Tea Wine.

The Food Journal Volume 1 (London, 1871) is a recent find, and is proving to be a wonderful source of ideas and stories. Today I give you a topic close to my heart – two topics in one, actually – tea, and wine.

The following excerpt from the journal is most interesting:

“Tea and moss up to the present time have not been regarded by total abstainers as containing any intoxicating properties; but for the future they will be looked upon with considerable suspicion. “The cup that cheers, but not inebriates,” has been found by Dr Thudichum to be capable of yielding a very excellent wine, wholesome and pleasant to the taste; while M. Stenburg, the Professor of Chemistry at Stockholm, has succeeded in extracting, by distillation, alcohol and brandy, from the Iceland Reindeer Moss. The starch, which it contains in large quantities, is transformed into grape sugar, and subsequently fermented. The value of the discovery lies not so much, perhaps, in the production of the alcohol as in the substitution of the Iceland Moss for other and more valuable grain crops, which are at present grown solely for distillation. In the interesting lecture delivered before the Society of Arts, in which Dr Thudichum brought forth his tea wine, he mentioned the unpleasant fact that very many sherries contain sulphite of potassium, which adds to the bitter taste, and is frequently purgative. He advises us to stick to three wines on our tables – a clear sound wine for thirst; a delicate wine, such as Burgundy or champagne, for tickling the palate; and, after dinner, claret or good port. If Dr Thudichum would go a little further, and tell us where to get the latter, he would make us for ever grateful.”

I will continue this theme tomorrow with Dr Thudichum’s own words on his experiments, which are indeed interesting. Tea-champagne anyone?

Recipe for the Day.

There is more than one way to have alcohol with your tea, or tea with your alcohol.

Tea Punch.

Make an infusion of the best green tea, an ounce to a quart of boiling water; put before the fire a silver or other metal bowl, to become quite hot, and then put into ti

½ pint of good brandy

½ do. rum

¼ lb. lump sugar

The juice of a large lemon.

Set these alight, and pour in the tea gradually, mixing it from time to tie with a ladle; it will remain burning for some time, and is to be poured in that state into the glasses; in order to increase the flavour, a few lumpos of the sugar should be rubbed over the lemon peel. This punch may be made in a china bowl, but in that case the flame goes off more rapidly.

How to mix drinks: or, The bon-vivant's companion (1862)

Quotation for the Day.

Oh, some are fond of Spanish wine and some are fond of French,

And some’ll swallow tay and stuff fit only for a wench.

John Masefield (1878-1967) Captain Stratton’s Fancy

A Vegetarian Picnic, 1899.

Nineteenth century vegetarians were something of a mystery to most of the populace in the English-speaking world, whose ideal meal had contained meat, and preferably plenty of it, for hundreds of years. Vegetarian events at the time were wonderful fodder for journalists, who reported the proceedings - particularly the bills of fare - with varying degrees of amusement and disdain.

The Vegetarian Society of New York held a picnic in June 1899, and it was reported in some detail the following day in the New York Times – the reporter seeing fit to include a recipe for one of the dishes.

VEGETARIANS HAVE A PICNIC.

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It was a Red-Letter Day for Potatoes, Onions, Cabbages, and Fruit

– Consumption of Meat Denounced.

The Vegetarian Society enjoyed a picnic yesterday afternoon on the grounds surrounding the home of the Rev. George Donaldson, at Edgwater-on-Hudson, N.J. Mr. A. Haviland, the Secretary of the society, and the Rev. George Donaldson welcomed the vegetarians.

During the laying of the vegetable feast many opinions were advanced as to why man should not eat meat. One woman who had presented a new succotash of radishes, potatoes, and beets said, that according to the matured opinions of eminent scientists, the custom of flesh eating leads to the “setting apart of a whole class of the population for the disgusting, brutalizing, and unwholesome occupation of butchery.”

Another mentioned the theory that life can be prolonged and health and happiness enhanced by eating vegetables only, and again it was heard that neither justice nor benevolence nor compassion can sanction the “revolting cruelties that are daily perpetrated in order to pamper perverted appetites. Still another held that vegetarianism was a protest against luxury, intemperance, and vice, and finally, when it was absolutely decided that old roast beef and Spring lamb and kidney stew were responsible for the entire gamut of sin and destruction, the feast of the day was begun.

There were potatoes cooked in such a variety of styles that one could not remember the names of all. There was plenty of haricots, peas, cauliflower, asparagus, lettuce, onions, a great array of tempting fruits, assorted nuts, and pickled cabbages. One of the members brought a dish made of peas and asparagus tips. It was served cold, in small dishes, with sliced radishes on top and mayonnaise dressing. The dish was called “mayonnaise succotash.”

A woman from Brooklyn brought a dish which rejoiced in the name of “Potato Charlotte.” Her recipe was to take boiled new potatoes sliced. She stewed them in milk, adding a dash of vanilla. When cold she spread over the top some whipped cream and sprinkled it with cinnamon.

One young woman who was heard to remark that she “wouldn’t even eat a slice of chicken if her life depended on it” brought to the gathering a recipe which she called ‘Vegetarian Delight’. She wrote the following recipe for it.

Take one whole young white cabbage. Chop fine in a bowl; then sprinkle with pepper and salt and add a dozen young silver onions, also chopped fine. Boil the whole then let it stand till cool. Take a lump of butter the size of an egg, a cup of sugar, four tablespoonsfuls of cinnamon and mix well together. To this add the cabbage and onions, also some carrots chopped very fine, and a quart of mashed potatoes. Cook the whole slowly in milk till done, and then serve. Can be served hot or cold.

After discussing at length how humane men and women revolt at the “cruelty, degrading sights, distressing cries, perpetual bloodshed, and other attendant horrors” which surround the slaughter of sentient animals, the picnic was ended.

Quotation for the Day.

Vegetarian - that's an old Indian word meaning "lousy hunter."

Andy Rooney

Simulated Baked Goods?

I don’t want to put any of you off your pastries today, but I feel this story should be told. In August, 1968, U.S Patent Number 3,409,442 was granted for a ‘No-Bake Cake Mix.’ The name is a little misleading, for the product is indeed baked – but not by the consumer. The objective was to provide a simulated bakery product, which did not require cooking, but “offers the texture, taste, mouth-feel, and other qualities similar to a conventionally cooked bakery product.”

In the words of the patent applicant:

“This invention is founded on the discovery that the above objectives can be accomplished in a product comprising a baked and dehydrated bakery product in crumb-like form and an edible binder.”

It appears that the ‘crumb’ and the ‘edible binder’ can be can be converted into ‘simulated baked goods’ by the consumer  “… without the necessity of batter preparation or the use of heat.”  All that is required is the addition of water to the dry mix, a little (not too exhausting) whipping, and the moulding of the resulting mixture into a suitable shape, and – Voila! one has a ‘cake.’

There follows, in the patent application, a lot of scientific stuff, which I do not understand, but is liberally sprinkled with phrases such as:

edible binder material

hydrophilic gelatinous substance

degraded whippable protein

hydrolyzed water soluble proteinaceous extract

other whippable cereal proteins

frothy cellular structure for commingling with the cake crumbs

mechanism … not fully understood

Heating of the final product is not forbidden of course - indeed, it may be advantageous to “gently warm the ingredients so that they may be served in a heated and more flavorful condition.” And, no doubt, to allow a little creative latitude for the ‘baker.’

I do wonder to whom this product was pitched. Someone far, far, from a bakery (even of the supermarket variety), with no cake in the freezer, and no oven or fuel to cook a packet cake-mix? Would this product satisfy your craving for cake? Wouldn’t you rather have bread and honey instead?

Admittedly, the ‘cake’ would be quicker to prepare than ‘from scratch’, especially when you take into account that the original ‘from scratch’ method involved quite a lot of physically hard work.

Butter Cake.

Take a dish of butter, and beat it like cream with both your hands; two pounds of fine sugar, well beaten; three pounds of flour, well dried; mix them in with the butter; twenty-four eggs, leaving out half the whites, then beat altogether an hour. Just as you are going to put it in the oven, put in a quarter of an ounce of mace, a nutmeg grated, a little brandy, and seeds or currants as you please.

The Female's Friend, and General Domestic Adviser (1837) by Robert Huish

Quotation for the Day

Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart.

Erma Bombeck

Better than Hodge-Podge.

There are many names for dishes of leftovers, and usually the names do not enhance the anticipation of the dish. ‘Hash,’ for example, is hardly likely to bring the family rushing to the table. ‘Hodge-podge’ doesn’t sound much better. You may have your own family name for a recycled dinner, but I bet it is at the gallows humour end of the language.

There are even clever names for the process of re-purposing yesterday’s dinner. It has been called ‘scrap cookery’ ‘and secondary cookery,’ although I prefer ‘camouflage cookery’. ‘Réchauffé cookery’ is another, which sounds a bit posh, but also pretentious, and I don’t think fools anyone.

There is a solution, I think, in an old word. Next time you are staring down some leftover cold mutton, make a gallimaufry, and impress your friends and family.  The Oxford English Dictionary describes a gallimaufry as ‘a dish made by hashing up odds and ends of food; a hodge-podge, a ragout.’ The dish and the word have been around since medieval times, although the original dish does not specifically seem to have been made from leftovers, but was a type of stew. The origin of the word itself is obscure. The OED suggests that it may be ‘a conflation of galer to amuse oneself and Picard dialect mafrer to gorge oneself , which certainly sounds like something tempting.

I give you three versions of a gallimaufry – an elegant one made from fresh ingredients, another eminently suitable for leftover lamb, and a third - a sort of Welsh Rabbit - just for fun.

Young Partridges in Gallimaufry.

After you have picked, singed, and drawn your Partridges, put them on the Spit with a Bit of Butter in the Inside of each, wrapping them up with Bards of Bacon in paper; when they are done enough, cut them as you would your Chickens for a Fricasey, then put them in a Stew-pan with a little Broth, a little shred Cives, and a Shalot, a little Parsley, Salt, and Pepper, a Rocambole well minced, a small handful of Crumb of Bread, some Zest, with the Juice of an Orange; heat them a little on the Fire, and give them two or three Tosses without boiling them in their Dish, and serve them up hot for a first Course Dish.

The whole duty of a woman, or, An infallible guide to the fair sex (1737)

Lamb and Potato Stew, or Gallimaufry.

This is said by one of our French authors to be the ancient dish of gallimaufry a la Languedocienne. It does not hurt anybody to eat it however, and only costs 10 or 12 cents with all its wealth of name thrown in.

Take some pieces of cold lamb; about 1 pound of clear meat will do and it may be the neck or shoulder that was boiled until just done in the soup boiler. Shave off the dark portions and cut the meat in large dice.Cut an equal amount of raw potatoes the same way and put both ont boil with clear broth or water barely to cover. Put in a small onion cut up and if to be true to name, a clove of garlic and a sprig of green thyme and a little chopped parsley. When it has stewed until the potatoes are done, season with pepper and salt and thicken it slightly if the potatoes have not boiled away and thickened it already. It is a neat looking little stew and good for a family supper.

Cooking for Profit.(Chicago,1893) Jessup Whitehead

Welsh Gallimaufry.

Mix well in a mortar cheese with butter, mustard, wine, flavoured vinegar, or any ingredient admired.

The Cook and Housewife’s Manual (1826) by the pseudonymous Meg Dodds.

Quotation for the Day.

Cook, see all your sawces be sharp and poynant in the palate, that they may commend you; look to your roast and baked meats handsomely, and what new kickshaws and delicate made things.

Frontispiece of The Cook and Housewife’s Manual

Rice in the Indies.

It is always interesting, and sometimes enlightening, to see another nation (or one’s own) through a visitor’s eyes.  Today we can do this in the comfort of our own home in front of the television, in what almost amounts to a watered-down reality-TV experience - with only the absence of security checks and the unique foreign smells of real down-and-dirty travel. How much more fascinating must it have been in the past, when a fifty-mile trip from home was a rare and often hazardous trip, to hear or read of the adventures of those who travelled far away to strange foreign places.  Some of the adventures of course, were of the food-kind, and it goes without saying that these are the sort that particularly interest me. 

John Chardin was a seventeenth century Protestant Frenchman - a jeweller and merchant by trade - who left his homeland to escape the persecution perpetrated at the time, on those of his faith in predominantly Catholic France. For many years he lived and travelled extensively in ‘the Orient’ and ‘the Indies’ before making his home in England, where he received a knighthood and completed a ten-volume account of his experiences. Today I want to give you an extract from his writings on rice in Asia and ‘the Indies.’ Rice was not unknown in Europe in the seventeenth century – far from it, in fact. It was an expensive import in the early medieval era, and Italy had been growing rice since perhaps as early as the thirteenth century, in the north of the country, and it is found in British and European recipes from that time. It was not, however, a staple food for the masses.

There are two particularly intriguing things about Chardin’s description of the use of rice in Asia. He discusses at some length the difference in the cooked article between the Asian and the Italian versions, which he attributes to the different water, and he also mentions rice being cooked in bamboo canes.

“Rice is the most common and best Esteem’d food of all Asia, and it is to be met with everywhere throughout the East. As it is light and cooling, they prefer it to Bread, and it even serves for Bread, in the most Southern Countries, where a good many People use it as their only Food. Rice is likewise very good in Illnesses. Mathiole, and other learned European Naturalists, have acknowledg’d all that I have said of this excellent Grain. They dress it in a great may Ways, which I shall reduce to three. The First, is to boil the Rice in water, without any other Seasoning, and then they dissolve it in boiling to make Broth for sick People, or they bake it dry, in using it for Bread. The Second way, is to make Soops with it, with Roots, Milk, or Meat. The Third, is to make Pilo*, or Kichery, those exquisite Foods, so cry’d up by Eastern People. I shall speak by and by, concerning the Manner of their dressing, this Pilo, and these rich Soops: I shall only speak here of the first way of dressing, and how it is done in the several parts of the Indies, where it is most us’d.

But you must observe beforehand, that the rice of Asia is tenderer and more easie to boil, in Proportion as the Country where it grows is more or less Southerly. In the Indies, one Boil is sufficient for the Rice, and even there where it is the hardest; they wash it well, rubbing it with their Hands, they shake it, and put it in the Pot, where it is presently done; and even in a great many Places in the Indies, they have no Occasion of Water to dress it; they do nothing but put a wet Cloath upon the Pot, under the Cover. I have seen it drest in a Bamboo, this is a thick sweet Cane, hollow and hard, that grows in the Indies, and of which there are some as thick as one’s Leg; they have a little thin Skin, or Rind in the inside, which is more solid and hard than the Wood. When the Fire has Penetrated to that, they take the Bamboo half burnt from off the Fire, and they take out the Rice well done. I relate these little particulars, because our Italian Rice is so hard, and that one has much trouble in boiling it. When I came to enquire into the Reason of this difference in the dressing of the Rice, which being the same, could not however be drest as soon everywhere: I found out, that the Water was the main Article in dressing; the one penetrating and dissolving sooner than the other; as ell as that the one softens this Grain in the boiling, whereas the other Waters sensibly harden it: I don’t well comprehend the Reason, but for all that, don’t disallow the Thing, being convinc’d by Experience of the difference there is, in the Staining of the Calicoes, and China-Ware, in those Countries, which are more or less Beautiful, according to the Water which they use.”

[*pillau and kedgeree]

One of the first English cookery books to have a dedicated section for recipes from the Orient was Domestic economy, and cookery, for rich and poor(1827). The author gave several recipes for ‘pillau,’ named as Persian, Indian and Turkish versions. Today I give you the ‘Syrian’ version (although there seems to be some confusion with ‘Turkish’), which is really just buttered rice.

To boil Rice, and make Syrian Pillau.

After having cleaned the rice properly, have three times the quantity of salted water boiling: some rice takes more or less water, which must be attended to; wash and strain it. The moment of putting it into boiling water, after it has boiled a few minutes, set it on the side of the grate, and let it remain until the water is absorbed, during which time the rice is upon no account to be disturbed by stirring or otherwise. Take off the cover, and pour over it as much previously pure melted butter as will butter it throughout, and giving it three stirs round with a spoon, replace the cover; serve it a few minutes after shaking it out on the dish; on no account stirring it, as it is that which makes pillau in this country so like pudding, and so unlike the real Turkish dish. The water is sometimes coloured with saffron. Hard white or saffroned eggs may be stuck into it.

There are a couple of nineteenth century English recipes for pilau in previous posts here and here.

Quotation for the Day.

I like rice. Rice is great if you're hungry and want 2000 of something.

Mitch Hedberg

The Kitchen Alphabet

‘Household Hints’ always catch my eye. Perhaps therein lie solutions to problems I never knew I had?  An alphabetic list of almost anything is also pretty hard for me to resist, perhaps because of my love of words, but also because I love to see how the writer solves the problem of the letter ‘X’.

Today, just for fun, I give you an alphabetical list of household hints from a book published by a Brisbane newspaper, the ‘Truth’ and ‘Daily Mirror’ Cookery Book, (c 1943) under the name of Ruth Cilento.

HOUSEHOLD HINTS.

THE KITCHEN ALPHABET

A pinch of baking soda added to any boiled syrup will prevent it crystallising.

Before heating milk rinse the saucepan with cold water and it will not scorch so easily.

Cut bread lengthwise instead of across, when cutting sandwiches, it saves the bread.

Don’t pile leftover potatoes together, spread them on a large dish to prevent them going sour.

Efficient equipment is necessary in the kitchen. How are your spoons and strainers wearing?

Fish should be included on the menu once a week.

Gelatine is the  modern housewife’s magic; learn the many ways of using it.

Honey can be used to mix nuts for sandwiches.

If syrup goes back to sugar, reheat, and add a small piece of butter and it will be useful as a soft sugar.

Juice left over from tinned fruits is useful in preparing jellies.

Keep all fat not suitable for cooking, and use for making soap.

Liquid from mustard pickles can be added to salad dressing in place of fresh vinegar and mustard.

Marmalade spread between two thin slices of buttered toast is delicious for breakfast.

Nuts are most nutritious, and there are many ways of using them in the daily menu.

Oranges baked are excellent for a cold. Cut a slice not quite through to form a lid, then put in a teaspoon of lime juice, bake until heated through.

Peas too hard for serving plain may be cooked until tender, then pressed through a sieve and used for soup.

Quite a good plan, when cooking rice, is to have some left over; it can be used in many appetising ways.

Rubber rings from fruit jars should be kept and used for standing dishes on the ice to prevent slipping.

Salt frequently curdles milk, so it should always be added last in cooking.

Thermometers always mean good results in baking cakes.

Use up yolks of eggs – when whites only have been used – for scrambling.

Very few housewives know the food value of dates; they are excellent in salads and des[s]erts.

When cooking vegetables, cover those that grow under the ground, and leave uncovered those that grow above ground.

X,Y, Z. These are teaser, which the cook can discover for herself while the dinner is cooking.

So, the author clearly wimped out on Y, and Z as well as X. Or perhaps it was because the text would not then have fitted so neatly onto one page. I challenge you to complete the list.

As the recipe for the day, I give you an interesting version of pickled onions, from the same book.

Pickled Onions in Sauce.

Five lb. onions, 1 quart vinegar, 1 lb. brown sugar, ½ oz. ground cloves, ½ oz. allspice, 2 big tablespoons flour, ½ dessertspoon mustard, 1 tablespoon curry powder, 2 teaspoons turmeric.

Cover the onions with salt and water, and allow to stand 24 hours. Put the vinegar and sugar on fire to boil, and when it just comes to the boil, add all the other ingredients, which have been mixed to a paste with cold vinegar. Boil till it thickens, then pour this over the onions [which presumably have been drained from the brine!]. Keep for three weeks before  using so as to allow the flavour of this sauce to go into the onions.

This recipe is very economical because the sauce can be used as well as the onions.

Quotation for the Day.

The only think I like better than talking about Food is eating.
John Walters