The Poor Author’s Pudding.

I have decided, purely on the basis of blog-writer’s whim (try arguing with that; just you dare try), to temporarily discontinue the Gawthorpe Hall series. Instead, I have decided, purely on the basis of fun, to give you a couple of recipes from the wonderful Eliza Acton (Modern Cookery for Private Families, 1845). They seem particularly apt, given that my book Pie: A Global History was released a few months ago, and the next magnum opus (make that double magnum) – Menus from History, is finally in the hands of the production team (which means that the dreaded indexing is finished. Hallelujah!)

The Poor Author's Pudding.

Flavour a quart of new milk by boiling in it for a few minutes half a stick of well-bruised cinnamon, or the thin rind of a small lemon; add a few grains of salt, and three ounces of sugar, and turn the whole into a deep basin: when it is quite cold, stir to it thrce well-beaten eggs, and strain the mixture into a pie-dish. Cover the top entirely with slices of bread free from crust, and half an inch thick, cut so as to join neatly, and buttered on both sides: bake the pudding in a moderate oven for about half an hour, or in a Dutch oven before the fire.
New milk, 1 quart; cinnamon, or lemon-rind; sugar, 3 oz.; little salt; eggs, 3 ; buttered bread : baked ½ hour.

The Publisher's Pudding.

This pudding can scarcely be made too rich. First blanch, and then beat to the smoothest possible paste, six ounces of fresh Jordan almonds, and a dozen bitter ones; pour very gradually to them, in the mortar, three quarters of a pint of boiling cream; then turn them into a cloth, and wring it from them again with strong expression. Heat a full half pint of it afresh, and pour it, as soon as it boils, upon four ounces of fine bread-crumbs, set a plate over, and leave them to become nearly cold; then mix thoroughly with them four ounces of maccaroons, crushed tolerably small; five of finely minced beef-suet, five of marrow, cleared very carefully from fibre, and from the splinters of bone which are sometimes found in it, and shred not very small, two ounces of flour, six of pounded sugar, four of dried cherries, four of the best Muscatel raisins, weighed after they are stoned, half a pound of candied citron, or of citron and orange rind mixed, a quarter saltspoonful of salt, half a nutmeg, the yolks only of seven full-sized eggs, the grated rind of a large lemon, and last of all, a glass of the best Cognac brandy, which must be stirred briskly in by slow degrees. Pour the mixture into a thickly buttered mould or basin, which contains a full quart, fill it to the brim, lay a sheet of buttered writing-paper over, then a well- floured cloth, tie them securely, and boil the pudding for four hours and a quarter; let it stand for two minutes before it is turned out; dish it carefully, and serve it with the German pudding-sauce of page 403.
Jordan almonds, 6 oz.; bitter almonds, 12 ; cream, ¾ pint; breadcrumbs, 4 oz.; cream wrung from almonds, ½ pint; crushed macaroons, 4 oz.; flour 2 oz.; beef-sue^ 5 oz.; marrow, 5 oz.; dried cherries, 4 oz.; stoned Muscatel raisins, 4 oz.; pounded sugar, 6 oz.; candied citron (or citron and orange-rind mixed), ½ lb.; pinch of salt; ½ nutmeg; grated rind, 1 lemon; yolks of eggs, 7; best cognac, 1 wineglassful; boiled in mould or basin, 4 ¼ hours.
Obs.—This pudding, which, if well made, is very light as well as rich, will be sufficiently good for most tastes without the almonds: when they are omitted, the boiling cream must be poured at once to the bread-crumbs.

Don’t you love the idea of obtaining the almond cream by wringing it “with strong expression” ?

Eliza gives two versions of the suggested German pudding sauce:

A German Custard Pudding Sauce.

Boil very gently together half a pint of new milk or of milk and cream mixed, a very thin strip or two of fresh lemon-rind, a bit of cinnamon, half an inch of a vanilla bean, and an ounce and a half or two ounces of sugar, until the milk is strongly flavoured ; then strain, and pour it, by slow degrees, to the well-beaten yolks of three eggs, smoothly mixed with a knife-end-full (about half a teaspoonful) of flour, a grain or two of salt, and a tablespoonful of cold milk; and stir these very quickly round as the milk is added. Put the sauce again into the stewpan, and whisk or stir it rapidly until it thickens, and looks creamy. It must not be placed upon the fire, but should be held over it, when this is done. The Germans mill their sauces to a froth; but they may be whisked with almost equally good effect, though a small mill for the purpose—formed like a chocolate mill— may be had at a very trifling cost.

A Delicious German Pudding-Sauce.

Dissolve in half a pint of sherry or of Madeira, from three to four ounces of fine sugar, but do not allow the wine to boil; stir it hot to the well-beaten yolks of six fresh eggs, and mill the sauce over a gentle fire until it is well thickened and highly frothed; pour it over a plum, or any other kind of sweet boiled pudding, of which it much improves the appearance. Half the quantity will be sufficient for one of moderate size. We recommend the addition of a dessertspoonful of strained lemon-juice to the wine.
For large pudding, sherry or Madeira, ½ pint; fine sugar, 3 to 4 oz.; yolks of eggs, 6; lemon-juice (if added), 1 dessertspoonful.
Obs.—As we have already said in the previous receipt, it is customary to froth sweet sauces in Germany with a small machine made like a chocolate-mill. Two silver forks fastened together at the handles may be used instead on an emergency, or the sauce may be whisked to the proper state, like the one which precedes it.
Great care must be taken not to allow these sauces to curdle. The safer plan is to put any preparation of the kind into a white jar, and to place it over the fire in a pan of boiling water, and then to stir or mill it until it is sufficiently thickened : the jar should not be half filled, and it should be large enough to allow the sauce to be worked easily. The water should not reach to within two or three inches of the brim. We give these minute details for inexperienced cooks

Quotation for the Day.

I pray that death may strike me in the middle of a large meal.
I wish to be buried under the tablecloth between four large dishes.
Marc Desuagiers

Rosemary Comfits, etc.

We discovered yesterday that the Shuttleworths of Gawthorpe Hall (our source of inspiration for the week) in Lancashire regularly ordered special supplies to be sent all the way from London. In November 1617, they purchased from Mr. Thomas Lever,confectioner, one lb. of rosemary comfits.

I have met comfits made from caraway, aniseed, coriander, cinnamon, and orange (and the infamous ones used by the Maquis de Sade, supposedly containing Spanish Fly) in my reading, but I don’t believe I have come across a reference to rosemary comfits before, and I am most intrigued by them.

Rosemary was used regularly in those times for medicinal purposes, to make pot-pourri, and to flavour beverages such as mead. Comfits were somewhere in the first group – as a sort of after-dinner digestive. Musing on the use of the herb led me to wonder when it became used for more definitive culinary purposes. I don’t pretend to have researched it in any depth, but I give you a few gleanings to get the discussion going.

Firstly, for the comfits themselves, I found a nineteenth century recipe:

Lavender and Rosemary buds may be put into just as much white of egg as will damp them, and then shaken amongst fine-pounded sugar till they are well-covered, and left to dry in it.
Domestic Economy, and Cookery, for Rich and Poor, by a Lady (1833)

I did find one reference from 1867 (from a book supposedly of Welsh cookery ideas) of it being added to the water used to clarify lard when a pig was killed, which sounds a very elegant touch to the inelegant process of rendering. Then there was this idea (from America) at a further point in the pig processing:

Souse for Brawn, and Pig’s Feet and Ears.
Boil a quarter of a peck of wheat-bran, a sprig of bay, and a sprig of rosemary, in two gallons of water, with four ounces of salt in it, for half an hour. Strain it, and let it get cold.
Irving’s 1000 Receipts, by Lucretia Irving (America) 1852

Here is a proper cookery recipe from 1804.

The Head of a Turbot Stewed.
Fill a sauce-pan nearly full with water, and put in a few anchovies, some marjoram and rosemary, two or three cloves, some whole pepper, and scraped ginger. Stew these for the space of an hour ; then strain, and put in the head to be stewed till tender ; when enough, thicken the gravy with flour rolled in butter; add to the butter an anchovy or two, and a little nutmeg. When ready to be served up, put in some spoonfulls of white wine, together with some balls made in the following manner : Bone and skin a piece of turbot; then chop it small, with a little thyme, marjoram, grated bread and nutmeg. Form these into balls with some melted butter and cream, or the yolk of an egg. Put jnto the stew-pan, before the head is taken out, a large piece of the forcemeat, and salt to the taste.
Culina Famulatrix Medicinae, by Alexander Hunter, 1804

And finally, a more familiar application from much more recent times. It is a dish of lamb with rosemary, from Mrs Beeton’s Cookery book and Household Guide, of 1909 – which is to say that it is Isabella’s in name only as she had been dead since 1865. Her original collection was progressively changed and manipulated after her death – exponentially so after the Beeton company was sold in the wake of her husband’s financial failure. It is a nice recipe nonetheless – a sort of herby pickle of lamb that methinks would adapt well to the modern slow cooker.

Baked Saddle of Lamb.
Ingredients: A small saddle of lamb, shalots, marjoram, rosemary, bay-leaves, cloves, juniper berries, lardoons, ½ pint vinegar, ½ pint of claret, pepper and salt.
Mode: Chop the shalots, rosemary, marjoram and bay-leaves; crush the berries, add the cloves and pepper, and having skinned the saddle, rub it thoroughly inside and out with the mixture. Put it in an earthen pan, pour over the claret and vinegar, and let it remain in this liquor for 4 days, frequently turning it. Then lard it, and bake it in an earthenware pan, carefully basting it, and adding a little salt, for 1 to 1 ¼ hour.


Quotation for the Day:

There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember; and there is pansies, that's for thoughts.
William Shakespeare.

Spice and other essentials.

A large manorial estate such as Gawthorpe (see yesterday’s story) was largely self-sufficient in the early seventeenth century. There were a few things considered necessary in a wealthy household that could not be produced by even the best run English farms however - such as spices and dried fruit. These expensive imported items were purchased from suppliers in London, and the costs recorded meticulously in the steward’s accounts book.

In June of 1601, the steward of Gawthorpe noted a purchase of:

“spyce, viz. ii pound of prunes, vjd ; j pound of cowraynes [currants] vjd ; halfe a pound of anelseedes [aniseeds] vd ; and saveron [saffron], ii”jd

To those who think that English food is (or was) bland and boring, please look again at this list! There were other spice purchases during the year – more aniseeds and saffron, as well as nutmegs and pepper and several other ingredients for cooking and household medicine.

Saffron is said to have been first brought to England by a pilgrim (probably from Arabia) in about 1339, and to have been first grown in England in 1582. The best home-grown saffron came from Essex, in the area around Cambridge and Saffron Walden. By November 1617, the steward’s book specifies “English saffron”, at a cost of twelve pence for half an ounce.

Saffron was valuable for a number of reasons: for its medicinal value, its brilliant colour, and of course, for its inimitable flavour. The herbalist John Gerard, writing in 1597 says “ … in good years we gather four score of 100lb of wet saffron of an acre, which, being dried, doth yield 20 lb. of dry and more …” and notes that “ besides the manifold use which it hath in kitchen and pastery, also in our cakes, (at bridals and thanksgiving of women) it is very profitably mingled with those medicines we have for the diseases of the breast [chest], of the lungs, of the liver, of the bladder, &c.”

The culinary uses of saffron were well established by the end of the fourteenth century in England, and continued to be expanded over the next few centuries. Here is a recipe idea (with medicinal comments) from Sylva sylvarum: or, a naturall historie: In ten centuries, by Francis Bacon (1635)

Mincing of meat, as in Pies, and buttered Minced Meats, faveth the Grinding of the Teeth; And therefore (no doubt) it is more Nourifhing; Especially in Age, Or to them that have weake Teeth; but the Butter is not so proper for weake Bodies; And therefore it were good to moiften it with a little Claret wine, Pill of Limon, or Orenge, cut small, Sugar, and very little Cinnamon, or Nutmegg. As for Chuetes, which are likewise minced Meat, infead of Butter, and Fat, it were good to moiften them, partly with Creame, or Almonde, or Pistachomilke; or Barley, or Maiz Creame; Adding a little Coriander Seed and Caraway Seed, and a very little Saffron. The more full Handling of Alimentation we reserve to the due place.

And here is a nice Saffron Cake (what we would call saffron bread today) from Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, 1747.

To make a fine seed or saffron-cake.

YOU muft take a quarter of a peck of fine flour, a pound and a half of butter, three ounces of carraway feeds, fix eggs beat well, a quarter of an ounce of cloves and mace beat together very fine, a pennyworth of cinnamon beat, a pound of sugar, a pennyworth of rofe-water, a pennyworth of faffron, a pint and a half of yeaft, and a quart of milk; mix it all together lightly with your hands thus: firft boil your milk and butter, then fkim off the butter, and mix with your flour, and a little of the milk; ftir the yeaft into the reft and ftrain it, mix it with the flour, put in your feed and fpice, rofe water, tincture of faffron, fugar, and eggs; beat it all up well with your hands lightly, and bake it in a hoop or pan, but be fure to butter the pan well. It will take an hour and a half in a quick oven. You may leave out the feed if you choofe it, and I think it rather better without it; but that you may do as you like.

Quotation for the Day.

A man who is stingy with saffron is capable of seducing his own grandmother.
Norman Douglas (1868-1952)

The very crown in the housewife’s garland.

I thought that, in lieu of a holiday, we might take a trip in the cyber time-travel machine and spend the week with the Shuttleworths of Gawthorpe Hall in Burnley, Lancashire. We can do this trip thanks to the survival of part of the household book (the steward’s accounts book) from the heyday of the estate in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Today’s selection from the carefully edited and annotated version published in 1858 was discovered when I was trying to find out more about clap bread, the subject of a post a week or two ago. The editor has this to say:

“The little charge and great benefit considered, oatmeal is the very crown of the housewife's garland, and doth more grace her table and her knowledge than all grains whatsoever; neither indeed can any family or household be well and thriftily maintained where this is either scant or wanting.”

He then goes on to detail its various uses (the headings below are mine), which surely show us that we underuse it today:

Pottage:
Oatmeal … is that with whick all pottage is made and thickened, whether they be meat-pottage, milk-pottage, or any thick or thin gruel whatsoever.


Bread:
Six several kinds of good and wholesome bread, every one finer than another, as your anacks, jannocks and such like.


Oat Cakes:  [i.e Clap bread)
Also there is made of it both thick and thin oaten cakes, which are pleasant in taste and much esteemed; but if it be mixed with fine wheat-meal, then it maketh a most delicious and dainty oat-cake, either thick or thin, such as no prince in the world but may have them served at his table.


Haggis:
Also this small oatmeal mixed with blood, and the liver of either sheep, calf, or swine, maketh that pudding which is called the haggas or haggus [haggis]of whose goodness it is in vain to boast, because there is hardly to be found a man that doth not affect them.


Wash Brew and Gird Brew:
Lastly, from this small oatmeal, by oft steeping it in water and cleansing it, and then boiling it to a thick and stiff jelly, is made that excellent dish of meat which is so esteemed in the west parts of this kingdom, which they call wash-brew, and in Cheshire and Lancashire they call it flamery or flummery, the wholesomeness and rare goodness, nay the very physic-helps thereof, be such and so many, that I myself have heard a very reverend and renowned physician speak more in the commendations of that meat, than of any other food whatsoever.

From this wash-brew is derived another coarser meat (as it were the dregs or proper substance of the wash-brew) called gird-brew, which is a well-filling and sufficient meat fit for servants and men of labour — a meat of harder digestion, and fit indeed but for strong, able stomachs, and such whose toil and much sweat both liberally spendeth evil humours, and also preserveth men from the offence of fulness and surfeits.


Puddings or “Pots”:
For of the bigger kind of oatmeal called greets [grits, groats] or corn oatmeal, are made all sorts of puddings or “pots” (as the west country terms them) whether they be black, as those made of the blood of beasts, swine, sheep, geese, red or fallow deer, or the like, mixed with whole greets, sweet and wholesome herbs; or else white, as when the greets are mixed with good cream, eggs, bread-crumbs, suet, currants, and other wholesome spices. Also of these greets is made the Good Friday pudding, which is mixed with eggs, milk, suet, penny-royal, and boiled first in a linen bag, and then stripped and buttered with sweet butter.

With Roast Goose:
Again, if you roast a goose and stop her belly with whole greets, beaten together with eggs, and after mixed with the gravy, there cannot be a better or pleasanter sauce.

Loblolly:
Nay, if a man be at sea in any long travel, he cannot eat more wholesome and pleasant meat than these whole greets, boiled in water till they burst, and then mixed with batter, and so eaten with spoons; which, although seamen call it simply by the name of loblolly, yet there is not any meat, how magnificent soever the name may be, that is more toothsome or wholesome. To conclude, there is no way or purpose whatsoever to which a man can use or employ rice, but with the same seasoning and order you may employ the whole greets of oatmeal, and have full as good and wholesome meat, and as well tasted.

***

The recipe for the day is for Oat Cakes, courtesy of A Modern System of Domestic Cookery, by Mrs. Radcliffe (1823)

Oat Cakes.
Sift a quarter of a peck of fine oatmeal; then take rather more than a pint of milk-warm water, half a gill of mild ale or good small beer yeast, and half an ounce of salt; stir them well together for about ten minutes, strain the whole into the oatmeal, mix the dough high in the same manner as for muffins, and let it remain an hour to rise. Afterward, roll it up with the hand, and pull it into pieces about the size of an egg; roll them out with a rolling-pin on a good deal of flour, cover them with flannel, and they will soon rise to a proper thickness. Should they, however, be found either too big or too little, it will be easy to roll the dough accordingly. They are to be baked on an iron plate, just like muffins. Toast them crisp on both sides, but do not burn them ; then pull them open, and they will appear like a honey-comb; lay in some butter, clap the two pieces again together, and only use a knife for the purpose of afterward cutting them into pieces. This is the best method of preparing muffins, as well as oat cakes.

Quotation for the Day.

One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference.
Robert Fulghum

Bunya Nuts.

[image courtesy of Wikipedia]

We do nuts pretty well here in Queensland. The macadamia nut is a native of this particular part of the world it (it will happily grow in the backyard) and was once called the Queensland Nut – the Hawaiians did a better job of processing and marketing it than we did, is all! Our state is also irredeemably associated with the peanut because a previous Premier of the state (the one with the Senatorial pumpkin-scone-making wife) was a peanut farmer – the particular style and quality of his regime ensuring that the peanut-farmer concept is a pejorative one. The peanuts are good though.

There is another sort of nut here that is not well known outside of the country. It is the bunya nut, and it is the product of the bunya pine (Araucaria bidwillii) which grows in that part of the Great Dividing Range known as the Bunya Mountains. The bunya nut was an important food for local aboriginals, and every third year (when it produced a bumper crop) tribes from within a 200 mile radius gathered to make the most of it. Tribal rivalries were suspended for the duration while up to 20,000 folk feasted on it and collected supplies to take home.

The nut is found in the female cones, which weigh up to 10 kg each, so there is an intrinsic danger inherent in being on the ground in a fruitful forest of bunya pines. Our family will be spending several days in the region in early July as my sister is getting married there. The brochure from the accommodation on the mountain lists includes a list of things under the heading “BEWARE” . It does not include snakes, strangely enough, but includes ticks, Gympie stinging trees, stinging nettles, and falling Bunya cones. I am not sure how one avoids falling Bunya cones. If one looks up to see if any look a bit ripe and loose, does that not mean that it splatters your nose, not the top of your head? Anyway, I digress.

The aboriginal people ate the nuts raw (when they were fresh), or roasted. They also pounded them into a sort of flour (the nuts are very starchy), and made ‘bread’. The first white settler to see them and remark on them was Andrew Petrie, a foreman of works in the penal days, in 1843. He wrote:

“The kernel of the bunya nut has a very fine aroma, and is certainly delicious eating . The blacks roast them, and we tried even to boil them, but the fruit lost its flavour in both cases. Besides it did not agree with my stomach. The blacks thrive on them.”

Later in the century, the white man had found another use:

“…. the following information received by the Department of Agriculture from Mr. Harold E. Meyers, of Bollier Plain, Gympie, with reference to the use of bunya nuts
as a substitute for coffee will be of interest. In a letter to the department Mr. Meyers says:-"Did you know that the nuts of the Araucaria Bidwilli produce as good coffee as is obtained from the best coffee beans? The coffee has been tried here in several places, and found equal to the best commercial article."

Recipe for the Day

The Bunya nut is underused, methinks – probably because it is not easy to grow commercially, and it is difficult to get the seeds from the cones – and there is a dearth of recipes for it. I therefore give you a nice recipe using peanuts, from the Courier Mail of October 12, 1933. The recipe contributor won the ten shilling prize of the week for the best “Household Secret”.

Peanut Crispies.
Half a cup of raw peanuts, half cup sugar, two-thirds of a cup of coconut, 4 cups cornflakes, the whites of 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons butter. Beat the whites to a stiff froth, add the sugar slowly, a drop of vanilla and a pinch of salt. Melt the butter, add to the eggs and sugar. Mix the dry ingredients in, and bake in small portions in a moderate oven about 16 minutes. Allow to remain on the tin until cool

Quotation for the Day.

And Mocha's berry, from Arabia pure, In small fine china cups, came in at last
Gold cups of filigree, made to secure the hand from burning, underneath them place. Cloves, cinnamon and saffron, too, were boiled Up with the coffee, which, I think, they spoiled.
Lord Byron.

Tiffin in the Bay.

There was great excitement and interest in Brisbane in April 1881 when the Merkara, a British-India Company mail steamer en route from London via Batavia (Indonesia) arrived in Moreton Bay to deposit some of its passengers. A party of “between seventy and eighty ladies and gentlemen” made up of the mayor, aldermen, and “a number of our leading residents” were invited by the Captain to lunch aboard the vessel during her sojourn in the bay.


This was no mere lunch, this was apparently tiffin. Or at least it was one interpretation of the concept of tiffin. Presumably it was so named as a matter of principle - it was an “Indian” ship, it was the lunching hour, and there was ‘curry’ on the menu. It was in fact a huge meal which lasted several hours during which multiple courses of hefty British and Anglo-Indian food were washed down with copious amounts (it seems) of alcohol. Those former colonials must have been made of stern stuff.


The report of the event in the Brisbane Courier the next day is a marvellous example of nineteenth century food journalism – effusive, yes, tinted (by today’s standards) with political incorrectness, certainly, - but charming nonetheless. And as an added bonus, it reminds us of a ‘lost’ (or at least seriously underused) word.

The "luncheon" in the saloon was a banquet of the most récherché kind. On the very elegant bill of fare it was styled " Tiffin," and if any gourmet wants to kuow what tiffin is let him read the following paragraph slowly and on an empty stomach.

We are all seated. The apartment ia a charming one, taking in the whole breadth of thevessel, the sides being of birdseye maple panelling, and light gilt moulding running along the white beams. There are four tables ranged in parallel lines the whole length of the Saloon. These tables are bright with flowers and glass, and the snowy table napkins are arranged in shapes of such marvellous ingenuity that to unroll one critically is to penetrate an Asian mystery A small army of white helmeted, white robed kitmagars await a signal from some unseen chief, and then disperse noiselessly to offer each guest turtle or mulligatawny soup. This is a painful moment. The rich green fat swims alluringly in the pellucid liquid, but with a sigh you motion it away and take the other, having heard that an Indian cook scorns curry powder and makes his mullagatawney from the fresh condiments ground up on a stone. Your acuteness is richly rewarded. Given a turtle any ordinary artist can make good turtle soup, but the mullagatawney made by a Bengalee is hopelessly unatainable to the European chef.

By the time you have disposed of a salmon cutlet, you begin to realise that you are under the spell of a superior race. The kitmagar, who anticipates your every want before even your slow brain has had time to definitely formulate it, belongs to iu ancient civilisation. His ancestors were comporting themselves in the stately manner that distinguishes their descendant 3000 years ago, at which time yours were running about the woods dressed in a suit of blue paint, and had possibly not yet rubbed off their tails by assuming a sitting posture.

But let us get back from history to the entrées. Will you have “lamb chops and French beans”, “chicken cutlets and green peas,” or “fillets of duck and olives,” “stewed pigeons and mushrooms”, or “roast turkey and ham.” It is best not to have all five, because the dish of dishes has yet to come – the curry. Here is its, a plate of snowy rice – each grain of which looks as though it had been boiled in a separate saucepan – and then the choice of curried chicken, vegetables, or prawns. Of course you choose the crustaceans, and become suddenly conscious of how the most prosaic wants of our nature may by cultivation become sublimated into artistic appreciation of a truly noble art.

During the last half column remember you have been plied by assiduous attendants with champagne. In your gallant struggle with the bill of fare you have continually sought fresh vigour from your glass, and after each application a dusky hand has bid it foam again to the brim.

The sweets of many and curious sorts, the iced jellies, the almond pastry, the peach vol-au-vent, the cheese, the salad, the fruit- all these we pass with a mournful non possumus; and whilt you sip the cup of coffee which is the final note of this glorious concert, permit us to explain that this is “tiffin” – on board the Merkara.

What of the kitmagars - those silent, stately, dusky-handed attendants? The OED knows kitmagar as khidmutgar - a male servant who waits at table, the word apparently coming from Urdū.


Recipe for the Day.

I give you an interesting perspective on “curries” from The Englishwoman in India: information for ladies ..., 1864. The slightly confusing instructions as to the mixing and pounding of the ingredients are as they appear in the book.

Curries.

Every native knows how to make these: chicken and prawn are, perhaps, the favourite ones: up country the dry prawns, which are sold by the seer in the bazaar, can be made into a very good curry, if they are well washed and half boiled in .water till tender.

MADRAS CURRY PASTE.
1 lb. coriander seed (Dummiah).
¼ lb. turmeric (Huldee).
¼ lb. red chillies (Lai mirchee).
¼ lb. black pepper (Kala mirchee).
¼ lb. mustard seed (Rai).
2 ounces dry ginger (Soaut).
2 ounces garlic (Lussun).
2 ounces vendinne.
½ lb. salt (Nimmuck).
½ lb. sugar (Shuprgeo).
2 ounces cummin seed (Zeera).
½ lb. gram (Chenna).

Fry this and take off the husks, then pound it with the other ingredients and mix with

½ pint salad oil
½ pint vinegar.

Quotation for the Day.

Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what's for lunch.
Orson Welles

A Café in the Colonies.

Migrants and colonists are sometimes faced with an uncomfortable move away from the food of their homeland when they arrive in their new land. How - or if - they adapt to this change depends on a multiplicity of factors, not the least of which is the availability of familiar ingredients.

The early settlers in Australia not only brought with them livestock and seedstock from Britain, they also brought an absolutely firm determination to make everything as much like “Home” as possible, and were resolute, on the whole, to avoid the food of the “natives”. Those who settled around the penal colony of Moreton Bay in what is now Brisbane could however hardly eschew the abundant local seafood (which would indeed have been foolish, as it is magnificent) even if they had wanted to, for fish cannot be farmed as easily as land, and cannot be preserved as readily and “sent for” from home.

The following menu for a Brisbane café in 1898 could have been lifted from any English café. Although the snapper and oysters must have been local varieties, they were prepared in a thoroughly English way. Not a sliver of kangaroo or a sprinkle of lemon myrtle or a bit of macadamia crust anywhere to be seen. This was solid, heavy English fare for the mild Queensland winter season.

From the Brisbane Courier, July 22, 1898, this advertisement for the Café Imperial.

BILL OF FARE FOR THIS DAY

Pea Soup. Beef Tea.

Boiled Schnapper and Oyster Sauce.

Fried Schnapper and Anchovy Sauce.

Saute of Kidneys and Bacon.

Veal and Ham Pie.

Lamb Cutlets and Tomato Sauce.

Roast Turkey and Pork Sausages.

Roast Fillet of Beef.

Grills.- Fillet Steak and Oyster Sauce.

Loin Chops and Chip Potatoes. French

Cutlets and Bacon. Peas. Potatoes.

Fruit Salads and Wine Jellies, 6d. extra.

Soup, Fish, Meat, or Poultry, with Tea,

Coffee, Bread and Butter, and Cheese, Is.

Three Courses for One Shilling.

Cafe Imperial, 28 Queen-street.

P.Hart, Proprietor

From Phillip Muskett’s The Art of Living in Australia (1893), a recipe for a local ugly but not particularly interesting fish, cooked in a thoroughly Victorian English style:


STUFFED FLATHEAD
1 Flathead—9d.
2 oz. Forcemeat—2d.
1 gill Gravy
1 oz. Dripping—1d.
Total Cost—1s.
Time—Half an Hour
Take a little veal forcemeat and season nicely. Sew this into the flathead and truss it into the shape of the letter S. Rub some dripping on to a baking sheet, which should only be just large enough to take the fish. Put some dripping on the top, and bake in a moderate oven for half-an-hour, or longer if large. Slip it on to a hot dish, draw out the trussing string carefully, flavour and boil up the gravy and pour round it. Serve very hot.


Quotation for the Day.

"In the hands of an able cook, fish can become an inexhaustible source of perpetual delight."
Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826)

Cakes in Queensland.

Still on our theme of Queensland, History, and Food, today I give you some 1930’s cake recipes from Brisbane newspapers – because really, truly, I know that most of you like “doable” recipes, especially if they are for cakes.

From the Courier Mail of March 15, 1934, an nice idea for the Ladies who Lunch but who don’t want the oven to add to the Queensland tropical heat:


Chocolate Biscuit Cake
This is a novel cake which is much appreciated at tennis or bridge teas or at supper parties. It is made with pure Copha* instead of butter, and requires no cooking. It cannot be successfully made with butter. The method is as follows:-
5 ounces copha, melted but not allowed to boil, mix in to this ½ lb. sifted icing sugar, 1 heaped dessertspoon cocoa, 1 egg, essence of vanilla to flavour. Have ready ½ lb. of coffee biscuits, which should have been softened by leaving them out of the packet. Line a square or oblong tin with greaseproof paper, place alternate layers of themixture and the biscuits until the tin Is filled, beginning and finishing with the mixture. Stand in a cool place till set, and when firm cut in slicesThe striped appearance adds to the attractiveness of this cake.

* Copha is an Aussie variation on the Crisco theme, made from fully hydrogenated coconut oil. Indispensible for making (also uncooked) Chocolate Crackles, which are indispensible for children’s parties, and for which I must give you the recipe one day.

From the Courier Mail of February 1, 1934, the lure of a “perfect” recipe:


The Perfect Orange Cake.
One of the most delightful and easy to-make of modern confections is orange cake. It has an orangey sweet frosting, light tender layers, a fluffy creamy filling, all delicately flavoured with orange. Here is the recipe for a cake large enough to serve eight people:
Beat together until thick two egg yolks, four tablespoonfuls of orange juice, the grated rind of one orange, and half a tablespoonful of lemon juice. Gradually add three-quarters of a cupful of sugar, beating with an egg-beater. Fold in the whites of two eggs beaten until stiff. Then fold in lightly one cupful of flour, two teaspoonfuls of baking powder, and quarter of a teaspoonful of salt which have been sifted together four times. Put into a greased, deep round pan and bake for half an hour in a moderate oven. Split and put the cream filling between the layers and cover the top and sides with orange icing.
To make orange cream filling, melt two tablespoonfuls of butter. Add four tablespoonfuls of cornflour, the grated rind of one orange, one cupful of orange juice, and one cupful of sugar. Bring to boiling point and stir occasionally. Cook for 15 minutes over boiling water (in a double saucepan). Add half a teaspoonful of
lemon juice. Cool and fold in half a cupful of whipped cream.
Orange Icing: Boil one cupful of sugar and one-third of a cupful of water without stirring until the syrup spins a thread when dropped from a spoon, Pour slowly on to one egg white which has been beaten until stiff, Beat constantly with an egg beater until the mixture holds its shape. Then gradually fold in one egg yolk, half a teaspoonful of orange juice, and a little orange rind. Spread this on the cake. In making the icing, add the egg yolk very slowly until the right colour and consistencyis obtained.

The Courier Mail of February 8, 1934 realised that “To provide variety in the little cakes she offers her visitors is always an ambition of the capable housewife”, and to that end provided amongst its offerings this nice little variation on the cup cake them (but we would probably have called it “patty cake” theme back then?)

Mint Cakes.
The ingredients required are 4oz. sugar, 4oz. butter, 6oz. self-raising flour, essence of peppermint, rind of one lemon, 2 eggs, and icing sugar.
Cream butter and sugar, add each egg separately, and beat; add the flour and grated lemon rind and a very few drops of essence of peppermint. Bake in frilled papers 15-20 minutes In moderate oven. Ice with glace icing, flavoured peppermint, and coloured green.

And finally, because the Through the Ages with Gingerbread archive has not had a new addition for some time, I give you the following, from the Courier Mail of April 26, 1934.


Gingerbread.
2 cups self-raising flour, half a cup each of butter and sugar, 1 egg, 1 teaspoon eachof cinnamon and ginger, 1 cup treacle or golden syrup, 1 cup hot water, ½ cup coconut, ½ teaspoon salt. Cream the butter and sugar together, add the egg, then treacle, sift in the flour and other ingredients. Add the water, beat till smooth and bake in a moderate oven.

Quotation for the Day.

I haven't trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I've never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex.
Erma Bombeck.

In Praise of Pumpkins, Part 2.

As promised last week, in honour of History Week in Queensland, today I give you a few more ideas for pumpkins.

As you know, the humble pumpkin has one very important function above and beyond the purely culinary – it is essential for the proper manufacture of Halloween lanterns. You may not be aware of another role in another scary situation. The pumpkin is, according to an article in the Brisbane Courier of April 17, 1891, useful for distracting sharks away from happy picnickers.

“Here is a hint for Inspector Fison and his white shark pets in Moreton Bay. One day last week there was a picnic down Sydney harbour (says the Evening News). One of the guests, M. Bonifacio Zurbano, of George-street, seeing a number of sharks about a boat, in which were a number of the picnickers, conceived a very happy idea, and one, we venture to say, unequalled in the annals of shark stories. Mr. Zurbano roasted a large pumpkin until it was thoroughly done. He then threw is near to a large shark, who took it down at one full gulp. Things were quiet for a minute or two when the shark commenced jumping out of the water to a height of 6 ft. or 7 ft., now rushing this way, now that, and lashing the sea into foam. What ultimately became of the fish is not known, but one can guess that in future, if it has survived the vegetable pill, it will, however hungry, draw the line at baked pumpkin.”

To settle your nerves after that idea, and at the particular request of reader Alf, I now give you Pumpkin Scones which are very popular here in Queensland. They are the default scones, actually, in spite of their association with one of our previous Premiers (or rather, his wife … This is not the place for political commentary, so I wont give any.)

The recipe is from a little book intended to assist the teaching of “plain cookery to school girls”, called Simple Cookery. It was published by The Department of Public Instruction in Queensland, in (I think) the 1940’s.


Pumpkin Scones.
Materials: 1 ½ cups flour; ½ cup mashed pumpkin; 1 teaspoon cream of tartar; ½ teaspoon soda; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 dessertspoon sugar; 1 egg; 1 tablespoon butter; ½ cup milk.
Utensils: Bowl, wooden spoon, cutter, baking dish, knife.
Method:
1. Cream butter and sugar; add mashed pumpkin, egg, and milk.
2. Sift in flour mixed with cream of tartar, soda, and salt.
3. Turn onto a floured board; knead lightly; press out flat, and cut into scones.
4. Bake in quick oven 15 to 20 minutes.

And because I want to extend your opinion of the culinary potential of this vegetable that is botanically a fruit, I give you this interesting idea from the Canberra Times, in 1931


Pumpkin Pickle.
This pickle is ready to eat 24 hours after it is made. Peel and seed about 5 lb pumpkin. Cut the pulp in pieces about 3 in. long and 1 in. wide. Steam till tender. In the meantime, put one quart vinegar into a saucepan with one pint water, 2 lb. sugar, one tablespoonful salt, and four sticks cinnamon, broken in small pieces. Bring to the boil. Drain the pumpkin, put into small jars and fill up with boiling vinegar.


Quotation for the Day.

It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need, and our air force has to have a bake-sale to buy a bomber.
Robert Fulghum.

Queensland (Culinary) History Week.

The state of Queensland is this year celebrating 150 years of independence from New South Wales. The actual day is December 10, but there are celebrations of various sorts going on all year, and today is the start of something called “History Week”. It has crossed my mind that the organisers have probably not paid much attention to Queensland’s culinary history (and I don’t just mean the damned Lamington.)

I have decided to do my bit this week, and promote one of Queensland’s humble glories – the pumpkin. We grow good pumpkins here. We don’t have to try, they sabotage compost heaps and garden beds and take over the garden with great facility if the vines are not beaten into submission as soon as they appear. If you have ever had this happen to you, you might have found that, quite literally, you cannot give them away. I have, more than once, (when I lived in the country) wondered what on earth I had done wrong, to be gifted with yet another enormous Queensland Blue.

So, today, I am going to assist you with any pumpkin glut that might come your way.The first thought, in Queensland, would be pumpkin scones. They are somewhat of a Queensland icon, so I hesitate to confess that in almost four years of this blog that I have not given you a recipe for pumpkin scones. Nor will I today, for I am still recovering from some of the truly shocking scone ideas I found for a previous post. We have had pumpkin fruit cake before too, so no news there.

How about the pumpkin pie? It is indelibly associated with that other Big Country across the water. – but I am here to tell you that it is well known in Queensland too (but we don’t use canned pumpkin. Canned pumpkin?) Pumpkin Pie was one of the topics in last year’s Thanksgiving Pie Week, but perhaps there is more than one post’s worth of substance in Pumpkin Pie?

The Australasian Cookery Book (circa 1915) thinks so. It has seven recipes for Pumpkin Pie, plus Pumpkin and Apple Pie, Pumpkin and Passionfruit Pie, Pumpkin and Pineapple Pie, and Pumpkin Meringue Pie (which includes chopped preserved ginger – another of Queensland’s famous products). If there is still pumpkin left, there is Pumpkin and Apricot Jam, Pumpkin and Pineapple Jam (did I mention that we grow a lot of pineapples here too?), and Pumpkin and Lemon Jam. And there is more. There are instructions (as if you’d need them!) for boiled mashed pumpkin and baked pumpkin, as well as Pumpkin Soup, Stuffed Pumpkin, and two versions of Pumpkin Fritters.

Most surprisingly there are also recipes for Pumpkin Flowers (stuffed with rice and herbs) and Pumpkin Tops (young shoots). All this last recipe lacks is the Hollandaise sauce to make it a nice stand-in for Eggs Florentine. Queensland chefs take note – a local spin on this breakfast classic is just a pumpkin patch away.

Pumpkin Tops.
Take a good quantity of the young shoots of the pumpkin vine, wash well in salted water. Have ready a saucepan full of quickly boiling water, add a small pinch of soda, put in the pumpkin tops, and boil until quite tender. Strain through a colander, and press with the back of a saucer to get out all the moisture. Chop finely and return to the pan with 1 oz. of butter, salt and pepper to taste. Toss till very hot. Have ready some nicely-toasted bread, butter thickly, and pile the pumpkin tops neatly on top. Place a poached egg on each, and serve.


Quotation for the Day.

Produce great pumpkins, the pies will follow later.
Anon.

Clap Bread.

Celia Fiennes (1662-1741; reputedly an ancestor of actor Ralph Fiennes) did an amazing thing for a seventeenth century Englishwoman – she made extensive journeys around the country on horseback (riding side-saddle, of course), and alone (two servant women didn’t count in those days). Luckily for us she kept extensive notes of her adventures - and especially luckily for those of us interested in food, she often commented on and described regional foods that now seem to have been lost.

During her journey northwards in 1698, she described ‘Clap Bread’ as it was then made in Westmoreland. Clap bread is a sort of oatmeal (or sometimes barley) cake so called because it is clapped or beaten until it is thin, and then baked on an iron griddle. Her diary entry serves as the recipe for today.

“Here it was I saw ye oat Clap bread made. They mix their flour with water, so soft as to rowle it in their hands into a ball, and then they have a board made round and something hollow in the middle riseing by degrees all round to the Edge a little higher, but so little as one would take it to be only a board warp'd, this is to Cast out the Cake thinn and so they Clap it round and drive it to ye Edge in a Due proportion till drove as thinn as a paper and still they Clap it and drive it round, and then they have a plaite of iron same size wth their Clap board, and so shove off the Cake on it and so set it on Coales and bake it; when Enough on one side they slide it off and put the other side; if their iron plaite is smooth and they take Care their Coales or Embers are not too hot but just to make it Looke yellow, it will bake and be as Crisp and pleasant to Eate as any thing you Can imagine, but as we say of all sorts of bread there is a vast deal of difference in what is housewifely made and what is ill made, so this if its well mixed and Rowled up and but a little flour on the outside which will drye on and make it mealy is a very good sort of food. This is the sort of bread they use in all these Countrys, and in Scotland they breake into their milk or broth or Else sup that up and bite off their bread between while they spread butter on it and Eate it with their meate. They have no other Sort of bread unless at market towns and that is scarce to be had unless the market dayes, soe they make their Cake and Eate it presently, for its not so good if 2 or 3 dayes old. It made me reflect on the description made in Scripture of this Kneeding Cakes and bakeing them on the hearth whenever they had Company Come to their houses, and I Cannot but thinke it was after this manner they made their bread in ye old tymes Especially those Eastern Countryes where their bread might be soone dry'd and spoil'd.”


Quotation for the Day.

I have eaten your bread and salt. I have drunk your water and wine. The deaths ye died I have watched beside; And the lives ye led were mine.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Jam, by name.

Yesterday’s story got me thinking about jam. Specifically, about the word “jam”. All sorts of versions of sugared fruit had been around for hundreds of years before there was “jam”. There were “wet” sweetmeats (or “suckets” – think of the Italian mostarda), “dry” sweetmeats – sometimes called quidonies (think of crystallised ginger or glacé apricots), and “marmalades” (which were thick pastes or dry blocks of any fruit – originally probably quince, and later any fruit, before we finally settled on oranges.)

So, we had plenty of ways of preserving fruit with sugar, and plenty of words to describe the various end-products, – but somewhere around the late seventeenth century, “jam” appeared. I understand the first known appearance of the word is in a manuscript written by a Rebecca Price in 1681, but I have no other information on her work. The first published recipe is usually attributed to Mrs. Eales, whose cookbook (1718) we have often used as a source in previous posts. She gives instructions for Apricock-Jam, Rasberry-Jam and Cherry-Jam. It does seem that around this time the fruit and sugar was more likely to be left “wetter” and put up in jars rather than dried in slabs, but we hardly needed another name.

The OED is puzzled, and half-heartedly suggests it may be from the method of “jamming” – that is, “bruising or crushing by pressure” – but is unable to resist the utterly charming and oft-repeated explanation that it derives from the French “j’aime” which means “I love (it)” - supposedly from the response of children to this form of sweetmeat. I am puzzled in turn as to why English children would have adopted a French phrase. I don’t know of any other phrases they adopted in the seventeenth century – and it seems unlikely that many children of the time learned French! Nonetheless, the explanation is so charming, I do hope the linguists eventually prove it true.

I am particularly and unreasonably fond of the spelling “giam”, so I give you Hannah Glasse’s version from her Art of Cookery (1747).


To make rasberry giam.
Take a pint of this [recipe above] currant jelly and a quart of rasberries, bruise them well together, set them over a slow fire, keeping them stirring all the time till it boils. Let it boil five or six minutes, pour it into your gallipots, paper as you do the currant jelly, and keep it for use. They will keep for two or three years, and have the full flavour of the rasberry.

Gallipots – now there’s another thing we don’t find in the kitchen any more.


Quotation for the Day.

The jelly - the jam and the marmalade, And the cherry-and quince-"preserves" she made! And the sweet-sour pickles of peach and pear, With cinnamon in 'em, and all things rare! - And the more we ate was the more to spare, Out to old Aunt Mary's! Ah!
James Whitcomb Riley.

Women, War, and Bread and Jam.

The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps was created in Britain in 1917. Young women with a taste for adventure and a strong sense of patriotism were – quite astonishingly for the era – allowed to join the army and go to war. They were sent to France, where they freed up men for fighting by performing all sorts of clerical jobs, but otherwise they lived the military life – wearing uniforms, living in camps, and eating in mess huts.

So, what did they eat in those mess huts? A lovely book called Women and War Work, published in Britain in 1917, tells us that:

“The girls wait on themselves and the food is excellent. They receive in rations the same as the soldiers on lines of communication – that is, four fifths of a fighting man’s ration.”

The book also gave details of a typical week’s meals, “to show how well they are fed”

MONDAY: Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, baked mince, jam. Dinner: Cold beef, potatoes, tomatoes, baked apples, custard. Tea: Tea, bread, butter, jam. Supper: Welsh rarebit, bread, butter, jam.

TUESDAY: Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, boiled ham, marmalade. Dinner: brown onion stew, potatoes, baked beans, biscuit pudding. Tea: bread, butter, jam, cheese. Supper: Savoury rice, tea, bread.

WEDNESDAY: Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, veal loaf. Dinner: Roast mutton, potatoes, marrow, bread pudding. Tea: bread, butter, marmalade, jam. Supper: Rissoles, bread, butter, cheese.

THURSDAY: Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, fried bacon. Dinner: Meat pie, potatoes, cabbage, custard and rice. Tea: Supper: Tea, bread, butter, jam. Supper: Soup, bread and jam.

FRIDAY: Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, rissoles, marmalade. Dinner: Boiled beef, potatoes and onions, Dundee roll. Tea: tea, bread, butter, jam, slab cake. Supper: Shepherd’s pie, tea, bread, butter.

SATURDAY: Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, boiled ham, jam,. Dinner: Thick brown stew, poatoes and cabbage, bread pudding. Tea: tea, jam, cheese. Supper: Toad-in-Hole, bread, jam.

SUNDAY: Breakfast: tea, bread, butter, fried bacon. Dinner: Roast beef, potatoes and cabbage, stewed fruit, custard. Tea: tea, bread, butter, jam. Supper: Soup, bread, butter, cheese.

I guess the girls didn’t go hungry, and in fact for most of them it was probably pretty similar to the daily diet of the working class back home in England. A superfluity of calories (all that bread and jam!) but a great dearth of fresh fruit and vegetables.

I did search in vain for a recipe for ‘Dundee Roll', but without success. So today, I give you good old Shepherd’s Pie.

The OED blames it on Scotland (as do a number of other sources), and gives as its first supporting quote a reference from 1877, from Kettner’s Book of the Table. The author (not the famous London restaurateur himself, he only lent his name to the book), says it is basically Irish stew with a crust:

“In Scotland they produce … such a stew, cover it over with a crust, and call it shepherd's pie... The shepherd's pie of Scotland is ...too farinaceous … potatoes within and paste without.”

I am now on a mission to find the first reference to Shepherd’s Pie. As a start, one of today’s recipes is from 1862, but I am sure there will be earlier examples, so please assist!

Nowadays we are more likely to make it from raw minced meat, but it was originally a way of using up leftover cold roast, as the following recipes show:


Shepherd's Pie.
Take cold dressed meat of any kind, roast or boiled, slice it, break the bones, and put them on with a little boiling water, and a little salt, boil them until you have extracted all the strength from them, and reduced it to very little, and strain it. Season the sliced meat with pepper and salt, lay it in a baking dish, pour in the sauce you strained, and add a little mushroom ketchup. Have some potatoes boiled and nicely mashed, cover the dish with the potatoes, smooth it on the top with a knife, notch it round the edge and mark it on the top the same as paste. Bake it in an oven, or before the fire, until the potatoes are a nice brown.
The Practice of Cookery and Pastry, by I. Williamson, 1862


Shepherd's Pie.
For shepherd's pie, chop finely some cold meat, season it well with salt and pepper and add enough gravy to moisten. Put into a greased baking dish and cover with an inch layer of potatoes mashed, seasoned and moistened with a few spoonfuls of hot milk. Smooth with a knife, brush with hot milk and brown in a quick oven.
365 Tasty Dishes, (Philadelphia, 1906)


Quotation for the Day.

Digestion is the great secret of life. Characters, talents, virtues, and qualities are profoundly affected by beef, mutton, piecrust, and rich soup.
Mr R. Hyde, of the Industrial Welfare Society, 1929

Unreal Coffee.

Those of you who have been with me from the beginning of this blog will remember that for the first half of its life every day had an “on this day” theme. I wandered away from the idea for a number of reasons, but today a lovely little sad story begs me to take notice.

On this day in 1849, the literary Brontë sisters Anne (1820-1849), Charlotte (1816-1855) and their friend Ellen Nussey travelled by train from their home in Yorkshire to the seaside town of Scarborough. Anne was ill with consumption, and as their brother Bramwell and sister Emily had both died of consumption within the previous year, she was under no illusions as to the seriousness of her condition. She decided to use her small inheritance to fund the trip, in the hope that the sea air would be beneficial. As soon as they arrived, the young women treated themselves to dandelion coffee, and bought season tickets for the spa and the famous Cliff Bridge. Sadly, it was too late for Anne, who was already very ill and frail, and she died in their lodging house only a few days later.

We have considered some of the culinary uses of the dandelion and several of the substances used as coffee substitutes in previous blog posts, but I don’t believe we have ever considered dandelion coffee in the past. Nowadays some folk prefer to use alternative “coffees” for negative health reasons – that is, they chose to avoid real coffee because of its perceived injurious effects. In other times the choice was often made because of the perceived health benefits of the substitute itself.

The other motivations for using coffee substitutes are unavailability of the real thing due to circumstances such as war. The protagonists of the American Civil War were particularly creative in this regard, if we are to to judge from passionate claims made in correspondence to various southern newspapers of the time and which we must continue to explore in more detail in a future post.

The dandelion has a longstanding reputation as a healing herb. The first half of its botanical name (Taraxacum officinale) comes from a Greek word indicating to alter or to change, and refers to the belief that use of it can alter the state of the blood. In the past it has been used as a panacea for all sorts of ills, especially as a diuretic and for “derangements of the liver”

The editors of the OED first note the phrase “dandelion coffee” in 1852, but they have clearly missed some earlier references – perhaps because it was made in the household or by individual pharmacists, therefore rarely mentioned in print until it started to be made commercially on a larger scale (perhaps “on the Continent” in the mid-1850’s).

Dandelion coffee was not a cheap alternative in the Bronte sisters’ time. It was a relatively expensive medicinal treat - which seems surprising given that the dandelion grows like a weed in Britain but the coffee bean is of course imported. As with many substitutes, dandelion coffee can be used “straight”, or it can be mixed with the real thing, as the recipes below show.

Strangely, or perhaps not, prolonged exposure to ersatz anything sometimes leads to the development of a preference for it against the real thing. It certainly seems that chicory “coffee” is the beverage of choice for some citizens of some southern states of the USA, and in Holland for example.


Dandelion Coffee.
Dr Harrison, of Edinburgh, prefers dandelion coffee to that of Mecca; and many persons all over the Continent prefer a mixture of succory and coffee to coffee alone. Dig up the roots of dandelion, wash them well but do not scrape them; dry them, cut them in bits, the size of peas, and then roast them in an earthen pot or coffee-roaster of any kind, and grind them in the coffee mill, or bruise them in any way. The great secret of good coffee is to have it fresh-burnt and fresh-ground.
British Husbandry, by John French Burke, 1811

Dandelion Coffee.
Good colonial coffee, 3 parts; hard extract of dandelion, 1 part; chicory, 1 part. Reduce them to coarse powder, and mix and grind them together.
The United States practical receipt book, 1844

Quotation for the Day.

Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions; the surest poison is time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Kissing Crust.

Were you ever, as a child, sent to buy a loaf of bread, and were unable to resist gnawing off one of the crusty crunchy corners on the way home? I was, and I did. I was reminded of it when I came across a definition of the phrase ‘kissing crust’ recently. I always understood the ‘kissing crust’ to be the soft part of the crust of a loaf of bread that happens when two loaves touch in the baking. The OED agrees with me on this, which is always nice. The great lexicographer Samuel Johnson agrees too, in his famous dictionary of 1755, and I am also delighted that the great man and I see eye-to-eye on the issue.

Dictionaries do not always agree however, and according to the Glossary of Northamptonshire Words and Phrases (1854), what I was chewing off as I meandered home with the bread was in fact the kissing crust, which it defines as “the bottom crust, or the small crusty nob at the corner of a loaf.” Perhaps occurring where the bottom of the loaf is extra-crusty from where it “kisses” the oven floor”? The very opposite idea indeed!

That is not all! Another work (Howitt’s The Rural Life of England, 1838) has “ … the rich curly kissing-crust, that hangs like a fretted cornice from the upper half of the loaf.”

The OED does add that the kissing crust can also be ‘the under-crust in a pudding or pie’. Perhaps because it is soft and sloppy? It gives as support for this a quotation from the story of Nell Cook, in The Ingoldsby Legends, by Richard Harris Barham (1840’s) – “A mouldy piece of kissing-crust as from a Warden-pie”.

I stick to my opinion that the OED, Sam Johnson, and myself are correct on the kissing crust, but there is no reason why I cant be inspired by the warden pie idea.  Wardens are olden-day pears, used mainly for cooking, but there is also no reason why I cant give you a slightly more modern version of the pear pie.

From Domestic economy, and cookery, for rich and poor, by a lady (1827)


Pear Pies.
Bake the pears, with a little water, and a good deal of sugar, under a coarse paste; or put them into the oven or bain-marie, or upon a hot hearth, in a well-covered baking-pan, and leave them till they soften; cut in quarters, and core them; sheet a dish, dress them in, strewing them with cloves, cinnamon, and lemon, or orange zest: they may be coloured in the first doing with beet-root, or cochineal; or they may be made to retain their white colour by lemon-juice.
Pears require zest and wine, as they are very insipid; therefore, acid apples are put into the juice, or quinces, a little rough wine, brandy, or lemon-juice. Every thing is good when properly managed : they require a great deal of sugar, but care must be taken not to overcome them.

Quotation for the Day.

Will fortune never come with both hands full
But write her fair words still in foulest letters?
She either gives a stomach, and no food, -
Such are the poor in health; or else a feast.
And take away the stomach, - such the rich,
That have abundance, and enjoy it not.
William Shakespeare, King Henry IV.

When Cream is not Enough.

Today’s recipe comes from a time when fat (whether on the body or on the plate) was A Good Thing. I dedicate this post to those courageous souls amongst you who scorn the nutrition police and have no fear of calories or cholesterol, but who, for reasons of your own nevertheless like to go sugar-free. I give you this eighteenth century indulgence for dessert.

Fry’d Cream.
Take a Quart of good new Cream, the Yolks of seven Eggs, a bit of Lemon Peel, a grated Nutmeg, two Spoonfuls of Sack [sherry], as much Orange-flower Water; Butter your Sauce-pan, and put it over the Fire; stir it all the while one way with a little white Whisk, and as you stir, strew in Flour very lightly, till ‘tis thick and smooth; then ‘tis boil’d enough, and may be poured out upon a Cheese-plate or Mazarine; spread it with a knife exactly even, about half an inch thick, then cut it in Diamond-squares, and fry it in a Pan full of boiling sweet Suet.
A collection of above three hundred receipts in cookery, physick, and surgery: for the use of all good wives, tender mothers, and careful nurses; Mary Kettilby, 1714.

Quotation for the Day.

A pessimist is someone who looks at the land of milk and honey and sees only calories and cholesterol.
Anonymous.

Chutney, Again.

Yesterday’s post got me thinking about the interpretation of Indian food by representatives of Her Majesty's Empire when they returned to Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The general consensus is that it was pretty appalling – the addition of a few spoonfuls of a single type of store-bought generic curry powder added to everything from hard-boiled eggs (mixed with apple) to soup to bananas to devilled fowl being sufficient to label it “Indian” or “Bengalee” or somesuch name.

It wasn’t all a travesty however. Without getting into the always-unwinnable debate about authenticity, I continue yesterday’s chutney theme with the following delightful-sounding recipes from a lovely book called The Englishwoman in India: information for ladies on their outfit, furniture [&c.] by a lady resident (1864).

Mint Chutnee.
½ lb. green mint leaves.
1 ounce red chillies
¼ lb. salt.
¼ lb. raisins or kismis.
2 ounces green ginger.
¼ lb. brown sugar.
1 ounce garlic or onion.
Pound with a quarter pint of vinegar, mix well and pour over the chutnee half a pint of boiling vinegar: when cold, stopper the bottles.
N.B. Country vinegar answers perfectly for most chutnees.

Sweet Chutnee.
½ lb. tamarinds.
½ lb. dates.
1 lb. green ginger.
½ lb. kismis [raisins]
½ lb. onions.
¼ lb. chillies, without seeds.
4 tablespoons brown sugar.
2 tablespoons salt.
Pound these ingredients with vinegar, and rub through a piece of net, or a coarse sieve. Bottle and cork, and it will be ready in a fortnight.

Quotation for the Day.

“A chilli,'said Rebecca, gasping,'Oh, yes!' She thought a chilli was something cool, as its name imported, and was served with some.'How fresh and green they look,'she said, and put one into her mouth. It was hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it no longer. She laid down her fork.'Water, for Heaven's sake, water!'she cried.”
William Makepeace Thackeray.

A Chutney Emergency.

I have never suffered from a chutney emergency, but in case I ever do, I will go immediately to The Truth and Mirror Cookery Book (Australia, 1943). Dr. Cilento gives a great solution in her chapter on Emergency Recipes. My only problem might be, that I am highly unlikely at any point in time to have in my pantry six pounds of leftover jam.

Chutney, from left-over jam.
Six lb. jam, 1 quart vinegar, ¼ oz cayenne pepper, 3 oz. salt, 2 oz. ground ginger, ¾ lb. onions, cut small. Put all in a preserving pan and boil for 1 hour. Mixed jams may be used with the same success.

Chutney is one of my favourite food words. It is a legacy, like kedgeree, tiffin, (and indeed ‘curry’), of the British colonial era in India. The word is derived from the Hindi chatni, and refers (according to the OED) to “A strong hot relish or condiment compounded of ripe fruits, acids, or sour herbs, and flavoured with chillies, spices, etc.” The OED gives the first use in English as 1813, but there are numerous uses well before this, as one would expect given that British India was a well established institution long before that date. A quick and very superficial search found “… chutnee, a curious mixture much used in curries and Indian made dishes…” (Sketches of India, Henry Moses, 1750)

The OED does not hazard an opinion as to what the Hindi chatni means, but of course this is important if we are to come to a full understanding of chutney. I do hope that someone out there with an understanding of Indian languages will enlighten us via the comments. I have had to resort to earlier dictionaries for ideas.

From A grammar of the Hindoostanee language (1796), we have chaťna – to lick. Is this the underlying concept? Something so good it makes you want to lick your lips? Or am I barking up the wrong tree altogether?

There is an interesting definition of chutnee in A Compendious Grammar of the Current Corrupt Dialect of the Jargon of Hindostan (Commonly Called Moors) with a Vocabulary English and Moors, Moors and English published in 1801. Now there is a book with an impressive title! What do George Hadley and Mohommed Fitrut give as a definition of chutnee? Sallad, that is what they suggest. My puzzlement increases.

Quotation for the Day.

I feed him interesting food, like chutneys and sardines and jalapenos, because I'm training him to be an adventuresome eater.
Michael Gross.

A Law about Eating.

There have been numerous attempts throughout history to regulate personal extravagance in food and drink on the basis of religious, political, economic or moral grounds. In the midst of a period of great dearth and famine in 1346, Edward II promulgated one of Britain’s earliest sumptuary laws.

“Whereas, by the outrageous and excessive multitude of meats and dishes which the great men of our kingdom have used, and still use in their castles, and by persons of inferior rank imitating their example, beyond what their stations require and their circumstances can afford, many great evils have come upon our kingdom, and the health of our subjects hath been injured, their goods consumed, and they have been reduced to poverty; we, being willing to put a stop to these excesses, with the advice and consent of our council, make the following rules and ordinances, - That the great men of the kingdom should have only two courses of flesh meats served up to their tables; each course consisting of only two kinds of flesh meat: except Prelates, Earls, Barons, and the great men of the land, who might have an intermeat (une entremesse) of one kind of meat if they please. On fish days they should have only two courses of fish, each consisting of two kinds, with an intermeat of one kind of fish, if they please. Such as transgress this ordinance shall be severely punished.”

Needless to say, whenever or wherever they have been enacted, sumptuary laws have proven almost impossible to police, and we can be reasonably confident that the great men of Edward’s realm took little or no notice of the restrictions, and continued feasting as they had always done.

There are no early fourteenth century English cookery books known to us, so we must turn to The Forme of Cury, compiled by the Master Cooks of King Richard II in about 1390 for our recipes for today. Here are a couple of nice ideas for you – pork with sage for a “flesh” day and salmon with leeks for a “fish” day.


Pygg in sawce Sawge [sage]
Take Pigges yskaldid [scalded] and quarter hem and seethe [boil] hem in water and salt, take hem and lat hem kele [cool]. take persel [parsley] sawge [sage]. and grynde it with brede and zolkes of ayrenn [eggs] harde ysode [boiled]. temper it up with vyneger sum what thyk. and, lay the Pygges in a vessell. and the sewe onoward and
serue it forth.

Cawdel Of Samoun.
Take the guttes of Samoun and make hem clene. perboile hem a lytell. take hem up and dyce hem. slyt the white of Lekes and kerue hem smale. cole [cool] the broth and do the lekes therinne with oile and lat it boile togyd yfere. do the Samoun icorne therin, make a lyour of Almaundes mylke & of brede & cast therto spices, safroun and salt, seethe it wel. and loke that it be not stondyng [too thick].


Quotation for the Day.

Pork - no animal is more used for nourishment and none more indispensable in the kitchen; employed either fresh or salt, all is useful, even to its bristles and its blood; it is the superfluous riches of the farmer, and helps to pay the rent of the cottager.”
Alexis Soyer (1851)

Comfortable Bread.

I came across the lovely concept of “comfortable bread” recently. It seems to have a range of meanings – occasionally soft white bread, occasionally as a metaphor for money, but most usually seems to mean spiced gingerbread. Clearly there is a connection here with comfits, the little sweet spiced sweetmeats or sugared seeds (especially caraway seeds) beloved as digestives by our medieval ancestors and used to nefarious purposes by the infamous Maquis de Sade.

The OED gives numerous meanings for the word “comfortable”. It can mean ‘strengthening or supporting (morally or spiritually)”, “helpful, serviceable, advantageous”, “Strengthening or refreshing to the bodily faculties or organs; sustaining”, “pleasing or grateful to the senses”, “affording mental or spiritual delight or enjoyment”, “affording or conveying consolation”, and “affording or fitted to give tranquil enjoyment and content.” Any or all of these could apply to a nice slice of spiced gingerbread, couldn’t they?

The surprise is that the OED nowhere mentions comfortable bread, in spite of the fact that an early occurrence of the name appears in the work of one of its frequent contributors, Ben Jonson.

From Jonson’s play Bartholomew Fair (1631)

Joan Trash, the gingerbread-woman, keeps her stall near him, and the rival traders have their differences. "Do you hear, Sister Trash, lady of the basket! sit farther with your gingerbread progeny, there, and hinder not the prospect of my shop, or I'll have it proclaimed in the fair what stuff they are made on." "Why, what stuff are they made on, Brother Leatherhead? Nothing but what's wholesome, I assure you." "Yes, stale bread, rotten eggs, musty ginger, and dead honey, you know." "I defy thee, and thy stable of hobby-horses. I pay for my ground, as well as thou dost. Buy any gingerbread, gilt gingerbread! Will your worship buy any gingerbread? Very good bread, comfortable bread!"

There is no shortage of gingerbread recipes in this blog. If you are not familiar with it, may I refer you to the Through the Ages with Gingerbread archive? I must still offer you a recipe for the day however, so here it is, a simple version from that just happens to also be gluten-free:

Belgian Gingerbread.
½ pound cornflour
¼ pound butter
¼ pound white sugar
1 or 2 eggs
½ ounce ginger.
Work all ingredients together on a marble slab, to get the paste all of the same consistency. Make it into balls as big as walnuts, flattening them slightly before putting them into the oven. This sort of gingerbread keeps very well.
The Belgian cook-book, by Brian Luck. 1915


Quotation for the Day.

Our boyish days look very merry to us now, all nutting, hoop, and gingerbread.
Idle Thoughts, J.K. Jerome.

The Name of the Pudding.

Today I am going to reverse the natural order of things, and give you a recipe first up.

The Spread-Eagle Pudding.

Cut off the Crust of three Half-penny Rolls, then slice them into your Pan; then set three Pints of Milk over the Fire, make it scalding hot, but do not let it boil, so pour it over your Bread and cover it close, and let it stand an Hour; then put a good Spoonful of Sugar, a very little Salt, a Nutmeg grated, a Pound of Sewet after it is shred, half a Pound of Currants, washed and picked, pour Spoonfuls of cold Milk, then Eggs, but five of the Whites, and well all is in, stir it, and mix it well; butter a Dish. Less than an Hour will bake it.
[From The whole duty of a woman,…. 1737]

Now this recipe for bread pudding has me greatly puzzled. It is a fairly basic recipe not unlike thousands of others for an ordinary bread pudding of the custard variety. So, my question is “Whither the name?”

The “Spread Eagle” is a heraldic term for the depiction of an eagle “displayed” (that is, as if spread out with both wings and both legs seen in the same plane as the body) as on the Great Seal of the United States, the insignia for a Colonel in the US military, and the Coat of Arms of Poland, Austria, Germany, Russia and a number of other countries. By virtue of this grand symbolic use, it is also the name of a large number of pubs, taverns, and other hostelries in Britain and elsewhere.

For obvious reasons, the “spread-eagle” has also been adopted as a term used to refer the human body stretched out for flogging or certain sexual adventures. Perhaps less obviously, for those not familiar with the sports, it is apparently used to describe a certain figure-skating exercise as well as the result of a ten-pin bowling split which leaves the 2-3-4-6-7-10 pins still standing.

There are a couple more uses of the phrase: spread-eagling refers to a particular type of jingoistic attitude and a gruesome method of execution supposedly perpetrated by the ancient Vikings.

I cannot for the life of me fathom how something as innocuous as a bread pudding has attracted a name with this sort of connotations. So, I ask you “Wither the name of this pudding?” Any ideas?


Quotation for the Day.

Y'know I order a club sandwhich all the time. And I'm not even a member. I don't know how I get away with it. I like my sandwiches with three peices of bread. So do I. Lets form a club. Okay, but we're gonna need more stipulation. Yes we do. Instead of cutting it once, lets cut it again. Yeah, four triangles. And we shall dump chips in the middle. Let me ask you something, how do you feel about frilly toothpicks? I'm for them.
Mitch Hedberg.

Notes for Guests.

The Melbourne newspaper the Argus, of May 10, 1919 reported on a recent “Air Force” dinner that had been held in London for Mr. Winston Churchill (1874-1965),the newly appointed Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air.

The article demonstrates that frustration with the bureaucracy is not new, nor is the primary method of managing that frustration – maintaining a sense of humour. It is impossible to believe that these “Notes for Guests” were the creation of anything going by the name of “Board of Management.” A military joker, no doubt, having a laugh at the system.

An Air Force Dinner.

The following “Notes for Guests” were provided by the Board of Management for the guidance of those participating in a dinner to Mr. Churchill recently.

D.A.O. Boards /9999/Final. (Thank Heaven.)

No wines or spirits will be served without an Issue Warrant.

Serviettes will be provided in Triplicate.

The Menus are in batches of six colours – Red, Green, White, Blue, Pink, and Yellow.

The Red form must be attached to the cheque in payment of ticket.

The Green form must be handed to the Waiter along with your tip.

The White form to be sent to C.S.D. (X.Y.Z), 34 Department.

The Blue form can be retained as a souvenir.

The Pink form can be sent to your wife in advance of your return.

Anyone desirous of changing places or leaving the room must apply for a transit note.

The dinner has been arranged to take place at the Savoy hotel, bu the Ministry officials change their quarters so frequently that it is possible you may have to inquire later as to where the dinner will be actually held.

The price of the dinner has been fixed at 50/- but this is, of course, subject to any advances in wages that may be granted by the Ministry before the dinner is held.

Each guest will receive a contract number before going in to dinner, and this must be quoted on all documents referred to above.

It is hoped the above instructions will assist the guests to keep everything in order.

In honour of these fine airforce men, I give the following recipe from Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery (1870’s)

Military Puddings.
Mix well together half a pound of breadcrumbs, half a pound of moist sugar, and half a pound of finely-chopped suet. Mince the rind of a good-sized lemon, squeeze the juice, and stir into the mixture. Place the puddings in small buttered cups or moulds, and bake for half an hour in a tolerably quick oven. If preferred, military puddings may be boiled, if so, they must be made into small balls. In either case, serve with lemon or wine sauce.

Quotation for the Day.

My living in Yorkshire was so far out of the way, that it was eleven miles away from a lemon.
Sydney Smith.

Flowery Pickles.

Yesterday’s story suggested nasturtiums instead of capers to make a sauce to accompany mutton, so has given me an opportunity to address a near dearth of flower recipes on this blog.

Botanically speaking, there are two ‘nasturtiums’. The bright cheeky flower that we commonly call nasturtium is officially Tropaeolum majus. Within the cabbage and mustard family (the Brassicas) there is also a genus Nasturtium which includes the peppery pungent cresses such as watercress and garden cress. It is the happy yellow or orange or red flower (sometimes called Indian cress) that we are talking about today.

All parts of the nasturtium are edible. For a spectacular splash of colour and a peppery bite the flowers can be added to salads, and they can also be used to flavour and colour vinegar, as this mid-nineteenth century recipe shows.

Nasturtium Vinegar.
Pick full- blown nasturtium flowers; fill a wide-mouthed bottle with them; add ½ a clove of garlic and a moderate-sized shalot chopped; pour as much vinegar as the bottle will take; in 2 months' time rub the whole through a fine sieve; add a little cayenne pepper and salt.
Murray’s Modern Domestic Cookery, by A Lady, 1851

The best-known nasturtium pickle however, is that of the seed pods – the alternative to capers for making sauce for your mutton, or putting wherever else you usually put capers.

Nasturtium Pickle.
So much resemble capers, both in flavour and the mode of pickling, as to be frequently used in the same manner; the seeds should be allowed to get ripe after the buds and flowers have gone off. Gather them upon a dry day, and keep them for a few days after they have been gathered; put them into a jar, and pour boiling vinegar well spiced upon them; when cold, cover the jar. They will not be fit for use for some months, but will be finely flavoured after keeping, and are sometimes preferred to capers, for which they are an excellent substitute, being useful also in serving up all dishes in which pickles are warmed with the gravy. Young red capsicums and elder-flowers before they open may be done in the same way.
Murray’s Modern Domestic Cookery, by A Lady, 1851

Quotation for the Day.

Nobody really likes capers no matter what you do with them. Some people pretend to like capers, but the truth is that any dish that tastes good with capers in it, tastes even better with capers not in it.
Nora Ephron.

Seven Days with a Leg of Mutton.

About twelve months ago we had a story about Caroline Chisholm, the English gentlewoman turned social activist who became ‘the emigrants’ friend’ in mid-nineteenth century Sydney, Australia. In one of her tracts she gave some suggestions for cooking and serving the staple salted beef every day of the week. Back ‘home’ the concept of creating multiple meals from one joint of meat was not new, and today I give you one formula for managing this with a leg of mutton. Remember, this was in the days well before domestic refrigeration.

From: The English cookery book: Uniting Good Style with Economy, and Adapted to all Persons in Every Clime; Containing Many Unpublished Receipts in Daily Use by Private Families. Collected by a Committee of Ladies, and Edited by J.H. Walsh, F.R.C.S, Author of “A Manual of Domestic Economy” 1859

ECONOMICAL FARE FOR A VERY SMALL FAMILY.

When a smaller family than the above requires a very economical fare, the case is still more difficult, because less variety can be obtained from those joints which are well known to be the only really economical ones. Nevertheless, a good deal may be done by management; and even in the case of a leg of mutton, the dinners for a whole week may be obtained from it without having any two exactly alike, and without extra cost in any way. The following is the method proposed, which may be often useful to a married couple without children or servant, or to two sisters living by themselves.

1st Day- Cut some steaks off the large end and broil them.
2nd Day – Cut off a small knuckle and boil it, to be served with caper or nasturtium sauce.
3rd Day – Cut some cutlets off the side next the knuckle, and fry with egg and breadcrumbs.
4th Day – Bone and stuff the fillet, which is to be roasted.
5th Day – Hash part of the remainder.
6th Day – Eat part cold, with salad.
7th Day – Mince the remainder, and cover with breadcrumbs. See par. 531

Caper sauce is a very old traditional accompaniment to mutton, and I refer you back to a previous story for a recipe. The nasturtium alternative is tomorrow’s story!

Here is the par. 531 recipe for day seven, from The English cookery book.

Minced Beef Or Mutton.
531. Make a gravy according to par. 282; thicken it with flour or arrowroot, which is still better), then add to it the minced-up beef and warm it. In warming up any meats in this way, they should be done in a stewpan on a hot-plate, or in a water-bath, commonly called a bain-marie, as it is owing to boiling hashes or minces that they get hard. All sorts of stews, or meat dressed a second time, should be only gently simmered, and that for a short time only, so as to be just warmed through. After mincing the beef with some of the fat, season it and add boiled carrots, with a little onion or shalot chopped fine. Have a small hot dish with sippets of bread ready, and pour the mince into it, but first mix a large spoonful of vinegar with ir; if shalot vinegar is used as a seasoning, there will be no need of the onion or the raw shalot.


Cullis or Brown Gravy.
282. Lay over the bottom of a stewpan as much lean veal as will cover it an inch thick ; then cover the veal with thin slices of undressed gammon, two or three onions, two or three bay-leaves, some sweet-herbs, two blades of mace, and three cloves ; cover the stewpan, and set it over a slow fire; but when the juices come out let the fire be a little quicker; when the meat is of a fine brown, fill the pan with good beef-broth; boil and skim it, then simmer an hour, and add a little water, mixed with as much flour as will make it properly thick; boil it half an hour, and strain it. This will keep for a week.

Quotation for the Day.

It's nice to eat a good hunk of beef but you want a light dessert, too.
Arthur Fiedler.

The perks of the kitchen.

A modern cook or chef would probably be singularly unimpressed with being offered offered the bones, meat trimmings and rendered fat produced in the kitchen as part of his or her wage, but it once upon a time this was a traditional right of the position. We think we are clever and noble now when we put our bottles and cans in the correct bins for recycling, but in previous times absolutely nothing was wasted and everything (right down to the ashes from the fireplaces) could be onsold to top up the wages. In a large household, the the footman or butler was allowed the candle stubs, the dairy maid the poultry feathers, and the nurse the cast-off clothing of the children, for example. One man’s waste was another man’s raw materials - fat and ashes were sold to soap-makers, feathers to mattress-makers, and candle stubs to tallow-chandlers and so on.

The cook’s traditional perks, and the kitchen practices that it encouraged are nicely summarised in An Encyclopædia of Domestic Economy ...( Thomas Webster, William Parkes 1855)

“The perquisites of servants are, in many cases, so many encroachments on the property of their employers, who tacitly allow them, while they, in principle, condemn them. Perquisites are among the circumstances which tend to corrupt the morals of household servants, and as such their continuance is most objectionable. At the same time it would be difficult to eradicate the evil, which is, by prescription, become almost a domestic law. Why it has so corrupting an influence among a household it is not difficult to perceive. It places the interests of servants in opposition to those of master. What is gain to the one is often loss to the other; and in taking only a shortsighted view of his interest, a servant's integrity is not always proof against the temptation of immediate gain. The barrier between honesty and dishonesty being once broken, who can say how often it will be passed !

Perquisites of cooks consist chiefly in dripping, commonly called " kitchen stuff." This perquisite is very generally allowed, probably from the very general difficulty of keeping any check upon the cook’s use of it if it were not allowed. Every temptation to purloin should should be in all houses as much avoided as possible; but in this particular instance it is scarcely possible to avoid it. If the perquisite be forbidden, no one can tell if the cook will not furtively secure it to herself. If it be allowed her, and other temptation assails her; that of obtaining as much of it as she can by practices mean and despicable. A cook who grasps at making much of her dripping often over-roasts joints of meat, by which the fat is melted into the dripping pan. She neither protects the fat from the fire by covering it with paper, nor basts the surface of the meat to keep it moist and rich. She trims from all joints all external fat, to add to her hoards; she used for frying and for common pastry expensive materials, when she has at hand which would answer as well, and would more honestly employ the melted fat which is obtained in roasting meat.”

There were other ways too that the cook could increase the value of the perk – such as “surreptitous stabbings so that the juice may run away more freely”, as well as some rather more sneaky and sinister tricks. Butter could not only be used when dripping would serve as well (such as in pastry for savoury pies), but could be surreptitiously added to the dripping pan when no-one was looking – and worse, even candle stubs could be buried in there (presumably when the footman was not looking.)

It sounds like a really good roast had to avoid a number of points of sabotage before it reached the master’s table. What then of Yorkshire Pudding? The dish requires the generous use of dripping. Originally it was cooked underneath the roast (which was on a spit close to the fire) and collected the drippings from the meat - these becoming an integral and tasty part of the meal, and thus lost to the cook. In households with sneaky, greedy cooks, I wonder if it was served less commonly? Here it is, by its original name:

A Dripping Pudding.
Make a good Batter as for Pancakes, put it in a hot Toss-pan over the Fire with a Bit of Butter to fry the Bottom a little, then put the Pan and Batter under a Shoulder of Mutton instead of a Dripping-pan, keeping frequently making it by the Handle and it will be light and savoury, and fit to take up when your Mutton is enough, and turn it in a Dish, and serve it hot.

From: The whole duty of a woman, or, An infallible guide to the fair sex: containing rules, directions, and observations, for their conduct and behavior through all ages and circumstances of life, as virgins, wives, or widows: with ... rules and receipts in every kind of cookery ... 1737

Quotation for the Day.

The qualities of an exceptional cook are akin to those of a successful tightrope walker: an abiding passion for the task, courage to go out on a limb and an impeccable sense of balance.
Bryan Miller

Not for the novice to attempt.

Emily Post, the 1920’s guru of etiquette, was quite clear on the point that dinner-giving was not to be entered into lightly. Actually, Emily was quite clear on everything to do with the social graces. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, to be so certain of the rules, so sure that one could follow them with ease, that one would never, ever , commit a social gaffe of any sort? Is anyone ever so certain, in real life?

Emily was certainly certain that dinner parties were …

Not for the novice to attempt.

If the great world of society were a university which issued degrees to those whom it trains to its usages, the ‘magna cum laude’, honors would be awarded without question, not to the hostess who may have given the most marvelous ball of the decade, but to her who knows best every component detail of preparation and service, no less than every inexorable rule of etiquette, in formal dinner-giving.

To give a perfect dinner of ceremony is the supreme accomplishment of a hostess! It means not alone perfection of furnishing, of service, of culinary skill, but also of personal charm, of tact. The only other occasion when a hostess must have equal--and possibly even greater ability--is the large and somewhat formal week-end party, which includes a dinner or two as by no means its least formidable features.

There are so many aspects to be considered in dinner giving that it is difficult to know whether to begin up-stairs or down, or with furnishing, or service, or people, or manners! One thing is certain, no novice should ever begin her social career by attempting a formal dinner, any more than a pupil swimmer, upon being able to take three strokes alone, should attempt to swim three miles out to sea. The former will as surely drown as the latter.

Even a “normal” family dinner would have been quite an intimidating production for a novice, if we are to judge from the recommended meal for May 6, from The Practical Daily Menu, by C.B. Peacock (1926).

Lentil Soup

Beef Olives, Savoury Cabbage, Potatoes.

Marmalade Pudding OR Blancmange; jam; custard.

From the same book, the recipe for Marmalade Pudding.


Marmalade Pudding.
4 oz. flour; 4oz. bread-crumbs; 4 oz. suet; 2 oz. sugar; pinch of salt; 1 teaspoonful baking powder; 2 eggs, 2 tablespoonfuls marmalade; a little milk if necessary.
Rub the shredded suet into the flour; add breadcrumbs, sugar, salt, baking-powder. Add the marmalade, well-beaten eggs, and, if necessary, a little milk. Mix well together, and steam in a greased mould for an hour and a half.

Quotation for the Day.

Marmalade in the morning has the same effect on taste buds that a cold shower has on the body.
Jeanine Larmoth