An Incomplete History of Hash Browns.

I meander rather carelessly around the Oxford English Dictionary at times, so it is not surprising that sometimes, something trips me up, and sometimes that something is interesting. Take ‘hash browns’ for example. I found them by accident while I was pottering about and considering the meaning of ‘hash’ in general – and was immediately surprised.

I was surprised because the OED gave the first mention of ‘hash browns’ as being in 1917, or, in their alternative name of ‘hashed brown potatoes’, as appearing first in 1900.  Surely this is a mistake?

‘Hashing’ leftovers is not a new concept by several centuries at least, and it has come up a number of times on this blog in the past. Surely folk have been frying up leftover potatoes as long as they have been boiling too many potatoes, which is probably ever since they have been cooking them, which, in the Old World is since the sixteenth century?  

The defining feature of hash browns seems to be the ‘cake’ or omelet style. Naturally, it goes without saying that the browning is crucial, otherwise they are merely ‘hashed potatoes’ and not nearly so irresistible. When I speak of irresistible of course, I am, referring to the freshly-assembled, freshly-cooked, very hot, very crisp and golden, very potatoe-y version, not the sort that look and taste like dirty bath sponges soaked in grease that are so ubiquitous at breakfast buffets and cafés

The OED is quite definite on the point that hash browns – are ‘chiefly US’ in origin. I guess it depends what you mean by ‘origin’. I think we all agree that recipes are built on previous recipes, and there is a lot about hash browns that is reminiscent of the röesti of Switzerland (which I understand from the purists is made from raw potato), the latkes of the Jewish cookery, and the tortilla de papas of Spain, for example.

In the end, I think that the ‘hash browns’ debate is really (as it so often is in matters of cookery) about the name, not the overall concept.

It does seem correct, however, from my quick reading around the topic (the title of this post warns that this is an incomplete history) that the specific name did originate in the USA. References and recipes using one or other form (hashed brown potatoes, hash browned potatoes, brown hashed potatoes etc) are fairly common in the 1890’s, so I was about to assume that this was when the dish (name) originated, when I found the following recipe from the Minnesota Farmers' Institute Annual of 1835. The journal has hash potatoes (cooked in milk, but not browned), brown hashed potatoes and brown creamed hash potatoes. You will note that the second one is oven-baked.

Brown Hashed Potatoes.

Chop cold boiled potatoes and season with salt and pepper. Put some clarified butter into the frying pan. Add the potatoes, cover, and cook slowly until the potatoes are nicely browned on the underside. Fold and turn out on a warm platter.

Brown Creamed Hashed Potatoes.

Chop four cold boiled potatoes. Season with salt and pepper. Cook, together, one tablespoon of butter and a heaping teaspoonful of flour and add to it a cup of milk. Stir until it boils. Put some clarified butter, or fat, in a frying pan, add the potatoes, and pour over them the sauce. Set in the oven, on the floor, and let them bake until a brown crust is formed on the underside. Fold and turn out on a warm platter.

Are there earlier recipes? Did you invent the dish, you Minnesotans?

I now give you the recipes quoted as firsts by the OED.

Hashed Brown Potatoes.

One large boiled potato chopped fine; grease a pan with one tablespoonful of butter and press the potatoes

into it with the palm of your hand. Dust with a little salt and sprinkle over the top one tablespoonful of finely

chopped parsley. Place in the oven and when brown fold like an omelet and serve.

The Complete Cook Book (Philadelphia, 1900), by Jennie Day Reese

Hash-Browned Potatoes

3 cupfuls cooked potatoes, chopped fine.

6 tablespoonfuls milk

1 teaspoonful salt

2 tablespoons butter or drippings

1 teaspoonful salt

¼ teaspoonful salt

Combine all the ingredients except the butter. Melt the latter in a frying pan, add the potato mixture, and

smooth down, pressing it in shape. Cook for a moment over a quick fire and then slowly for twenty minutes,

watching carefully that it does not burn. Then fold as an omelet, pressing the parts together. Turn onto a

heated platter, and serve garnished with parsley and bacon, if it is to serve as a substantial dish.

Mrs. Allen’s Cook Book (Boston, 1917)

This simple dish is infinitely variable of course, and I give you a selection of ideas (all American, you will be pleased to know) to prove my point, and for you to choose your favourite.

Hashed Brown Potatoes.

Try out fat salt pork cut in small cubes, remove scraps; there should be about one-third cup of fat. Add two cups cold boiled potatoes finely chopped, one-eighth teaspoon pepper, and salt if needed. Mix potatoes thoroughly with fat; cook three minutes, stirring constantly; let stand to brown underneath. Fold as an omelet and turn on hot platter.

Boston Cooking School Cook Book (1896) by Fannie Farmer

And three variations from

Hashed Brown Potatoes

Chop cold boiled potatoes (about two cups) into small bits. Season with salt and pepper. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a pan, add the chopped potatoes and toss and turn frequently until they show brown, then add a half cup of cream and put in a hot oven to brown. Serve hot.

The Neighborhood Cook Book (1914) by the Council of Jewish women.

Hashed Brown Potatoes, Lyonnaise

Finely hash up six cold boiled potatoes and keep on a plate. Heat one tablespoon of butter in a frying-pan, add a finely chopped onion, and lightly brown for three minutes, then add the potatoes. Season with one-half teaspoon of salt and two saltspoons of white pepper, evenly sprinkled over, then nicely brown them for ten minutes, occasionally tossing them meanwhile. Give them a nice omelet form, brown for eight minutes more, turn on a hot dish, sprinkle a little freshly chopped parsley over and serve. These potatoes may be prepared with fat in place of butter.

The International Jewish Cook Book (New York, 1919), by Florence Kreisler Greenbaum.

And a couple of variations from Mrs Allen’s cook book:

Hash-Browned Potatoes with Ham.

3 cupfuls chopped potatoes.

1 cupful milk

1 cupful chopped ham

Few grains salt and pepper.

Mix together the potatoes, ham, milk and seasonings.

Put 3 tablespoonfuls of drippings into a frying pan, melt and, when hot, pack in the potato mixture. Cover and

cook slowly until the milk is absorbed and the mixture is brown on the bottom; fold over and turn as an omelet.

Mrs. Allen’s Cook Book (Boston, 1917)

Hash-Browned Potatoes with Nuts.

Use the proportions included in Hash-Browned Ham Potatoes, substituting chopped peanuts for the ham.

Mrs. Allen’s Cook Book (Boston, 1917)

I am surprised to find at the end of my post that in my excitement I have given you NINE recipes today.

Quotation for the Day.

Peace of mind and a comfortable income are predicted by a dream of eating potatoes in any form.

Ned Ballantyne & Stella Coeli, Your Horoscope and Your Dreams (1940)

Foamy Food.

There really is no such thing under the sun as brand new idea in cookery. Take foam for example. Foam-making seems to have been raised to an art form by modern chefs at the cutting edge of cuisine, and for all I know, the skill to produce foam of a particular stability, texture, colour, fragrance, or flavour may be a requirement for graduation from some culinary schools. The concept of foamy-textured food is not new however.

Today I give you some old ideas to help you introduce a little more lightness into your food life.

Foaming Sauce [a pudding sauce]

Beat 1 cup sugar and ½ cup butter together. Add the yelks of 2 eggs and the grated rind and juice of a lemon. Beat the two whites stiff and mix all together. Just before serving, stir in quickly 1 cup boiling water

Breakfast, Dinner and Supper (1887), Battle Creek Co. Michigan.

Foamy Eggs [a pudding sauce]

1 egg, ½ cup maple sugar, ½ tsp. vanilla, ½ cup whipped cream.

Beat egg white until stiff, beat in gradually the maple sugar powdered; when smooth and light, add vanilla and well-beaten yolks. Stir in whipped cream, serve at once.

"Win the War" Cook Book (1918) published by St. Louis county unit,

Woman's committee, Council of National Defense.

Foam Omelette.

Beat the yolks of two eggs till they are thick and light; add half teaspoon of pepper and two tablespoons of milk, then the whites beaten stiff. Spread on a hot buttered omelette pan. Run a knife along the edges, and occasionally underneath, to prevent burning.  Let it cook till well browned underneath. Fold carefully, and serve at once.

Queensland Figaro, (Brisbane, Qld) May 19, 1928

And here is an interesting idea from World War II – an austerity recipe using dried eggs and lemon cordial.

“Fresh eggs are precious. Don’t let them vanish in cakes, puddings, or sauces – save them for children, invalids, or a very special breakfast!”

Hot Foam Sauce

Here is an unusual recipe for a fluffy pudding sauce, flavoured with lemon cordial. It is a cunning substitute for the luxury foam sauce made with fresh egg and wine. Sieve two level tablespoons egg powder and one tablespoon vanilla flavoured custard powder into a small but deep saucepan (or basin). Add one tablespoon sugar. Pour one-third teacup of lemon cordial into a cup 1 measure. Add two-thirds cold water. Use to blend the egg-powder mixture to a smooth thin liquid. Stand saucepan in a larger pan with gently simmering water to come two thirds up the sides. Stir liquid until warm. Then whisk with rotary whisk until very light and foamy and slightly thickened. Serve at once. If required cold, it will be a delicious type of thin custard. Whisk up before use; add extra vanilla flavouring.

NOTE: Once egg-powder has been reconstituted. It should be used within 24 hours. In hot climates it should not be left uncooked for more than a few hours.

Townsville Daily Bulletin (Qld.) May 28, 1946

Orange Foam Sauce.

One and a half cups milk, l tablespoon sugar, 1 tablespoon cornflour, 1 egg (separated), rind and juice of 1 orange.

Combine the sugar and cornflour, blend with a, little cold milk, and add the egg yolk. Place the remainder of the milk on to boil. When boiling pour on to the blended mixture. Return to saucepan and stir until the mixture boils and thickens. Add the orange rind and juice. Beat white of egg and pinch of salt to stiff froth, and fold into the hot sauce. Allow to cool.

The Mercury (Hobart, Tas.) July 22, 1954

Quotation for the Day.

The dishes of the present day are very light, and they have a particular delicacy and perfume. The secret has been discovered of enabling us to eat more and to eat better, as also to digest more rapidly....The new cookery is conductive to health, to good temper, and to long life. ...Who could enumerate all the dishes of the new cuisine? It is an absolutely new idiom. I have tasted viands prepared in so many ways and fashioned with such art that I could not imagine what they were.

                        Louis Sebastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 1781-82

Jubilee Puddings.

One more jubilee post for the time being, folks, for the royalists, the pudding fans, the word lovers, and the eternally historically curious amongst you. 

The word ‘jubilee’ was originally from the concept of a ‘jubilee year’, which, as I understand it, is a Jewish concept. The Oxford English indicates that the phrase has been in use in the English language since the fourteenth century, and explains it thus:

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

And later:

A year instituted by Boniface VIII in 1300 as a year of remission from the penal consequences of sin, during which plenary indulgence might be obtained by a pilgrimage to Rome, the visiting of certain churches there, the giving of alms, fasting three days, and the performance of other pious works.

It was at first appointed to take place every hundred years, but the period was afterwards shortened to fifty, thirty-three, and twenty-five years, and now ‘an extraordinary jubilee is granted at any time either to the whole Church or to particular countries or cities, and not necessarily or even usually for a whole year’ ( Cath. Dict. 1885).

In time, the concept became expanded to encompass any ‘time of restitution, remission, or release’, or a ‘season or occasion of joyful celebration or general rejoicing.’ More specifically, it came to refer to:

The fiftieth anniversary of an event; the celebration of the completion of fifty years of reign, of activity, or continuance in any business, occupation, rank or condition. silver jubilee (after silver wedding), a name for the celebration for the twenty-fifth anniversary; so diamond jubilee, applied to the celebration of the sixtieth year of the reign of Queen Victoria.

I don’t know if there is a particular qualifier for a seventieth anniversary, but given the apparent good health of Queen Elizabeth, and the longevity of her mother, I hope English wordsmiths are already onto it.

Given that any family or organisation can celebrate their own jubilees, there is no shortage of ‘jubilee puddings’ in the caveat that there is no knowledge or promise of any royal connections whatsoever in any of them.

Firstly, a variation on the universally popular theme of baked apples.

Jubilee Pudding.

Take six well-shaped apples, remove the cores, and put a piece of cinnamon in each. Placethe apples in a flat-bottomed basin, and pour a teaspoonful of brandy over each. Cover the top with a sheet of paper, and set in a pan ofboiling water to steam. When soft remove the cinnamon, and put a teaspoonful of strawberry jam in its place. Then dish them up in a pyramid, and pour over them all half a pint of whipped cream, flavoured with vanilla and sweetened with sugar.

Warwick Examiner and Times (St. Lucia, Qld.) May 16, 1896

And a jelly studded with jewelled fruits.         

Jubilee Pudding.

Make a pint of claret jelly: pour it into a small border mould; whip half a pint of cream in which is a quarter of an ounce of dissolved gelatine. When it is whipped solid, stir in one ounce of candied angelica, one ounce of preserved ginger, and one ounce of preserved apricot – the ginger and angelica cut small. Set on ice; then turn out. Pile the whipped cream and fruit in the centre, and decorate according to fancy.

Choice Cookery, (Bedford, MA, 1889) by Catherine Owen

And a choice of two steamed puddings, in case you live in one of the cooler parts of the world.

Jubilee Pudding

“641” (Melbourne) asks for a recipe for jubilee pudding which appeared some considerable time ago in these columns.

The recipe required may be one of the following: - (1) Put 2oz. of butter m a basin with quarter pound of sugar, the juice of half a lemon a little grated rind, a grate of nutmeg, and a pinch of powdered cinnamon. Work the butter to a cream, add two eggs, and beat for five minutes Then put in quarter pound of breadcrumbs, 3oz. sultanas, 2oz currants, 1 oz, crystallised ginger (chopped small), 1 ½ oz. chopped apple, l oz. of either raspberry or plum jam. Mix all together, put in a buttered mould, and steam for two hours. Serve with sweet sauce or cream. (2) One egg, two tablespoonfuls sugar, one and a half cupfuls milk, one tablespoonful butter, one cupful flour, one teaspoonful baking powder. Flavour with grated lemon rind or essence of lemon. Steam in a buttered mould for 35 minutes. Serve with sauce or jam.

The Argus (Melbourne, Vic.) 14 July 1920

Quotation for the Day

Ponder well on this point: the pleasant hours of our life are all connected by a more or less tangible link, with some memory of the table.

Charles Pierre Monselet (1825-1888)

A Coronation Cake.

 I am not sure how I allowed a piece on celery - albeit pink celery - to appear here yesterday, when I had intended to continue the theme of royal jubilee food stories, but today I am back on this temporary track, with some ideas for coronation cake.

On June 8, 1911, with the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary mere weeks away, The Times (London, England), ran the following short piece:

A Coronation Cake.

The King has consented to receive from Messrs. Gunter and Co. (Limited) a Coronation cake.

The cake weighs about 500lb. or 600lb., and its ingredients included 190 lb. of butter, sugar, and flour, 700 eggs, and 200 lb. of mixed fruit, besides almonds and liqueurs. Almond icing is overlaid with sugar icing, and the cake, which was baked in sections, is octagonal in shape. Its circumference is about 9 ft, and its height nearly 2 ft. It is lavishly ornamented with panels containing painted miniatures of their Majesties and emblems of the Overseas Dominions. Above the cake are graduated columnar temples, containing a finely modelled sugar figure of Britannia on the first tier, a fully-rigged three-decker on the second tier, and a figure of “Love” on the third tier. The whole is surmounted, at a height of about 10 ft, by a white satin cushion, on which reposes a crown, supported by three lions rampant. Figures of “Peace” and “Plenty” are also incorporated in the design.

Messrs. Gunter and Co. provided the cake for the wedding of the King and Queen in 1893, and that for the silver wedding of King Edward and Queen Alexandra.

Sadly, the instructions for the cake were not included along with the ingredients, but any housewife or household cook of the time would have been able to scale the recipe down and make it according to the ‘usual method’ for a rich fruit cake.

I can give you a recipe for a cake for the next coronation – that of King George VI in 1937. I don’t know if it is an ‘official’ recipe, but it sounds good enough. The recipe appeared in The Washington Post of April 10, 1937.

Coronation Cake Recipe.

Here is an English recipe for coronation cake for the benefit of Americans who might want to try it.

Ingredients:

12 ounces flour

4 ounces rice flour,

10 ounces butter

10 ounces castor sugar (powdered sugar)

6 eggs

Grated rinds of two oranges

8 ounces glace cherries

8 ounces sultanas (seedless Smyrna yellow raisins

8 ounces ordinary seedless raisins

1 ½ teaspoonfuls baking powder

Pinch of salt.

Line a tin (cake pan) with stiff cartridge paper (oiled brown paper) and brush the paper with melted butter. Sift the flour, rice flour, baking powder, and salt.

Grate the orange rind, cut the cherries in quarter, clean the sultanas and raisins in flour and mix all these ingredients together.

Put the margarine into a large bowl and work it with a wooden spoon until it softens, Add the castor sugar and beat well together until light and creamy. Add eggs, unbeaten, one at a time, and beat them into a mixture. If, after the third egg, the mixture begins to separate, or curdle, beat in a tablespoon of flour before adding another egg.

When all the eggs are beaten in, fold in alternately the flour and mixed fruit, stirring with a metal spoon until well mixed. Put into prepared tin, smooth out towards the sides of the tin and bake for 1 ¾ hours in a moderate oven, then reduce the heat until the oven becomes very cool, and bake for 1 ¼ hours.

Take out of tin, remove paper and cool on a wire tray. It is best to keep this cake in a tin box for at least two weeks before icing it.

Cover with Almond Icing.

Cover the top with almond icing, then ice all over with plain white icing Keep back two tablespoons of the plain icing for decoration. Color one red and the other blue with vegetable coloring. When the cake has set, pipe a border of blue and a border of red around the top of the cake.

Decorate the center of the top with a colored sugar crown, and tie a red, white and blue paper frill around the cake, and it is ready for the Coronation Day Tea.

The state crown of England is the correct one to use, that is the one King George VI will wear on the procession from Westminster Abbey. It has a level top, surmounted by a jeweled ball and cross.

And finally, I give you another cake from the same era, from a newspaper of my home town of Brisbane - The Courier-Mail (Tuesday 11 May 1937.)

Make a Coronation Cake

A Cake that is a little out of the ordinary and yet is not too rich, or too expensive in its ingredients, will be appreciated by the family, especially during this week of festivities. The following will be found an excellent mixture. To half a cup of butter allow three and a half cups of flour, half pound of sultanas, two and a half cups of brown sugar, five tea-spoons baking powder, one cup of milk, one ounce of preserved cherries, four eggs, one teaspoon each of ground cinnamon and grated nutmeg, three ounces of mixed candied peel chopped. Sift the flour, baking powder, and spices together, rub in the butter. Beat the eggs and add, stirring lightly. Put in the prepared fruit, and add enough milk to make the mixture moist enough to fall into a cake tin lined with buttered paper. Bake in a moderate oven for two hours. Make a nice soft icing as follows: — Roll smoothly five ounces of icing sugar, add one good tablespoon of boiling water, and if liked one teaspoonful of oiled butter. Blend it in a small saucepan off the fire, then stir over the heat till hot and smooth, but on no account let it come near boiling point. Put a little of this on one side and colour it pink with cochineal. Spread the white icing over the cake, and when nearly set write with the pink icing, or pipe if preferred: 'G' on one side, 'E' on the other. Put the date 1937 in the centre, and beneath the 'Long May They Reign.' Then watch the family's faces as they get their first sight of your Coronation cake.

Quotation for the Day.

He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration.”

Michael Pollan

Pink Celery?

The first food history story on this blog was on October 31, 2005. The topic was celery. In that post we learned from John Evelyn, the enthusiastic gardener and author of Acetaria: a discourse on sallets (1699) that ‘sellery’ was at that time newly introduced from Italy.

Since that day, I have posted more than eighteen hundred stories, and although many of the recipes in those stories have included celery, I don’t think it has been the star in a single post. Sadly, it also rarely stars on the dinner table. It is a useful vegetable, certainly. It travels and keeps well. It is crisp and green in salads, and the salad-unworthy fragments are a fine addition to soups and stews. It almost always appears in some sort of mélange, however. How long since you had celery as a side-dish in a restaurant?

My musings on celery were prompted by a book called How to Cultivate and Preserve Celery, (Albany, 1860) by Theophilus Roessle. At the beginning of the book is a lovely colour plate – of pink celery. The sort of celery that could be rhubarb, if you don’t look too closely at the leaves. What a gorgeous thing, I thought. And why have I never seen it at the farmers’ markets?

I gather from the author’s words that pink or red celery was not rare in the mid-nineteenth century. He begins his chapter on ‘Varieties’ with the following summary.

“After an experience of many years, with a great number of varieties of celery, I have narrowed my list to the following few kinds which I recommend as most profitable for general cultivation:

No. 1. Early White Solid.

No. 2. Joint       do.

No. 3. New Silver Leaf.

No. 4. Red Solid, or Rose-colored.

No. 5. Celeriac or Turnip-rooted.

The varieties 1, 2, and 4 are best.”

It appears then, that in the second half of the nineteenth century that pink/red celery was a profitable variety, not a frivolous experiment. A little further reading indicated that there were many pink/red varieties in Britain and Europe at this time. What happened to them? Did they become less profitable because better green varieties were developed? And what would constitute ‘better’ celery anyway? Another question: did rose-pink celery taste different? A final question: are any heritage vegetable enthusiasts growing this celery today?

For a long, long time, when celery was a new vegetable, it was served alone. It was served raw and pure, en branche, at the end of the meal with the nuts and cheese. When eventually it became commonly cooked, its most usual role was in sauce. Celery Sauce must have become unfashionable at some point in time, for I don’t remember seeing it on a restaurant menu, ever. How good would this be with pink celery? Don’t tell me it loses its colour on cooking, please.

Celery Sauce.

You must have a fine head of celery. Wash it and carefully clear off any defective parts, and the coarser green ends. Cut the white part into small evenly-sized pieces, and boil very gently until quite tender in a little water. Then rub a little butter in flour, and thicken your sauce, seasoning it with pepper and salt, a very little pounded mace and nutmeg, and boil it up. You should then add about a cupful of cream if possible, and mix it well before serving.

Tib’s Tit-Bits, (London, 1869) ed. by Frances Freeling Broderip

Quotation for the Day.

Many kids can tell you about drugs but do not know what celery or courgettes taste like.

Jamie Oliver.

The Second Banquet.

On Friday I gave you the menu for the first official coronation banquet, today I give you that for the second official banquet held on June 4 at Buckingham Palace.

Consommé St George.

[hare soup]

-

Rosettes de Saumon Edinburgh

-

Filet de Boeuf Pôele Palais

Petits Poid au Beurre

Pommes Nouvelle, Salade Mimosa

-

Asperges, Sauce Mousseline

-

Soufflés Glacés Princess Anne

Mignardises Assortis

WINES

Sherry Solera Tarifa 1890

Forster Altenburg Riesling 1949

Château Léoville Poyferré 1934

Cliquot 1934

Château Yquem 1928

As with the menu I gave on Friday, it is not possible to know exactly what these dishes were, but they would almost certainly have been classic dishes, perhaps tweaked or renamed for the occasion. The Salade Mimosa appears on a number of twentieth century royal menus, so it is presumably a family favourite. I have previously given you a recipe for this from another royal chef cook book.

The asparagus was served with a classic Mousseline sauce, which is similar to Hollandaise but uses less butter and has whipped cream folded into it at the end. At least, that is the classical description of the sauce. Mrs McKee, one-time royal cook and author of yesterday’s source (Mrs. McKee’s Royal Cookery Book, 1964) has her own version, without the cream.

Mousseline sauce.

3 yolks of eggs, 2 tablespoons water, pinch of salt, ¼ lb soft butter.

Whisk the egg yolks, water, and salt together over a low heat until frothy. Remove from the heat and add the butter in small portions. A light and lovely sauce with asparagus, artichokes, or broccoli.

Rene Roussin, the Chef de Cuisine for King George VI gave more classical instructions for the sauce in his book, Royal Menus, published in 1960.

Sauce Mousseline.

This sauce is made by folding a third as much stiff-whipped cream into a given quantity of Hollandaise sauce. The whipped cream should be added immediately before serving.

Quotation for the Day.

Banquet: an affair where you eat a lot of food you don’t want before talking about something you don’t understand to a crowd of people who don’t want to hear you.”

Anonymous

Banquet at Buckingham Palace.

It is impossible to avoid the Royal Jubilee hype. I suspect it has insinuated itself into all corners of the world, both English-speaking and not. And why should we avoid it anyway? It doesn’t matter if we are royalists or not, it is impossible to separate the institution of royalty from just about any other historical event, anywhere – and I assume, if you are reading this blog, that you are interested in history.

I am not royalist, but I cannot help but be interested in the goings-on at royal dinner tables of any era. Although Queen Elizabeth came to the throne sixty years ago on the death of her father in February 1952, her formal coronation did not take place until June 2 the following year. In case you are considering any ‘themed’ meals to celebrate the Jubilee, I thought some contemporary menus might help you to plan. I have already given the menu for the royal family dinner which took place at the end of what must have been an exhausting day, in a previous post. Today I am going to give you the menu for the first of the two official coronation banquets which took place on the following two days.

On June 3, 1953, about 240 lucky (wealthy, aristocratic, diplomatic and royal) personages sat down at the banquet tables in Buckingham Palace. The menu was:

Tortue Claire Sandringham.

(Clear Turtle Soup)

Delices de Soles Prince Charles

(Filet of Sole)

Carré d’Agneau à la Windsor

(Rack of Lamb)

Haricots Verts au Beurre

(Buttered String Beans)

Pommes Nouvelles

(New Potatoes)

Salade Royale, Asperges with Sauce

Bôite de Fraises Reine Elizabeth

Friandises Assortis.

The exact recipes for the dishes served at this banquet, I cannot give, as I have not found them published anywhere. They are classic dishes, however, almost certainly only tweaked and re-named for the occasion, and you will find them in any classic cookery book.

As the recipe for the day I give you a little something a little different – but still royal, and very summery. It is a wonderful raspberry fool from Mrs. McKee’s Royal Cookery Book, 1964, (by the former cook to H.M. the Queen and H.M. the Queen Mother.)

Raspberry Fool with Orange Curaçao.

2 lbs raspberries, fresh or frozen.

2 tablespoons orange curaçao.

¾ pint cream.

Sugar to taste.

Pistachio nuts.

If using frozen raspberries, defrost but do not add extra sugar.

Sieve the raspberries, add the sugar and orange curaçao. Whip the cream stiff and mix in with the raspberries. Put in individual glasses or fill tartlets. Decorate with pistachio nuts.

On Monday I will give you the menu for the second banquet.

Quotation for the Day.

A banquet is probably the most fatiguing thing in the world except ditchdigging. It is the insanest of all recreations. The inventor of it overlooked no detail that could furnish weariness, distress, harassment, and acute and long-sustained misery of mind and body.
Mark Twain