Do You Know Oatmeal?

I have occasionally given you bits and pieces from the British WW II Food Facts leaflets put out by the Ministry of Food, today I am going to give you some snippets from a WW I booklet published in 1917 by the U.S Dept. of Agriculture for the U.S Food Administration. The booklet is a composite of eight leaflets:

No. 1. Start the Day Right

No. 2. Do You Know Cornmeal?

No. 3. A Whole Dinner in One dish

No. 4. Chose Your Food Wisely.

No. 5. Make a Little Meat Go a Long Way.

No. 6. Do You Know Oatmeal.

No. 7. Food for Your Children

No. 8. Instead of Meat

Under the list of leaflets is the exhortation to:

KEEP THEM                          REFER TO THEM

SHOW THEM TO YOUR NEIGHBOURS

It seems right to start this post with some advice on how to start the day right. Essentially this is to have a good breakfast with:

FRUIT                        CEREAL       MILK

These make a meal –

NOURISHING          EASY TO COOK

GOOD                        CHEAP

of foods the Government asks us to eat

I am not sure why this poster-type style was used, but I guess because it fitted with the many actual posters on food and other wartime issues.

Some brief suggestions on the use of fruit, cereal and milk followed (“Use bananas with dark skins. Bananas with greenish-yellow skins are hard to digest unless cooked.”) The ideas in the “Do You Know Oatmeal” leaflet naturally overlap with the breakfast suggestions, and as many of you love oatmeal posts (is it one of the universal Western comfort foods?) this is what I want to focus on today.  I have selected my top three recipes from the leaflet.

Do you know that oatmeal makes delicious puddings and other good things?

Of course, you know it is a good breakfast food, but it is even better fixed up for dinner or supper.

It makes

Excellent Puddings

Wholesome Bread and Cookies

An Appetizing Soup for a Cold Day

A Baked Dish for Dinner in Place of Meat

OATMEAL BETTY               or         BROWN PUDDING

2 cups cooked oatmeal.                                   2 cups cooked oatmeal

4 apples cut up small                           ½ cup molasses

½ cup raisins                                       ½ cup raisins

½ cup sugar

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

Mix and bake for one half-hour. Serve hot or cold. Any dried or fresh fruits, dates, or ground peants may be used instead of apples. Either will serve five people.

Especially crisp and good as Well as cheap are

SCOTCH OAT CRACKERS

2 cups rolled oats.       1 ½ tablespoons fat.

¼ cup milk                  ¼  teaspoon soda.

¼  cup molasses          1 teaspoon salt.

Grind or crush the oats and mix with the other materials. Roll out in a thin sheet and cut in squares. Bake for 20 minutes in a moderate oven. Makes 3 dozen crackers.

Instead of meat, cook this appetizing dish for your family

BAKED OATMEAL AND NUTS

2 cups cooked oatmeal.                       I teaspoon vinegar.

1 cup crushed peanuts             ¼ teaspoon pepper.

½ cup milk                              2 ½ teaspoons salt.

Mix together and bake in a greased pan 15 minutes. This is enough for five people.

The puddings look like a good way to use up leftover porridge, or to make a bigger quantity in the first place, to have some prepared for this dish (would save on fuel too.)

The most intriguing to me is the recipe for baked oatmeal and nuts. The title suggested a breakfast granola, but instead it is a sort of savoury peanut and oatmeal meat-substitute pudding. Not sure if I really like the sound of it, but on the other hand I recently had Ripe Banana Phili on Norfolk Island and loved it. Phili is a similar concept – take any starchy cereal (flour, in the case of the one I had) and add a mashed starchy ingredient (ripe or green bananas, sweet potato etc) and some milk and bake. The phili was served at ambient temperature, cut into squares, as an accompaniment to some fabulous fish, lots of salads, and some amazing coconut bread.

How to Make Potato Blood.

Some time ago we talked about Potato Cheese, which at the time seemed a greatly intriguing thing to me. I have discovered some old ideas for the potato which are new to me, and may be to you, too. I found them in The Journal of Agriculture, an English publication from 1835.

I shall now proceed to lay before you some of its uses which are less obvious and more seldom described. …

In some parts of Germany potatoes are put to another use. The lower classes are accustomed to incorporate them, after being steamed and reduced to a paste, with the butter to be spread over bread. It thus goes farther where economy is studied: and that it may longer be preserved, is often salted.

It will surprise many to learn, that a mode has been suggested by a French chemist for converting potatoes into a substance resembling coffee. He mixes some best olive-oil with a certain portion of dried potato-flour, and then adds a small quantity of coffee-powder. He asserts that this will produce a liquor more agreeable than coffee.

Chemical ingenuity has likewise converted this most useful root into substitutes for many other articles … An imitation chocolate is made on the same principles as the imitation coffee; and a kind of mock-vermicelli on the same principles as the mock-tapioca. …… also brandy, beer, treacle.

… I may close the catalogue by an account taken from a work published in 1710, upon the virtues of herbs. The author, after mentioning that potatoes make very good food for man, either boiled, baked, or roasted, when eaten with good butter, salt, juice of oranges or lemons, and double refined sugar, then goes on to speak of the virtues of what he calls the blood of potatoes. For the mode of preparing this valuable ingredient, he refers his readers to the description of the method of extracting a similar blood from parsnips. After reducing them to a pulp, he mixes them with crumbs of white bread, and sprinkles them with white port wine: after sundry distillations (which need not be recited here), "the matter is changed," says he, "into a rubicund or bloody chyle." This is to be forced out strongly with a press, and the juice exposed to a variety of operations, " till the blood becomes quite clear, and of a most perfect red.'' "From this," he continues, "you may, if you please, separate, by an alembic, a thin and clear liquor, so you have remaining in the bottom the blood of potatoes of a very glorious colour; It hath all the properties of the roots boiled, baked, Toasted, or made into bread, puddings, or broth. It invigorates to a strange degree." "The potato-blood," he says, "may be taken with good effect, a spoonful or two morning, noon, and night, in a glass of choice Canary, Malaga, or other good wines.”

The phrase “potato blood” was also used disparagingly to refer to the Irish as in:  “English meat-eaters … appeared favourably in contrast to feeble Indian vegetarians and Irishmen with sluggish'potato blood'.”

I must, of course, give you a potato recipe for the day. Here are a couple of ideas from a little piece called Irish Economy from the Housewife’s Daily Economy Calendar in The Washington Post of November 4, 1913:

Of course, potatoes did not originate in Ireland, but for some reason the Irish became their staunchest advocates and it is to the housewives of the Emerald Isle that we must look for the most toothsome way of cooking and serving them.

Some Irish Recipes.

Mash four good-sized potatoes and mix in a lump of butter. Butter a baking pan and fill it with three or five alternate layers each of mashed potatoes and bread crumbs. Beat up an egg with a little milk, salt and pepper, and add. Bake for about 20 minutes.

Potato puffs begin with mashed potatoes seasoned with butter, and mixed with half a cupful of milk and one, or two beaten eggs. The mixture should be beaten very light. Have a pan of deep fat at a good frying temperature and drop the mixture into the fat and brown a light brown.

How to Cook a Skunk.

I don’t know if you will ever need or want this information, neither do I know how a French chef became an expert on the topic. Here they are, however - instructions on how to skin and cook a skunk , from What to Eat, and how to Cook It (New York, 1863) by Pierre Blot. The preliminary instructions are generic to a few other delicacies.

Opossum, Otter, Raccoon, Skunk, Woodchuck, Fox, etc.

We cannot say that we have had much experience in cooking the above, but all these animals are eaten by many persons in different parts of this and other countries. We have eaten of all of them except the raccoon, and we must say that we found them good.

It is well known that when our soldiers retook possession of Ship Island, they found plenty of raccoons on it, and ate all they could catch. One day we happened to meet a sub-officer who was there at the time, and enquired of him about it. He said he had never eaten any raccoons before, and did not know that they were eatable; but now he would eat them as readily as rabbits, as they were quite as good.

The best time to eat either of the animals enumerated above is from Christmas to the 15th of February; squirrels also are not good in warm weather.

How to prepare them.—As soon as the animal is killed skin it, take the inside out, save the liver and heart, and wash well with lukewarm water, and a little salt, in and outside; then wipe dry with a towel, put inside of it a few leaves of sage, bay leaves, mint and thyme, and sew it up. Hang it outside in a place sheltered from the sun, such as the northern side of a building; leave it thus five or six days, then take off and cook.

How To Skin A Skunk.

We were hunting one day in New Jersey, northwest of Paterson, with a friend and two farmers living there, when one of them shot a skunk. We asked him how much he could get for the skin. He said it was not worth-while to take it to town, but that he would eat the animal, as it was very good.

We thought at first that he was joking; but putting his gun and game bag to the ground, he looked at us earnestly and said, “Gentlemen, you seem to doubt; I will show you how it is done.” We soon saw that we had been mistaken.

He made a fire, took hold of the skunk by the head with one hand, and with a stick in the other, held the skunk over the fire. He burnt off nearly all the hair, taking care to avoid burning the skin, commencing at the hind legs; then, -with his hunting knife, he carefully took off the bag containing the fetid matter, and skinned and cleaned it.

We then examined the stunk, and although it had not been washed, we could not find any part of it which had smell, and if we had not seen the whole operation, we certainly would not have thought that it was a skunk, the very name of which is repulsive.

The following week we dined with the farmer, ate some of that identical skunk, and found it very good.

The Mango Fork.

In times past, the perfect kitchen for the perfect hostess presumably then, as now, had a place for everything, which presumably means there was a lot more storage space than most of us have nowadays. I don’t know where I would put a collection of mango forks, if I had them, but then, I don’t really think I would ever use them. I did not know such things existed, until I read a little piece in the women’s pages of the Washington Post of June 26, 1924

THE MANGO FORK

In “Fruit Recipes” published nearly twenty years ago, one of the things said about the mango is this: “The fruit is truly exceedingly juicy ….but where the mango grows in the greatest luxuriance and it is properly understood and used one may procure the regular mango fork, a three pronged affair of which the middle prong is long and projected, so that the fruit will not slip.”

This was the kind of fork on which the first mango I had in Havana, Cuba, some weeks ago, was served, at a place where they ate and drank fruit, and forthwith I went hunting for some of those forks. The first I found were made by one of the leading makers of plate in the United States, but I kept up my quest to get the Cuban make and succeeded.

The Spanish buccaneers probably ate mangoes. In a 100-year old book on the West Indies, written by a woman, which I read some years ago to learn about the foods there, it speaks of the great variety of fruits and says of the mango: “It is certainly the most abundant. This fruit hangs in such thick clusters that the fruit of one tree is immense. There are many varieties, but the small ones are the best.” A small, delicate yellow one is mentioned, a coarse green one, etc.

Outside the tropics the mango is now mostly eaten by epicures, and two budded varieties, mulgobaa and Haden, are spoken of as the aristocrats of the family. “To the connoisseur these two varieties combine all the delicious flavors and aromas of the peach, apple, pear, cantaloupe, and pineapple, and, in addition, a delightfully spicy flavor all their own.

The mango fork certainly sounds elegant, but elegance seems incompatible with a completely satisfying, sticky, ripe-mango-eating experience. For those of you who want an elegant, mango dessert but do not have the correct forks, I give you a recipe for a mango fool, and for those of you in the tropics with a backyard mango tree and a yearly glut of the fruit, I give you a recipe for the dried and salted unripe fruit for use with your curries. Both recipes come from The Times of India, in May, 1934.

Mango Fool.

Pare, slice and boil the unripe fruit in sufficient water to cover it. Strain the pulp, which mix with the same quantity or more of milk (either raw or boiled) and sweeten it well with sugar (N.B. “The same quantity” means, a cup of pulp to a cup of milk.)

Mango Dried and Salted.

Slice four pound of hard unripe mangoe and dry them on a net in the sun for ten days, bringing them in before sunset. Make a strong brine of one pound salt and water, immerse the dried fruit in it, dry again in the sun. Use to acidulate curries.

A Spanish Prison Diet.

The eighteenth century prison reformer John Howard visited many British and foreign gaols in the 1780’s. He left detailed reports in his book The State of The Prisons In England and Wales: With Preliminary Observations, And An Account Of Some Foreign Prisons And Hospitals published in 1784.

Howard’s report of the Spanish prison and hospital at San Fernando make for interesting reading.

The Table of Diet for San Fernando.

Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Twenty ounces of bread, eight ounces of mutton, and two ounces of garvances (i.e. yellow beans dried). 

Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Twenty ounces of bread, four ounces of meat, and two ounces of garvances.

At night, four ounces of bread in broth, or three ounces of lentils; or two ounces and a half of jew-beans. 

Fridays and fast days. Twenty ounces of bread, three ounces of dried fish, two ounces of rice, and two ounces and a half of jew-beans.

To make their ollas, they are allowed, on meat days, eight pounds of salt butter; on Fridays, four pounds for supper.

On Fridays, they are allowed, one pound of oil and twenty-five pounds of jew-beans, garvances, and lentils for soupe-maigre.

On meat days,cayenne pepper for sauce.

Diet table for the Infirmary.

Full Diet.

Breakfast. Bread two ounces.

Dinner. Bread eight ounces, meat six ounces.
Supper. Bread six ounces, meat four ounces.

Half Diet.

Breakfast. Bread two ounces.

Dinner. Bread four ounces, meat four ounces.
Supper. The same.

Common Diet.

Breakfast. Broth.

Dinner. Bread two ounces, and broth.
Supper. The same.

Low Diet.

Broth only.

Chocolate, biscuits, wine and other necessaries are allowed the sick; according to discretionary orders from the physician, who is to be guided by the medical rules approved of by the body of physicians at Madrid.

Nurses and others who attend the sick are allowed a diet of ten ounces of meat, sixteen ounces of bread, two ounces of garvances, and half a quarto (about half a pint English) of wine daily.

Olla is a general term in Spain for a variety of ingredients boiled over a slow tie, meat, greens, pepper, &c.

I am not sure what “jew-beans” are, and hope one of you can enlighten me. I have seen suggestions that they are haricot beans or fava beans.

As the recipe for the day, I give you a nice stew from The Jewish manual; or, Practical information in Jewish and modern cookery (1846)

Beef with Celery, And White Beans And Peas.

Soak for twelve hours one pint of dried white peas, and half a pint of the same kind of beans, they must be well soaked, and if very dry, may require longer than twelve hours, put a nice piece of brisket of about eight pounds weight in a stew-pan with the peas and beans, and three heads of celery cut in small pieces, put water enough to cover, and season with pepper and salt only, let it all stew slowly till the meat is extremely tender and the peas and beans quite soft, then add four large lumps of sugar and nearly a tea-cup of vinegar; this is a very fine stew.

Many Ways with Maize in 1678.

I have been doing a little reading about the disaster that was the Irish Famine of the 1840’s, and this led me to a discussion of the gifts and purchases of ‘corn’ (maize) from America that were made in attempts to relieve the starvation. Before long I found myself a couple of centuries earlier in America, enjoying samp - the original polenta, if you like the connection – and beer made from bread.

Governor John Winthrop (1606-1676) of the Massachusetts Bay Colony sent to the Royal Society of England a report on maize, and it is a marvelous account of the uses of that crop in the colony. His report was included in the thirteenth edition of Philosophical Transactions, Giving Some Accompt of the Present Undertakings, Studies and Labors of the Ingenious in Many Considerable Parts of the World (London, 1677-8.)  I give you the "cooking part" of the article:

The Description, Culture, and Use of Maiz. Communicated by Mr.Winthorp [John Winthrop]

This Corn the Indians dressed several ways for their food. Sometimes boyling it whole till it swelled and became tender, and so either eating it alone, or with their Fish or Venison instead of Bread. Sometimes bruising in Mortars, and so boyling it. But commonly this way, viz. by parching it in Ashes, or Embers, so artificially stirring it, as without burning, to be very tender, and turned almost inside outward, and also white and flowry. This they sift very well from the Ashes, and beat it in their wooden Mortars, with along Stone for a Pestle, into fine Meal. This is a constant food at home, and especially when they travel, being put up in a Bag, and so at all times ready for eating either dry or mixed with Water. They find it very wholfom Diet. And is that, their Souldiers carry with them in time of War. The English sometimes for novelty, will procure some of this to be made by the Indian women, adding Milk or Sugar and Water to it, as they please..

The Indians have another sort of Provision out of this Corn, which they call Sweet-Corn. When the Corn in the Ear is full, while it is yet green,it hath a very sweet Tast. This they gather, boy!,and then dry,and so put it up into baggs or baskets, for their use: boiling it again, either whole or grosly beaten, when they eat it, either by itself, or amongst their Fish or Venison or Beavers, or other Flesh; accounting it a principal Dish.

These green and sweet Ears they sometimes roast before the Fire or in the Embers, and so eat the Corn. By which means, they have sufficient supply of food, though their .old Store be done. Their Souldiers also most commonly at this time goe out against their Enemies, having this supply in their Marches both at home and in the Enemies fields.

The English, of the full ripe Corn, ground, make very good Bread. But 'tis not ordered as other Corn. For if it be mixed into stiff Paste, it will not be so good, as if made only a little stiffer than for Puddings; and so baked in a very hot Oven, standing therein all day or all night. Because upon the first pouring of it on the Oven-floor, it spreads abroad , they pour a second layer or heap upon every first, and thereby make so many Loves. Which is baked enough, and good, will be of a deep yellowish colour; if otherwise, white.

It is also sometimes mixed with half or a third part of Rye or Wheat Meal, and so with Leaven or Yest made into Loaves of very good Bread.

Before they had Mills, having first watered and Husked the Corn, and then beaten it in Wooden Mortars; the courser part sifted from the Meal, and separated from the loose Hulls by the Wind, they boyled to a thick Batter: to which being cold, they added so much of the fine Meal, as would serve to stiffen it into Past, whereof they made very good Bread. But the best sort of Food which the English make of this Corn, is that they call Samp. Having first watered it about half an hour, and then beaten it in a Mortar, or else ground it in a Hand or other Mill, into the bigness of Rice, they next lift the Flower, and Winnow the Hulls from it. Then they boyl it gently, fill it be tender, and so with Milk or Butter and Sugar, make it into a very pleasant and wholsom Dim. This was the most usual Diet of the first Planters in these Parts, and is still in use amongst them, as well in Feavers, as in Health: and was often prescribed by the Learned Dr. Wilson to his Patients in London. And of the Indians that live much upon this Corn, the English most acquainted with them, have been informed by them, That the Disease of the Stone is very seldom known amongst them.

The English have also found out a way to make very good Beer of Grain: that is, either of Bread made hereof, or else by Malting it. The way of making Beer of Bread is by breaking or cutting it into great jumps about as big as a mans fist, to be mash'd, and so proceeded with as Malt, and the impregnated Liquor, is Woort, either adding or omitting Hopps, as is desired.

To make good Milt of this Corn, a particular way must be taken. The Barly-Malt-Masters have used all their skill to make good Malt hereof the ordinary way but cannot effect it; that is, that the whole Grain be Malted, and tender and flowry, as in other Malt. For it is found by experience, that this Corn, before it be fully Malted, must sprout out both ways, (i.e both Root and Blade) to a great length; of a finger at least, if more, the-better. For which, it must be laid upon an heap a convenient time. Wherein on the one hind, if it lyeth of a sufficient thickness for coming, it will quickly heat and mould, and the tender Sprouts be so intangled, that the least opening of the Heap breaks them off; and so hinders the further maturation of the Grain into Malt. On the other, if it be stirred and opened to prevent too much heating, these sprouts which have begun to shoot, cease growing, and consequently the Corn again ceaseth to be promoted to the mellowness of Malt.

To avoid all these difficulties, this way was try'd and found effectual; Take away the top of the Earth in a Garden or Field two or three inches, throwing it up half one way, and half the other. Then lay the Corn, for Malt, all over the Ground so as to cover it. Then cover the Corn with the Earth that was pared off;  and there is no more to do, till you see all the Plot of Ground like a green Field covered over with the Sprouts of the Corn, which will be within ten days or a fortnight, according to the time of the year. Then take it up, and shake the earth from it and dry it. For the Roots will be so intangled together, that it may be raised up, in great pieces. To make it very clean, it may be washed, and then presently dry'd on a Kiln, or in the Sun, or spread thin on a Chamber floor. This way, every Grain that is good will grow, and be mellow, flowry and very sweet; and the Beer made of it, be wholfom, pleafant,and of a good brown colour.

Yet Beer made of the Bread, as aforesaid, being as well coloured, as wholfom and pleasant, and more durable; this therefore is most in use. And the rather, because the way of Malting this Corn, last described, is as yet but little known amongst them.

Shrimp Cocktail, Anyone?

I have recently been on the trail of the first Shrimp Cocktail recipe (or, in Australia, Prawn Cocktail.) The specific concept is American, for sure, although it is really just a tweak of a well-established idea of serving oysters or other seafood with a slightly sharp and spicy sauce. In the case of the shrimp cocktail, that spicy sauce has a tomato base.

I invite you to help me find the earliest recipe named Shrimp Cocktail. The best I have managed so far is the following one, from the Milwaukee Sentinel of March 17, 1926:

Kraut and Shrimp Cocktail.

1 ½ cups Frank’s Kraut (uncooked) shredded.

1 cup Frank Kraut juice

1 can shrimp, shredded [shredded? An error, surely?]

Small piece of green pepper (chopped fine)

Small piece of onion, chopped very fine.

Method: Combine ingredients and pour over kraut juice. Let stand for some time. One-half hour before serving, put in glasses and cover with the following sauce:

One-half cup chili sauce. Two tablespoons catsup, juice of half a lemon. Salt to taste with a dash of paprika. Serve with salt wafers. This recipe is for six portions.

Here is another recipe for a cocktail sauce for oysters which would work just as well for shrimp (or, in Australia, for prawns) from The Meriden Daily Journal, Apr 9, 1936:

Cocktail Sauce.

Two tablespoons tomato catsup, I tablespoon prepared horseradish, 1 tablespoon vinegar, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, half teaspoon minced onion, half teaspoon salt, few drops tabasco sauce.

Mix oysters with sauce in glasses before wanted for serving and keep on ice to chill thoroughly. Use about one tablespoonful of the mixture for each serving.

One man’s weed is another man’s treat.

Last week I gave you part of an article from A New Kind Of Page for the New Kind Of Woman, from the New York Times in January 1913. The topic of the time was the Japanese udo, which, for all I know may be as ubiquitous as the choko is in Australia. In a post a long time ago I discussed “the bloody choko”, and its role in the cuisine of this country. Let me keep this simple. The choko, which I understand is a much valued vegetable in the South of the U.S.A, is not considered a delicacy here. My Australian readers will be amused that the choko was another of the “strange and foreign fruit and vegetables” covered in the article mentioned above. Perhaps it helps if you call it a chayote.

Cooking the Chayote.

As a preliminary preparation, always peel and cut the chayote in two, take the seeds out, and cook in boiling salted water for an hour and a quarter. For baking, cut the vegetable thus prepared into slices, mix with a cream sauce; season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and sprinkle the top with grated cheese, fresh breadcrumbs, and butter. Bake for ten minutes in a hot oven.

Stuffed chayotes are found on the tables of many New Orleans families. The housewife seeking something new and delicate should try them. Stuff the halves of the prepared chayote with some duxelle. Sprinkle with fresh breadcrumbs and some butter, seasoning to taste; then bake in the oven for fifteen minutes and serve with tomato sauce. Duxelle is prepared by chopping fine one onion and two shallots; add some finely chopped mushrooms, and let the whole stew in butter until the moisture out of the mushrooms has been thrown out; season with salt, pepper, and a little chopped parsley.

The chayote makes a delightful salad, with a most unusual taste. After being well cooked it should be allowed to cool, then split into four pieces. These in turn should be sliced to a thickness of about a quarter of an inch. Place in a serving dish with lettuce and cover with mayonnaise or French dressing.

A Menu Pathetic and Humorous By Turns.

I am on holiday for the rest of this week, and my plan is that my daily stories will launch themselves, as scheduled, thanks to the wonders of technology.

I have a little fun for you today, in the form of some proof that political rivalry can occasionally have a light-hearted side. The story takes place in 1893, in New York, and was reported in the New York Times.

A unique and jolly dinner at the Seventh Regiment Veteran Club a few nights ago engaged the attention of twelve genial and worthy members of the Ninth Company of the Seventh Regiment. Seven loyal Republicans acted as hosts and footed the bills, and five loyal Democrats enjoyed the dinner as guests. The gastronomic bout was the outcome of a wager between Republican and Democratic members of the Ninth Company on the results of the Presidential election last Fall.

The menu [compiled by the Republican, Lieut. Du Val] was original in form and pathetic and humorous by turns. The banquet began with “Salt River Clams” and “a large tureen of Harrison consommé.” Then there came some “Bering Sea fish” and “Adlaid eggs on toast.” Next there was a dish of “Fall lamb roasted in November,” and some “Murphy potatoes raised on the Hill.” Further along in the feast were “Whitelaw Reid birds,” “Sore head duck,” “Current opinion jelly,” “Hoke and Hominy,” “Salary Salad with Tammany dressing,” and “Pension cheese.” The wine and cigars were of a non-partisan quality, and the toasts and stories were purely of a military and social flavour.”

Our recipe for the day is from The National Cookery Book which was compiled for America's Centennial celebration in 1876, in Philadelphia.

To Roast Reed Birds.

Roasting is the best method of cooking these little birds. This can easily be accomplished by suspending them from the little wires usually found in roasters, or in tin kitchens, as they are sometimes called. They can be frequently turned and easily basted. They take a very short time to cook, and must be carefully watched. Baste them with butter and serve them hot.

An April Fool's Day Dinner

An April Fool’s Day Dinner.

The choice was forced on me today – an Easter Monday story or an April Fool’s Day story? The latter won, because it was easier, thanks to the Washington Post of March 29, 1913 (I need to take the easy option for a few more weeks – there is a book to finish and a few days holiday to squeeze in!)

A column called The Housewife’s Daily Economy Calendar had the following suggestions for an April Fool’s Day dinner:

"Practical jokes of a rough sort ought to be opposed by everyone with sense and feeling. Serious results have often ensued from the ill-timed efforts of someone to be funny. But human nature likes laughter, and April Fool’s day can be celebrated in a way to produce fun and laughter, without bringing any possible harm to anybody. The way to do it is with an April Fool’s dinner."

THE DINNER.

The guests at the dinner, of course, should not know that jokes are to be indulged in. They will find out soon enough without being told.

To begin with, there should be a centerpiece of fruit containing favors for the guests. The fruit must be carefully prepared and arranged with smilax or some ferns to cover up any suspicious looking spots. Cut oranges and grapefruit in halves, and remove the pulp, which can be used later on. Slit several bananas lengthwise and remove the fruit. Scoop out the inside of several apples, and prepare any other availalble fruit so that only the shell is left. Then line the cavity with waxed paper, wrap some amusing little knickknack in tissue paper, and pack it carefully in the fruit. Arrange the fruit with the uncut sides to the top, and twine the smilax or other green about it to cover cuts and creases. The favors might consist of little gifts which would call attention to some liking or hobby of each guest.

The place cards can have jokes written on them – wholesome, laugh-producing jokes, - or they can have some cryptic word traced on them in milk and the guests can be asked to read the words on their cards. A good deal of fun will result before someone discovers that by holding the cards over candle or othe flame the word turns brown and becomes visible.

Surprise dishes should be served. The meat course can be hidden in big baked potatoes. Green peppers can be stuffed with rice. A salad of surprise tomatoes, hiding celery and mayonnaise, can be served. The dessert can consist of a good-sized sponge cake which, just before it is brought to table, is hollowed out and put, cake side up, on a platter.

Nuts for Surprises.

Surprise nuts can be served. They can be bought ready made but they can also be made at home. To make them split walnuts, hazel nuts, and peanuts as neatly as possible. In each shell put a tiny trinket – little tin favours that can be bought for a few cents a dozen, answering that purpose. Then, with a little strong glue, fasten the shells together again. Arrange the nuts in small bonbon dishes and use them as table decorations until time to pass them.

Hot Cross Buns, Again.

The Harper’s Bazaar edition of April 1900 which gave us yesterday’s Easter Egg recipes also included one for Hot Cross Buns. I have given you recipes for Hot Cross Buns previously, but there is always room for one more, and anyway, I liked the introductory words:

FOR days before Easter the shop windows are gay with Easter gifts, Easter favors, Easter novelties of all sorts. Even those to whom Lent has been little more than a name feel the influence of the spring gladness the approaching festival brings. The Easter thrill is in the blood, and it is natural that there should be a desire to express the inner spirit by some outward and visible sign. It is the effort to do this which fills our homes with blossoms, that moves us to send Easter cards and tokens to our friends, and that prompts us to make the children about us joyous by the bestowal of rabbits, colored eggs, baby chicks, and the other quaint and pretty emblems of the season. The housekeeper who marks the calendar of the year in the kitchen, as well as out of it is seeking diligently just now the dishes suitable for this feast. In some respects the task is less easy at this festival than at others, since there is no time-honored convention concerning Easter. With the Easter breakfast the work is comparatively simple. It is not so long after Good Friday that cross-buns are yet out of season, and the leftovers can be made hot and crisp for the Sunday breakfast. Eggs are a sine qua non, and instead of converting them into an omelet or other made dish, they would better be served whole. If it does not seem sufficiently festive to have new-laid eggs boiled in the shells, they may appear as stuffed or deviled eggs, retaining thus their natural shape, and crisp from frying or masked with a white or anchovy sauce. Colored eggs of ice-cream each egg placed in an individual nest of spun sugar make a pretty dessert. In circumstances where for any reason the spun sugar and ice-cream are not feasible, an excellent home-made substitute can be provided by a hen’s nest  of preserved orange-peel shredded to imitate straw.

Hot Cross Buns.

Make a sponge of a cup and a half of milk, half a yeast-cake dissolved in half a cup of warm water, and flour enough to make a thick batter. Set in a warm place overnight. In the morning add two large spoonfuls of butter, melted, half a cup of sugar, a salt-spoonful of salt, and as much cinnamon or gratedd nutmeg. Work in more flour until the dough can be handled, kneading it well. Cover, and let it rise in a warm corner for five hours longer, then roll out into a sheet about half an inch thick, and cut into rounds, like biscuit. Lay them in a buttered baking-pan, let them rise half an hour, cut a cross upon each, and put into the oven. When they are baked to a light brown brush over with white of egg beaten up with fine sugar, and take from the oven. For a large supply double the quantity.

Variations on a Theme of Easter Eggs.

It is time for something a little lighter than the fare I have fed you the last few days, and it is certainly time for Easter Eggs. I give you two egg recipes – deep-fried hard-boiled eggs for the grown-ups and something light and fluffy for the grown-ups. The kids will get plenty of their own, trust me. The recipes are from Harper's Bazaar of April 7, 1900.

Stuffed Eggs, Fried.

Boil six eggs hard. Cut them in half, remove the yolks, and rub them smooth with a table-spoonful of melted butter, two tablespoonfuls of minced ham or tongue, a little chopped parsley, a few drops of onion juice, and salt and pepper to taste. Fill the whites with this mixture, press the halves together, and either stick the edges with a little beaten egg, or pin them together with fine toothpicks. Roll the eggs first in fine crumbs, then in beaten egg, and then in crumbs again. Fry to a fine brown in boiling deep fat.

Easter Eggs in The Nest.

Soak one box of gelatine half hour in cold water. Put three cups of milk on the fire in a double boiler and make very hot. When the gelatine is soft add to it two cups of sugar; mix well, and turn both in the boiling milk. Stir until thoroughly dissolved. Take from the fire, divide into as many portions as you desire colors. To one portion add a couple of tablespoonfuls of grated chocolate, melted over boiling water. Tint another pink with cochineal. To a third add the beaten yolks of two eggs, and return to the fire long enough to cook the egg about five minutes. Leave one portion white. Flavor this with vanilla, add a few drops of strawberry juice or rose-water to the pink, and orange-peel to the yellow. If you have no egg-moulds you may have improvised some by emptying the contents of eggs to be used in cooking through a small hole broken carefully in one end. Rinse the shells out thoroughly in cold water, and fill them with the blancmange mixture. Set them to form, open end up, in a pan of flour or meal, which will hold them steady, and put them in a cold place. Make your nest of preserved orange-peel, cut in shreds. The orange marmalade put up in glass jars may be used for this. Arrange a bed of it in the bottom of a glass or silver bowl, break the shells from the eggs with great care, and arrange them in the nest. If you wish, you can heap wine jelly about them by the spoonful, or half bury them under whipped cream

Fashionable Food.

Fashionable Food.

I hope you enjoy the following extract from a lengthy piece in London Society (1867) on the Curiosities of Fashion in the Matter of One’s Food, the wily and wonderful ways of cooks, and how to roast a peacock.

Fashion is society's Chancellor of the Exchequer, and fails not to tax the lieges with ingenuity and unrelenting sternness of purpose . … You prefer an old-fashioned English dinner, full, substantial, abundant, and materialistic, to the lightness and insubstantiality of a diner à la Russe, but then - the fashion! … Fashion makes you wear a hat that pinches your ample brow, and puts on Amanda's head a bonnet that does not become her. Fashion tempts you to live on a thousand a year when your income is only eight hundred. …

But perhaps the most personal and humiliating of Fashion's  salle à manger are safe from its vexatious intrusion. As sternly as an Abernethy to a dyspeptic patient, it says to society, “This thou shalt eat, and this thou shalt not eat. This dish is vulgar; yonder plat is obsolete; none but the canaille partake of melted butter; only the ignorant immerse their souls in beer.” And changeable as that sex which is supposed to worship it most humbly, Fashion proscribes in 1863 what it sanctioned in 1763; and approves now, what in the days when George III was king - consule planes - it most sternly condemned. The meals which now do (too often) coldly furnish forth the table were regarded with contempt by our great-great-grand fathers. Fancy Sir Roger de Coverley examining a salmi des perdrix or a pate de foie gras! In like manner the Honourable Fitzplantagenet Smith would regard as 'deuced low' the boar's head that delighted his cavalier ancestor, or the peacock pie that smoked upon Elizabethan boards.

… In the year 1272, the then Lord Mayor of London issued an edict which fixed the prices to be paid for certain articles of provisions at the pence; a goose for fivepence; a wild goose, fourponce; pigeons, three for one penny; mallards, three for a halfpenny; a plover, one penny; a partridge, three-halfpence; a dozen of larks, one penny halfpenny; a pheasant, fourpence; a heron, sixpence; a swan, three shillings; a crane, three shillings; the best peacock, one penny; the best coney, with skin, fourpence; and the best lamb, from Christmas to Lent, sixpence, at other times of the year, fourpence.

Now, out of the foregoing list of edibles, Fashion nowadays would strike the mallard, the heron, the swan, and the crane, and would look askant at the peacock. But the peacock was of old right royal bird, that figured splendidly at the banquets of the great, and this is how the medieval cooks dished up the mediaeval dainty: “Take and flay off the skin with the feathers, tail, and the neck and head thereon; then take the skin and all the feathers and lay it on the table abroad, and strew thereon ground cumin. Then take the peacock and roast him, and baste him with raw yelks of eggs; and when he is roasted, take him off and let him cool awhile; then take him and sew him in his skin, and gild his comb, and so serve him forth with the last course.”

... In a fish-tariff issued by Edward I, mention is made of ' congers, lampreys, and sea-hogs.' Fancy Lady Mayfair inviting her guests to partake of a sea-hog! In the Earl of Northumberland^ Household Book we find allowed for 'my Lord and Ladie's table,' 'ij. pecys of salt fische, vj. pecys of salt fische, vj. becormed herryng, iiij. white herryng, or a dish of sproots (sprats).' Certes, a deep draught of Canary or Malvoisie would be needed to wash down so dry a repast!

… The great ministers of Fashion, its agents in enforcing its decrees upon unhappy society, have been the cooks - always a potent, a conceited, and, sooth to say, an ignorant fraternity. From the days of Aristoxenes and Archestratus to those of Ude - Ude, who refused four hundred a year and a carriage when offered by the Duke of Richmond, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, because there was no Opera at Dublin - from the days of Archestratus to those of Ude, they have studied rather the display of their inventive powers than the laws of physiology and the stomachs of their patrons. Ben Jonson furnishes us with an admirable description of one of these gentry, who are more solicitous about the invention of wonderful novelties than the provision of a wholesome and sufficient dinner :- ' A master cook!' exclaims the poet;

Why, he’s the man of men

For a professor; he designs, he draws,

He paints, he carves, he builds, he fortifies;

Makes citadels of curious fowl and fish.

Some he dry-dishes, some moats around with broths,

Mounts marrow-bones, cuts fifty-angled custards

Tears bulwark pies, and for his outerworks

He raiseth ramparts of immortal crust;

And teacheth all the tactics at one dinner:

What ranks, what files to put his dishes in;

The whole art military. Then he knows

The influence of the stars upon his meats,

And all their seasons, tempers, qualities;

And so to fit his relishes and sauces,

He has Nature in a pot, ‘bove all the chemists

Or airy brethren of the Rosy-Cross.

He is an architect, an engineer,

A soldier, a physician, a philosopher,

A general mathematician!

It is the cooks who are responsible for the untasteful monstrosities and semi-poisonous plâts that still figure in our bills of fare. Just as the cooks of ancient Rome served up to their patrons the membranous parts of the matrices of a sow, the echinus or sea-hedgehog, the flesh of young hawks, and especially rejoiced in a whole pig, boiled on one side and roasted on the other—the belly stuffed with thrushes, and yolks of eggs, and hens, and spiced meats; so the cooks of modern London love to disguise our food with an infinite variety of flavours, until the natural is entirely lost, and the most curious examiner is at a loss to detect the component parts of any particular dish. The ancient cooks, with a vegetable, could counterfeit the shape and the taste of fish and flesh. We are told that a king of Bithynia having, in one of his expeditions, strayed to a great distance from the seaside, conceived a violent longing for a small fish called aphy, either a pilchard, an anchovy, or a herring. His cook was a genius, however, and could conquer obstacles. He had no aphy, but he had a turnip. This he cut into a perfect imitation of the fish; then fried in oil, salted, and powdered thoroughly with the grains of a dozen black poppies. His majesty ate, and was delighted! Never had he eaten a more delicious aphy! But our modern cooks are not inferior to the ancient. Give them a partridge or a pheasant, a veal cutlet or a mutton chop, and they will so dish you up each savoury article that nothing of its original flavour shall be discernible. O Fashion! O cooks! O confectioners ! We are your slaves, your victims; and our stomachs the laboratories in which you coolly carry out your experiments. Look, for instance, at vegetables: no food more wholesome, or more simple, and yet how the cooks do torture and manipulate them, until the salutary properties of these cibi innocentes utterly disappear!