Water of Life.

I wind up my time here in Dublin with some ‘Irish’ recipes – by which I mean those named ‘Irish’ by cookbook writers of the past. They may or may not be authentically Irish – but what does that mean anyway? A griddle cake made from potatoes may be called boxty in Ireland (as was discussed in yesterday’s post), but there are potato cakes of some form or another wherever there are potatoes, so perhaps after all it is only the name that is authentically Irish.

It seems that the Irish may have invented whisky, although we will never know for sure, as the art of distillation is very ancient. It does seem however that we must certainly give them credit for the name. The word ‘whisky’ apparently derives from the Irish Gaelic ‘Uisge Beatha’, which translates as ‘water of life’ – or aqua vitae, or eau de vie, if you like. Strong ‘waters’, or ‘cordials’ were popular once upon a time for their perceived medicinal value. Here is a recipe, purporting to be Irish, for Water of Life.

Prime Irish Usquebaugh.
Put into a large glass or stone bottle three pints of brandy: half an ounce each of saffron, liquorice, jujubes, and raisins of the sun; and a quarter of an ounce each of coriander seeds and cinnamon. Then melt a pound and a half of sugar in a pint of water, put it to the rest, and let the whole infuse three weeks; after which time, pour off the clear liquor. This is an excellent cordial, and much esteemed by the Parisians, to whom it was originally introduced by a celebrated general officer in the Irish brigade.
A Modern System of Domestic Cookery, M. Radcliffe, 1839

What else is intrinsically Irish? ‘Irish Stew’ seems to be a relatively modern phrase, and the dish is, after all, merely one version of pot au feu, or a hot pot, or some other nation’s one-pot dinner. Perhaps it is Irish because it contains sheep and potatoes, two ingredients strongly identified with Ireland? I have never been clear on the quintessential difference between Irish Stew and Lancashire Hot Pot (also usually mutton and potatoes), and suspect there is none. There are an infinite number of interpretations of ‘Irish Stew’, and we have had several in previous posts (here, here, and here), so I will forbear from giving you another one today.


The beverage and main courses being settled, here are the ‘Irish’ dessert options for you.

Irish Cream Cheese
Take a quart of very thick cream, and stir well into it two spoonfuls of salt. Double a napkin in two, and lay it in a punchbowl. Pour the cream into it; turn the four corners over the cream, and let it stand for two days. Put it into a dry cloth within a little wooden cheese vat; turn it into dry cloths twice a day until it is quite dry, and it will be fit to eat in a few days. Keep it in clean cloths in a cool place.
The Lady’s Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner Table Directory, Lady Charlotte Campbell Bury, 1844.

Irish Pancakes.
Beat eight yolks and four whites of eggs, strain them into a pint of cream, sweeten with sugar, and add a grated nutmeg. Stir three ounces of butter over the fire,, and as it melts pour it to the cream, which should be warm when the eggs are put to it. Mix it smooth with nearly half a pint of flour; and fry the pancakes very thin the first with a bit of butter but not the others. Serve up several at a time one upon another.
The cook and housekeeper's complete and universal dictionary, Mary Eaton, 1822


Quotation for the Day.

Uisce Beatha: an Irish or Erse word for the Water of Life. It is a compounded and distilled spirit, being drawn on aromaticks, and the Irish sort is particularly distinguished for its pleasant and mild flavor. In Scotland it is somewhat hotter, and by corruption in Scottish they call it Whisky.
Dr Samuel Johnson, in his Dictionary of 1750.

Boxty.

I had the opportunity to sample three different forms of ‘boxty’ (or boxtie) in Dublin last night. Foolishly, I had ordered Irish Stew to follow. Boxty is an Irish potato cake, and there are numerous regional variations – boiled, baked, fried, and with (or without) various additional ingredients. My sample platter at Gallagher’s Boxty House was listed as an appetiser and was a modern version of the concept as it was served with two sauces for dipping – blue cheese and honey-whisky.

Boxty is perfectly explained in an edition of The Dublin University Magazine of 1854.

"In the formation of potato starch the fibrous portion of the tuber, when separated and squeezed from the watery part, was mixed with coarse flour or oatmeal, and by the addition of a little kitchen stuff [i.e fat rendered from meat]or butter formed into a cake popularly known in the vest as boxtie, and in the south denominated “buck bread”, “Scotchy”, or “stampy”. This was so much admired, that the children in country parts used to make a grater out of the side of an old tin can, by punching it with an awl in order to rasp lumpers for a feast of boxtie. If we have reserved to the last, the potato-cake, made by bruising with the bottom of a tin porringer, two cold well-boiled potatoes, and mixing therewith a pound of the finest flour, the yolk of a fresh egg, a print of butter, and a sup of new-milk, the whole being well kneaded then pounded with a rolling pin, made into a cake five eighths of an inch thick, cut into squares and diamonds, baked on a griddle, and when properly browned and mottled, each piece torn asunder like a muffin, and a bit of butter slipt in to melt in the interior, and then eaten at tea or breakfast but particularly at the former, it is because it was the most widely disseminated, and universally admired form of potato-eating known to all tea-drinkers and cup-tossers from Cape Clear to the Causeway."

So then, boxty can be a griddle cake (or scone), a fried potatoe cake, a type of boiled (or baked) potato ‘pudding’ (for want of a better word), or something nearer a pancake. It can be made with grated raw potato or mashed up cooked potato. It can be sole food or soul food or far too solid an appetiser.


And, as an added bonus for our consideration, in the short description given above, we have two interesting word usages – ‘lumper’, for potato, and ‘a print’ of butter, meaning a single moulded block.


Quotation for the Day.


Boxty on the griddle
Boxty in the pan
If you don't eat boxty
You'll never get your man.
Traditional Song.

Two Excuses to Celebrate.

Today is the third birthday of The Old Foodie. How Amazing. It started off as a little experiment for fun, and here we all are, 863 posts later. Who’da Thought It?

A few people around the world will chose to celebrate Halloween instead of the TOF’s birthday of course, for tonight is also the e’en (evening) of All Hallows (All Saints) Day.

The modern customs of Hallowe’en are the result of clever commercial manipulation of traditions that have their roots in the the ancient Celtic celebration of Samhain which marked the end of the harvest season. It was believed that on this night the passages between the worlds of the living and the dead were open, and the souls of the dead could walk the land, wreaking havoc if they were not properly appeased (or confused by scary costumes and noise.)

The spirits could also be invoked to foretell the future, and many Halloween games and customs are based on old divination methods. For example, in a variation of the bean in the Twelfth Night Cake, or the charms in a Christmas Pudding, one custom in Ireland was to put a ring in a sweet fruit bread called a barm brack. The girl who got the ring would get her man within the year – a hugely reassuring promise at a time when her only other alternative to marriage was remaining dependent on her parents or brothers for ever.

Barm Brack comes from the words barm (yeast) and breac (speckled) and refers to the fruit scattered through the sweet dough. In that other stronghold of the Celts – Wales – speckled bread is called Bara Brith, and in Scotland it is the same as Bannock.

The earliest recipe I have found so far (after a far from an exhaustive search) is from a Scottish cookery book of 1802 – the recipe donated by a lady in Bath, proving that the provenance of recipes nearly always demonstrates a mongrel heritage. The name of the particular recipe is clearly a phonetic interpretation at the name.

To Make Barren Brack.
Take three quarts of flour, rub into it three ounces of butter, seven ounces of sugar, some carraway seeds, make a hole in this; put into it two eggs beat up to a froth, a gill of barm in as much new milk as will wet it; work it up and let it rise, and bake it upon a girdle.
Mrs. Cobb, Bath.
The New Practice of Cookery, Pastry, Baking, and Preserving: being The Country Housewife’s Best Friend, by Mrs Hudson, Mrs Donat, Edinburgh, 1804.

Quotation for the Day …

On the plain household bread his eye did not dwell; but he surveyed with favor some currant tea-cakes, and condescended to make a choice of one. Charlotte Bronte.

A dispensation for St Pat’s Day.

March 17 ...

A dispensation for St Pat’s Day.

Today, I don’t need to tell you, is St Patrick’s Day – the day when everyone who is Irish, thinks they may be Irish, or wishes they were Irish celebrate with a little drink. Or sometimes a big green drink.

The Irish are suspected of a certain fondness for a nice drink, which could be a potential problem, given that the national saint’s day falls during the period of Lent. Pope Gregory realised way back in the sixteenth century that it was an impossible abstinence request, and made the very sensible decision to avoid the issue, and gave a dispensation for the day. Since then the Irish have made thanks with the toast “Good luck and long life to the Council of Trent; it took away meat but left us the drink.” Unless the story is all blarney of course. Perhaps someone theologically inclined could clarify it for us?

The generic St Paddy’s day drink is the Pota Phadraig, or Patrick's pot. It may be beer or whiskey or whiskey punch or any appropriate substitute, but its most important feature is that it is always full. St Patrick supposedly rid Ireland of snakes, but his far greater legacy was the mythical pot that never emptied, the pot that many Irish and wannabe-Irish have been trying to find the bottom of ever since. His other great Lenten gift is also summed up in the popular song about him:

“This ended, our worshipful spoon
Went to visit an elegant fellow,
Whose practice, each cool afternoon,
Was to get most delightfully mellow.
That day, with a black-jack of beer
It chanced he was treating a party;
Says the Saint—'This good day, do you hear,
I drank nothing to speak of, my hearty!
So give me a pull at the pot!' "

The pewter he lifted in sport,
(Believe me, I tell you no fable),
A gallon he drank from the quart,
And then placed it full on the table.
A miracle!' every one said,
And they all took a haul at the stingo;
They were capital hands at the trade,
And drank till they fell; yet, by jingo,
The pot still frothed over the brim!

“Next day. quoth his host, ' 'Tis a fast,
And I've naught in my larder but mutton;
And, on Fridays, who'd make such repast,
Except an unchristian-like glutton!'
Says Pat, 'Cease your nonsense, I beg,
What you tell me is nothing but gammon;
Take my compliments down to the leg,
And bid it come hither a salmon!'
And the leg most politely complied!”

A very traditional libation to the Saint is whisky punch, as this writer says so eloquently:

“Good whisky-punch, when well made, is, certainly, of all the tipples ever invented by man, the most insinuating and the most loving ; because, more than any other, it disposes the tippler to be pleased with himself. It brightens his hopes, assuages his sorrows, crumbles down his difficulties, softens the hostility of his enemies, and, in fact, induces him for the time being to think generously of all mankind, at the tip-top of which, it naturally and good-naturedly places his own dear self, with a glass in one hand and a mug in the other, without a wish ungratified, and as unsuspicious of evil as if not a single drop of gall, or a sprig of wormwood, existed on the face of the earth.
[Hints for the table: or, The economy of good living. J. Timbs, 1859]

And here is how to make it. Take note of Father Maguire’s preferred version, I reckon it could become very popular ….

The mystery of making whisky-punch comes with practice. The sugar should be first
dissolved in a small quantity of water, which must be what the Frisk cull " screeching hot.'' Next throw in the whisky. Then add a thin shaving of fresh lemon peel. Then add the rest of the water, so that the spirits will be a third of the mixture. Lastly,— Drink ! Lemon-juice. is deleterious and should be eschewed. What is called " Father Maguire's receipt for making Punch." is more simple than the above. It runs thus,—First put in your sugar, then add the whisky—and every drop of water after that spoils the punch.
Noctes Ambrosianæ, By John Wilson, Robert Shelton Mackenzie, James Hogg 1863

Tomorrow’s Story …

On Dumplings.

Quotation for the Day …

I never turned to drink. It seemed to turn to me. Brendan Behan (a 2 or 3 bottle sof whisky a day man)