the several ways and manners how to dress Poached Eggs, and boyled Eggs in Water.
Cause your water to boyl, after which break your eggs into it, the one after the other, and when they are pretty well boyled, take them out of the said boyling water before they become too hard; these kind of poached Eggs may stand you in stead to garnish an herb pottage withall, or any such like dish. Observe also that these kind of eggs may bee served up alone, with diverse kinds of sauces, and also sometimes eggs may be poached in Milk, or in any sweet wine.

And now one of his variations, which is the sort of poached egg (actually egg yolk) you have when you really want fried egg (or is it scrambled?) – which he follows with instructions for the Manner to butter a dish of eggs without any butter at all.

The Tenth manner of eating Poached Eggs.
Cause good fresh butter to be melted in a dish over an indifferent hot fire, after which you may break your eggs, and having taken out the white, you may put all the yolks into a porrenger by themselves,and after that you may pour them one by one into the said melted butter, and when the said butter shall begin to boyl take your dish off from the fire, and so you may adde there-unto a little powdered cinamon and sugar if you please.

“On the sixth day of Christmas, my good friend gave to me
Six eggs a poaching
Five golden fruits
Four keeping cakes,
Three boiling hens,
Two chocolate tarts,
And a partridge in a pear tree.”

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Seventh Day of Christmas.

Quotation for the Day …

I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday - the longer, the better - from the great boarding school where we are forever working at our arithmetical slates, to take, and give a rest.
Charles Dickens

The Fifth Day of Christmas.

December 30 ...

“On the Fifth Day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Five gold rings”

One of the interpretations of the five gold(en) rings is that they represent the band of yellow around the neck of the pheasant – meaning that the first seven gifts in the song are all birds. Pheasant may be all very well, but we have had partridge and hen already, and it is time for something lighter.

Golden fruits seem appropriate after all of our over-eating – perhaps bananas? Some say that bananas were the fruit of the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden, rather than the apple (which is certainly not a native of the Middle East, and has a more suggestive shape for a fall from grace). No doubt early clerics had reasons for associating the apple with the sin, but there is often very little logic in how we assign names or meanings. The following fruit salad is a good example. I am unable to hazard any guesses at all as to why this is “Russian”. Certainly pineapple has not a single mote of Russian inheritance, and surely vodka would be more suggestive than madeira or rum?

Alas, this fruit salad has no bananas, but it sounds wonderfully colourful and delicious nevertheless.

Russian Fruit Salad.
Peel and pit some peaches, cut in slices and add as much sliced pineapple, some apricots, strawberries and raspberries, put these in a dish. Prepare a syrup of juice of two lemons, two oranges, one cup of water and one pound of sugar, a half teaspoon of powdered cinnamon, grated rind of lemon, add one cup red wine and a half glass of Madeira, arrak or rum. Boil this syrup for five minutes, then pour over the fruit, tossing the fruit from time to time until cool. Place on ice and serve cold.
[The International Jewish Cook Book. By Florence Kreisler Greenbaum, 1919]

“On the fifth day of Christmas, my good friend gave to me
Five golden fruits
Four keeping cakes,
Three boiling hens,
Two chocolate tarts,
And a partridge in a pear tree.”

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Sixth Day of Christmas.

Quotation for the Day …

What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future. It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace.
Agnes M. Pharo

The Fourth Day of Christmas.

December 29 ..

“On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Four calling birds …”

Or – four “colly” birds in an earlier version. “Colly” indicates coal black, so four blackbirds were the gift for the day – and they do “call” beautifully as well, so either way they fit the rhyme. As we are told in the nursery rhyme Sing a Song of Sixpence, blackbirds can be baked in a pie, so pie is a possibility for the day. There are almost as many explanations of the nursery rhyme as there are of the Christmas song, and one of them suggests that it is based on an actual pie presented at a huge feast hosted by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy in 1464. The event was to whip up support for another crusade, and as was the custom for feasts of the time, some impressive entertainment was arranged. At one point a giant pie was presented – containing ‘eight and twenty’ musicians who “sang” when the pie was opened.

I think I will take today’s inspiration from the “colly” colour, not the birds – birds have already featured twice in our song-menu. Dark fruitcake seems like the way to go – get next year’s made now and keep dousing it with something alcoholic for the next twelve months.

I am rather fond of my own Chocolate Alcohol Cake recipe, but this one, from “an experienced lady” sounds very black and tasty indeed.

Black Cake.
One pound of flour, one of sugar, fourteen ounces of butter, ten eggs, three pounds of seeded raisins, three pounds of Zante currants, and one pound of citron, a wine glass of wine, one of brandy, and one of milk, a tea-spoonful of saleratus, a table-spoonful of molasses, a table-spoonful of cinnamon, a tea-spoonful of cloves, a quarter of an ounce of mace, or one nutmeg. The sugar should be the brown kind, and stirred a few minutes with the butter, then the eggs beaten to a froth, and stirred in. Brown the flour in a pan, over a few coals — stir it constantly to prevent its burning. It should be done before you commence making the cake, so as to have it get cold. Stir it into the butter and sugar gradually, then add the molasses and spice. Dissolve the saleratus in the milk, then strain it, and mix it with the brandy and wine, to curdle them—stir the whole into the cake. Just before you put it into the cake pans, stir in the fruit gradually, a handful of each alternately. When well mixed in, put it into cake pans and bake it immediately. If baked in thick loaves, it takes from two hours and a half to three hours to bake it sufficiently. The oven should not be of a furious heat. Black cake cuts the best when three or four weeks old.
[The American Housewife: Containing the Most Valuable and Original Receipts ... By Experienced lady, 1841]

“On the fourth day of Christmas, my good friend gave to me
Four keeping cakes,
Three boiling hens,
Two chocolate tarts,
And a partridge in a pear tree.”

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Fifth Day of Christmas.

Quotation for the Day …

The merry family gatherings
The old, the very young;
The strangely lovely way they
Harmonize in carols sung.
For Christmas is tradition time
Traditions that recall
The precious memories down the years,
The sameness of them all.
- Helen Lowrie Marshall

The Third Day of Christmas.

Today, December 28 …

“On the third day of Christmas my true love sent to me: "Three French hens ….".

Why French? I guess because “Three Bresse chickens” doesn’t have the right ring to it? To the English, a “French Hen” was an alternative name for a particular variety of bantam chicken with frizzled (i.e upcurled) feathers. I have no idea why. Does the rhyme mean three of these little birds? But why hens? Old laying hens are not much use for anything other than making chicken stock – mind you, that’s a pretty noble end. What would we do without chicken stock? Live on ice-cream I suppose.

Once upon a time, recipes and bills of fare specified the type of fowl that made up the dish – capon, pullet, hen, rooster etc. Now we mostly just get “chicken”, because mostly the bird is factory reared to standard specifications, and is culled at a standard age. Chicken-rearing practices would have to be drastically re-discovered for us to regularly see these old names on menus – but in case it does happen, here is a short summary:

Hen: the female of the “common domestic barnyard fowl” i.e Gallus domesticus; usually refers to a bird beyond its pullet stage.

Pullet: a young female, at the beginning of her egg-laying life (about 20 weeks) but has not yet moulted.

Rooster, Cockerel: the male of the “common domestic barnyard fowl”, most usefull in the household to make Cock-Ale (a useful beverage to restore your fighting spirit).

Capon: A castrated cock. Capons are bigger, fatter and more docile than their intact brothers, so desirable on all counts to farmers and the first two to cooks (they make the best roasters, apparently).

In case the chicken-rearing revival does not become widespread, but you have a yen for roast capon on Sundays, here is how to caponize your birds, as told by William Ellis in his marvellous Country Housewifes Companion (1750)

To make Capons. This operation belongs to the country housewife. I know a yeoman living near Hempstead in Hertfordshire, whose estate is but about fifty pounds a year, that makes (as it is credibly reported) fifteen pounds a year by the sale of capons; his wife and daughter cut the young dunghill cocks, but I don't suppose they were all bred on his farm, for some for this purpose make it their business after harvest-time to go to markets for buying up chickens, and between Michaelmas and Allhollantide caponize the cocks, when they have got large enough to have stones of such a bigness that they may be pulled out, for if they are too little, it can't be done; and to know when a cock is fit for it, he should be pretty well grown, have a good comb, and be well fleshed, for these signs shew they are bigger than those of leaner fowls. To cut them, the cock must lie on its back, and held fast, while with a very sharp knife she cuts him only skin-deep about an inch in length, between the rump and the end of the breast-bone, where the flesh is thinnest; next she makes use of a large needle to raise the flesh, for her safer cutting through it to avoid the guts, and making a cut here big enough to put her finger in, which she thrusts under the guts, and with it rakes or tears out the stone that lies nearest to it. This done, she performs the very same operation on the other side of the cock's body, and there takes out the other stone; then she stitches up the wounds, and lets the fowl go about as at other times, till the capon is fatted in a coop, which is commonly done from Christmas to Candlemas, and after. Now if the stones are but big enough, as they lie to the back, they may be safely taken out with a greased fore-finger, without much danger of killing the creature, but when they are too small there is danger. This way of caponizing a cock, I have had done at my house for my information, by a woman deemed to be one of our best capon cutters, else it would have been a difficult matter for me to give a description of it; for they that never saw such an operation, and venture at it, must expect to kill one or more, before he or she gets master of the science. And indeed it is for want of this knowledge that the art of caponizing fowls is not so much practised as formerly; but as I have given a pretty good account I hope of it, I am of opinion the art will be revived, and capons sold in greater plenty than ever.

I stand firmly by my statement about the indispensibility of chicken stock, so our foodie Twelve Days of Christmas now reads:

“On the third day of Christmas, my good friend sent to me
Three boiling hens,
Two chocolate tarts,
And a partridge in a pear tree.”

Susanna Kellet, whose book A complete collection of cookery receipt… was the source of yesterday’s recipe, knew some other things to do with boiling hens.

A dish of Boiled Hens.
Dress your hens for boiling, fill their bellies with the yolks of hard boiled eggs, and boil the hens; when enough, lay them in order on a dish, then pour sauce over them, and thin slices of bacon round.

Sauce for Boiled Hens.
Take some good turnips, pare them, cut them into square small dices, and boil them in milk and water, but don’t boil them too much; then drain them, and have some bacon boiled and cut like turnips, and lay them together; then shred some lemon and oysters, and melt some butter; when it is ready, put all into it, and pour it over your hens; you may boil square pieces of bacon, to lay in the middle of the dish.

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Fourth Day of Christmas.

Quotation for the Day …

The dinner table is the center for the teaching and practicing not just of table manners but of conversation, consideration, tolerance, family feeling, and just about all the other accomplishments of polite society except the minuet. Judith Martin (“Miss Manners”)

The Second Day of Christmas.

December 27 …

“On the second day of Christmas, my true love sent to me … two turtle doves …”

There seems to be something very Un-PC about the idea of eating turtle doves, even if they are glorified pigeons – which are certainly very OK to eat. Apart from Mrs. Chiang-Kai Shek, who attributed her good health to the regular eating of a restorative soup made from white doves, I can find hardly a reference to them appearing on the table. Perhaps we are reluctant to eat them because we have appropriated the species to our coo-ing love-bird selves?

Turtle doves coo over ….. bird seed I suppose? Human turtle doves gift each other … chocolate! Chocolate may well be the most coo-ed over food for all humans, lovers or not, so on this second day of Christmas we are going to have TWO chocolate tarts!

Chocolate, for most of its life, has been a beverage. It was introduced to Europe in the mid-sixteenth century by the Spaniards, who came across its use by the Aztecs (who had gotten it from the earlier Maya who got it from the even earlier Olmecs). It was a spicy drink back then – with vanilla and chilli and all sorts of other ingredients added, but was not sweet. It appears that it was the Spanish who added the sugar, and once that was done, its success in Europe was certain. It took several technological developments in the nineteenth century to make it the solid eatable confectionary that we know today.

In between chocolate as a bitter, spicy drink and chocolate as a sweet, smooth, biteable confection, chefs and cooks discovered its value as a cooking ingredient. It was usually partly processed into solid cakes of coarse “cocoa” which had to be grated or pounded up before use. The first I have been able to find are in François Massialot’s Le nouveau cuisinier royal et bourgeois, ou cuisinier moderne (first ed. 1691) there are two recipes in which chocolate is an ingredient: in a sauce for “sea-duck”, and in a sweet custard. (This recipe is given in an earlier story on chocolate history).

The earliest known written version of our theme song is from 1780, so I am going to give you a recipe from that year. It is a chocolate cream recipe from Susanna Kellet’s book A complete collection of cookery receipts, (consisting of near four hundred,) which have been taught upwards of fifty years…. With a little adaptation it would make a fine filling for those chocolate tart shells that I am sure you can whip up in a jiffy.

Chocolate Cream.
Scrape two ounces of chocolate in a pint of cream, set it on, and let it just come a boil; then mill it up, put in a little perfume, and steep it in rose water. Sweeten to your taste and put in a china dish, and lay froth upon it.

“On the second day of Christmas, my good friend sent to me
Two chocolate tarts
And a partridge in a pear tree.”

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Third Day of Christmas.

Quotation for the Day …

If I were a headmaster, I would get rid of the history teacher and get a chocolate teacher instead and my pupils would study a subject that affected all of them. Roald Dahl.

The First Day of Christmas.

December 26 …

Is “The First Day of Christmas” today? Or was it yesterday?

The correct answer is “both”. Another correct answer is “neither”.

It depends,to start with, on which calendar you use.

According to the Julian calendar, Christmas is not for another thirteen days.

It also depends on when “the day” starts. You thought it was at midnight, didn’t you? And you are correct, for our time and in our culture. Blame the Ancient Romans for the midnight idea. Before they imposed their definition on their subjects the “day” ended when the sun went down – which makes perfect sense for a people whose “clock” was the sun and whose calendar was the turn of the seasons.

So – the new “day” started with the start of what we now call “night”, an arrangement that fitted perfectly with the world view that said that First there was Dark, and Light and Life arose out of the dark. The idea of night preceding (not following) the day is how it came to be that “today” (Boxing Day or St. Stephen’s Day) actually began “last night” at sunset, and “Twelfth Night” (the eve of January 5) precedes precedes Twelfth Day (January 6), and

According to the Christian calendar, Twelfth Day (or Epiphany, or Three Kings Day) is the day that the Wise Men, bearing gifts, came to pay homage to the infant Jesus. It is the official end of the Christmas season, and at the secular rules say it is time to take down the decorations, clean out the fridge, hide your ugly presents in the back of the deepest cupboard, and start panicking about the credit card bill that is probably already in the mail.

The twelve days of Christmas are also – as I am sure by now you are repetitively aware – the subject of a traditional song, the lyrics of which are themselves the subject of much debate. “The Twelve Days of Christmas” may or may not be a song of religious symbolism, or numerological wit (if you apply the correct mathematical formula, you end up with 364 gifts – enough until the next Christmas), or a mere nonsensical childrens memory song/game. The first known recorded version dates to 1780, but it is undoubtedly much older, possibly medieval, and possibly even French in origin. In some versions the person doing the sending is not “my true love” but “my mother”, and there are minor variations in the gifts in different versions.

Your next question is probably “So what has this to do with food?” Not much, really, except that everything is to do with food, or can be made to do with food. There are many parodies of the song The Twelve Days of Christmas, but my brief search has been unable to uncover a foodie version. It is time to put this to rights.

The first line of our song is taken directly from the original – there is no need to change it - Partridges and Pears are fine ingredients for a meal – particularly, I find, for breakfast. Here is some help from Eliza Acton (Modern Cookery for Private Families, 1845).

BROILED PARTRIDGE; (Breakfast dish.)
Split a young and well-kept partridge, and wipe it with a soft clean cloth inside and out, but do not wash it; broil it delicately over a very clear fire, sprinkling it with a little salt and cayenne; rub a bit of fresh butter over it the moment it is taken from the tire, and send it quickly to table with a sauce made of a good slice of butter browned with flour, a little water, cayenne, salt, and mushroom-catsup, poured over it."
We give this receipt exactly as we received it from a house where we know it to have been greatly approved by various guests who have partaken of it there.

TO BAKE PEARS.
Wipe some large sound iron pears, arrange them on a dish with the stalk end upwards, put them into the oven after the bread is drawn, and let them remain all night. If well baked, they will be excellent, very sweet, and juicy, and much finer in flavour than those which are stewed or baked with sugar: the bon chrétien pear also is delicious
baked thus.

Tomorrow's Story …

The Second Day of Christmas.

Quotation for the Day ...

Perhaps the best Yuletide decoration is being wreathed in smiles. Anon.

Alternative Christmas Menus.

December 25, Christmas Day.

I hope you, my hungry readers, all have a safe and happy Christmas season, however you celebrate it. I hope your Christmas food is sufficient in amount and superb in quality. While you enjoy your meal(s), consider these alternative Christmas dinners, taken in wild and far-away places.

1803: The Lewis and Clark expedition party were at Camp River Dubois (near present day Hartford, Illinois). They had just finished constructing the camp on Christmas Eve. Clark
wrote:

“Christmas 25th Decr: I was wakened by a Christmas discharge found that Some of the party had got Drunk (2 fought) the men frolicked and hunted all day, Snow this morning, Ice run all day, Several Turkey Killed Shields returned with a cheese & 4 lb butter, Three Indians Come to day to take Christmas with us, I gave them a bottle of whiskey …. ”

1815: In Australia, Capt. James Kelly, in the newly discovered Macquarie Harbour:

“Christmas Day. Strong gales from the westward, and a heavy sea heaving into the cove. This day we had a 'glorious feed' for dinner - two black swans; one roasted (stuck up), the other was made into a sea-pie - a three-decker, in a large iron pot, - a first-rate Christmas dinner on the west coast of Van Diemen's Land. After dinner we named the cove 'Christmas Cove,' by throwing a glass of brandy into the salt water, and giving three hearty cheers upon the occasion.”

1908: Shackleton en route to the South Pole:

“From Nov. 14, 1908 to Feb. 23, 1909, our party was always hungry, except on Christmas Day when we divided a four-ounce plum pudding into four parts and licked the spoons. We had another luxury that day in a tin of frozen sardines, which contained seventeen fish. After taking four each we tossed our knives on the ice for the odd one. We started to take a tin of jam with us, but as it weighed two pounds we left it 121 miles from base, which was 750 miles from the pole. Our breakfast consisted of pony steaks.”

A couple of extra side-dishes would have gone down a treat for any of these intrepid, and hungry, explorers.

New York Cranberry Sauce.
Wash 1 quart of cranberries, put them into the kettle with 1 pint of water and four cored and sliced tart apples. Cover and cook for twenty minutes; press through a colander.Add 1 pound of sugar, boil five minutes and take from the fire.
[Galveston Daily News,dec 17, 1911]

Creamed Chestnut Pates.
Shell a pint of chestnuts and peel off the brown skins. Wash In cold water and boil in milk until very tender. Drain and sprinkle over them half a teaspoon of salt. Keep hot. Add to the milk in which the chestnuts have been boiled sufficient cream to make a pint, and thicken with a teaspoon of corn starch mixed with a little cold milk: stir in a double boiler until boiling, then add a teaspoon of butter and a little grated onion; let boil up, add the chestnuts; when steaming hot spoon into hot pate shells. One has to gauge the amount of sauce to the size of the shells. Serve garnished with parsley and sliced lemon.
[The Fort Wayne Sentinel, (Indiana) dec 21 1903]

Tomorrow’s Story …

A Foodie’s Twelve Days of Christmas.

Quotation for the Day …

Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. Calvin Coolidge.

Mrs. Pepys’ Pies.

December 24, Christmas Eve.

Samuel Pepys arrived home from the office on this day in 1663 to find his wife making mince-pies. The traditions of mince pies for Christmas was already well established by the mid-seventeenth century, and Pepys mentions them in other diary entries – noting, a few years later when he was more prosperous, the servants (“my people”) helping his wife with this project.

Mince pies originally contained meat, as we found out in our December 2005 story – which also touched on the symbolic meaning attached to the making and eating of pies. There is an almost infinite variety of recipes for mincemeat – even “mock” mincemeat – and several appear in the Vintage Christmas recipe archive.

The cookbook of Robert May – The Accomplish’t Cook – was very popular in Pepys time and I like to think that perhaps Mrs. Pepys knew of it. May gives several recipes for mince pies, with “French” and “Italian” versions included. There are no caraway seeds in these “foreign” recipes as there are in two out of three of the pies of unspecified heritage (caraway seeds were particularly beloved of the English): the “Italian” version presumably gets its nationality from the use of saffron, but I cant hazard a guess as to what makes the other one “French”. Elizabeth Pepys was of French Huguenot stock, so she might have been able to tell us.

Minced in the French fashion, called Pelipate, or in English Petits, made of Veal, Pork, or Lamb, or any kind of Venison, Beef, Poultrey, or Fowl.
Mince them with lard, and being minced, season them with salt, and a little nutmeg, mix the meat with some pine-apple-seed, and a few grapes or gooseberries; fill the pies and bake them, being baked liquor them with a little gravy.
Sometimes for variety in the Winter time, you may use currans instead of grapes or gooseberries, and yolks of hard eggs minced among the meat.

Minced Pies in the Italian Fashion.
Parboil a leg of veal, and being cold mince it with beef-suet, and season it with pepper, salt, and gooseberries; mix with it a little verjuyce, currans, sugar, and a little saffron in powder.

[Remember – traditions says it is good luck to eat one mince pie on each of the twelve days of Christmas, to bring good luck for each of the succeeding twelve months.]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Alternative Christmas Menus.

Quotation for the Day …

It is a great Nostrum the composition of this Pasty ["Christmas Pye"]; it is a most learned Mixture of Neats-tongues, Chickens, Eggs, Sugar, Raisins, Lemon and Orange Peel, various kinds of Spicery, etc. M. Mission, French visitor to England in the late seventeeth century.

Alternative Christmas Puddings.

Just in case you are behind schedule with your puddings, here are a couple of alternative ideas for you. As usual, they have been added to the Vintage Christmas Recipes archive.

The following recipe was found in a Winnipeg newspaper of 1914. It sounds like a nice change from heavier puddings.

Cranberry Snowballs.
Sift together two cupfuls of flour, a pinch of salt and three teaspoonfuls of baking powder; add sufficient sweet milk to make a soft batter, one cupful of sugar, one and a half cupfuls of chopped cranberries dredged with flour and two well beaten eggs. Pour the mixture into buttered pudding cups, and steam for two hours. Garnish with sprigs of holly and serve with hard sauce.

And from Eliza Acton, a mid-nineteenth century plum pudding with potatoes and carrots:

VEGETABLE PLUM PUDDING
(Cheap and good.)
Mix well together one pound of smoothly-mashed potatoes, half a pound of carrots boiled quite tender, and beaten to a paste, one pound of flour, one of currants, and one of raisins (full weight after they are stoned), three quarters of a pound of sugar, eight ounces of suet, one nutmeg, and a quarter-teaspoonful of salt.
Put the pudding into a well-floured cloth, tie it closely, and boil it for four hours. The correspondent to whom we are indebted for this receipt says, that the cost of the ingredients does not exceed half a crown, and that the pudding is of sufficient size for a party of sixteen persons.
We can vouch for its excellence, but as it is rather apt to break when turned out of the cloth, a couple of eggs would perhaps improve it. Sweetmeats, brandy, and spices can be added at pleasure.
Mashed potatoes, 1 Ib.; carrots, 8 ozs.; flour, 1 Ib.; suet, ½ Ib.; sugar, ¾ Ib.; currants and raisins, 1 Ib. each ; nutmeg, 1; little salt: 4 hours.
[From: Modern Cookery for Private Families. Eliza Acton, 1845]

1944: Wartime Christmas Recipes.

During, and for some years after WW II, the Ministry of Food in Britain put out regular Food Facts leaflets to help the public cope with rationing. Rationing was eased very slightly on some foods in the weeks leading up to Christmas – the authorities being well aware of the morale-boost that this would provide.

Food Facts No. 232 in the second week of December in 1944 had recipes for Christmas pudding and cake.

First, the “splendid Christmas Pudding recipe with a fine, rich, fruity flavour, which is not difficult to make. It tastes almost as good as pre-war!”

Christmas Pudding.
“EXTRA SPECIAL” FOR CHRISTMAS 1944.
2 oz. plain flour, ½ level teaspoon baking powder; ½ level teaspoon salt; ¼ level teaspoon grated nutmeg, ¼ level teaspoon salt; ¼ level teaspoon cinnamon; 1 level teaspoon mixed spice; 4 oz suet or fat; 3 oz. sugar; 1 lb. mixed dried fruit; 4 oz. breadcrumbs; 1 level tablespoon marmalade; 2 dried eggs, reconstituted; ¼ pint pale ale, stout or milk. (Enough for 4-5 people).
Sift flour, baking powder, salt and spices together. Add sugar, fruit, and breadcrumbs and grated suet or melted fat. Mix with the marmalade, eggs and liquid. Mix very thoroughly. Put in a greased basin, 2 pint size. Cover with greased paper and steam for 4 hours. Remove paper and cover with a fresh piece and a clean cloth. Store in a cool place. Steam 2 or 3 hours before serving.

Christmas Cake.
½ lb. margarine, ½ lb. sugar (brown if possible); 5 dried eggs, dry; 10 tablespoons water; ½ teaspn. almond essence; ½ teaspn. vanilla essence; ¾ lb. plain flour; 1 level teaspn. bicarbonate soda; ½ level teaspn. Salt; 2 level teaspns. mixed spice; 2 lb. mixed dried fruit; 3-4 tablespns. ale, stout, or milk.
Cream margarine and sugar, adding dried eggs and water gradually. Beat until white and creamy. Add essences. Sift flour, soda, salt and spices together and add to mixture. Add prepared fruit and lastly the liquid, to make a fairly stiff mixture. Mix thoroughly. Put in a cake tin lined with paper, and bake in a slow oven for 3 hours. Leave in tin to cool. (Icing recipe in next week’s Food Facts.)

As promised, Food Facts No. 233 the following week had the recipe for ration-friendly icing, as well as several other ideas including one for wartime gingerbread men.

Icing made with ordinary Sugar and Household Milk.
Ingredients: 4 level dessertspoons sugar, 6 level tablespoons Household Milk, dry [i.e milk powder], 2 tablespoons water, colouring and flavouring.
Method: Mix sugar and milk together. Add water and beat till smooth.Add colouring and flavouring and sperad on top of cake.

Gingerbread Men.
Ingredients: 2 oz. sugar or syrup, 2 oz. margarine, 8 oz. plain flour, ½ level teaspoon mixed spice, 2 level teaspoons ginger, lemon substitute, 1 level teaspoon bicarbonate of soda.
Method: Melt in a pan the syrup or sugar and margarine. Pour into a bowl. Add some flour and the spice and lemon substitute. Stir well. Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in a tablespoon of tepid water and add to the mixture. Continue stirring, gradually adding more flour. Finish the process by turning out the mixture on to a well-floured board. Knead in the remainder of the flour. Roll a small ball for the head, flatten it and place it on the baking tin. Roll an oblong for the body and strips for arms and legs. Join these together with a little reconstituted egg and put currants for the eyes.

Spiced Fruit Punch.
Ingredients: 1 level tablespoon marmalade, 1 level dessertspoonful syrup, ¼ - ½ level teaspoonful ground ginger, 1 tablespoon water, 2 tablespoons orange squash, 1 tablespoon lemon squash, ½ pint freshly made tea.
Method: Put marmalade, syrup, ginger, and water into a pan and make hot but do not boil. Add the lemon and orange squash and the tea and serve hot or very cold. (The tea should not be allowed to stand for more than 3 minutes before straining, and should not be very strong.

Snow Pudding.
Ingredients: 1 ½ oz. semolina, ½ pint milk and ½ pint apple pulp, or 1 pint fruit syrup, 1 ½ oz. sugar, coloured sugar for decorating.
Method: Cook the semolina in the milk or fruit syrup for 7-10 minutes, then beat in the appke and sugar. Turn into a bowl to cool. When cold, but not set,beat until light and frothy. Turn into a dish and just before serving, decorate with coloured sugar.

Coloured Sugar.
Ingredients: Put 2 level teaspoons sugar on a plate and add a few drops of food colouring. Mix well. Allow to dry before using as a decoration. If more than one colour is available, a very pretty effect can be obtained by using different coloured sugars.

[For the sake of completeness, these recipes have been added to the Vintage Christmas Recipes archive. The gingerbread men recipe has also been added to the Through the Ages with Gingerbread archive.]

Mushroom Advice.

December 21 ...

Marion Harland, American writer of all sorts of books including very popular cookbooks, was born on this day in 1830, in Virginia. She did not like, or rather - “not being ambitious of martyrdom” - she was afraid of mushrooms.

MUSHROOMS.
Imprimis.- Have nothing to do with them until you are an excellent judge between the true and false. .... Not being ambitious of martyrdom, even in the cause of gastronomical enterprise, especially if the instrument is to be a contemptible, rank-smelling fungus, I never eat or cook mushrooms; but I learned, years ago, in hillside rambles, how to distinguish the real from the spurious article. Shun low, damp, shady spots in your quest. The good mushrooms are most plenty in August and Septemher, and spring up in the open, sunny fields or commons, after low-lying fogs or soaking dews. The top is a dirty white, -par complaisance, pearl-color, -the underside pink or salmon, changing to russet or brown soon after they are gathered. The poisonous sport all colors, and are usually far prettier than their virtuous kindred. Those which are dead-white above and below, as well as the stalk, are also to be let alone.
Cook a peeled white onion in the pot with your mush rooms. If it turn black, throw all away, and be properly thankful for your escape. It is also deemed safe to reject the mess of wild pottage, if, in stirring them, your silver spoon should blacken. But I certainly once knew a lady who did not discover until hers were eaten and partially digested, that the silver had come to grief in the discharge of duty. It was very dark, and required a deal of rubbing to restore cleanliness and polish; but the poison - if death were, indeed, in the pot - was slow in its effects, since she lived many years after the experiment. It is as well perhaps, though, not to repeat it too often.
[From: Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery. 1873]

The methods Marion suggests to distinguish safe from poisonous mushrooms were commonly believed at the time – and absolutely none are reliable. I present her words to you out of historic curiosity, not as words of instruction! It can be extraordinarily difficult to tell the deadly, the delirium-inducing, and the delicious apart, and even experts occasionally make mistakes.

No self-respecting cookbook of the time would have excluded recipes for mushrooms however, and in spite of her anxiety Marion’s was no exception. Here are a couple of examples, for your holiday season enjoyment:

Mushroom Sauce.
1 teacupful young mushrooms.
4 tablespoonfuls butter.
1 teacupful cream or milk.
1 teaspoonful flour.
Nutmeg, mace, and salt to taste.
Stew the mushrooms in barely enough water to cover them until tender. Drain, hut do not press them, and add the cream, butter, and seasoning. Stew over a bright fire stirring all the while until it begins to thicken. Add the flour wet in cold milk, boil up and serve in a boat, or pour over boiled chickens, rabbits, etc.

Mushroom Catsup.
2 quarts of mushrooms.
¼ lb. of salt.
Lay in an earthenware pan, in alternate layers of mushrooms and salt; let them lie six hours, then break into bits. Set in a cool place three days, stirring thoroughly every morning. Measure the juice when you have strained it, and to every quart allow half an ounce of allspice, the same quantity of ginger, half a teaspoonful of powdered mace, a teaspoonful of cayenne. Put into a stone jar, cover closely, set in a saucepan of boiling water over the fire, and boil five hours hard. Take it off, empty into a porcelain kettle, and boil slowly half an hour longer. Let it stand all night in a cool place, until settled and clear. Pour off carefully from the sediment, and bottle, filling the flasks to the mouth. Dip the corks in melted rosin, and tie up with bladders.
The bottles should be very small, as it soon spoils when exposed to the air.

Monday’s Story …

Mrs. Pepys’ Pies.

Quotation for the Day …

I confess, that nothing frightens me more than the appearance of mushrooms on the table, especially in a small provincial town. Alexandre Dumas.

Mystery Turkey.

December 20 …

It is that time of the year again. The time to search for new and interesting ways to cook the Christmas turkey. Even more critically, the time to search for new and exciting ways to use up the Christmas turkey leftovers for the days that follow.

I present this recipe today in the hope that someone, somewhere will shed some light on the name. Or even make some wild hilarious guesses. It is from The Complete Practical Cook, by Charles Carter, published in 1730.

I have no idea what, where, or who is “Rockampuff”. Even Google refuses to hazard a guess. Presumably it is an attempt to ‘translate’ a French name, coming as it dos from a high-class courtly cookbook.

Whatever its origins, the recipe would be an elegant, if labour-intensive way of using up leftover roast turkey, and is surely worth adapting by persons of a modern persuasion.

ROCKAMPUFF, with Capon, Pullet, Turkey, or other Fowl.
Take, after roasted, all the brawny, white, and fleshy Part of your Fowl’ mince it, when taken off, very small: Take the best of the Joints and Bones, and cut them in pieces, and ragoust them in good Gravy; put to them a few Morelles and Mushrooms, and an Artichoke-bottom cut in Pieces; season with Pepper, Salt, Nutmeg, an Onion, and a Faggot of Sweet-herbs; sheet the same dish you serve it in with Puff-Paste; raise a border of hot Butter-Paste in the Inside three or four Inches high: First put in your Ragoust, and over that lay a Row of large Oysters dipp’d in Eggs, and seasoned with Pepper, Salt, Nutmeg, Thyme and Parsley minc’d, and a little grated Bread; then toss up your minc’d Fowl with good Gravy, thick Butter, and the Yolk of an Egg, season’d with Pepper, Salt, and Nutmeg; Put it over the Oysters, and strew over it some Raspings of French Bread to the thickness of a quarter of an Inch; then take thick Butter and beat it up with the Yolk of an Egg or two, and with a Brush, drop it all over in Rings till quite cover’d; paper your Border round, and bake it; and when done, serve it away hot to the Table: Squeeze over an Orange.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Mushroom Advice.

Quotation for the Day …

Cooking Tip: Wrap turkey leftovers in aluminum foil and throw them out. Nicole Hollander.

Candy for Health.

December 19 …

An article in the prestigious British Medical Journal on this day reported on a study conducted by the equally prestigious Harvard School of Public Health. The results appeared to show that the mortality rate was lowest amongst men who ate candy at least three times a week compared with those who did not eat candy at all..

I find this study immensely interesting, not only because of its value in reducing greed-guilt, but also on account of the wild and wonderful theories that can be inspired by it (not by the Harvard researchers I might add). Was it the preserving power of the sugar? Or were the ancient medicos right and sugar has medicinal benefits in its own rights, even if they were wrong on the dose (they thought tiny amounts were sufficient)? Would the same results apply to women? Are the results explained by the candy-eaters doing large amounts of exercise penance? Are candy-eaters more fun, and it is actually the fun that saves your life? Did the BMJ deliberately choose to publish this article before Christmas, as their gift to their reading public?

We have met several different forms of candy in this blog – chocolate occasionally (but not often enough), nougat (in relation to a crime), ‘sugar of roses’ (in an article about climbing mountains and eating mints), caraway comfits (in a story about lust and orgies), and ‘others too numerous to mention’ (or look up) by this lazy writer.

So what to choose by way of recipes, to reduce your mortality risk over the Christmas season?

I have so far neglected liquorice in this blog. Liquorice comes from the root of several species of shrubby plants of the genus Glycyrrhiza, especially G. glabra. It has been used for centuries as a medicine, and is said to be useful in – among other things – disorders of the gastrointestinal tract, which are prevalent in late December due to the festivites. It is timely then to address the omission.

‘Confectionary’ only fairly recently came to apply only to hard candy. Once upon a time it was part of the pastrycooks domain and also included all manner of conserves and sweetmeats as well as pastries. Pastrycooks of the early eighteenth century had a frighteningly large sphere of responsibility, if we are to judge by the information immediately below the title of today’s recipe source, which was published in 1705.

The pastry-cook’s vade-mecum: or, a pocket-companion for cooks, house-keepers, country gentlewomen, &c. ...

Choice and Excellent Directions, and Receipts for making all Sorts of Pastry-Work; Dressing the most Dainty Dishes; Candying, Preserving and Drying all manner of Fruit. As also, the Art of Distilling and Surgery.

The “Good Old Days” Huh? When the local pastrycook had pretensions to chirugerie? No thankyou. I’ll take my varicosed veins to a real surgeon.

To make Liqourish Cakes.
Take 12 ounces of Liquorish scraped very thin, then take two pints and a half of Isop [hyssop?] Water, one pint and half of Coltsfoot Water, a pint and half of red Rosewater, two good handful of Rosemary flowers, one handful of Maiden-hair, keep all these together three or four days in a stew Pot or Jug that may be close stop’d, shaking them together two or three times a day, then put them all into a Skilet, and set them upon a soft Fire two hours, then strain it into a Silver Bason, put to it a pound of brown Sugar-candy so let it boil till it grow thick enough to beat to a Paste, when you find it grow pretty thick, take a little upon a Spoon, and beat it with a Knife till it be cold, and then you will find whether it be enough, when you take it off the Fire, it must be beaten with a good strength with a Spoon till it be white, then take some fine Sugare searced, and so roul it up in little Cakes, the best way is to keep beating it to the last, or else it will so crackle that it will never role handsomely, half this Receipt is enough to make at a time.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Mystery Turkey.

Quotation for the Day …

Anyone who uses the phrase 'easy as taking candy from a baby' has never tried taking candy from a baby. Unknown