An anthropologist does dinner.

January 24

Desmond (John) Morris the English anthropologist and author of The Naked Ape was born on this day in 1928. Is there anyone better qualified than he to comment on our dining behaviour?

“Observe diners arriving at any restaurant and you will see them make a bee-line for the wall seats. No one ever voluntarily selects a centre table in an open space. Open seating positions are only taken when all wall seats are occupied. This dates back to a primeval feeding practice of avoiding sudden attack during the deep concentration involved in consuming food.”

The Hirsute variety of Ape still faces this risk of course, whereas we, the Naked Therefore Fully Clothed variety of Ape have evolved and become civilised. Consequently, the risks associated with dining are far, far, more complicated.

Sitting against the wall in the breakfast nook does not protect from attack within the ranks. The family mealtable, since we evolved enough to be able to have “relationships” and their associated “issues”, can be fraught. Winston Churchill was well aware of this when he said “My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked.”

Progress does sometime pay off however. We have dispensed largely with etiquette – that perilous quicksand of ever shifting, uncertain social rules that were broken at considerable cost in previous times. We are left with a few little situations to negotiate, - how to escape before the inevitable dishwasher stacking argument, to risk taking a good bottle of wine and have it disappear into the host's cellar and a poor one offered at dinner, and how to divide up the bill at a restaurant, for example. It was not always quite so simple.

I give you a random list of nineteenth century etiquette rules, for your edification.

When the various members of the party are assembled in the drawing room, the mistress of the house, or the master, supposing him a bachelor or a widower, points out to you the lady you are to lead into the dining room. You, the lady indicated, will have to take precedence according to rank. … The rank of ladies is decided by that of their male relatives … As the lady’s rank gives the precedence, so it decides the order of procession to the dining room.

Coming down stairs, give the lady to the wall; lead her into the room, and seat yourself beside her.

If you pass to dine merely from one room to another, offer your left arm to the lady.

Both ladies and gentlemen remove their gloves when they sit down to dinner.

It is considered vulgar to take fish or soup twice.

Eat peas with a dessert spoon, and curry also.

It is not elegant to gnaw Indian corn. The kernels should be scored with a knife, scraped off into the plate, and then eaten with a fork. Ladies should be particularly careful how they manage so ticklish a dainty, lest the exhibition rub off a little desirable romance.

To shine at the dinner-table requires much conversant practice with polite life. A double duty devolves upon the gentlemen, that of feeding with elegance, and of attending to their fair neighbours.

Today’s recipe gives a tiny nod to anthropologists and archeologists and ancient historians. It is from Modern Ways with an Ancient Food. Addressed to Mothers. It is an advertising booklet for the Hecker brand of ‘farina’, which is the Italian word for flour, but in this case is the same as ‘Cream of Wheat’, which is essentially ‘cornflour’ made from wheat, not corn, which is quite confusing, I must say.

I chose this recipe because it sounds awful in the way that is sometimes quite tasty, in the secret-eating kind of way.

Cream-Farina Cheese Sandwich Filling.
2 tablespoons uncooked Cream-Farina
1 ¼ cups ( ¼ lb) grated cheese
⅛ teaspoon pepper
1 cup strained tomato pulp
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup ( ¼ lb.) cooked ham, ground or chopped
Paprika
Heat strained tomato pulp in double boiler; add salt and Cream-Farina and cook 7-8 minutes with frequent stirring. Add grated cheese and heat until melted. Remove from fire, add remaining ingredients, and allow to cool before spreading on bread.
Makes 1 ½ cups filling.

Please confess if you’ve ever made this.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Getting a Grip on Sausages.

Quotation for the Day …

I expected (purely on statistical grounds) to die ten years ago … something has gone wrong with my prediction because I am still here, and I have a feeling that part of the reason could be that I have managed to maintain a deep disrespect for all the health police, the faddist gurus and the diet fascists who plague our bookstalls, radio stations and newsagents. Desmond Morris.

Odds and Ends for Dinner.

January 23

Our old friend Parson James Woodforde has given us much wonderful information about the dining habits of the middle class in the second half of the eighteenth century. He was clearly a man who enjoyed his food, and frequently made quite detailed report of his dinners. On this day in 1795 however, he was uninspired, noting simply: “Dinner to day, odds and ends &c.” One can almost hear the plaintive, disappointed voice.

He uses this same phrase in other entries, not telling us any other information. There are people who cook specifically to have leftovers, – I am one of them myself – there are others who abhor the idea, and are either much more calculating cooks than I am and are able to prepare just the right amount for one meal, or they are more daring and are able to dump the remains into the garbage.

The problem with leftovers (if it is a problem), is largely in the name, which hints at toothprints and saliva residue at best, and loss of flavour and serious bacteriological contamination at worst. What else to call them? Parson Woodford’s other phrase, ‘heatups’, is no better. ‘Re-cycled’ sounds ethically correct but somehow not delicious.

One eighteenth century author tried hard with ‘secondary cookery’, which at least is a little intriguing. The full title of the book is The family save-all, a system of secondary cookery, and it was published in 1861. It is a fascinating book, and the author tries valiantly to add excitement to many dishes that surely do need it, by renaming them in they style of a ‘Capital Dinner from Ox-Cheek’ and ‘Capital Soup from Cow Heels’.

My favourite is this one:

A Marbled Dish of Remnants.
A sort of marbled mass is sometimes made by shaking together in a mould remnants of various coloured Blanc-manges cut nearly of the same size, and then filling it up with a clear jelly.

His creativity falls short of glamourising some dishes however:

Economical Dish of Baked Faggots.
Leaves of Mangel Wurzel as a Table Vegetable.
Delicious Pie of Sheep’s Head and Trotters.
Tails, Various Uses Of.
Various ways of Cooking and re-Cooking that unmanageable dish, Ox-heart.

The book contains much other useful advice on such things as getting rid of vermin, removing stains from clothing, etc, and a whole lot of other things that you didn’t even realise you needed to know, such as:

Important Hints on Breathing.

and

How to Eat an Egg with Satisfaction !
WHAT ! mean to insinuate that, after all these years, we don't know how to eat eggs properly ? Never mind: don't be above taking a hint. By the usual mode of introducing the salt into a boiled egg, it will not incorporate with the egg; the result is, you get either a quantity of salt without egg, or egg without salt. In order to make the two mix properly, after cutting off the top of the egg, put in a drop of water, tea, coffee, or other warm liquid that may be on the table ; then add the salt, and stir. The result is far more agreeable - the drop of liquid is not tasted.

And this very useful idea, using ‘English chilies’. I don’t believe I have ever read the phrase before.

Home-made Cayenne Pepper, of superior Flavour.
Those who desire to obtain good Cayenne Pepper, free from adulteration and poisonous colouring matter, should make it of English chilies. By so doing they half the heat of the foreign. A hundred large chilies, costing only two shillings, will produce about two ounces of cayenne - thus the superior home-made is as cheap as the commonest red pepper. The following is the way to make it:—Take away the stalks, and put the pods into a colander ; set it before the fire for about twelve hours, by which time they will be dry. Then pour them into a mortar, with one-fourth their weight in salt, and pound and rub them till they are as fine as possible; sift through a little muslin, and then pound the residue, and sift again.

Tomorrow’s Story …

An anthropologist does dinner.

Quotation for the Day …

Give us this day our daily taste. Restore to us soups that spoons will not sink in and sauces which are never the same twice. Raise up among us stews with more gravy than we have bread to blot it with ...
Robert Farrar Capon.

Much Depends on Dinner.

January 22

The English poet Lord George Gordon Byron was born on this day in 1788. He is best known to foodies as the source of the quotation that inspired the title of the wonderful book by Margaret Visser, Much Depends on Dinner.

The quotation is from The Island, and the full stanza reads:

“All human history attests That happiness for man, - the hungry sinner! - Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner.”

The sub-title of Margaret Visser’s book is The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Meal, which is ironic, given that Byron found negotiating the meal table to be full of perils , having a troubled relationship with food – perhaps even so far as having what we would call an eating disorder.

His journals and letters certainly suggest an unhealthy attitude to eating. He is known to have struggled with his weight, loving good food but occasionally adopting severe weight loss regimes involving crash diets (becoming ‘a leguminous-eating Ascetic’), intense exercise regimes, purging and sweating.

His sister Augusta commented in a letter to another that “his way is to fast till he is famished & then devour more than his stomach in that weak state can bear - & so on”

A couple of his own letters will also illustrate:

“Sunday, I dined with the Lord Holland in St. James's Square. Large party …. Stuffed myself with sturgeon, and exceeded in champagne and wine in general, but not to confusion of head. When I do dine, I gorge like an Arab or a Boa snake, on fish and vegetables, but no meat. I am always better, however, on my tea and biscuit than any other regimen, and even that sparingly.”

And:

“To-day I have boxed one hour - written an ode to Napoleon Buonaparte - copied it - eaten six biscuits - drunk four bottles of soda water.”

Byron did not like to be seen eating, and his romantic views of women preferred that they be seen in an ethereal light, not doing something so gross as eating. He refused to eat with his wife when she was obviously pregnant, and had his meals sent to another room.

“A woman should never be seen eating or drinking, unless it be lobster salad and Champagne, the only true feminine & becoming viands.”

Presumably, if it was OK for women to eat lobsters, a very delicate way to eat them would be to avoid the pesky shells altogether and have them potted. This recipe is from a domestic medical text.

To Pot Lobsters.
Take out the meat as whole as you can; split the tail, and remove the gut: if the inside be not watery, add that. Season with mace, nutmeg, white pepper, salt, and a clove or two, in the finest powder. Lay a little fine butter at the bottom of the pan, and the lobster smooth over I; cover it with butter, and bake it gently. When done, pour the whole on the bottom of a sieve; and with a fork lay the pieces into potting pots, some of each sort, with the seasoning about it. When cold, pour clarified butter over it, but not hot. It will be good next day; or highly seasoned, and thick covered with butter, it will keep some time.
[Thomas Cooper, M.D. A Treatise of Domestic Medicine, intended for families, in which the treatment of common disorders are alphabetically enumerated. To which is added, a Practical System of Domestic Cookery, …also The Art of Preserving. 1824] {American}

Tomorrow’s Story …

Odds and Ends for Dinner.

Quotation for the Day …

Man is a carnivorous production,
And must have meals, at least one meal a day;
He cannot live, like woodcocks, upon suction,
But, like the shark and tiger, must have prey;
Although his anatomical construction
Bears vegetables, in a grumbling way,
Your laboring people think beyond all question,
Beef, veal, and mutton better for digestion.”
Lord Byron (1788-1824.) Don Juan

TV Cook, Number One.

January 21

The whole TV celebrity chef thing started on this day in 1937 when the French restaurateur Marcel Boulestin demonstrated how to make an omelette on the BBC program Cook’s Night Out.

His full name was Xavier Marcel Boulestin (1878-1943), and he was a man of many and varied talents. His obituary in The Times described him as ‘music critic, novelist, both in French and English, actor, caricaturist, designer and decorator, broadcaster and restaurateur’ whose cookery lessons by television ‘were greatly helped by the expressiveness of his face and of his gestures.’

Boulestin must have been a man of great stamina too. He wrote for Vogue magazine, taught cookery at Fortnum & Mason, and wrote three books - Simple French Cooking for English Homes, What Shall We Have Today, and The Conduct of the Kitchen. He also found time to run his restaurant: in 1925 it was the Restaurant Français in Leicester Square, and two years later he moved to Covent Garden and opened the Restaurant Boulestin.

Sadly, the details and transcript of that first program no longer exist, or so I am told. I wonder why Boulestin chose an omelette to cook for his first show? Because it is so simple anyone can do it, or because it is so tricky it is difficult to get it just right? He certainly chose a classic, with no international boundaries, and a long history. The word was originally ‘amulet’, from the same word used to mean a thin plate such as the blade of a sword or knife – so the same origin as ‘laminate’ and ‘lamina’.

By some terrible oversight, I don’t have a single one of Boulestin’s cookbooks, but it hardly matters as the following recipe for a 'lamina of eggs' proves that some things have not changed for centuries. I could have picked an earlier version, but this early eighteenth century recipe is just fine: the only concession to the era is the final flourish of verjuice, butter, and sugar.

Amulet, to make.
Take twelve Eggs, beat them and strain them, put to them three or four spoonfuls of Cream, then put in a little Salt, and having your frying-pan ready with some Butter very hot, pour it in, and when you have fryed it a little, turn over both sides into the middle; then turn it on the other side, and when it is fryed, serve it on the Table with Verjuice, Butter, and Sugar.
From: Salmon, William. The family dicitionary, or houshold companion …. 1710.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Much Depends on Dinner.

Quotation for the Day …

Do not be afraid to talk about food. Food which is worth eating is worth discussing. And there is the occult power of words which somehow will develop its qualities. Marcel Boulestin

Just for Fun.

Today, purely for fun, I give you this satirical bill of fare, found in a nineteenth century journal, found in turn via the wonderful Google Books resource. I give it as it is spelled and numbered.

A BURLESQUE BILL OF FARE.

From MS.Ashmole (Oxford), No. 826, fol.179

A BILL OF FARE SENT TO BANKES Y^e VINTNER IN CHEAPE SIDE IN MAY, 1637

Imps. 4 ffancies, 2 boyld and 2 rosted.
2. A large dish of carrett doucets.
3. 4 dysshes of andyrons.
4. 6 pelican chickins.
5. Six birds of paradice.
6. Two phœnxes, a cock and a hen.
7. Four pair of elephants pettitoes.
8. A green dragon springcock.
9. A rhinocerus boyld in alligant.
10. A calves head boyled wth a pudding in y^e belly.
11. A sowced owle.
12. A dish of Irish hartshorne, boyled to a jelly.
13. 4 golden horseshooes disolv’d through a woodcocks bill.
14. Sixe tame lyons in greene sawce.
15. A lyons chyne.
16. A haunch of a beare larded.
17. A whole horse sowced after y^e Russian fashion.
18. 12 sucking puppies of a Capadocian bitch.
19. 6 dozen of ostriges rosted.
20. A leg of an eagle carbonadoed.
21. The pluck of a grampus stewed.
22. An apes tayle in sippitts.
23. Two she beares served up whole.
24. Foure black swans, 2 in a dish.
25. 2 dozen of white blackbirds, 6 in a dish
26. A large dish of cuckow twinckles.
27. Two cocatrices and 3 baboones boyled.
28. Two dryed salamanders.
29. A dish of modicumes boyld in barbary viniger.
29. The jole of a whale butterd in barbary viniger.
30. A grosse of canary birds rosted.
31. A shole of red herrings w^th bells about their necks.
32. Two porpoises pickled.
33. Two porcupines parboyld.
34. Two dozen of Welshambassodars.
35. A dish of bonitoes, currflying fishes with sorrel sopps.

SECOND COURSE

1. A West Indian Cheese.
2. A hundred of cacus nutts.
3. A dish of pyne apples.
4. 6 pompions quodled.
5. A dish of puffes
6. A tame panther, swimming inwhite broth.
7. A crocadill baked in a pye, looking out of y^e lid and laughing at y^e company.

I have no idea about the authenticity of this manuscript, but assume that the learned gentlemen who contributed to the Retrospective Review in 1853 would vouch for it. It is now on my list of Interesting Things to Investigate.

There is an apocryphal story around this time of a man called Bankes (or Banks) who owned a dancing horse shoed with silver and who may have been a vintner. Perhaps it is he? A large part of the satirical fun is lost if you dont know the story behind the satirical story. If you do know it, please do tell us all in the comments, or email me if you would prefer.

Monday's Story ...

TV Cook, Number One.

Quotation for the Day …

It's important to watch what you eat. Otherwise, how are you going to get it into your mouth ? Matt Diamond.

An unfortunate invitation.

January 17

January 17 1920 was the first new day of that Noble Experiment, Prohibition. It was also the twenty-first birthday of that less-than-noble person, Al Capone – which I find an amusing irony or synchronicity for some reason. I wonder if his birthday was marked with an income-producing epiphany?

‘They’ say that no-one is all bad, even amongst the baddest. Al Capone did start up an impressive Soup Kitchen in Chicago during the Depression, and if, as his critics said, it was merely to improve his image amongst the working folk, then at least some poor hungry souls got a feed. Others say that there is honor amongst thieves. An example of this honorable behaviour took place at a banquet held by Scarface himself in May, 1929, which we have previously featured here. To summarise the story: Big Al had gotten wind of a plan by three of his men – Scalise, Anselmi, and Giunta to betray him. He invited them to a banquet. He feasted them with sumptuous food and wine and good-old gangster bonhomie. Then he eliminated them in a most spectacular fashion right there at the table. The reports vary, but most involve clubbing them severely around the head then shooting them for good measure. Doubtless, the unequivocal message was understood by any other wannabe-heads of The Outfit that may have been present at the dinner.

Dreadful things can happen at banquets - not just if your host is a gangster with a grudge, and not of just of the prosaic food poisoning kind. Dining history is full of spectacular dinner incidents that have nothing directly to do with the food. A couple of examples will have to suffice.

The traditional belief about the astronomer Tycho Brahe – that he died in 1601 of a ruptured bladder caused by his unwillingness to appear impolite by leaving a banquet table to answer a call of nature - has been overturned by recent evidence that mercury poisoning was the cause of his death. The story still hangs together however, as he almost certainly self-administered medication for the bladder obstruction triggered at the banquet – and the medication of the time contained mercury.

Poor, popular ‘mad’ King George III attacked his son and heir, the future George IV at a state dinner in November 1788, bashing his head against the wall to the accompaniment of an unintelligible tirade. We now believe that King George was suffering from a disease called porphria which can sometimes cause bouts of mental instability, but we also now know that the Number One Son was an unpleasant, disrespectful and greedy man who would have tried the heart of any parent. The dinner table can be the place where it all comes out!

Napoleon broke the news of his intention to divorce his beloved Josephine at the beginning of dinner, citing his country (which needed an heir) as her competitor. His timing hardly seems fair, for with servants scurrying about she was forced to restrain her reaction until the meal was over, whereupon she fell apart, her reason fled, and passed out.

There are many more stories of murder and betrayal most foul occurring at dinner – and completely opposite stories too of wonderful opportunities and gifts, but these must wait for another day, for these blog stories are supposed to be short.

Suffice it to say, as parents often do, if there is any justice in the world, you reap what you sow. Al Capone ended up in Alcatraz for one set of his sins, finally dying a few years later from syphilis for another set of his sins. I don’t know when he succumbed to a life of crime, but perhaps on his twenty-first birthday he was a fresh-faced young man enjoying a family party. With Prohibition just starting, the women’s pages of the newspapers on this very day in 1920 were already tackling the problem of how to cook without using any forbidden products. From the Appleton Daily Post in Wisconsin on January 17, 1920, here are a couple of retrospective birthday dishes for our anti-hero.

‘As the last rites are being said over John Barleycorn, the question arises as to what substitutes for brandy and wine can be used in making good fruit cakes, cookies, mince pies and chafing dish creations. … The following recipes illustrate the use of fruit juice as substitutes for brandy and wine:

While Fruit Cake.
Cream 3/4 cup butter, add one and one half cups sugar, three egg-yolks beaten thick. Mix two and one half cups flour with two teaspoons of baking powder. Sift twice. Mix one and one half pounds seeded raisins, one pornd currants, one half cup citron, one cup candied orange peel, dredge with flour mixture then add. ¼ cup of cream, ½ teaspoon nutmeg. Add ( ¾ cup of brandy) grape juice used as substitute, to butter sugar and egg mixture then add flour and fruit and mix. Fold in the whites of three eggs and bake in buttered pans from 40 to 60 minutes.

Lobster a La Newberg.
Two and one half cups of lobster, three teaspoons of butter one half tea spoonful of salt, dash of cayenne, one cup citron, one half cup of sherry and brandv mixed, (fruit juice used as a. substitute) Saute the lobster in the butter, add cream and egg-yolks, also seasoning. When boiling add fruit juice.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Just for Fun.

Quotation for the Day …

Champagne will not a dinner make,
Nor caviar a meal
Men gluttonous and rich may take
Those till they make them ill
If I've potatoes to my chop,
And after chop have cheese,
Angels in Pond and Spiers's shop
Know no such luxuries.

Mark Lemmon.

Funeral Bread.

January 16

Once upon a time there were far more traditional foods consumed on particular days. Only Christmas Cake and Easter Eggs remain with fragile certainty. Who has Black Bun at Hogmanay, or Simnel Cake on Mothering Sunday anymore? And our local supermarket – the Twelve Days of Christmas barely over and some folk still tardy with removing the tinsel from the house – has Hot Cross Buns already! What is the traditional food world coming to? Food Things Fall Apart, and I am not happy about it.

As for the personal celebrations and milestones, even the white iced wedding cake can no longer be assumed, it has been usurped by chocolate mud cake and pyramids of vegan cupcakes and the like. And does anyone offer Groaning Cake and Groaning Cheese anymore, when the lady of the house has just been safely confined? And at the other end of life, where is the funeral bread?

The son of George Browne of England made a fine funeral feast for his father on this day in 1702. The expenses were not insignificant; amongst other costs there was five shillings to the preacher (only one for the doctor), two shillings to the two women “for winding him” (and a whopping nine shillings and fivepence for the 5 ½ yard winding sheet), but only 6 pence for the coffin. Browne Jnr. did not leave a bill of fare for the dinner, but noted the cost of the cheese, beef, bacon, veal, and mutton purchased. The most important and pricey item was the Arval bread at a cost of 16 shillings for ‘16 dozen at 14 to the dozen whole loaves.’

Arval bread was a type of bread provided at funerals, particularly in the North of England. No doubt it was different from region to region, as it is variously described as a ‘particular kind of loaf’, ‘a thin, light and sweet cake’, a ‘funeral loaf spiced with spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, and raisins, and ‘a coarse cake, composed of flour, water, yeast, currants, and some kind of spice; in form round, about eight inches in diameter, and the upper surface scored, perhaps exhibiting originally the sign of the cross.’ Remember, this was a century and a half before baking powder was developed, and a ‘cake’ was a sweet, fruity bread dough – which is why it was sometimes called Arval Cake. It was provided not just as sustenance at the wake, but mourners were given it to take home, and it was also distributed to the poor.

The word ‘arval’ is connected with ideas of kinship and inheritance - including inherited obligations and responsibilities. The arval dinner and arval bread were intended (according to Hazlitt) ‘to exculpate the heir and those entitled to the possessions of the deceased from fines and mulcts to the Lord of the Manor, and from all accusations of having used violence; so that the persons then convened might avouch that the person died fairly and without any personal injury.’ A heavy responsibility for a loaf of bread. The world should not have gotten rid of such a useful food.

There is then, no single, inviolable recipe for arval bread, but I offer you one from George Browne’s era that I am sure would do quite nicely. It is from The pastry-cook’s vade-mecum: or, a pocket-companion for cooks, house-keepers, country gentlewomen, &c. ... as also the art of distilling and surgery (1705).

To make Cake Bread.
Take to half a peck of Flower three pounds of Currants, rub’d dry in a Cloth, one pound and a half of Butter, half a pound of Sugar, a pretty deal of Cinnamon, half an ounce of Nutmeg, as much Mace, a good quantity of Ale-yest, and mix some Sack in it, temper all these with old Cream, and your Butter must be put in cold, temper it somewhat stiff, and let it lie half an hour to rise, then take a brown Paper and Butter it very well, and strow it well with Flower, and lay it under the Cake, then take Butter and a little Rosewater beaten well together, and wash your Cake over, and strow it well with Sugar before you set it in the Oven. Let your Oven be well heated.

Tomorrow’s Story …

An unfortunate invitation.

Quotation for the Day …

… I shall not hear your trentals*,
Nor eat your arval bread;
For the kin of you will surely do
Their duty by the dead.

… I shall not hear your trentals,
Nor eat your arval bread;
Nor with smug breath tell lies of death
To the unanswering dead.

Two verses from: Lines Written in the Belief that the Ancient Roman Festival of the Dead was called Ambarvalia, by Rupert Brooke.

*trental = A set of thirty requiem masses, said on the same day or on different days (OED).

Living on Parmesan.

January 15

Today in 1622 was the birthday of the French playwright and actor Jean-Baptiste Molière. His health was poor in his last few years between 1667 and his death in 1673 and it is popularly believed that he subsisted almost entirely on Parmesan cheese during this time.

He could have done worse. Parmesan (or Parmigiano Reggiano) is a historic hard, dry cheese from a restricted and legally defined area of Northern Italy. The basic method of production has remained unchanged since the Middle Ages, because there is no need to mess with perfection. Sixteen litres of raw cow’s milk from grass-clover-lucerne-fed cows goes into the making of one kilo of the cheese. The real thing from the real country is termed grana, indicating that it is grainy or granular in texture, and has the words Parmigiano-Reggiano stamped all over the entire rind, so that even if you buy a small piece, you can tell it is the genuine article. It has been prized all over the known world for eight centuries.

Samuel Pepys appreciated it, and with the great fire of London approaching his home on September 4, 1666 saw fit to try to save his supply along with important documents and other valuables.

“…. And in the evening Sir W. Penn and I did dig another (pit) and put our wine in it, and I my parmazan cheese as well as my wine and some other things … Mrs. Turner …. and her husband supped with my wife and I at night in the office, upon a shoulder of mutton from the cook’s, without any napkin or anything, in a sad manner but were merry …”

Beware of imitations of this cheese – especially the pre-grated pre-packed version of ‘parmesan’-style, which may be fine and dandy for some purposes but don’t kid yourself it is close to the freshly grated real thing. And the real thing is far too good to be used merely as a pasta-topper. We far too rarely simply slice it thinly and dissolve it on the tongue, but if we do cook with it, there are other things to do with it than sprinkle it on the bolognese. We have had recipes in previous stories for Parmesan Cheese Ice-Cream (1830) and Macaroni with Parmesan (1769), so today I give you a parmesan-version of that other marriage made in heaven – cauliflower with cheese sauce - from Louis Eustache Ude’s The French Cook (1829).

Cauliflowers with Parmesan Cheese.
Prepare and dish the cauliflower as above*. Next mask the pieces with a little thick bechamelle, powder some rasped Parmesan cheese over them, and melt a little freshbutter, which pour gently in different places. Then strew them over with crumbs of bread and rasped cheese again, to which you give a fine colour with the salamander. Wipe the border of the dish, mix a little Parmesan cheese with some veloute and a little fresh butter, work the sauce, season it well, and pour it gently all round the cauliflower. If you should happen to have neither bechamelle nor any other sauce ready, a little melted butter with some glaze in it, will answer the same purpose; but it is more liable to turn to oil.

*to remove the snails or other insects, which are liable to creep towards the heart. For this purpose leave the cauliflower in cold water for an hour. Next throw it into boiling water, with a little salt and butter. This vegetable being very tender is soon done.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Funeral Bread.

Quotation for the Day …

“I live on good food, not fine words”. Jean-Baptiste Molière, Les Femmes Savants.

The Pope comes to dinner.

January 14 ...

Over a thousand people, including Queen Christina of Sweden attended a banquet give for Pope Innocent XI in Rome on this day in 1687. Mine host was His Excellency the Earl of Castelmaine, English Ambassador to Rome, and he put on a fine spread indeed – so fine that the feast remained set out “for two whole days, (according to the Roman way) that everyone's curiosity might have some share in the Entertainment”.

The event was recorded by the Ambassador’s steward, John Michael Wright, and he left some details about the food.

“This large table, having (as is said) these adornments in the middle, had between them, and the napkins, (which were also most artificially folded) two rows of Assiets, or Intermesses, on either side, fill'd with all sorts of relishing bits, whether salt, sweet or soure; as Pickles, Butter, slices of delicate Bacon, Bologna-Sausiges, Taratufoli, Composts, &c., all which, stood in the abovesaid order, for two whole days, (according to the Roman way) that everyone's curiosity might have some share in the Entertainment."

The art of napkin-folding had impressed Samuel Pepys a few decades earlier, so it seems that it was a relatively new fashion in England. The ‘adornments’ were the incredibly elaborate food ‘sculptures’ – like the medieval subtelties or illusion foods that were not necessarily eaten but served as messages of propaganda or symbols of religious devotion, or simply – as in this case – to impress the guests with the wealth and status of the host. These ‘adornments’ were given to eminent ladies to take home – so no doubt they did second duty in eminent homes as symbols of rank and influence.

Mr. Wright’s inclusion of ‘composts’ in his list seems a little old-fashioned for the time. It was already an old word to describe a ‘composition’ or combination of ingredients – as in the modern use of the word to describe a mix of garden refuse in the process of melting down into rich soil. We do still use it in a culinary sense too – although we use the Frenchified version: the little accent mark over the second ‘o’ in compôte indicates the loss of a letter ‘s’. So there you are – next time you have a fruit compote you are really having a modern version of compost.

Composts were not exclusively made of fruit in medieval and early modern times. Here are a couple of versions from Englands first printed cookbook, A Noble boke off cookry ffor a prynce houssolde or eny other estately houssolde (1500)

Peres in composte.
To mak peres [pears] in composte tak a good quantite of canelle [cinnamon] and sugur and set it on the fyer to boile and draw yt throughe a stren then lesk [slice or chop]dates thyn and put them ther to in a pot and boille wardens [pears] and pair them and put them in the ceripe [syrup] put ther to sanders [red sandalwood, used to color the dish] and boile them and alay them up with chardwins and salt it and mak yt doucet [sweet] and chargaunt and put it out of the vesselle in to a treene vesselle and let it boille then pare smalle raisins and tried guinger and temper it ij dais or ij nyghtes with wyne then lay it in clarified hony cold a day and nyght then tak the raisins out of the hony and cast ther to peres in composte and serue it furthe with a cold ceripe.

To mak compost.
To mak composte tak chekins [chickens] and halve them then tak saige parsly lekes and other good erbes and chop them small then tak a pint of hony and som of the erbes and lay in the botom of the pot and som of the chekyn then tak lard of pork smale mynced and lay it on and cast ther to pouder of guingere and canelle and boille it and serue it.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Living on Parmesan.

Quotation for the Day …

Monsieur Guizot assures us that while he was ambassador in London, his cook was more useful to him politically than his secretaries.
Lucien Tendret (1825-1896) great-nephew of Brillat-Savarin.

Honorary Potatoes.

January 11 ...

It is sad that chefs no longer seem to create and name dishes in honour of celebrities. Do they not realise that they are depriving future food historians of great fun? Why are they shirking their responsibilities and not developing future classics such as Raspberries à la Bush and Gruel à la Paris Hilton ?

There are disputed claimants for the inspiration of many eponymously named dishes, and the search for authenticity can be difficult, even impossible. Who really was the Benedict in Eggs Benedict, or the Newburg in the lobster dish? There is consensus on some however, and intriguing mystery with others, and as it is our week of potatoes in celebration of the International Year of the Potato, we will look at a few of them. Other ideas are welcome, please use the comments section!

Potatoes Anna.
Myth and history collide on this one, and the ‘Anna’ is said to be a Anna Deslions, a nineteenth century Parisian celeb and member of the world’s oldest profession – although I am sure she did not see herself that way as it is said that she never charged her clients, she merely accepted trinkets such as diamonds and beautiful apartments from them. Her favourite meeting place was the famous Café des Anglais, and it appears that she brought much royal and imperial and aristocratic business to the restaurant by way of her guests. No wonder the chef of the time saw fit to create a dish in her honour. He was Adolphe Duglère, famous in his own right, and no doubt if he were alive today he would have his own TV show and his own adoring fans. Unfortunately, Adolphe did not leave one single cookbook, so the ‘authentic’ recipe is not certain. It very rapidly became a classic however, and other cookbook authors made sure they included it. Here is a version from another French chef, Charles Ranhofer, who moved to America and became famous as the chef of Delmonico’s in New York, and did write a cookbook called The Epicurean (1894).

Potatoes Anna (Pommes de Terre Anna)
Select long-shaped potatoes; they must be peeled and cut into the form of a large cork; mince them finely, and soak in water for a few moments; drain and wipe on a cloth. Butter and bread the inside of a thick copper pan, having a well-fitted cover; range on the bottom and sides a thin layer of the potatoes, one overlapping the other, then fill entirely with the remaining ones in separate layers, covering each with butter free from moisture, softened by working in a napkin; mask the upper layer with the same, and close with the lid. Cook the potatoes for three-quarters of an hour in the oven; a quarter of an hour before serving take from the fire, drain off the butter and cut a cross through the potatoes yet in the sautoir, and turn each quarter over with the aid of a palette; put back the drained-off butter and return to the oven until ready, and invert on a dish to serve. These potatoes may be made in a smaller pan; in this case they should not be cut but turned over whole before putting in the oven the second time.

A dish can be named in honour of a place or event too, and Delmonico’s restaurant became the home of several eponymously named dishes, including Delmonico Potatoes. This dish was not invented by Ranhofer however, and does not appear in his book. It was the creation of an earlier chef, Alessandro Filippini, who did include it in his own book published many years later in 1906.

Delmonico Potatoes.
Place four good-sized boiled and finely hashed potatoes in a frying pan with one and a half gills cold milk, half gill cream, two saltspoons salt, one saltspoon white pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg; mix well and cook on the range for ten minutes, lightly mixing occasionally. Then add one tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese, lightly mix again. Transfer the potatoes into a gratin dish, sprinkle another light tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese over and set in the oven to bake for six minutes, or until they have obtained a good golden colour; remove and serve.

There are so many more dishes, but so little time (today) to include them. I hope to gradually add them to the Fun With Potatoes recipe archive. I do leave you with one puzzle. Who was the ‘O’Brien’ in O’Brien Potatoes? The honour goes by default almost to the only person found with that name to have a significant association with potatoes – William Smith O’Brien (1803-1864) an Irish nationalist and leader of a post-famine revolt who was eventually transported to Australia for his sins. I do hope this story is true. I would love to know more about the man and the dish. Please help if you can.

Monday’s Story …

The Pope comes to dinner.

Quotation for the Day ...

I appreciate the potato only as a protection against famine; except for that I know of nothing more eminently tasteless. Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Poorhouse or Prison?

January 10

When improvements to the prison food ration were mooted in England in the mid-nineteenth century, there was a “strongly expressed opinion” on the part of some members of the judiciary, that “the increased scale of dietary recommended by the government would operate as a direct premium to crime.” In spite of these fears, the improvements were ratified, and “the most depraved characters in the country” did get better prison food.

The justice of this decision was demonstrated in an article in The British Farmer’s Magazine in 1849 that contrasted the fare in the workhouse and in the prisons. At that time the attitude to the poor was based on the principle that most of them were ‘undeserving’ – that is, were idle or indolent, and not truly deserving of charity. The management of them was therefore punitive, and the conditions in the poorhouses (as sanctioned by the Poor Laws) were deliberately kept severe as a disincentive to the lazy individuals disinclined to work, who, it was feared, would flock there in droves. The conditions were so bad that there were many reports of inmates of these ‘houses of industry’ committing crimes so as to be sentenced to gaol for a few days R&R on the better food. It is easy to see the attraction when the two dietaries are compared, as in this article. Today being Thursday, this was the fare in one set of institutions:

Workhouse:
Breakfast (same every day): 8 oz bread and half pint of broth, gruel, or milk.
Dinner: 8 oz. bread and 4 oz. cooked meat.
Supper (same every day) 7 oz. bread and an ounce and a half of cheese.

Prison:
Breakfast: 1 pint of oatmeal gruel and 6 oz. of bread.
Dinner: 4 oz. Cooked meat without bone, 1 lb potatoes, and 6 oz of bread.
Supper: 1 pint of oatmeal gruel, and 6 oz. of bread.

The workhouse diet varied hardly at all from day to day – and the food was very poor quality and often diluted and adulterated. In the prison there was a little more variety - some days there was cocoa (1 pint, sweetened with ¾ oz of sugar or molasses) for breakfast, and soup at dinner, with the ingredients specified, and including vegetables.

There is something punitive-sounding in the word ‘gruel’, isn’t there? I have never quite understood why ‘gruel’ was also a food for invalids. It would not get you better as quickly as ‘broth’, now would it?

As this is the week of potatoes in honour of The International Year of the Potato, I give you a couple of recipes for invalids from yesterday’s book, The Potato: A compilation of Information from every available source. They are from the famous venue for the wealthy unwell, the Battle Creek Sanitarium of the Kellogg brothers.

Potato Meal Gruel.
1 ½ quarts water
1 cup potato meal.
Mix, heat, and serve.

Savory Potato Meal Gruel.
1 cup water, in which is steeped two stalks of celery
½ cup water
½ cup strained tomato
2 ½ tablespoons baked potato meal
¼ cup cream
¼ teaspoonful salt.
Mix ingredients and heat.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Honorary Potatoes.

Quotation for the Day …

This root, no matter how much you prepare it, is tasteless and floury. It cannot pass for an agreeable food, but it supplies a food sufficiently abundant and sufficiently healthy for men who ask only to sustain themselves. The potato is criticised with reason for being windy, but what matters windiness for the vigorous organisms of peasants and labourers? Denis Diderot in 1767

Polite Potatoes.

January 9

I am devastated. Humiliated even. I wish to apologise retrospectively to all my dinner guests over the years. I have belatedly read the advice (96 year old advice!) that would have saved me from several decades of social ineptitude.

I have served impolite potatoes for decades.

The Potato: A compilation of Information from every available source (1912) advises that “In polite society, potatoes are only admitted “en robe de chambre”, - that is to say, in their jackets – to the midday meal and then not on formal occasions. At such time the following are used …. ”

The book goes on to give a number of extraordinarily polite potato recipes, starting with this one:

Potato Georgette.
Special recipe of M. Joseph, chef of the Cafe Paillard:
Take a potato and hollow it out, filling the hollow with a salpicon of shrimp tails drenched in a bisque sauce made from the heads and pounded bodies of the shrimps. Cover the potato with some of the mashed insides and bake very well done and serve hot.

Somewhat later in the polite section is a familiar recipe:

Potatoes Julienne (Shoestring Potatoes)
Cut raw into very fine shreds like straws, cook quickly in hot lard, dust with fine salt.

Followed by a very unfamiliar (to me) and most intriguingly named dish:

Between the Acts Potatoes.
Same as Julienne, only about twice as large.

The name? Does this mean French Fries during the interval at the theatre?

From another book about The Irish Potato (1914) by Jessie Pinning Rich, from the University of Texas in 1914 we have a rather more homely approach – a recipe which sounds like a great way to use up leftover potatoes - but whatever you do, don’t serve them to guests if you move in polite society, it sounds a little rustic and, well, leftover.

Waldorf Potatoes.
Cut cold boiled potatoes into cubes and mix one cup of potatoes and one-half cup of cream sauce, having previously added four tablespoons of grated cheese. Pour over potatoes and heat slowly without boiling.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Poorhouse or Prison?

Quotation for the Day …

Pray for peace and grace and spiritual food. For wisdom and guidance, for all these are good. But don’t forget the potatoes. John Tyler Petee.

Leprosy in the time of Potatoes.

January 8

Gilbert White (1720-1793) was an English cleric and naturalist whose home was Selborne in Hampshire. Much of his detailed observation of the natural world (and the human one) was recorded in letters he wrote to other naturalists and scientists, and these were compiled in a book called The Natural History of Selborne. In a letter he wrote on this day in 1778, he mused on the possible causes of leprosy (particularly the dietary) – and in the course of this gives us a strong clue as to the timing of the acceptance of the potato as a useful crop in England.

To The Honourable Daines Barrington

Selborne, Jan. 8, 1778.

Dear Sir,
In all ages the leprosy has made dreadful havoc among mankind…. Some centuries ago this horrible distemper prevailed all Europe over; and our forefathers were by no means exempt, …. It must therefore, in these days, be, to an humane and thinking person, a matter of equal wonder and satisfaction, when he contemplates how nearly this pest is eradicated … This happy change perhaps may have originated and been continued from the much smaller quantity of salted meat and fish now eaten in these kingdoms; from the use of linen next the skin; from the plenty of better bread; and from the profusion of fruits, roots, legumes, and greens, so common in every family. … Three or four centuries ago, before there were any enclosures, sown-grasses, field-turnips, or field-carrots, or hay, all the cattle which had grown fat in summer, and were not killed for winter-use, were turned out soon after Michaelmas to shift as they could through the dead months; so that no fresh meat could be had in winter or spring…. But agriculture is now arrived at such a pitch of perfection, that our best and fattest meats are killed in the winter; and no man need eat salted flesh, unless he prefers it, that has money to buy fresh…. One cause of this distemper might be, no doubt, the quantity of wretched fresh and salt fish consumed by the commonalty at all seasons as well as in Lent; …. Potatoes have prevailed in this little district, by means of premiums, within these twenty years only; and are much esteemed here now by the poor, who would scarce have ventured to taste them in the last reign.

It was an interesting turnaround for the potato – to be given as an example of the profusion of healthy vegetables available for the poor, and thereby contributing to the disappearance of leprosy. One of the things that delayed the adoption of the potato in Europe was the belief that it might cause leprosy - although this may well have been propaganda on the part of clerics who feared that what it would really do would be to precipitate a distracting lust amongst their flock. Many fruits and vegetables introduced from the New World were initially accused of being aphrodisiacs (the tomato and chocolate also for example) - the motto seemed to be ‘If in doubt, don’t trust it.’

Cookbooks of the eighteenth century do contain recipes for ‘potatoes’, but often this means the sweet potato. It is not always possible to be certain which potato is being referred to in a recipe. Sometimes the ‘ordinary’ white potato was referred to as the Virginia potato, or Irish potato or white potato – but ‘Spanish potato’ could mean either variety.

Which type of potato do you think Mrs Elizabeth Raffald expects you to use in this recipe from The Experienced English Housewife (1769)?

To scollop Potatoes.
Boil your potatoes, then beat them fine in a bowl with good cream, a lump of butter and salt. Put them into scolloped shells, make them smooth on top, score them with a knife. Lay thin slices of butter on the top of them, put them in a Dutch oven to brown before the fire. Three shells is enough for a dish.
[P.S. There are more historic potato recipes HERE.]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Polite Potatoes.

Quotation for the Day …

What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow. A.A. Milne.

A Special Day for Fanny.

January 7

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

What was the secret of Fannie's success?

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

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

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

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

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

Tomorrow’s Story …

Leprosy in the time of Potatoes.

Quotation for the Day …

Cookery is the art of preparing food for the nourishment of the body. Prehistoric man may have lived on uncooked foods, but there are no savage races today who do not practice cookery in some way, however crude. Progress in civilization has been accompanied by progress in cookery. Fannie Merritt Farmer.

The Twelfth Day of Christmas

January 6

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

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

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

1. Pie of Bull’s Testicles.

2. Pies with live birds and frogs.

3. Blood Pie.

4. Calf’s Head Pie.

5. Old Maid’s Pie

6. Parrot Pie.

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

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

9. Amblongus Pie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday’s Story …

A Special Day for Fanny.

Quotation for the Day …

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

The Eleventh Day of Christmas

January 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Twelfth Day of Christmas.

Quotation for the Day …

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

The Tenth Day of Christmas

January 4

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

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

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

Here are a few examples:

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

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

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

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

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

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Eleventh Day of Christmas

Quotation for the Day …

Merry Christmas, Nearly Everybody! Ogden Nash

The Ninth Day of Christmas

January 3 ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Tenth Day of Christmas.

Quotation for the Day …

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

The Eighth Day of Christmas.

January 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Ninth Day of Christmas

Quotation for the Day …

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

The Seventh Day of Christmas.

January 1 ....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tomorrow’s Story ...

The Eighth Day of Christmas.

Quotation for the Day …

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