Solstice Syrups.

Today, June 21^st

This day is the Solstice – the day the sun seems to stand still. In the Northern Hemisphere it is the Summer Solstice, the longest day and shortest night of the year, and in the Southern Hemisphere it is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day and the longest night. Since very very ancient times these celestial marks of the turn of the seasons have been celebrated all over the world, and the celebrations have been adapted and appropriated to varying cultures and religions. The classic example is the adoption of the Northern Winter Solstice customs to the Christmas season, so that we now do not associate fires and fruit cake with the movement of the sun at all (and they have an uncomfortable fit at Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere where it is Summer).

It seems to me – us now being global citizens and all – that the celebration of the Solstices is worthy of reviving. Not in the sense of religious worship, but in the sense of acknowledgement of this wonderful planet and the cycle of the seasons. A twice-yearly, truly global, non-sectarian celebration. Does the world need that? Would it be fun?

I would love to hear your own solstice celebration ideas.

Last year I gave you some ‘Snow’ recipes to represent the Winter Solstice here in the Southern hemisphere. This time I give you some recipes inspired by the Summer Solstice, which those of you in the Northern half of the globe are celebrating.

I have chosen some fruit syrups or cordials which may be used to make refreshing drinks. It may be that we will all need more cooling beverages in the future, if we cannot solve the problem of global warming. In the meanwhile, if you are in the Southern Hemisphere and feeling chilly, make the drinks anyway, and add a nip of the warming draft of your choice.

The recipes are from Cassells Dictionary of Cookery (1870’s), and appear under the heading Summer Beverages.

Quince Syrup.
Grate quinces, pass the pulp through a sieve, then set it before the fire for the juice to settle and clarify; strain and add a pound of sugar (boiled down) to every four ounces of juice; remove from the fire , and when cold bottle for use. A table-spoon of this syrup will flavour a pint of water.

Rasberry Vinegar [syrup]
This is made by squeezing the juice of three quarts of raspberries into a quart of vinegar, and then simmering the vinegar for about a quarter of an hour with two pounds of sugar in an earthen pipkin not glazed with lead. When cold it is to be corked; and a small spoonful of water makes it a very cooling and refreshing drink.

Lemon Syrup.
Boil six ounces of sugar in a pint of water until it is dissolved. Let it cool, then add a quarter of a pint of lemon-juice and half a drachm of essence of lemon. Mix thoroughly, and bottle for use. Sufficient: two tablespoonfuls of syrup to a tumblerful of cold water.

If your solstice celebrations demand cake, I offer you my recipe for Summer Solstice Cake (originally made for the Southern Hemisphere Christmas).

Tomorrow's Story ...

May Harrods Suggest … ?

Quotation for the Day …

The right food always comes at the right time. Reliance on out-of-season foods makes the gastronomic year an endlessly boring repetition. Roy Andries de Groot.

Potage Jubilé

Today, June 20^th …

The young Queen Victoria ascended to the throne on this day in 1837, and it proved to be the first day of an extraordinarily long reign. Victoria occupied the throne of England for sixty-three years and seven months, which meant that she celebrated three jubilees: Silver Jubilee in 1862, Golden Jubilee in 1887, and her Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

The word “jubilee” has a Jewish heritage, and comes from the name of a ram’s horn used as a trumpet. The the word “jubilant” obviously comes from the same root, and would have aptly described the mood of Her Majesties subjects had she fulfilled the obligations required under the original definition of the word “jubilee”. The OED gives this as:

“A year of emancipation and restoration, which according to the institution in Lev. xxv was to be kept every fifty years, and to be proclaimed by the blast of trumpets throughout the land; during it the fields were to be left uncultivated, Hebrew slaves were to be set free, and lands and houses in the open country or unwalled towns that had been sold were to revert to their former owners or their heirs.”

It is doubtful if much emancipation and property restoration happened anywhere in Her Empire during any of Her Jubilees, but there is no doubt that may dishes bear the name “jubilee’. Not all were invented for Her special days of course, many organisations and individuals have celebrated their 50^th anniversaries with a new dish. The famous Escoffier gives a recipe for Potage Jubilé and it seems likely that it might have been in Victoria’s honour. It is a very elegant take on pea soup, and here it is.

Potage Jubilé (Pea soup with quenelles of chicken)

1. Purée de pois frais.
This can be made in two ways:
(i)2 lb garden peas, white stock.
Cook the peas quickly in boiling salted water, strain and rub the peas through a fine sieve. Return the purée to the pan and add some white stock.
In this way the purée has a good colour.
(ii)2 lb garden peas, 3 oz. butter, 1 small lettuce, pinch sugar, 2 spring onions, ½ teaspoon salt, ½ pint water.
Put all the ingredients together and cook until the peas are tender. Rub through a fine sieve. Return the purée to the pan, add some white stock and bring to boiling point.
In this way, the purée is less bright in colour but has a more delicate flavour.
In both cases add 2-3 oz butter before serving and a little chopped chervil or mint.

2. Fine forcemeat of chicken with cream.
1 lb boned young chicken, 1 level teaspoon salt, very small pinch white pepper, 2 egg whites, 1 – 1 ¼ pints fresh thick cream.
Pound chicken in a mortar with seasoning. Add the egg-whites slowly then rub through a fine sieve. Put into a flat dish and leave on ice for at least 1 hour. Then stir in the cream very gently and keep on ice until required for use.

Preparation of Quenelles.
These are shaped in a spoon or ladle, in various sizes, put into a buttered fireproof dish and carefully covered with boiling white stock or simply with salted boiling water. Cover the dish and allow the quenelles to poach ofr 10-12 minutes on the corner of the stove. Above all, do not let the liquid boil, the quenelles should poach very gently.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Solstice Syrups.

Quotation for the Day …

Good soup is one of the prime ingredients of good living. For soup can do more to lift the spirits and stimulate the appetite than any other one dish. Louis P. De Gouy, The Soup Book (1949)

To Feed a Butt of Beer.

Today, June 19^th …

According to the French Revolutionary Calendar, what we now call June 19^th (or sometimes the 20^th) was the first day of the month of Messidor. Messidor was the tenth month of the year, and the first month of the Summer quarter. The name comes from the Latin word messis, meaning ‘harvest’.

The French Revolutionary Calendar was the official calendar over three periods of time: it was initially adopted on October 24^th 1793 (but made retrospective from September 22^nd – although how a calendar is made retrospective I have no idea.) It lasted until Napoleon Bonaparte restored the conventional (Gregorian) calendar on January 1^st 1806. It was briefly reinstated for two brief periods during the Revolution of 1848 and the Paris Commune in 1871 before it fell into oblivion- apart from in the hearts and minds of a few enthusiasts who apparently still dote on it for historic, sentimental, or philosophical reasons. The fact is, the calendar never worked very well for a number of reasons – and one particular bone of contention with the workers was that they still only got one day off a week – and the ‘week’ was 10 days long.

The days of the calendar were named after agricultural plants, apart from the 5^th (named after a domestic animal) and the 10^th (named after an agricultural tool). The leftover days at the end of the year to bring the start back to the autumn equinox were called the Sansculottides (which refers to "those without trousers". There is a logical explanation for this name, but the ones provided by your own imagination will no doubt be much more amusing.

The first (Primidi) of Messidor was called Seigle (Rye), so this is the topic today.

Rye probably originated in North East Europe or South West Asia (or both, of course). Originally, say the experts, it was a weed in the wheat crop. It grew better than the wheat in many areas, particularly the colder ones, and eventually farmers gave up trying to separate the two, and harvested the fields as they were. The combined crop was called “maslin”, from an old French word meaning “mixed” - and the word lives on in our word for mixed salad greens - “mesclun”. Maslin bread was the common bread of the common folk for centuries, fine white wheat bread being only affordable for the well-to-do. Wheat is high in gluten, which is what gives bread its characteristic texture and structure; rye is low in gluten, so bread made solely with rye is very dense indeed, although it may be tasty.

In order to make bread, dough must be fermented by the addition of yeast, either deliberately or serendipitously from the air. The other great fermentation product of grain of course is alcohol, and the world has a goodly selection of these made from rye. What you can do, if you make your own rye bread, is to make an extra batch of extra-nutmeggy flavour, and use it to make beer, as Mrs. Taylor shows:

To feed a Butt of Beer.
Bake a rye loaf, of two-pence price, with a pretty deal of nutmeg in it; then cut it in pieces, and put it in a bag of hops with some wheat, and put them altogether in your cask.
[Mrs.. Mrs. Taylor's family companion; or the whole art of cookery display'd, in the newest and most easy method, being a collection of receipts …. London; circa 1795]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Potage Jubilé.
Quotation for the Day …

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Benjamin Franklin

Retro Cake Challenge No. V

T. B Barritt has done it again. Retro Cake number 5 is a Coca-Cola Cake. If you have fond memories of the '70's go to "Coca-Cola Cake and a Smile from 1971" and get a warm, fuzzy, nostalgic feeling.

If you have missed Retro Cakes Nos. I-IV, go HERE and see them all. You'll be glad you did.

Turtle Season.

Today, June 18^th …

The Corporation of the City of London held a banquet on this day in 1814 for the “Allied Sovereigns” – the Prince Regent (later George IV), The Emperor of Russia (Tsar Alexander I), and the King of Prussia (Friedrich Wilhelm III). Seven hundred guests sat down to a dinner “as sumptuous as expense or skill could make it ….”.

It was more than an excuse for a good nosh-up of course:

“This, indeed, and similar occurrences, are not to be considered as mere festive parties; they are, when connected with their causes and consequences, political events of no small moment, the memory of which will remain so long as the present generation exists, and the record of them will form a part of the history of the unions of the Empire which the Sovereigns respectively are born to govern.”

Unfortunately, the record of this occasion of dinner-table diplomacy does not include the complete details of the menu - or if it did they have so far eluded me - but it did include mention of one essential dish for such events:

“Samuel Truner, Esq., one of the Directors of the Bank of England. Very handsomely presented a fine Turtle for the occasion, which was the first imported in the season, and arrived in time to be served .. ”

Turtle, particularly in the form of soup, became an indispensible and inevitable part of every important dinner - public or private or state - by the nineteenth century. So unthinkable was it to have a dinner without it, that it was preferrable (and quite proper) to have Mock Turtle Soup rather than No Turtle Soup. As turtle became more scarce, the substitute became more common, accumulating status in its own right until it became the norm.

Before their inevitable near-extinction by eating, how did one prepare a turtle for ones Royal Guests? This is how:

The following receipt for dressing a Turtle, having been much enquired after, was received from a cook in the Indies, where they are dressed in the utmost perfection.
Cut off the head first, and hang the turtle by one of the hindmost fins, that the blood may run from it to make the fish white. This done, cut off the fins & wash them clean; then cut off the belly shell well with meat, take out the guts and wash them very clean, and observe you turn them the right way or you will meet with a great deal of trouble. Stew the guts with a quart or three pints of the best Madeira wine, infuse half a dram of coyn* butter. Then having boiled the four fins, & taken the scales off, stew them with the guts on the belly part, which is called the collop. Take all sorts of the best sweet herbs, cut and shred them very small, and strew them over the collop. Put pieces of the best best butter, one bottle of the best Madeira wine, and a dram and a half of pepper, or coyn butter over it. Take great care it is not over baked. You may cut off collops and dress them as veal cutlets. Send your guts up in the top shell, and set it at the upper end of the table, the collops in the middle, and at the lower end, which garnish with the four fins.
This is the most proper way of dressing this fish, in any part of the Indies, or in England, approved by the best and most experienced cooks who undertake to dress them.
[From: The British Jewel, or complete housewife’s best companion … (1776)]

*coyn: an obsolete word for quince.

[Be patient – there will be more on Mock Turtle Soup on Friday.]

Tomorrow’s Story …

To Feed a Butt of Beer.

Quotation for the Day …

I have always been punctual at the hour of dinner, for I know that all those whom I kept waiting at that provoking interval would employ those unpleasant moments to sum up my faults. Nicolas Boileau (1636-1711)

Bloomsday Breakfast Recipes (2)

Tomorrow, the 16th of June is Bloomsday, an Irish holiday to celebrate the life of the writer James Joyce. All of the 'action' of James' novel Ulysses takes place on June 16th 1904, and the chief protagonist is Mr Leopold Bloom.

"Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine."

Last year I gave you a recipe for one of Bloom's favourite dishes - fried kidney ( and I have repeated it below for the sake of completeness), so today I give you recipes for some of his other favourite dishes, so you can have yourself a Bloomsday breakfast or dinner.

Heart, Calf’s [Roast]
Wash the heart very clean, soak it in vinegar and water, fill it with a forcemeat made of four ounces of crumb of bread, two ounces of butter, two table-spoonfuls of chopped parsley, half a tea-spoonful of finely-minced lemon rind, and a little salt and cayenne. Fasten the heart securely and roast before a clear fire for an hour and a half to two hours. Serve it with goodmelted butter mixed with a table-spoonful of lemon juice or vinegar. A calf’s head is improved by partially boiling it before it is roasted.
[Cassell’s “Dictionary of Cookery” (1870’s)]

Liver, Fried.
Cut one pound of liver into slices, a quarter of an inch in thickness, and dredge some flour over them. Take an equal number of slices of bacon, fat and lean together. Fry the bacon first, and when it is done enough, draw the rashers from the fat, and place them on a hot dish. Fry the slices of liver in the same fat, and when lightly browned on both sides, dish bacon and liver in a circle, a slice of each alternately. Pour the fat from the pan, and dredge a little flour into it. Add a quarter of a pint of broth, a little salt and pepper, and a table-spoonful of mushroom ketchup. Stir smoothly together until the sauce boils, and pour it into the dish with the liver. Garnish with sliced lemon. If liked, a table-spoonful of finely-minced gherkins or pickled walnuts may be added to the sauce.
[Cassell’s “Dictionary of Cookery” (1870’s)]

Giblet Soup.
Stew the giblets (i.e head, neck, feet, gizzard, liver, heart, &c., “all the parts of a goose that are left behind when it goes to the spit to be roasted”), in 3 pints of water, and cook until the gizzard is tender, by which time all the other parts are sure to be well done; a little thyme should be used to flavour, and salt and pepper to season; strain the liquor, and when it is cold remove all fat and grease. Cut up the cold giblets into small pieces ready to add to the soup when required.
Beef stock must be added to the giblet stock, in quantitu according to the number of diners; the beef stock to be of course flavoured with vegetables, onion, &c. Add the minced giblets to the combined stocks. Heat well, and serve as hot as possible.
Have ready some light and delicate suet and flour dumplings, the size of a large walnut, well boiled and tender, to be served in the soup; allow 2 or more for each person.
Add the freshly made dumplings to the soup when it is in the tureen.
[The Cookery Book of Lady Clarke of Tillipronie; 1909]

Kidney Fritters.
Make a batter with four well-beaten eggs, mixed with half a pint of new milk, and flavoured with a little pepper, salt, and pounded mace. Stir into this a teaspoonful each of finely shredded chives, parsley and mushrooms, and a table-spoonful of the remains of a cold veal kidney finely minced, and mixed with half its weight of fat. Beat together for two or three minutes, then melt an ounce of butter in the frying pan, pour in the mixture, and stir it until it is set. When it is browned on one side, turn it on a hot dish, hold a salamander or red-hot shovel over it for a minute or two to colour it on the other, and serve immediately.
[Cassell’s “Dictionary of Cookery” (1870’s)]

Of course, any potato dish would be suitable for an Irish day; there are plenty to chose from in the Fun with Potatoes archive.

I am on the hunt now for an appropriate recipe for cod roe ....

Calf’s Head and Pig’s Face.

Today, June 15^th …

“We had for Dinner boiled Calfs Head and Pigs face, a Piece of rost Beef and a Gooseberry Pudding’.

The English Parson James Woodforde recorded his dinner, as he often did, in his diary on this day in 1792. Most of us would have passed on the animal faces and gone for its rump, if we were time-travelled back to this meal, I suspect. Our modern sensibilities prefer that the parts of the beast that might smile back at us (and require a lot of fiddly preparation) be served up in anonymously in sausages or meat pies (you didn’t think all those snouts and ears and smiles were just sent for dog meat, did you?).

In the good Parson’s day, when a beast was killed, it was eaten nose to tail without qualms. The parson had expressed some distaste for cow’s udder when he was served it at Oxford in 1763, but perhaps that was a reflection on the College cooks as it appeared on his own table regularly over the next three decades.

Often, as on this day, the Calf’s and Pig’s heads were simply boiled, but there were other ways of presenting these delicacies. Hannah Glasse in her Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747) gives recipes for many parts of the pig and cow that are spirited away to be turned into a ‘product’ today, and do not reach the butchers’ shops. She gives several recipes for Calf’s Head – boiled, baked and hashed (two versions), and in a very elegant pie. In the pie recipe she also answers the question you were all afraid to ask: “What about the Eyes?”

To make a Calf’s Head Pye.
Cleanse your head very well, and boil it till it is tender, then carefully take off the Flesh as whole as you can, take out the Eyes and slice the Tongue; make a good Puff-paste Crust, cover the Dish, lay in your Meat, throw over it the Tongue, lay the Eyes cut in two, at each Corner; season it with a very little Pepper and Salt, pour in half a pint of the Liquor it was boiled in, lay a thin Top-Crust on, and bake it in an Hour in a quick Oven. In the mean time boil the Bones of the Head in two Quarts of the Liquor, with two or three Blades of Mace, Half a Quarter of an Ounce of whole Pepper, a large Onion, and a Bundle of Sweet Herbs. Let it boil till there is about a Pint, then strain it off, and add two Spoonfuls of Catchup, three of Red Wine, a Piece of Butter, as big as a Walnut, rolled in Flour, Half an Ounce of Truffles and Morels; season with Salt to your Palate; boil it and have Half the Brains boiled with some Sage, beat them, and twelve Leaves of Sage chopped fine; Stir all together, and give it a boil; take the other Part of the Brains, and beat them up with some of the Sage chopped fine, a little Lemon-peel minced fine, and half a small Nutmeg grated. Beat it up with an Egg, and fry it in little Cakes of a fine Light brown, boil six Eggs hard, take only the Yolks; when your Pye comes out of the Oven, take off the Lid, lay the Eggs and Cakes over it, and pour the Sauce all over. Send it to Table hot without the Lid. This is a fine Dish, you may put in as many fine Things as you please, but it wants no more Addition.

Monday’s Story …

Turtle Season.

Quotation for the Day …

There are few articles of cookery more generally liked than relishing pies, if properly made. Mrs Rundell, in A New System of Domestic Cookery (1806)

The Fourteenth Guest.

Today, June 14^th …

Lieut.-Col. Nathanial Newnham-Davis was probably one of England’s first restaurant reviewers. If he were alive today he would no doubt be blogging his experiences, but in the late nineteenth century his only options were to write for newspapers, or publish a book. He did both. His articles frequently appeared in The Times, and he published books called The gourmet's guide to London, and The Gourmet's Guide to Europe.

On this day in 1899, he received a dinner invitation ‘with a tinge of mystery’. He was to dine ‘at one of the cheapest but most amusing places in town’, at a venue for which an introduction was required, where the conversation would be in French, and he was sworn to secrecy as to its whereabouts. It doesn’t sound like a commercially viable idea for a restaurant, does it? After walking through a labyrinth of streets in an unpretentious locality, they entered (via a wine-shop) what was clearly a private apartment, presided over by “Madame” (there is no suggestion that she was A Madam however, in spite of the secretive nature of the evening).

The meal began with a soup and continued with the boiled beef, whereupon “the lady in green” (unlucky colour, that) “made the terrible discovery that we were thirteen at table”. Madame was prevailed upon to sit down (she had been “hovering” and superintending the food, it seems) until a couple of belated guests arrived and saved the night. An admirable chicken, a sweet and cheese and coffee completed the meal for a total cost of two shillings.

Thirteen has been an unlucky number in many cultures for many centuries, and all sorts of explanations are given for the superstition, which I wont go into here. Suffice it to say that thirteen at table is a particular worry, the belief being that one of the guests will die within the year. The point was proved to some when President Wilson died within a year of giving an Armistice dinner for thirteen. The belief was (still is, they say) particularly prevalent in Paris, where independent gentlemen made themselves available as paid guests, called quatorizième (“fourteenth”) ready at a moment’s notice to save the life of someone else at table, in the unfortunate event that only thirteen others turned up.

The number thirteen pops up with varying significance in many places. In Norfolk it is (or was) believed that primroses are unlucky, but if one must bring them into the house, the bunch must not be fewer than thirteen in number, or broody hens (or geese) will hatch only the same number of eggs from the clutch as the number of primroses. As an accompanying belief, the traditional number of eggs to set under a hen is 13 – in the belief that she will then rear 12 and the 13^th will be addled.

I therefore give you a recipe for a sixteenth century tart of eggs and primroses, and your guests will be very lucky if you go to the trouble of making it for them. The recipe is given as a variation of a tart of borage flowers.

To make a tarte of borage floures.
Take borage floures and perboyle them tender, then strayne them wyth the yolckes
of three or foure egges, and swete curdes, or els take three or foure apples, and perboyle wythal and strayne them with swete butter and a lyttle mace and so bake it.

To make a tarte of marigoldes primroses or couslips.
Take the same stuffe to euery of theim that you do to the tarte of borage and the same ceasonyng.
[A Propre new booke of Cokery; 1545]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Calf’s Head and Pig’s Face.

Quotation for the Day …

Mark Twain told a friend of an invitation to be the 13th guest at a dinner party. Horrified, the friend advised him, “Don’t go! It’s bad luck!” To which Twain replied, “Nonsense.” The next day, Twain met the friend again and said, “I admit that you were right about the dinner. It WAS bad luck. There was only enough food for twelve.”

Shakespearian Strawberries.

Today, June 13^th …

The story of the disappearance (and presumed murder) of the royal princes in the Tower of London in the fifteenth century has spawned a lot of books and movies, and in almost all of them the evil-doer was their uncle and Protector, the Duke of Gloucester who then became Richard III. One of the writers who contributed to Richard getting the rap (there are significant doubts that he was actually the perpetrator) was no less than William Shakespeare, in his play Richard III. He has Richard (still at this point the Duke of Gloucester) casually ask the Bishop of Ely for some of the fine strawberries from the Bishop’s gardens, while he is planning his dastardly deed.

My lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn,
I saw good strawberries in your garden there;
I do beseech you, send for some of them!

Ely: Marry, I will, my lord, with all my heart."

Shakespeare, like many other dramatists of his time, used the Chronicles of Raphael Holinshed [1529 – 1580 approx.] as a resource. The Chronicles were also written long after the events, but if Holinshead was correct, the strawberry dialogue actually took place on this day in 1483. Holinshead says:

“On the Friday (being the 13th of June, 1483) many lords were assembled in the Tower, and there sat in council, devising the honourable solemnity of the king's [12 year old Edward V] coronation, of which the time appointed then so near approached, that the pageants and subtleties were in making day and night at Westminster, and much victuals killed therefore, that afterwards was cast away. These lords so sitting together, communing of this matter, the Protector came in amongst them, just about nine of the clock, saluting them courteously, and excusing himself that he had been from them so long, saying merrily that he had been a sleeper that day. After a little talking with them, he said unto the Bishop of Ely, 'My lord, you have very good strawberries at your garden in Holborn; I require you let us have a mess of them.' 'Gladly, my lord,' quoth he. 'Would God I had some better thing as ready to your pleasure as that.' And therewithal, in all haste, he sent his servant for a mess of strawberries.”

So how would Shakespeare’s contemporaries have enjoyed strawberries? Perhaps like this:

Tarte of Strawberies.
Seson your Strawberyes with sugar, a very little Sinamon, a little ginger, and so cover them with a cover, and you must lay upon the cover a morsell of sweet Butter, Rosewater and Sugar, you may Ice the cover if you will, you must make your Ice with the white of an egge beaten, and Rosewater and Sugar.
[From: A Boke of Cookrye, published in 1591]

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Fourteenth Guest.

Quotation for the Day …

The strawberry grows underneath the nettle;
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality.
Shakespeare; King Henry V. Act I. Scene 1.

Life with Dates.

Today, June 12^th …

Today is the feast day of Saint Onuphrius, who, like the rest of the Saints I have featured in this blog, is only on my radar on account of a food connection. Saint Onophrius was a hermit, as Saints are wont to be, and lived during the 4^th Century in Egypt. He lived entirely, it is said, on dates. He could have made a worse choice (athough there may not have been too many choices in 4^th C Egypt) – because dates are not only nutritious (high fibre, high carb, almost zero fat, and lots of vitamins and minerals etc etc etc), they are delicious.

The date palm is native to North Africa and the Middle East, and is one of the oldest food plants cultivated by humans. It appears that we have been growing it for at least 7000 years in one of the world’s most challenging environments – the hot dry desert. The plant must have developed some spectacular survival mechanisms to have been so successful, and in a truly amazing example of time-warp gardening, a botanist in Israel has managed to germinate a 2000 year-old seed from a Judean date tree that was thought to be extinct. Perhaps one day we might be able to eat dates with a direct link to biblical times, which would be an amazing example of time-warp eating!

There is an old saying that there are as many ways of using dates as there are days in the year, and I don’t doubt that is true. They were certainly known and enjoyed by Europeans in the 13^th century, no doubt thanks to returning crusaders. They were enjoyed only by the wealthy of course, who must have relished their sweetness in the centuries before sugar became cheap. I have chosen two medieval recipes for you featuring dates, either of which would be perfect for today.

The first is from an Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the 13th Century, translated Charles Perry, and is for a sort of date and nut paste or cake that would be excellent on a cheese platter.

A Sweet of Dates and Honey.
Take Shaddâkh dates. Clean them of their pits and pound a ratl of them in a mortar. Then dilute with water in a tinjir on a gentle fire. Add the same amount of skimmed honey. Stir it until it binds together and throw in a good amount of peeled almonds and walnuts. Put in some oil so it doesn't burn and to bind firmly. Pour it over a greased salâya (stone work surface). With it you make qursas (round cakes). Cut it with a knife in big or little pieces.

The second is a Lenten tart from the first English cookbook, the Forme of Cury (about 1390). As a Lenten dish it contains no milk or eggs. The instructions are strange to us today, but it seems that a thick ‘custard’ of almond milk and rice flour is made and allowed to set, then cut into pieces and layered with cut up figs and dates in the pastry ‘coffin’, and finally more almond milk is poured in before it is baked.

For To Make Flownys [flans] In Lente.
Tak god Flowr and mak a Past and tak god mylk of Almandys and flowr of rys other amydoun and boyle hem togeder' that they be wel chariaud wan yt is boylid thykke take yt up and ley yt on a feyr' bord so that yt be cold and wan the Cofyns ben makyd tak a party of and do upon the coffyns and kerf hem in Schiveris and do hem in god mylk of Almandys and Figys and Datys and kerf yt in fowr partyis and do yt to bake and serve yt forth.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Pleasure and Health.

Quotation for the Day …

The first of all considerations is that our meals shall be fun as well as fuel. Andre Simon.

The Breakfast of Travellers.

Today, June 11^th …

Today is a public holiday in most of Australia. It is the Queen’s official birthday, hence, as a relic of our colonial past and in recognition of Her as Head of the Commonwealth, we get a Monday off work. It is the one day a year I am a minor Royalist, in gratitude for the holiday.

For those of you who must drag yourselves reluctantly to work this Monday morning, pause a moment and think yourself back to 1911, when June 11^th was a Sunday. On this retrospecive Sunday morning imagine yourself aboard the magnificent R.M.S. Lusitania and blissfully unaware of its fate in 1915 at the hands of a German U-Boat. Your imagination can only manage Second Class, but the breakfast choices are still pretty good.

Apples
Oatmeal Porridge and Fresh Milk
Broiled Codfish Steaks Aberdeen Haddock
Boiled Eggs to Order
--
Broiled Cumberland Ham Fried Eggs
Grilled Beef Steak Saute Potatoes
Rice Cakes, Golden Syrup
--
COLD
Corned Beef
--
Watercress
White & Graham Rolls Soda Scones
Vienna Bread
--
Marmalade Jam
--
Tea Coffee Cocoa

Ham and eggs sound a good breakfast choice, but my history choice today is the Soda scones, for there is in soda scones the complete history of grain-based cuisine.

On the sad off-chance that there may be some of you who don’t know what a scone is, it is the little treat defined by the OED as “ … generally, a soft cake of barley- or oatmeal, or wheat-flour, baked in single portions on a griddle or in an oven. Also with defining words, denoting varieties of this cake, as butter, potato, soda, treacle scone; brown scone, one made of whole meal; drop-, dropped scone, one made of a small portion of batter dropped on the griddle or on a tin and baked.”

If you grow grain, what can you do with it to make it more digestible and palatable? You can soften up the whole grains in water, boil them up, and make a sort of porridge called frumenty. You can first grind the grain to a varying degree from very coarse to very fine. You can then get creative with this idea of grain mixed with water. Your mixture can be varied, depending on which grain you use, how ‘wet’ you make it, and what else you add to enrich it. You can cook it on a flat hearthstone or metal griddle over your fire, or inside your oven, if you have one. From this grain and liquid you can end up with:

Pancakes, drop scones, or pikelets (Australia) or hoe-cakes (America) – with a wettish batter, cooked on a griddle.
Griddle (or girdle) scones – with a bit less liquid so you have a dough rather than a batter. Or a damper, if you are in Australia and make one large scone with your dough.
Bread – if you add yeast (or the air adds it for you).
Cakes and soda scones – if you add a rising agent such as baking powder.
Pastry - if you add fat, and handle lightly.

Baking powder leavening agents were developed in the mid-nineteenth century, so by definition, soda scones did not exist before then. A textbook of 1848 called “School chemistry: or, practical rudiments of the science” by Robert Dundas Thomson describes how this works “Soda scones are made by mixing bicarbonate of soda with the flour, and then baking the mass up with buttermilk; the acid of the milk displaces the CO2”

In yet another example of two countries with a common culinary heritage being divided by their common language, what is called a ‘scone’ in England and Australia, is a ‘biscuit’ in the United States. Technically, the word ‘biscuit’ means ‘twice cooked’ – so a crisp, hard thing - so we who use ‘scone’ for this soft cooked dough tend to feel linguistically correct and therefore superior on this point. Imagine my surprise then, when I took up that quintessentially English cookbook author, Isabella Beeton (1861), to give you her soda scone recipe, to find that she calls them Soda Biscuits!

A book of the same era - Cookery and domestic economy, by Somerville (1862) – recognises the difference (or is it the similarity?) and gives these two recipes:

American Biscuits.
Mix half a pound of sugar with one pound of flour, half a tea-spoonful baking powder, and rub in four ounces of butter; make into a dough with warm milk, roll out thin, cut them out, and bake immediately in a quick oven.

Soda Scones.
To every pound of flour give one half tea-spoonful of carbonate of soda, and the same of cream of tartar, make it into a dough with very sour butter-milk; knead quickly; make it up in small round balls, roll out pretty thin, prickle them with a fork, and bake immediately on a hot griddle or in the oven. A little butter rubbed amongst the flour may be added if wanted richer, and a few currants.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Life with Dates.

Quotation for the Day …

In nothing more is the English genius for domesticity more notably declared than in the institution of this festival - almost one may call it - of afternoon tea...The mere chink of cups and saucers tunes the mind to happy repose. George Gissing.

Election Cake

Today, June 8^th …

A young soldier stationed in North Carolina called Frederick Osborne wrote home to his family in Massachusetts on this day in 1862. He made mention of a local specialty:

“Aunt Jane has been making 'lection cake I suppose, or is the time for it past?”

Young Fred was referring to Election Cake, a cake associated with – as its name suggests – local elections. It is a New England specialty, and came to be particularly associated with Hartford, Connecticut.

The history of Election Cake goes back to colonial times, to the days when the British summoned eligible men from far and wide to the nearest town for military practice, and the whole town prepared for the onslaught of hungry soldier-farmers. In other words, the town’s housewives did a lot of baking of very large cakes which at that time were known as Training Cakes or Muster Cakes.

Even before the Revolution the same cakes served well for elections, when party representatives descended on the same towns for the vote-counting. The military association did not go away completely however. A New York Times article in June 1871 described the recent Artillery Election Day in Boston when officers were elected and commissioned in a ceremony that was a “relic of colonial days”. The newspaper bemoaned the loss of glory of this once great holiday when parades were held, and election cake and luscious ginger-beer could be purchased from stalls set up on the Common.

Election cake was a fruited yeast bread (leavening agents such as baking powder were not developed until the mid-nineteenth century). The first American cookbook, by Amelia Simmons, contained this recipe which you will find most useful if a few score out-of-town visitors descend on you.

Election Cake
Thirty quarts flour, 10 pound butter, 14 pound sugar, 12 pound raisins, 3 doz eggs, one pint wine, one quart brandy, 4 ournces cinnamon, 4 ounces fine colander seed, 3 ounces ground alspice; wet the flour with milk to the consistence of bread oover night, adding one quart yeast; the next morning work the butter and sugar together for half an hour, which will rended the cake much lighter and whiter; when it has rise light work in every other ingredient except the plumbs, which work in when going into the oven.
[American Cookery; Amelia Simmons 1796.]

Monday’s Story …

The Breakfast of Travellers.

Quotation for the Day …

I won't eat anything that has intelligent life, but I'd gladly eat a network executive or a politician. Marty Feldman.

Hellish Food.

Today, June 7^th …

The American writer Henry Miller died on this day in 1980. He once had a conversation by correspondence with his British writer friend Lawrence Durrell on the subject of the food in Hell.

Miller wrote: “Hell is probably quite similar to most Paris bistros ... a bit overheated, somewhat too crowded, and a little too noisy for my tastes. The waiters will surely treat you rudely and the cashiers will always add a few extra francs to your bill but ... and this is the important part ... the food will be marvellous”.

Some time later, Miller and Durrell spent some time on the island of Corfu, which – being part of the Ionian Islands – is of volcanic origin and sometimes smells of the sulphur. Durrell apparently asked his friend how he would feel about his “bistro” smelling sulphurous (as Hell is said to do).

Miller replied: “With a good bouillabaise, a young chicken cooked in tarragon and a good wine from Bordeaux not even the smells of hell will bother me”

Presumably, in Hell’s Kitchen, the Devil is Cook. Which made me think of the hot dishes called ‘devils’ that were so beloved of the Victorian Englishman. The eccentric English cookbook writer William Kitchener eloquently described their delights (and dangers) in his book The Cook’s Oracle, and they can be read on the Companion site HERE. We have also previously had recipes for Devilled Chestnuts and Devilled Eggs, so we should perhaps find another focus for today.

This story started with Henry Miller, whose idea of heavenly food in Hell included the French bistro version of chicken cooked in tarragon, so here is a recipe from the eccentric French cookbook writer, the Baron Brisse (1868).

Chicken with Tarragon.
Boil some finely chopped tarragon-leaves and take a third of them to mix with a stuffing made of minced liver of chicken, scraped lean bacon, salt and pepper. Stuff the fowl with it, truss and cover with slices of bacon, wrap up in a sheet of buttered paper and roast. Melt some fresh butter, stir in a little flour, and add the remainder of the tarragon leaves, a little gravy, a few drops of vinegar, salt and pepper. When the fowl is two-thirds cooked, take it off the spit and simmer in a stew-pan with the sauce until quite done. Thicken the sauce with two or three yolks of eggs before serving.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Election Cake.

Quotation for the Day …

The disappearance of hot hors-d'oeuvre was the result of the excessive development of women's skirts. Baron Leon Brisse (1813-1876)

Figgy Puddings.

Today, June 6^th …

A young man called James Letcher left his home in Cornwall and set off for the goldfields of Ballarat, Australia in 1857. Life aboard migrant ship was significantly better that that aboard the convict ships of seven decades earlier, but not as luxurious as that aboard cruise ships a hundred years later. Passengers supplemented the ship’s supplies with their own, and took turns assisiting with cooking. James wrote regularly in his journal, which was addressed to his wife and children who were to follow him later.

June 6th Saturday: This day we have a good breeze gained more today than we have before since we left Liverpool, my turn to be cook today, had meat and fig puddings boiled in a bag with a plenty of suet, but I don't like the mode they have for dressing the meat here, put into a large chaldron called copper many hundreds in bags and boiled with sea water, a very pig like way to me, we have a plenty of sugar, tea and coffee and oatmeal served out every week and good many other things but there is so many passengers on board this ship that we can[t] get our meat dressed as we ought, a person that goes to sea he must be rough both in manners and appearance and eat everything that will come along for the first, I can get along very well, but I have to eat here what I should not at home, but some folks here can't eat the meat we have.

Victorian men (unless they were professionals) did not normally cook, and elsewhere in the journal James notes the mild amusement of some of the women aboard ship at seeing him elbow deep in flour. It was probably good training for making damper – the fireside bread which was a staple of the bush and the goldfields. I wonder if his wife had given him a few hints before he left?

Suet pudding was a Victorian staple. There was an almost infinite number of variations both sweet and savoury, and they were all hearty, stick-to-your ribs kind of fare. No need to look any further than Mrs Beeton (1861) for a version such as James might have cooked.

Fig Pudding.
Ingredients: 2 lbs. of figs, 1 lb. of suet, ½ lb. of flour, ½ lb. of bread crumbs, 2 eggs, milk.
Mode: Cut the figs into small pieces, grate the bread finely, and chop the suet very small; mix these well together, add the flour, the eggs, which should be well beaten, and sufficient milk to form the whole into a stiff paste; butter a mould or basin, press the pudding into it very closely, tie it down with a cloth, and boil for 3 hours, or rather longer; turn it out of the mould, and serve with melted butter, wine-sauce, or cream.

The other famous mid-nineteenth century cookbook was Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845). Eliza’s book is the finer there is no doubt, and many of Mrs Beeton’s recipes are taken from it. There is no shortage of suet pudding recipes in Modern Cookery, but Eliza also gives this lovely compote made from figs – again, the dried sort of course, not the fresh.

Stewed Figs (A Very Nice Compote)
Put into an enamelled or a copper stewpan, four ounces of refined sugar, the very thin rind of a large and fresh lemon, and a pint of cold water. When the sugar is dissolved, add a pound of fine Turkey figs, and place the stewpan on a trivet above a moderate fire, or upon a stove, where they can heat and swell slowly, and be very gently stewed. When they are quite tender, add to them two glassfuls of port wine and the strained juice of a lemon; arrange them in a glass dish and serve them ocld. From two hours to two and a half of the gentlest stewing will generally be sufficient to render the figs fit for table. Orange-juice and rind can be used for them at pleasure, instead of the lemon; two or three bitter almonds may be boiled in the syrup to give it flavour, and any wine can be used for it, but port is best. This compôte may be served in the second course hot, in a rice-border, or cold for dessert.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Hellish Food.

Quotation for the Day …

Your face makes my soul want to eat chocolate pudding! Andy Milonakis

War and Sprouts.

Today, June 5^th …

A newspaper article on this day in 1918 described the terrible privations endured by the British Royals during wartime.

The King and Queen gave a small dinner party at Buckingham Palace last evening. During wartime no entertainment of guests on a large scale is attempted, but Their Majesties are keeping in touch with leading members of various branches of society, and last night’s dinner party was the second of a series to theat end. The King and Queen set and maintain an example of rationing, and the dinner last night was practically meatless and the menu strictly moderate.

One can only hope that Their Majesties practically meatless and strictly moderate dinner was not too much of a shock to the Royal Digestive Systems. Meanwhile, Their Loyal Subjects were learning new ways of eating too (apart from having to be very meatless and very strictly moderate). They were learning to embrace foreign food, which probably did not come too easily to British Digestive Systems of the time, but substitutes had to be found for things in short supply. One charming little book was put together by Mrs Brian Luck (I wonder what her own name was?) from recipes supplied by “Belgian refugees from all parts of the United Kingdom”.

I do not know if this was a fund-raising effort, or whether Mrs Brian just wanted to raise awareness of the terrible situation in Belgium, or whether she noted a gap on the bookshop shelves where a Belgian cookbook would fit perfectly. I do know that I have to feature recipes for Brussels Sprouts from it, as a matter of principle. But first, a little from her introduction:

… this small manual is offered for the use of the work-a-day and inexperienced mistress and maid. It is not written in the interests of millionaires. The recipes are simple, and most inexpensive, rather for persons of moderate means. … . A shelf of provisions should be valued, like love-making, not only for itself but for what it may become.

And from her general notes on vegetables and brunettes:

VEGETABLES: Nearly all these are at their best (like brunettes) just before they are fully matured. So says a great authority, and no doubt he is thinking of young peas and beans, lettuces and asparagus. Try to dress such things as potatoes, parsnips, cabbages, carrots, in other ways than simply boiled in water, for the water often removes the flavor and leaves the fiber. Do not let your vegetable-dishes remind your guests of Froissart's account of Scotchmen's food, which was "rubbed in a little water."

And finally, a couple of her recipes for that most opinion-polarising of vegetables:

Brussels Sprouts.
(The best way to cook them)
Having cleaned and trimmed your sprouts, let them simmer in salted water, to which you have also added a little soda to preserve the color. Or, if you do not like to add soda, keep the pan firmly covered by the lid. When tender, take them out and let them drain, place them in another pan with a good lump of butter or fat; stir, so as to let the butter melt at once, and sprinkle in pepper and a tiny pinch of nutmeg.
[The Belgian Cookbook (1915), by Mrs Brian Luck]

Belgian Puree
Cook two pounds of Brussels sprouts in boiling water. Take them out, drain them and toss them in butter for five minutes, sprinkle them with a teaspoonful of flour, and then cook them in gravy (or meat extract and water), fast boiling, over a good fire, and keep the lid of the saucepan off so that they may remain green. Pass them throughthe sieve, leave them in ten minutes, bind the mixture with the yolks of three eggs, a pint of milk; then at the last minute one dessert-spoonful of butter for each pint and a half of soup.
[The Belgian Cookbook (1915), by Mrs Brian Luck]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Figgy Puddings.

Quotation for the Day …

We kids feared many things in those days - werewolves, dentists, North Koreans, Sunday School - but they all paled in comparison with Brussels sprouts. Dave Barry

Old Maid Day.

Today, June 4^th …

According to some almanacs, this day is Old Maid’s Day. In spite of the efforts of the feminist movement, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence of overwhelming enthusiasm for celebrating this day. Surprisingly, there are several claimants for the honour of inventor of the occasion sometime in the late 1940’s, in America. It may be an adaptation of the Leap Year idea especially resurrected in honour of returning servicemen and in reflection of the hope of the greater number of available women waiting at home.

I blame the name of the day for the lack of enthusiasm for making merry on the day. I blame it even more on the lack of a special food to celebrate it with. It would hardly help the cause to use the dish sometimes called “Old Maid Pie”, and you will understand why when I tell you its other names are “Scrap Pie” or “Saturday Pie”. It doesn’t take much imagination to realise that this is the traditional pie of the weeks leftovers, the cook trying valiantly to hide their provenance under a pastry lid.

Old Maid’s Pie
This, which is in a manner of speaking made entirely of scraps, is yet very good. Take 4oz or 8oz of any sort of cold meat, poultry, or game — a mixture of one of these with a little chopped lean ham or bacon is perhaps best. Have ready some freshly boiled mashed potatoes. Spread a layer of these at the bottom of a pie dish, then put a layer of the meat.
Cover this with a layer of freshly-fried onions, then sprinkle with grated cheese and fried breadcrumbs. Continue these layers until the dish is full. Moisten with a little stock or gravy; strew the top very thickly with fried onions and breadcrumbs, and grate over the whole 1oz of cheese (any scraps of dried cheese will do just as well as fresh for this); place a few bits of butter here and there, and bake in a moderate oven until of a golden-brown hue. Take out and serve at once. Fish may be used in place of meat if liked.
[Cookery For Worried Housewives; Mrs Alfred Praga; 1948]

Tomorrow’s Story …

War and Sprouts.

Quotation for the Day …

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

A Guest (G)Astronomer Blogs.

I found myself in a state of supreme ignorance a few days ago when I attempted to make sense of the idea of Heavenly Beer. My plea for help was heard, and a Real Astronomer has generously agreed to be a guest blogger today. Our guest blogger has not only answered my questions and clarified the trillion/million thing, but has provided a lot more fascinating information about that Great Potential Brewery in the Sky.

The identity of this Real Astronomer must remain mysterious. I will say he/she works at one of the universities in the Western part of the U.S.A and studies the sort of things that will forever be mysterious to the rest of us - such things as "large-scale structure (that is, how the universe looks and behaves if you step back and give it a bird's-eye view) and galaxy formation and evolution", but who also says something that we can all agree with:

"The marvelous thing about our universe is that it's fascinating on every scale, from enormous clusters of galaxies and beyond to tiny molecules of ethyl alcohol, and the marvelous thing about astronomy is that it's one of humankind's oldest sciences, deeply entangled with history and culture."

I now hand you over to:

The (G)Astronomer.

The Old Foodie tracked down a manufacturer of booze that makes the Guinness brewery look like a backyard moonshine operation. TOF immediately zeroed in on the important questions:

"How many of these interstellar booze-clouds are there? An approximately Infinite number? (Is `Infinite' a number? ) How can the alcohol be harvested? Is it a renewable resource? Can these clouds be seeded to make it rain beer? Would that be 400 [trillion] trillion pints of low alcohol beer, or high? Presumably, as they were British scientists, they mean British trillions (18 zeros) and not US trillions (12 zeros) . . ."

We astronomers are historically very enthusiastic about our drink; unsubstantiated legend has it that the 16th-century astronomer Tycho Brahe died of a bladder burst by too much ale drunk at a royal banquet. Present-day astrophysicists are also fans, of course.

How many interstellar booze clouds?

After doing some rough calculations assuming a standard British pint (3.5% alcohol by volume), I'm afraid that the "trillion" in the news article indeed refers to the American "trillion" (a one with twelve zeroes after it).

But never despair. There are many varieties of interstellar clouds, and of the type in this case, the "hot molecular core" (generally associated with the births of new stars! no booze in baby's bottle, please), there are probably somewhere in the neighborhood of three to ten thousand in our own Milky Way galaxy. That still means enough booze for up to four million trillion trillion (a four with thirty zeroes after it) pints! That's about a million pints per person on Earth . . . each minute . . . for the next billion years.

Or if you prefer, instead of a million pints, make it seven hundred thousand gin martinis. The bubbly has already been provided; some structural changes in hot molecular clouds are actually called champagne flows by astronomers.

In case you are planning to hold a party, there are also at least another hundred billion other galaxies in our observable universe, presumably with their own alcoholic clouds.

But every overly happy evening must end in a hangover.

How do you bottle some of this exotic brew? Are you sure that you want to?

There are logistical problems, to be sure. A trip to the vicinity of one of these clouds runs a long 10,000,000,000,000 kilometers. Even traveling at the speed of light, that's the difference between a university party man at departure and a somewhat more haggard thirty-something with a mortgage on arrival. And as far as extracting the goods goes: for every one gram of alcohol, such a cloud would also contain about one hundred thousand (100,000) kilograms of hydrogen. Happy distilling!

For the advanced drinkers among us, the pleasure in an excellent beer or cocktail comes not just from that happy buzz disrupting our neurons but from the other vital chemicals that lend a drink its aroma, flavor, body, and color. The vast majority of these acids, salts, oils, esters, and so forth have not been found in interstellar space. Some of the most complex are built painstakingly, atom by atom, in the remarkable laboratories of living cells and tissues. Forget about gin in space; true gin needs juniper, and juniper needs Earth.

These clouds also contain a distressing number of substances guaranteed to leave a headache, such as

• carbon monoxide,
• ammonia,
• hydrogen sulfide (sewer gas),
• formic acid (the sting in bee and ant venom),
• aldehydes (what your frog was pickled in back in Miss Winney's biology class),
• and cyanides, which in tiny incidental amounts can lend rather a pleasant bitter almond flavor to wild cherry wines but which, in slightly less tiny amounts, kill.

Drink 'er down!

Even if hot molecular cores contained real beer; just as in real life, the new baby (star) embedded in the hot cloud would readily get in the way of a good time. Young, hot stars, particularly the large ones, produce an immense amount of ultraviolet and blue light. The same type of light is the reason that many wines and beers come in dark bottles (or — shifting my eyes judiciously — sealed boxes). The high-energy form of light does a number on the brew, instigating chemical reactions that produce sulfurous compounds. If you have ever had the misfortune to taste a beer that has gone off after a few minutes in the air or a "skunked" wine, you know what I'm talking about. Might as well make vinegar from it — yes, that too can be found in space, as can sugars (although the alcohol in space is not generated via Earthly varieties of fermentation).

Never mind all the naysaying. Talking of Old Foodies (or Drinkies): Inanna, a Sumerian goddess of the long-gone first human civilizations, and titled "supreme queen of the heavens" (!), understood the importance of a party of cosmic proportions. She is said to have sung, four thousand years ago:

While I circle around the abundance of beer,
While I feel wonderful, I feel wonderful,
Drinking beer, in a blissful mood,
Drinking liquor, feeling exhilarated,
With joy in the heart [and] a happy liver —
While my heart full of joy,
[And my] happy liver I cover with a
garment fit for a queen!
The heart of Inanna is happy again,
The heart of the queen of heaven is happy again!

Retro Cake Challenge No. IV

There's no stopping that T.W.Barritt over at Culinary Types. We have a few little email converstations about old-fashioned cakes, a little vintage recipe searching, and the recipe hardly pauses in cyberspace before it is cooked, photographed and blogged for your delight. Each story is written in a style appropriate for the cake. The latest is set in the 1950's when the latest fashion was a German Chocolate Cake.

The recipe for this cake appeared in the newspapers in late 1957. The first mention is said to have been in a Dallas newspaper in the fall, but so far I have been unable to track this down. By December it had spread to North Carolina, as The Daily Times-News in Burlington asked on December 17th of that year:

Would you like Recipe for German Chocolate Cake?
There is a new cake that is causing considerable comment here this Christmas. It is a German chocolate cake and everywhere we have been recently someone has been talking about the recipe and how it might be obtained.

In case you missed T.W's other Retro Cakes, they are:

I Lady Baltimore Cake.

II Chocolate Malted Milk Cake

III Watermelon Cake.

Do yourself a favour and check them all out HERE.

Monroe and Potato.

Marilyn (when she was only Norma) may have been Artichoke Queen of 1947, but my friend Peter (who has a bit of a thing for beautiful ladies, especially when they are naked, and to potatoes in any form) pointed me to Marilyn (when she was a Star) dressed in an Idaho potato sack. The famous picture was taken in 1952 as a publicity shot for 20^th Century Fox, the idea apparently germinating from the idea that she would look good even in a potato sack. Which she did, of course.

There is no evidence that Marilyn had anything else to do with the potato industry, but I cannot post without giving you a recipe. I have chosen again from the Lily Wallace New American Cook Book (1946), to show you that Hashed Browns can be beautiful too, when properly made.

Hashed Brown Potatoes.
Melt 2 tablespoons fat in a frying pan. Add 2 cups finely chopped boiled potatoes, 1 tablespoon chopped parsley, ½ teaspoon salt, and a few grains pepper. Mix thoroughly, then allow the potatoes to brown on the under side. Fold over like an omelet. Serves 6.

If you want more potato recipes, please go to the Potato Archive.

Queen of Artichokes.

Today, June 1^st

Norma Jeane Mortenson was crowned ‘Artichoke Queen’ in ‘The Artichoke Capital of the World’ on this day in 1947. You probably know her better as Marilyn Monroe, and you will find the town better by looking up Castroville, California. Norma/Marilyn’s career was not to start for a few years, but Castroville had been working for two decades at growing and promoting the “new” vegetable in order to earn its title.

The artichoke is a member of the thistle family and is similar to the cardoon, which is almost as unfamiliar to a lot of us as the artichoke. It probably arose in Sicily or North Africa and arrived in Europe in the fifteenth century, and in America a confused time later.

Like so many other newly introduced plants, the artichoke was first accused (or lauded) as being an aphrodisiac. In the words of one sixteenth century physician "it has the virtue of . . . provoking Venus for both men and women; for women making them more desirable, and helping the men who are in these matters rather tardy." I did ponder – with this mythoid in mind – if this attribute of the artichoke helped Marilyn’s reputation, or vice-versa.

As to the recipe for the day, I thought to provide you with an artichoke recipe from the mid-1900’s, to fit the story for the day. First, I did a quick browse across the centuries and found that in Adam’s Luxury and Eve’s Cookery (1744) there were nine recipes for fresh artichokes; Mrs Beeton (1861) has three; The Lily Wallace New American Cookbook (1946) has two – and the default artichoke is canned. Progress is about improving, adding, learning etc, isn’t it?

It pains me to do it, when a wonderful Fricassy of Artichokes appears in the book of 1744, but somehow I feel I must give you the recipes from the book of Marilyn’s time – we cannot hide from history you know, we must face canned artichokes square-on, with bravery.

Artichoke Hearts.
Drain canned artichoke hearts. Impale on toothpicks. Serve around bowl of mayonnaise.

Artichoke Heart Salad.
5 cups canned artichoke hearts.
Head of lettuce.
¼ cup piquant mayonnaise (NO. 704)*
Drain the artichoke hearts, saving the juice for soup. Chill thoroughly. Arrange on crisp lettuce and serve with mayonnaise. Dust mayonnaise with paprika. Serves 6 to 8. To use fresh artichokes, remove stem and outside leaves. Discard thistle-like center or “choke”. Soak in salted water ½ hour.Boil 25 minutes in salted water.

*chopped sour pickle and pickled onions added.

Monday’s Story …

Old Maid Day.

Quotation for the Day …

These things are just plain annoying. After all the trouble you go to, you get about as much actual "food" out of eating an artichoke as you would from licking 30 or 40 postage stamps. Have the shrimp cocktail instead. Miss Piggy