Wartime Children’s Meals (1918)

I had another story planned for today, but I find myself unable to leave the good Dr. Spriggs’ interesting wartime book, Food and How to Save It (1918) without one more extract. Yesterday we saw him quoted on the topic of “Feeding Schoolboys,” and gave a recipe from his book. Today I give you some of his thoughts on the preparation of children’s meals in the context of wartime food shortages and rationing. It is surprising – or perhaps not – how current many of his ideas are: breast is best, sugar need not be part of every meal, don’t stint on fat in the diet for growing children, plenty of fruit and veges are good, but snacking between meals is not, provide variety and encourage the eating of good wholesome food.

CHILDREN'S MEALS.

Children's Meals.-The feeding of babies does not offer any special difficulty in wartime, so long as milk can be had. Perhaps the danger of unwise feeding is as great as that of lack of food.  The only right food for an infant is its natural food. Any mother who can feed her baby and does not is using the food of others, and is not doing the best for her child. It is remarkable how seldom babies which are fed by their mothers are brought to doctors or hospitals. The reason is that, compared with other children, they seldom   get ill.  Cow's milk, even when diluted and modified according to the age of the baby, is inferior to human milk; but it is the only other suitable food. Hence the importance of keeping up the milk supply for the sake of infants and young children.

Children under 18 months should receive a pint and a half of milk a day, except, of course, while they are being fed by their mothers. From 18 months onward they should get a pint a day.  The main foods of children over five years old are milk, bread, porridge (of oatmeal, barley flour, or ground maize and oatmeal mixed), oatcake, puddings, eggs, butter or margarine, dripping, meat, bacon fat, fish, fresh vegetables and fruit.

The most likely foodstuff to be short is the fat, supplied in milk, butter, margarine, dripping, suet puddings and bacon; children should get a fair amount of some of these daily. Margarine should be given with bread in preference to syrup or jam.  Bacon should be fried with bread or potatoes to take up the fat, or a good deal of it will be left in the frying pan or the dish.

A little fruit, fruit juice or well-cooked fresh vegetables must be provided.

Three meals a day are enough for healthy children, with a slice of bread and butter and some milk at bedtime. Meat or fish should be given at the mid-day dinner only. Older children, living the more strenuous school life, may have fish, egg or bacon at breakfast also, but can do quite well without it if porridge, or oatcake, and milk is taken. Childrenought always to have a good breakfast. Breakfast and dinner should be their chief meals. The third meal, tea, should not be eaten until four hours after dinnertime, and should not include any meat or protein foods; sleep  is better if this meal, however plentiful, is quite plain. A convenient division of the bread is to give some at breakfast, but only after porridge or oatcake has been eaten, little at dinner, or none if there is a nourishing pudding and no soup, and most at tea. Sugar need not form part of every meal. Except for infants, it is not an absolutely necessary food, because we can and do make sugar in our bodies from the starch we eat.

Care must be taken to see that children eat slowly, chewing all food, whether soft or hard. Any decayed, loose or tender teeth must be put right. Every meal should end with a piece of crust, oatcake or a biscuit to cleanse the teeth and prevent decay. Children should drink at the end of their meal, after all the solid food is eaten, and, if they are thirsty, between meals. Before the age of five or six years no tea or coffee should be given. After that milk and water may be just flavoured at breakfast and tea. At dinner water only should be drunk, or water flavoured with fruit juices.

Children should be taught to eat all ordinary plain foods such as porridge, bread and butter, plain puddings, and peculiar tastes should be discouraged, though with reasonable tact and sympathy. If a child is to grow up healthy such simple foods must form the chief part of its diet, and it will learn to take them without difficulty if no others are offered at the same time. A child may be seriously handicapped when it is ill if it has not been brought up to eat, for example, milk pudding.

Nothing whatever should be eaten between meals.

Both at home and at school, the fare must be varied both as regards the food and the way it is cooked, so that the child cannot tell what is likely to be given on any one day. This uncertainty helps appetite, and good digestion waits on appetite. It is easy to forget in what a great number of ways plain foods may be served.   Variety needs care, but does not necessarily mean expense.

The following are some of the plain dishes from which choice may be made to get variety at the three meals of the day -

Breakfast: Porridge, milk, oatcake, bread, margarine, butter or dripping. One of the following dishes may be added: Eggs, boiled, poached, scrambled, fried, French, curried or scalloped; fish, grilled, fried, baked or boiled; fish cakes, scallops, potted herrings, sardines, bloater paste; occasionally sausage or bacon; nuts, fresh or dried fruits.

Dinner: Two courses, one of them being the chief protein dish of the day of meat or fish, or sometimes eggs, cheese or nut dishes, with potatoes and fresh vegetables, either cooked or as various salads; and the other course a pudding. Soup may be added or on certain days replace the meat course: in the latter case the soup should contain plenty of vegetables and be eaten with bread or dumplings.

Meats: Roast, baked, braised, stewed or boiled, stuffed, salted, minced, curried, potted, jellied; as pies or puddings, shepherd's pie, Irish stew,hot pot, rissoles; liver, minced, fried, stewed or curried; stuffed heart, oxtail.

Fish as mentioned under breakfast, also: boiled cod and egg or parsley sauce, fish pie with curried beans, fish cream with curried shrimps; stuffed haddock; tomatoes stuffed with shredded fish.

Dishes for dinners without meat or fish: Curried eggs, cheese on toast, macaroni cheese, cheese pie, curried nuts, chestnut stew, haricot beans and lentil dishes, pease pudding, savoury pies, vegetable pies, savoury omelettes.

Puddings: Rice, ground rice, flaked rice, semolina, tapioca, maize, cornflour, sago, farola, bread crust or bread and butter, suet, raisin, currant, ginger, spice, cabinet, college, castle, date, fig, roly with jam, treacle or syrup; fruit puddings, carrot and fruit puddings, pancakes, junket, blanc-mange, stewed fruits, roast apples, fritters.

Puddings and fritters usually, made with flour are excellent made with part or all barley flour or cornflour.

Soups: Meat, fish, gravy, Scotch broth, oatmeal, pea, lentil, haricot bean, rice, potato, mixed vegetable, leek, spinach, tomato, celery, carrot, turnip, parsnip.

Tea: Bread, oatcake, margarine, dripping toast, currant bread, potato scones, barley scones, rice cakes, gingerbread made with oatmeal, syrup, jam, sandwiches of cress, tomato, lettuce, radish; green and fruit salads; stewed fruit.

The amount of food eaten by children must be controlled but not unduly restricted. The rations are liberal for most children, but they are not intended to deprive any child of the food needed for proper growth. If bread can be made at home and barley meal or oatmeal are obtainable, the mixtures of these with national flour, described on pages 17 to 19 will give wholesome and nourishing bread.  Cereals will be used for puddings so far as they can be had and means allow.

In some schools the diet contained too much starchy food, such as bread, and in these an increase of the protein foods, such as fish and beans, will be an advantage. The amounts of food needed each week in schools of children mostly over thirteen years old will be similar to those given on pages 47 to 49.

The housekeeping for children both at school and at home calls in these days for much skill and a study of food values. Improvement in cooking and the rigid avoidance of waste can alone save a good deal.

The food should not be changed suddenly without making sure that the new diet is sufficient as compared with the old. There is a simple way of finding out whether children are getting enough, and that is by weighing them    once a month.  The average weight should increase slowly.

Everyone will agree that the greatest care must be taken to give our children the food they need, whoever else goes short. Upon them will lie the duty of holding what has been won by the blood of the brave. They must be fit, in body and mind, to make peace more glorious than war by the right use of our dear bought freedom.

The recipe for the day is, of course, from Dr Spriggs’ book. I give you another useful and potato recipe, for potatoes are ever and always an essential part of any hearty British meal!

Potato cheese.

Mash 1 lb. of boiled potatoes while hot, adding 2 tablespoonfuls of milk, 3 oz. of grated cheese, pepper and salt, and ½ oz. of cooking fat. Grease a pie dish with 4 oz. of cooking fat, and strew it thickly with breadcruinbs; fill with the potato and cheese, and bake for half an hour in a good oven. Turn out and serve very hot.

An excellent dish. Food value about 1,050 calories, with over an ounce of protein.

The Feeding of Schoolboys (1922)

There is an ongoing debate around the world as to the proper constituents of the mid-day meal at school – and who should provide this, and what is the place of legislation in their provision. It is a veritable battlefield for parents, school committees, nutritionists, and politicians – but none of the questions or issues are new. A letter to the Editor of The Times (of London) in January 17, 1922 referred specifically to boarding schools, and is most interesting.

Articles about the feeding of schoolboys are not uncommon in newspapers and other publications, but I don’t recollect ever seeing one on the feeding of schoolgirls. Which speaks volumes unrelated to nutrition, does it not?

Here is the piece from The Times:

THE FEEDING OF SCHOOLBOYS.

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A MATTER FOR EXPERTS.

Sir, - I should be glad if you would draw attention to a subject which I believe has not been sufficiently studied – the feeding of schoolboys. Active, growing boys, the surface of whose bodes is large compared to their weight, need careful and abundant feeding, and before the powers of the human machine can be rightly educated or drawn out, attention must be paid to whatever is put in.

In “Food and How to Save It,” written by Dr. Spriggs in wartime, he says that he amounts of food needed each week in schools for children over 13 years of age will be similar to those needed for grown-up people lightly occupied. Here is an example of one day’s dietary, scientifically and economically arranged by him: - Breakfast – one egg, bread and butter, marmalade, coffee, milk; dinner – meat, vegetables, bread, milk; tea- bread, oatcake, butter, jam, tea, milk; supper – bread, fish, butter, cheese, stewed fruit.

In the face of this it is disconcerting to know that there are houses at our public schools where nothing but bread and butter is served to the boys after their mid-day dinner. The boy whose parents provide him with the money remedies this state of things for himself. But from observations made in the “tuck shops” at Harrow and Eton, his choice is no wiser than his house-master’s and what I wish to suggest is that the choice should lie with neither of them, but should be determined by experts.

Some years ago the schoolboy’s need of sleep was made the subject of fruitful controversy. If you think his diet should be improved also, I shall be glad if you will find room for this letter.

Yours faithfully,

C.M. Mathieson.

I have found a copy of Dr. Spriggs’ book Food and How to Save It (1918) which was mentioned in the article above, so am delighted to be able to offer you something from it which would be entirely suitable for filling the void in the hungry schoolboys in your life – although they might want a large amount of ketchup to aid their ingestion:

Potato Sanders.

Take 1 lb. of boiled potatoes, and while hot work into them, by mashing, 3 oz. of flour to make a stiff paste. Roll this out and cut in six squares. Soak 2 oz. of breadcrumbs in a little water, squeeze them dry and make a forcemeat with half an onion, which has been soaked in boiling water, ½ oz. of chopped parsley or herbs, and a little nutmeg. Add seasoning. Put some of the forcemeat into each square of potato paste, and roll like a sausage roll. Bake in a hot oven for 20 minutes. The batch gives about 770 calories.

Fresh Canned Coconut, Southern-Style.

The American Food Journal was first published in 1906, as “The National Magazine of the Food Field.” In 1928 I was merged with the Home Economist, which unfortunately ceased publication at the end of that year.

Home economics teachers were amongst the target audience of the journal, and in Volume 21, published in December, 1926, they received a special offer from one of the advertisers, which I give in detail below. I have no idea if Southern-Style Canned Coconut is still available, nor what distinguishes Southern-style from that of the North, East, or West, but I do love coconut in all its forms (bar the cheap and nasty versions of dessicated coconut which is often dry, gritty, powdery, and too sweet) so I am sure, had I been a Home Ec. teacher at the time, I would have taken advantage of the offer and to hell with any Conflict of Interest. The advertisement is also interesting today as an example of politically incorrect racist stereotyping. Here it is:

Leading cookery editors and Experts are enthusiastic over this

New Fresh-canned Coconut.

Since the discovery of this new way of packing coconut in tins, leading cookery editors and experts say that they make a dozen coconut dishes now to every one they made before. Baker's Canned Coconut, Southern-Style, is no more like the old-fashioned, dried kind than choice canned fruits are like dried fruits. It is fresh coconut, shredded ready for use and sealed in tins. It gives you the rich flavor, the delicate tenderness of fresh coconut just as it comes from the shell.

Try these new recipes by two of America's leading cookery editors. Made with Baker's Canned Coconut, they will give you an entirely new idea of how good coconut can be.

Let the family enjoy all their favorite coconut dishes often - for coconut, put up this way with all its tenderness and with all its valuable vitamins and proteins, is one of the most nourishing and digestible of food

A Free Supply for Class Work.

We want you, as home economics teacher, to see for yourself how marvelously better this new fresh-canned coconut makes cakes, pies, puddings – all the popular coconut dishes. And so, if you will fill out the coupon below and mail it to us, we will be glad to supply you with enough Southern-style for a class lesson.

A Cake Recipe an Old Southern Mammy gave us.

MISS ALICE BLINN, Associate Editor of The Delineator, especially recommends this unusual cake recipe.

COCONUT LAYER CAKE: Use any favorite layer cake recipe. Put the layers together with this coconut cream filling and cover first with the filling and then with the coconut.

Coconut Cream Filling: ⅞ cup sugar, ½ cup flour, ⅛ teaspoon salt, 2 cups scalded milk, ¾ cup Baker's Canned Coconut, Southern-Style, 1 teaspoon vanilla, yolks 2 eggs. Mix the sugar, flour and salt, add the yolks of eggs slightly beaten, and add this mixture gradually to the scalded milk. Cook the mixture for 15 minutes in a double boiler, stirring it constantly until it is thickened and after that stirring it occasionally. Cool the mixture, add the coconut and flavor it with the vanilla. The filling is then ready to spread on cake.

The old familiar kind, too.

The old fashioned shredded kind, sugar-cured, made from the meat of the same fine coconuts as Southern-Style. Bakers Old Fashioned Shred Coconut is more daintily and finely cut, more carefully prepared than any dry shredded coconut you have used before, and packed in a double-wrapped stay-fresh package.

These tarts are especially delicious made with fresh-canned coconut.

MISS MARIE SELLERS, Home Economics Editor and Director of Home Bureau of Pictorial Review, says you will like these tarts.

SUNSHINE TARTS. Hot Water Pie Crust: Cream ⅓ cup shortening with ¼ cup boiling water. Cut in 1 cup sifted flour and ¼ teaspoon salt. Roll thin. Perforate well with silver fork. Bake. Above pie crust makes 6 tarts.

Tart Filling: Stir a rounded tablespoon cornstarch with cold water to a smooth consistency: pour on 1 cup boiling water and stir till the whole is boiling. Add ½ cup sugar and cook in double boiler 15 minutes, Beat 2 egg yolks to which add gradually ½ cup sugar, ¼ teaspoon salt, and stir into the hot mixture. Cook until mixture is light and puffy. Beat in 1 teaspoon butter, juice of 1 lemon, and 1 cup Baker’s Canned Coconut, Southern-Style. Fill pastry cases shortly before serving. Cover with meringue, brown, and sprinkle with Baker’s Canned Coconut.

An American Response to Dinner in Japan in 1888.

I have one of my favourite things to share with you today – a traveller’s food tale from the past. The story comes from The Washington Post of 25^th November, 1888:

A JAPANESE DINNER

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The Menu Something Astonishing to a Hungry American

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TROUBLE IN GETTING A “SQUARE MEAL”

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How the Table is Served – No Knives, Forks or Spoons, but Pine Sticks and

Toothpicks – Items on the Bill of Fare.

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[The following description of a Japanese dinner is from a recent letter published in the Baldurnsville (N.Y.) Gazette and written by Mr. Otis Bigelow, a well-known Washingtonian, who is making a journey through the Orient. Mr. Bigelow is now in China, and will soon be heard from direct through the columns of THE POST.]

A Japanese table is a bright colored tray about a foot square, with the corners cut off and an edge all around to hold the little dishes, and has legs to raise it about six inches high. Let us imagine a hearty American farmer, accustomed to what he would all a good square meal, seated on the floor of his room, on newly arriving, and hungry for dinner. (This is, of course, in a first-class, purely Japanese hotel.) There being no bell, he properly claps his hands. Away in the distance, or if he occupies the second floor, down stairs he hears “Hay!” (spelled hai) and presently a little maid appears before him sitting on her knees bowing low and then sitting mute and upright. He motions to his mouth and empty stomach and says, “Dinner.” “Hay” says the little maid, but she means yes, and is gone. In a few minutes he sees a beautiful tableau.

Two maids are approaching, dressed in the same authordox fashion, except in the color of their sash, or obi, and one may have a flower sitting upright in her hair and the other a brilliant hairpin instead. The first holds a tray, or table, before her filled with dishes in her outstretched hands. The second clasps with her bare arm a large round lacquered covered box with her right hand on the cover. Both have the same attitude, with their faced inclined toward the guest; their knees bend with the same angle and their skirts cling to their peculiar forms in the same way; both go with a mincing gait with bare toes turned in. The first plants her table before him; the second places her box a little further off. Both sit on their upturned feet and simultaneously bow to the floor.

The tray contains a porcelain bowl, like a coffee cup, with a saucer-like over fitting inside, and is empty; a thin wooden bowl, lacquered, with also a cover of the same, a has soup, made, perhaps, of moss; another bowl, without cover, contains a piece of squid, or cuttle fish, with a thin liquid-like soup; the other dishes are little plates in several sizes, the largest having on it a mat made of smooth sticks of smooth sticks of glass with four or five brilliant colored threads woven through it. It is five inches square and very pretty. On it is a nice, fresh slice of raw fish covered with ice. On the smaller plates are, first, one with three slices of a large green apple; the next has three slices of purple egg plant; the next has three slices of yellow ripe cucumber salted. These slices are neatly placed. Then a larger plate has four brook trout, in a mat form with two or three little sticks thrust through to hold them together. They look nicely roasted. The last plat is a tiny one and is filled with sugar. On the top of a little white mound are three preserved red plums, so nice, red and juicy they make one’s mouth water.

Our farmer opens the empty bowl, and, seeing no bread, hands it out. The maids, after bowing, sit like the images of Amida Buddha in the attitude of contemplation and perfect silence. The maid with the box uncovers it and, taking the empty bowl, places it upon a little tray, fills it with the plain boiled rice her box contains, with a wooden paddle. There are no knives, forks, or spoons to be seen, but one of the maids points to a long envelope, decorated in colors, in a little pocket of which on one side are two toothpicks and inside are two fresh pine sticks, eight inches long by one quarter of an inch thick, a little tapering. If our farmer had been in the kitchen when his table was filled he would have seen a dozen or twenty just like it, and every one arranged in the same way. No American housewife could survey her large table, well filled for her guests, with greater satisfaction than the Japanese does hers.

Let us watch our guest at his meal. He pulls out the chop sticks and tries to hold them between his middle fingers:  maid gently places them properly in his hand and he endeavours to eat some of the rice. The sticks go sideways and slip apart, and he spills the rice, and the girls begin to smile out of the corners of their eyes. Then he tries the soup and fishes out some long slippery substance that falls back again, and the girls begin to show their extremely pretty teeth. Then he lifts the bowl of squid and says, “They have given me devil fish, which I pass.” Then he tries a brook trout. “Surely, this looks natural, only they did not take the insides out.” He takes a bit. “Goodness! What is this cooked in?” The maids don’t understand, but say at a venture, “Shoya,” and titter. “Shoya!” repeats the farmer; “I want no more of it.” He then tries several other dishes and then in an agony of despair says, “By George! It is all shoya! I wish they could show me something better.” He takes a mouthful of dry, unsalted boiled rice with his fingers, and the girls laugh. Shoya is the universal Japanese sauce. It takes the place of salt and pepper with us. They do not use salt in any other form, except to cleanse their teeth and mouths. Nearly everything is cooked with shoya, except rice which is boiled plain and is eaten in the place of bread. I visited a house where they made shoya. I think the process is described in a former letter. It consists of one-third each of wheat and beans fermented. A little more than one-third of salt is added and after lying in a tank three years is pressed out for sale.

The plums now catch his eye, and with great effort he spears one with a chop stick, rolls it in the sugar, and prepares for something good at last. Oh! what a face! His mouth twists, tears come in his eyes. The mixture is of intense acid plum flavor, pucker, and salt and sugar. He cannot express his feelings forcibly enough. The maid of the tray flies from the room half scared and bursting with laugher, The maid of the rice box is as well disciplined as “the boy who stood on the burning deck,” she dares not leave until her task of filling the little rice bowl with a addle is done. Besides she had previously served this “foreign barbarian” with tea on his arrival, after pulling off his shoes, and had seen him empty the little tea-pot twenty times while he ate up all the rice four candy with no flavor in it. Our farmer at last consoles himself with a piece of stale and moldy bread he had in his pocket and says, “After all, though I am starving and cannot eat Japanese food, these little maids make this a very charming country.”

When I read these stories, I always wish I had the view of the reverse tourist. Sadly, my lack of language skills prevents me from reading and sharing the opinions of early Japanese visitors to the West. If you have some such information, I would love to hear it, please!

The recipe for the day, inspired by this story, comes from the Chinese-Japanese Cook Book by Sara Bosse And Onoto Watanna [pseud.] published in Chicago in about 1914. Perhaps this dish would have pleased the Big American Farmer of the late nineteenth century?

USAGI AMAI-SUI

(Hare, Sweet and Sour)

One good-sized rabbit or hare; one cupful of vinegar; one cupful of syou sauce; one tablespoonful of salt; three tablespoonfuls of sugar; one half cupful of mirin sauce; one tablespoonful of mixed spices; one half pound of fat fresh pork; one dozen red plums; one small lime or lemon.

Take a small hare or large rabbit that has been hanging for at least two days, and after it has been skinned, and the insides removed, wash well in cold water. Cut in quarters and put in a deep dish, covering it well with the vinegar, sugar, salt, and so on, mixed with water. Add the spices also, and a quarter of a cupful of mirin sauce. Cover up well, and let it pickle in a cool place for two or three days; then remove it from the liquid and cut in small pieces. Have ready the fat pork cut in small pieces, and fry. Toss in the hare, and brown. Now have ready a covered China cook dish or casserole, and place in it the hare and pork, adding the syou sauce, a pinch of salt, pinch of the spices, and the quarter cupful of mirin sauce. Cover up tightly, and cook in a slow oven for one hour. Then prepare a dozen large red plums, removing the stones, and add them. Dissolve one teaspoonful of Kanton (Japanese gelatine) and mix with the gravy, taking care not to break the plums. Cook for another five minutes, then place on a hot platter, decorated with slices of lemon or limes, with a plum placed on top of each slice. This is good served either with white-bean cakes or rice.

Carrot Bread, not Carrot Cake.

In the mid-nineteenth century Europe wheat prices were very high, and there was a great deal of interest in substitutes that could be used to make bread – bread for the poor, that is, the scanty expensive amounts of good white flour not being a problem for the wealthy of course.

Cooks and agriculturalists alike experimented with starchy root vegetables in the making of bread during “this time of dearth,” and their results appeared in a variety of publications. I have given recipes for breads made with various roots and tubers in the past (see the links at the end of this post) but I have not so far given you Carrot Bread – by which I do not mean Carrot Cake!

Carrot Bread.

The Belgian Carrot mixed with flour makes capital bread, as does the red carrot; but the colour is somewhat against the latter, although the bread is superior to that made with the white Carrot, being pleasanter in flavour, moister, yet firmer. Instead of equal quantities of Carrots and flour, only one fourth of the former is used, a half being found to render the loaf too close in texture. A peck of flour by itself yields three good-sized loaves, but mixed with 7 lbs. of Carrots produces four, and of excellent quality. As regards the preparation, I followed the instructions in the Chronicle to the letter. Carrots grown on sandy soil are better than those from clayey land, as, when well boiled, you may pass a fork with the greatest ease through the former, but those from clay are hard at the heart, therefore much more difficulty is found in breaking them up. They should be mixed with the flour while war – a point, as I understand, of considerable importance. In beating the Carrots up, use a wooden bowl and spoon, the wood affording hold which other vessels do not. – F. Nash, Ludlow, Feb. 2 – [The bread was “good,” but it tasted too much of Carrot for a fastidious palate.] – Gardeners’ Chronicle.

              Hood's Magazine and Comic Miscellany, (1846) by Thomas Hood.

Wheat was also in short supply during the two world wars, but for a different reason – ships usually used for transport of the grain were required for military use, and it became a patriotic duty to reduce home consumption. I gave a WWI recipe for a milk-enriched carrot bread in a previous post, but I include it again here, by way of comparison.

Carrot Bread.

1 cup sweet milk

1 ¼ teaspoons salt

½ tablespoon fat

¼ cake yeast

1 cup hot mashed carrots

About 3 cups white flour.

No sweetening is needed because of the sugar in the carrots.

A cup of mashed carrots may be added to any of the dark breads.

A book of original receipts, by Kathryn Romig McMurray... A practical guide to economical cooking, emphasizing the conservation of time, money and foods--especially wheat, meat, sugars and fats (Lincoln, Ill., The Star Publishing Co., c1917.)

Previous recipes for bread made with vegetables can be found at the following links:

Beetroot bread

Parsnip bread

Sweet potato bread

Potato bread

Turnip Bread

Dinner in the Lunatic Asylum in 1873.

The New York Times of the 9^th of November 1873 published the following very brief glimpse into the grim life of the severely mentally ill in the final decades off the nineteenth century.

Ward’s Island is part of the borough of Manhattan. It was once separated from nearby Randall’s Island, but the channel separating them was filled in in the mid-twentieth century. The original lunatic asylum opened in 1863, and the island is still the location of treatment services for the mentally ill, although it is now more kindly called the Manhattan Psychiatric Center.

Ward’s Island Bill of Fare.

The following is the official bill of fare just adopted by the Commissioners

of Charity for the dinners at Ward’s Island Lunatic Asylum.

Sunday – Roast beef, potatoes, pudding.

Monday – Irish stew.

Tuesday – Soup, boiled or roast mutton, potatoes.

Wednesday – Irish stew, pudding.

Thursday – Roast beef, potatoes.

Friday – Boiled cod-fish, potatoes.

Saturday – Soup, boiled beef, potatoes.

Bread with every meal.

If there was any decision made by the Commissioners as to the quality of the ingredients or the quantity served to the inmates, then it was not noted in the newspaper. Sadly, it is likely that both quantity and quality of the food was poor. I assume that the breakfast and supper were along the lines of gruel or bread, and were the same every day – but perhaps shall check that out and let you know in another post.

The recipe for the day comes from A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes, (1852) by a man who was, for a brief period, chef to Queen Victoria - Charles Elmé Francatelli.

No. 1. BOILED BEEF.

This is an economical dinner, especially where there are many mouths to feed. Buy a few pounds of either salt brisket, thick or thin flank, or buttock of beef; these pieces are always to be had at a low rate. Let us suppose you have bought a piece of salt beef for a Sunday's dinner, weighing about five pounds, at 6 ½ d. per pound, that would come to 2s. 8 1/2 d, two pounds of common flour, 4d., to be made into suet pudding or dumplings, and say 8 ½ d. for cabbages, parsnips, and potatoes; altogether 3s. 9d. This would produce a substantial dinner for ten persons in family, and would, moreover, as children do not require much meat when they have pudding, admit of there being enough left to help out the next day's dinner, with potatoes.

No. 2. HOW TO BOIL BEEF.

Put the beef into your three or four gallon pot, three parts filled with cold water, and set it on the fire to boil; remove all the scum that rises to the surface, and then let it boil gently on the hob; when the meat has boiled an hour and is about half done, add the parsnips in a net, and at the end of another half hour put in the cabbages, also in a net. A piece of beef weighing five or six pounds will require about two hours' gentle boiling to cook it thoroughly. The dumplings may, of course, be boiled with the beef, etc. I may here observe that the dumplings and vegetables, with a small quantity of the meat, would be all-sufficient for the children's meal.

A Green and White Luncheon for a Bride, 1910.

One of my little pleasures in food history is finding an interesting ‘themed’ menu. There is no shortage of examples, and I have featured a number of them here over the years: meals based on a particular ingredient and meals inspired by a historical period or a specific historical event or a celebrity have appeared on a number of occasions, as have some of the rather bizarre ‘Freak Dinners’ held by the over-wealthy and under-employed of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

One popular theme is that of a meal inspired by a particular colour, such as the Pink Tea on the Bottom of the Sea which was the topic of a post last year. These colour-themed meals were popular amongst the ladies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, particularly for ladies’ lunches and other girlie events. I have one of these for you today – a lovely luncheon for the bride-to-be, at which I suspect the rather risqué elements of the modern bridal ‘shower’ were entirely missing.

From The Washington Post of June 5, 1910:-

Flowers and Simple Menus for Attractive Luncheons

A green and white luncheon is very appropriate for a bride, and both the decorations and menu may be carried out with the same effect. There are many kinds of flowers one could use for this decoration. The calla lily is stately and pure looking, and the bride roses are most appropriate and graceful as well. Still, to one of moderate means these flowers for decoration mean quite an expenditure, so, if one is artistically inclined and willing to go to some trouble, the beautiful field daisy can be gathered in large quantities and most effectively used for this purpose. Girls are so willing and ready to help at such times that by calling a number together long daisy chains may be made that, when tied to the chandelier with a large bow of white ribbon and drawn down to the four corners of the table, a suggestion of summer and the sunshine of happiness is given. Small pictures of the bride may be used for place cards, with white linen frames embroidered in daisies. Bank the mantel with daisies and moss, and use the daisy chain over the doors. The menu for this luncheon may be arranged as follows:

White cherries served in mint.

Cream of clam broth.

Crab croquettes, green peas.

Fried chicken, a la Maryland.

Rice balls, scallop potatoes and parsley.

Hot biscuit.

Nasturtium salad.        Wafers.

Pistachio ice cream      Angel food.

Crème de menthe.

In making the clam both do not thicken it, but make of all cream, if possible, cooking the clams in another kettle until tender. Add a few bits of parsley before serving. The crab croquettes should be molded into pyramids, and a tablespoon of green peas with cream sauce placed on the same plate. Fried chicken a la Maryland is a dish most housekeepers have long since learned to cook and boast about. The nasturtium salad is one of the daintiest that can be made; tender, pale green lettuce leaves are first put in the dish with a few of the nasturtium leaves, the bud and the seed of the nasturtium are mixed with pecan meat and a few chopped plain olives. French dressing is the best seasoning for this salad. At the last moment before serving place a few of the petals of the blossoms on the salad and plate, trying to have it appear as if they dropped there, carelessly. In carrying out the green and white idea, the pistachio ice cream is very delicate, and may be ordered in different kinds of molds, corresponding to the decoration, such as calla lily, daisies, pond lilies, &c. Should forms of hearts or darts and arrows be preferred, these too are in keeping with such an occasion. The angel food can be iced with green, and cut in the shapes of hearts, diamonds, &c. Dainty flowers for such an occasion are the lilies of the valley, for they can be gathered in great quantities at this season of the year.

I have another, quite different version (actually several versions) of the salad for you today too:-

Nasturtium Salad.

To make such a salad, take as many of the fresh blossoms as will line and border a low, roomy salad bowl, choosing a cut glass receptacle if possible. Arrange the leaves around the outer edge, with the blossoms alternating with and leaning against them. Throw a few more leaves and flowers into the bottom of the bowl, heap with chopped celery, cold beans, potatoes, peas, or other green vegetables, and pour mayonnaise dressing over all. When serving, see that each person receives several each of the leaves and flowers. Meat salads are equally good treated in the same way; nuts take very kindly to the nasturtium flavor and become more easily digestible, and water-cresses, chives, radishes, or even plain shredded lettuce gain much from the addition of the pretty yellow flowers. An entire salad may be made of them, if liked, the pungent beauties being merely heaped in the salad bowl and treated to a lavish dressing of mayonnaise, or well-mixed oil and vinegar, but the addition of some mild-flavored salad stuff is preferred by most people, excepting in very hot weather. At such ties the biting taste of the nasturtium is better than cayenne or chutney as a toning agent for the jaded digestion.

Another way of serving the nasturtium salad, and the prettiest of all perhaps, is to toss a few blossoms on each plate, add a large leaf or two, and pass the dressing around. Or again, the pretty flowers are exquisitely artistic and lovely when embodied in a jellied mayonnaise. Make the mayonnaise as usual, adding sufficient dissolved gelatin or cornstarch to make it set, and when it is congealing, whip lightly in the freshly plucked and washed flowers and leaves. When turned out of a prettily-shaped mould upon a dainty dish, surrounded by a border of the flowers themselves, and served delicately this dish is certain of appreciation. The mayonnaise may be colored a light green, if liked, with pistachio coloring, and the effect is enhanced greatly, but the clear amber of the natural jelly is also very artistic and lovely.

Monmouth Evening Gazette (Illinois), October 18, 1898.

P.S. In a previous post (here) I gave you Nasturtium vinegar and Nasturtium Pickle

A ‘Hitler’ menu in Brisbane in 1937.

I found the following fascinating article in the Brisbane newspaper The Courier Mail of 25 October, 1937, and could not wait to share it with you.

HITLER MENU

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One-Course Dinner at Turn-Verein.

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TO ASSIST THE NEEDY.

The novel but practical German method of raising money for winter relief by sacrificing lavish meals for a plain one-course dinner was introduced to Brisbane yesterday at the Deutscher Turn-Verein.

More than 100 German residents turned up to inaugurate the plan, which is now compulsory on certain days in Germany, where the savings from what would have been more diversified meals are diverted to relief funds.

A gold printed sign, superimposed upon which was a portrait of Herr Hitler, contained the following quotation from one of the Fuehrer’s speeches : ”Keiner soll hunger: keener soll frieren,” which means , “Nobody shall go hungry; nobody shall freeze.”

The gathering sat down to their “eintopf-Gericht,” a kind of Irish stew, which, with coffee, comprised the meal for which 1/- was charged. The profits from this meal, which is to be held at the club one Sunday in every month for the next five months, will go to a fund for the relief of German residents in Australia who are out of work or who are otherwise in need of assistance.

The ingredients of the stew comprised a whole sheep, two small bags of potatoes, 24 bundles of turnips and 12 bundles of carrots. It was cooked in a giant cauldron.

Addressing the gathering, Mr.Max Jahn, The Brisbane representative of the Consulate-General for Germany, said they were experiencing something with had been adopted so successfully for the relief of needy and unemployed people in Germany during the last four years. During the time Hitler had been in power, a sum equivalent to £140,000,000 in foodstuffs and coal, etc had been distributed to people in want. If such a sum were distributed in Queensland, more than £140 would have been paid to each person in the State. In the case of parents and three children, the contribution would have been equal to £700.

As the recipe for the day inspired by the topic of the day, I give you a fine mutton stew from German National Cookery for English Kitchens (1873.)

“Gedämpftes Hammelcare” – Loin of Mutton Stewed.

A piece of loin of mutton must have the back-bone chopped away without mangling the meat. Trim off the superfluous fat. Make a little butter hot in a stew-pan, and lay the meat in it, the bone side uppermost. When browned, turn it up, and add half a pint of water, an onion, a couple of bay leaves, a small bunch of sweet herbs, three or four cloves,  any approved vegetable for flavor, salt and pepper. Cover close and let it stew slowly. As the gravy wastes, add a little more water. When done, strain the gravy; take the fat off, add some rich browning, and serve quite hot.

Emmer and Spelt; 1835-1940.

Emmer (Triticum dicoccum) and spelt (Triticum spelta) are both ancient (or ‘heirloom,’ if you prefer) ancestors or relatives of common wheat (Triticum aestivum) that are currently in the spotlight again for their supposed advantages (or simply differences, if you prefer) over the modern form of the grain. Most general readers could be forgiven for thinking that they have relatively recently been rediscovered. The truth is, that in some regions of the world, they never lost their importance.

Spelt was certainly being grown in the USA, in Virginia, in the first decades of the nineteenth century, as a short piece in the New England Farmer, in 1835 shows:

Spelt (Triticum spelta.)

This grain is much used for bread, in Germany, and is the frumentacious tribute which the ancient Romans exacted from the People of the Country, while it formed a part of the Roman Empire. It is considerably cultivated by the German Farmers in Pennslvania. Its product is about the same as that of wheat, but the flour made from it is of a yellower color; and therefore not so valuable in the market, though perhaps equally good for common family use. The grain is to be boiled before grinding; and, as the skin of it is very thin, it is very productive in flour. … It is usually sown in Pennsylvania about the 20^th of September….

A much longer article on the cultivation of spelt appeared in the Commissioner of Patents Annual Report in 1848; the following is a brief extract:

Spelt.—Dinkel or spelt, as the Germans call this kind of wheat, has been more extensively planted at earlier periods in Germany, than at present; it is one of the oldest kinds of grain which seems to have been known to the Egyptians. It is principally cultivated on the upper Rhine, in Franconia, Wurtemberg, Baden and Switzerland: there are two kinds used, one with a smooth kernel, the other a rough one; the ears like the wheat, have beard or are without it. Schwertz thinks, that wheat or spelt, without a beard, when sown upon a poor field badly prepared, have ears with beard, and vice versa. The red spelt is considered the best kind.

……. The flour from spelt is considered finer and whiter than that from wheat, and it is used by confectioners; it goes further in cooking than wheat flour, but bread from spelt flour is of a rather drier nature than wheat bread.

Our old friend Alexis Soyer provides an opinion (apparently from Auguste Parmentier) on the origin of spelt in his book The Pantropheon: Or, History of Food and Its Preparation: from the Earliest Ages of the World, (1853)

The botanist Michaux has discovered in Persia, on a mountain four days' journey from Hamadan, the place where wheat (a species known as spelt, from the Latin spelta) is indigenous to the soil, from which we may presume that wheat has its origin in that country, or some part of Asia not far from Persia. This grain was more cultivated formerly than it is now; nevertheless, it is still gathered in Italy, Switzerland, Alsace, in the Limousin and in Picardy, to make bread, with spelt, a greater quantity of leaven, and, above all, a little salt. This bread is white, light, savoury, and keeps moist for several days.—Parmentier.

By 1940, the United States Department of Agriculture, in Farmers’ Bulletin No. 1429, summarized the current status of both emmer and spelt in the country, and noted that both were primarily used for animal fodder at that time:

Emmer was introduced into this country from Russia over 50 years ago … The States leading in the production of emmer are South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Colorado. About 344,000 acres of emmer and spelt (mostly emmer) were grown in 1929.

… Nearly all of the emmer and spelt grown in the United States is fed to livestock.

… In Europe, emmer and spelt are often used in making food products. Sometimes they are dehulled and ground into a meal which is cooked for porridge. Some emmer is being milled into an uncooked breakfast food in this country. In Germany spelt is sometimes harvested before it is ripe, and the dried immature kernels, called grünkorn, are used in sous, porridge, etc.

Flour from emmer and spelt produces an undesirable, dark, heavy bread; when flour is made, it is used mostly in mixtures with wheat flour.  These crops are not suitable for the manufacture of bread-making flour in this country.

Historical recipes for emmer and wheat are not present in large numbers in old cookery books, but I do have one for you today, from Ancient Rome. It appears in De Agricultura (On Farming or On Agriculture), written by Cato the Elder in about 160  BCE, and is for a type of porridge made from ‘groats’ that likely refers to emmer. The following recipe is from the Loeb Classical Library edition of the work, published in 1934, the English translation being by W. D. Hooper and H. B. Ash.

Pultem Punicam sic coquito. Libram alicae in aquam indito, facito uti bene madeat. Id infundito in alveum purum, eo casei recentis P. III, mellis P. S, ovum unum, omnia una permisceto bene. Ita insipito in aulam nova.

Recipe for Punic porridge: Soak a pound of groats in water until it is quite soft. Pour it into a clean bowl, add 3 pounds of fresh cheese [ricotta], ½ pound of honey, and 1 egg, and mix the whole thoroughly; turn into a new pot.