Nammet and Nunchin.

Today we are going to try to squeeze in nammet and nunchin. Nunchin (nuncheon) was the subject of a previous post, so I don’t need to repeat the whole story, but will help you schedule it in your day by reminding you that the word is not related to ‘noon’ but to ‘nones’ meaning the ninth hour after sunrise, therefore about three in the afternoon – meaning it competes with afternoon tea rather than luncheon.

‘Nammet’ (or nummit), if you remember as far back as Monday, was one of the meals claimed by Dorsetshire harvest workers in times past. Fitting in our nammet is made frustratingly difficult, or perhaps delightfully flexible by the variety of definitions it has attracted over the years.
According to the OED, it is (or was) ‘ A light meal, esp. one taken in the middle of the day’ – in other words, it is luncheon. An eighteenth century source however refers to it as ‘A short intermeal between Breakfast &; Dinner, or between Dinner & Supper’, which give us great latitude. Mr. Grosse, in one of his linguistic works, intriguingly says it is ‘a luncheon before dinner.’ Novelists have opinions on nammit too. In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, ‘nammet time’ is ‘around three o’clock’. To add to the confusion (or the flexibility), the novelist John Galsworthy in his book Bit O’Love (1915), has a character say “I give 'im a nummit afore 'e gets up; an' 'e 'as 'is brekjus reg'lar at nine”, making it similar to dewbit, or maybe first breakfast.

I have no idea of the origin of the word ‘nammit’, but I do prefer the explanation that it is the same as, or related to ‘nemmen’ and ‘nemnen’ which are are forms of usage of ‘remnant’ in Middle English. Whenever it is, one carries one’s nammit in a nammit-bag, of which I have read, and of which I wish I was in possession.


For the recipe for the day I give you a nice breakfast cake or currant bun – quite suitable for anything from dewbit to afternoon tea. It is from English Housewifry, by Elizabeth Moxon ( 1764).

To make Breakfast Cakes.
Take a pound of currans well washed, (rub them in a cloth till dry) a pound of flour dried before a fire, take three eggs, leave out one of the whites, four spoonfuls of new yeast, and four spoonfuls of sack or two of brandy, beat the yeast and eggs well together; then take a jill of cream, and something above a quarter of a pound of butter, set them on a fire, and stir them till the butter be melted, (but do not let them boil) grate a large nutmeg into the flour, with currans and five spoonfuls of sugar; mix all together, beat it with your hands till it leave the bowl, and then flour the tins you put the paste in, and let them stand a little to rise, and bake them an hour and a quarter.


Quotation for the Day.
Christopher Robin was home by this time, because it was the afternoon, and he was so glad to see them that they stayed there until very nearly tea-time, and then they had a Very Nearly Tea, which is one you forget about afterwards, and hurried on to Pooh Corner, so as to see Eeyore before it was too late to have a Proper Tea with Owl. .. A Proper Tea is much nicer than a Very Nearly Tea, which is one you forget about afterwards.
A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

Only Seven Meals a Day?

Hobbits, as we all know from the movie, enjoy seven meals a day - breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, supper. Some non-hobbits have also managed to establish the same habit, according to at least one historical source:

“In Dorset, the agricultural labourers were accustomed some years since to say that in harvest time they required seven meals in the day – dewbit, breakfast, nuncheon, cruncheon, nammet, crammet, and supper.”
[Nall’s Glossary of the East Anglian Dialect, 1866]

Does this seven-meals-a-day stand up to examination? Another nineteenth century commentator opines:

“… this seems to have been rather a quaint jingle than an enumeration of meals, as some of them, nuncheon and nammet for example, clearly indicate the same.”

The story weakens further when you find that cruncheon and crammet appear to have been made up for their poetic value, for there is no mention of either in the Oxford English Dictionary. The idea remains tantalising however, does it not?

It is true that some of us (Bavarians, Poles, and Englishmen who hunt) are familiar with the delights of Second Breakfast, but most of the rest of us are satisfied with three choices of meals every twenty-four hours. Could we do better? Should we do better?

My aim this week is to introduce you to some ‘forgotten meals’, in the hope that, as a race, we can lift our game. In fact, I think it very nearly possible that, if we work at it, we can find a meal for every hour of the day.

We will start Dorsetshire harvestman-style with a ‘dewbit’, or ‘a small meal or portion of food taken in the early morning, before the regular breakfast’. This dewbit – so called, obviously because it is taken while the dew is on the grass - is ‘not so substantial as a regular breakfast’ (regular First Breakfast that is.) It is a habit I have had myself for many years, but I take mine in liquid form only – a cup of tea while the dew is still wet (sometimes while it is still falling, even, being the lark that I am.)

For those of you who prefer some small food portion as your dewbit, yet are concerned about damaging your appetite for first breakfast, may I suggest these light-as-air breakfast cakes?

East-Wind Gems.
It is not known whether these hygienic breakfast cakes are of the days of unleavened bread, or a
modern invention. You need not fear the east wind they may have imbibed, for the hot oven
counteracts its mischievous influence, and they are not only hygienic, but taste good. Their fibre is like nut meats, and you will enjoy giving the teeth just the exercise they need when you are eating them.
You are supposed to have baking-irons for these gems, else you had better not attempt them.
Take very cold milk and water, half and half. Stir in Graham and white flour, half and half, little by little, until you have a batter that will drop from the spoon and not run. It must be stirred rapidly, lightly, and thoroughly, the more the better, to incorporate a large amount of air and insure lightness. It needs a strong arm to carry this into effect.
Have the gem-pans ready hot in a hot oven. This you must be sure about to secure light gems.
Drop the batter into the hot irons while in the oven, or if you are very quick take the irons out for convenience. They require a quick oven to bake them, else you lose the air they have taken in, which is a nice point to determine, for the oven should bake as fast as it can without burning.
If you don't succeed this time try again, - keep trying and don't give it up. Make your batter a little thinner or thicker, your oven a little slower or quicker. There is a way, you may feel sure, and if you keep trying you will find it out, and will be likely to repeat your success often. When these culinary curiosities are in perfection they are light and pufiy, and you have pure unleavened bread, with no taste of "emptyings" or soda.
[What to get for Breakfast; M. Tarbox Colbrath, 1882]


Quotation for the Day.

Oh, my friends, be warned by me,
That breakfast, dinner, lunch and tea,
Are all human frame requires.
Hilaire Belloc.

A Thanksgiving Breakfast to Prepare.

In a certain large continent in the northern hemisphere today, all thoughts are undoubtedly turned to the preparation of tomorrow night’s big turkey dinner. The danger is that the focus on dinner will be so great, that breakfast will be poorly planned – and you know how important a good breakfast is, don’t you?

A nice book called What to get for breakfast: with more than one hundred different breakfasts, and full directions for each (1882), helps with fine suggestions for several Thanksgiving breakfasts.

Modern Thanksgiving Breakfast.

Chicken Pie

Baked Potatoes Warm Biscuit

Apple Sauce Coffee.

Chicken Pie.

Cook the chicken as for the ancestral chicken pie [below]. When done, remove all the meat from the bones and flake it. Do not have it like mince, but in long, thin and manifest pieces. Line a large, deep soup plate with a thick paste, made per ancestral chicken pie rule. Fill the plate with chicken, sprinkle a little flour through it, adding butter, salt and some of the liquor in which it was boiled. Cover with a thick paste and bake a nice brown. Be sure you brown the under crust. Serve with a gravy made from the liquor in which the chickens were boiled.

Chicken Pie [Ancestral].

For a pie boil the chickens in water enough to barely cover them. Skim them. When tender or done take them out into a platter and carve them the same as if to be served on the table. Remove the skin if very thick. Have ready a deep baking dish, lined with a thick paste. Have the dish proportioned to the quantity of chicken you wish to
use. Arrange the chicken so tiiat the same kind of pieces may not come out together, when served. Sprinkle each layer with a little flour and salt. Fill the dish nearly full with the liquor in which the chickens were boiled, but not so full as to be in danger of boiling over. Cover with an upper paste and close the edges very carefully. Bake nearly an hour, or till the crust is handsomely done. The crust for chicken pie should be twice as thick as for fruit pies. Use butter in the liquor if you prefer it.


Paste for Chicken Pie.
One quart of flour.
One teaspoonful of salt.
Two teaspoonfuls of cream-tartar.
One teaspoonful of soda.
One pint of sweet milk. *
One cupful of butter.
Mix these ingredients the same as for short cake, avoiding too much flour. This makes a nice and tender paste.


Quotation for the Day …

Do we need to have 280 brands of breakfast cereal? No, probably not. But we have them for a reason - because some people like them. It's the same with baseball statistics.
Bill James

A Rhyming Recipe.

Silly me. A post popped up “yesterday” (Sunday) instead of “today”(Monday), because I accidentally typed the wrong date into the post-ahead schedule. Lucky you, because this means you get an extra post this week (I have undertaken to post every Monday to Friday, you know, so any Sunday posts, inadvertent or intended, must count as extras.) I will make up the mistake, by giving you a couple more recipes on the same theme.

It seems that producing cookery books was an early consciousness-raising and fund-raising effort of women suffrage advocates. It probably worked well – bringing home a new cookbook must have been a delightfully subversive act for some young wives and daughters, as even the most chauvinistic of the menfolk in the family would hardly have thought it necessary to check the culinary literature entering the household. Similarly, being seen writing or compiling a cookbook would hardly have raised any suspicious eyebrows. There were very few ways for decent women to earn a living in the late nineteenth century, and very few had few a disposeable income that was not scrutinised by a husband or father.

The Woman Suffrage Cook Book: Containing thoroughly tested and reliable recipes for cooking, directions for care of the sick, and practical suggestions... by Hattie A.Burr was published in Boston in about 1886. Many famous women contributed, including Julia Ward Howe, who provided “yesterday’s” quotation. The social activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) contributed the following rhyming recipe for a breakfast dish.

Breakfast Dish.

Cut smoothly from a wheaten loaf
Ten slices, good and true,
And brown them nicely, o'er the coals,
As you for toast would do.

Prepare a pint of thickened milk,
Some cod-fish shredded small;
And have on hand six hard-boiled eggs,
Just right to slice withal.

Moisten two pieces of the bread,
And lay them in a dish,
Upon them slice a hard-boiled egg,
Then scatter o'er with fish.

And for a seasoning you will need
Of pepper just one shake,
Then spread above the milky juice,
And this one layer make.

And thus, five times, bread, fish and egg,
Or bread and egg and fish,
Then place one egg upon the top,
To crown this breakfast dish.

Quotation for the Day.

Any influence I may happen to have is gladly extended in favor of woman suffrage.
Lydia Maria Child (famous cookery book author)

Another Breakfast Opinion.

The question in my mind is - was the opinion of Phyllis Browne and her “mere man” (yesterday’s post) on the subject of breakfast the prevailing one in England in the nineteenth century? I consulted the Handbook for the Breakfast Table by Mary Hooper (1873).

The author agrees with Phyllis on the importance of breakfast, and feels particularly strongly about eggs.

“Whilst a great deal of thought is given to ordering dinner, breakfast is left pretty much to the judgement of the cook, and as it is generally, in her opinion, an affair of secondary importance, the result is one directly tending to promote all the evils which follow in the wake of indigestion. But if we consider to how large a portion of the community it is of the first necessity that they should leave their homes in the morning physically fortified against the fatigues of an anxious day, it will at once be seen that it is at least of equal importance to provide a nourishing appetitive breakfast as a good dinner.”
Now the number of dishes used for breakfast, is, in the majority of English families, very limited. Bacon and eggs are the staple, the former generally unsatisfactory, being either over or under cured, too salt or too new; it is besides expensive, a large portion of it running to fat. New-laid eggs, when they can be procured in town, are very costly, they properly, after twenty-four hours, can only be described as fresh. The Cockney mind is not, however, very enlightened on this subject, and the vendors of eggs are persuaded, or at any rate try to persuade the public, that eggs are new-laid until they are “an apology for pepper.” The British cook has no idea of making these London eggs more palatable by the exercise of a little skill or the addition of some sauce, gravy, or cold meat, generally at hand even in households of very modern pretensions.”

The author includes amongst the substantial dishes that she recommends such things as hashes, pressed and potted meats, pigeons, rabbit etc – but, sadly, does not include pie. Or hock.

I do love those phrases “household of modern pretensions” and “apology for pepper.”

The following recipe from the book would seem to risk indigesion, methinks.

Egg Cutlets.
These are very good, and if carefully cooked need not be too rich. Cut hard-boiled eggs into thick slices, dip them in the yolk of an egg well beaten, and then in finely-sifed bread-crumbs seasoned with pepper and salt and a pinch of dried parsley. Have a little butter in the frying pan; let the eggs cook two minutes on one side, turn them on the other and finish. When taken from the frying pan lay them before the fire on white paper to absorb the grease. Serve a little thickened gravy around them.


Quotation for the Day.

And you stagger down to break your fast.
Greasy bacon and lacquered eggs
And coffee composed of frigid dregs.
Ogden Nash

A Mere Man’s Breakfast Suggestions.

Just when you think nothing more can be said about the “traditional” English breakfast, some more opinion comes to light. Today it is that of a “mere man” – the man allowed by the author to include his “tabular introduction” in her book Dictionary of Dainty Breakfasts, in 1899. Our old friend, cookbook and menu-book author Phyllis Browne (whom we have met here, here, here) has done a fine job with her suggestions, although it has to be said that the degree of “daintiness” is tainted with that of the awfully robust.

A Mere Man Considers Breakfast.

A breakfast should consist:-

A. Of a fundamental dish.

B. Of one or more trifling accessories for the benefit of (1) thos who are so hungry that the fundamental dish does not suffice, and (2) those who feel so sick that they cannot touch it.

C. Of fresh fruit, stewed or tinned fruit, jam or marmalade.

D. Of drinks.

E. Of bread, toast, or scones.

The mere man then goes on to clarify the choices within each of these categories. Here they are, much summarised:

Fundamental dishes: ham or bacon, alone or in combination with other articles; eggs cooked in various ways; fish and allied products; “certain internal portions of the animal economy”; meats - chops, sausages, fricasees, curries, etc etc of different kinds hot or cold, including “meat pies of all sorts … [which] should be large: the smaller varieties contain an undue proportion of crust. … The very robust are willing to eat chops and steaks at breakfast. Men in training commonly do so. … The ordinary person eschews butchers meat [ie beef and mutton] at breakfast.”

Accessory dishes: boiled eggs; cold ham or gammon; sardines, in the tin or on toast; anchovies; potted meats; shrimp, bloater, or anchovy paste; mushrooms on toast; herring’s roes on toast; porridge and its allies; cold sausages of sorts.

Fruit and Vegetable products – including tomatoes, stewed rhubarb, tinned fruit, jam and marmalade and honey, and cream “is good with them all, especially Devonshire cream ….the best way of eating Devonshire cream is, however, unquestionably with cheap, black, highly flavoured treacle.”

Drinks: Tea, coffee, cocoa; “when fresh fruit is taken at the beginning of breakfast, a glass of hock is a suitable accompaniment. A glass of good light beer is excellent after breakfast, as they know very well at Westminster school.

Bread, etc. … hot buttered toast, dry toast, tea-cakes and scones – hot and buttered, cut bread and butter, white and brown bread, Vienna and other fancy breads, Hot rolls (for the reckless), Hot Cross buns on Good Friday.

In comparison with this list, the “traditional” English breakfast is a puny, unvarying, unimaginative thing – even such worthy entrants as the “10 deadly sins breakfast” served by the historic London restaurant Simpson’s-in-the-Strand doesn’t quite cut it. The ten sins offered at the venerable establishment are: Cumberland sausage, egg (fried, poached, or scrambled), streaky and back bacon, Stornoway black pudding, fried mushrooms, baked tomato, lamb kidney, bubble & squeak, baked beans, fried bread. Observe that includes neither pie in any form, nor a glass of hock or beer.


It seems that the range of breakfast choices was unquestionably greater a hundred-odd years ago. Bring back pie for breakfast, I say.

Here is a nice dainty dish, from the book – a very British-type of dish - presumably from the trifling accessory range, not the fundamental one.


Bombay Toast
Ingredients: two eggs, toast, butter, essence of anchovy, capers.
Time required: Ten minutes. Prepare slices of buttered toast cut into rounds or fingers. Melt a little butter in an omelette pan. As it dissolves, stir into it two beaten eggs, half a teaspoonful of essence of anchovy an dhalf a teaspoonful of chopped capers and pepper. Spread the mixture on the toast and serve hot.


Quotation for the Day.

Sure I eat what I advertise. Sure I eat Wheaties for breakfast. A good bowl of Wheaties with bourbon can't be beat.
Dizzy Dean.

More Thoughts on Breakfast.

Most of us probably don’t think of breakfast and parties in the same breath – breakfast and the best newspaper, or breakfast and last night’s washing-up, or breakfast and one-thousand and one emails perhaps, but not breakfast and fun.

Ms. Julia Andrews, the author of Breakfast, Dinner, and Tea, viewed Classically, Poetically, and Practically (1860) the source of yesterday’s ideas and recipe, quoted several American visitors on the topic of English “breakfast parties”

Miss Sedgwick writes of the English breakfast party, that the hour appointed is from ten to eleven o'clock. “The number of guests is never allowed to exceed twelve. The entertainment is little varied from our eight o'clock breakfasts. There are coffee, tea, chocolate, toast, rolls, grated beef and eggs, and in place of our solid beef-steaks, - broiled chickens, reindeers' tongues, sweetmeats, fruit and ices. These are not bad substitutes for heavier viands, and for our variety of hot cakes. You see none of these unless it be a “muffin.”

Mrs. H. B. Stowe in mentioning a breakfast at which she was a guest in England, relates some conversation with Mr. Macaulay upon breakfast parties. She says: “Looking around the table, and seeing how everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves, I said to Macaulay that these breakfast parties were a novelty to me; that we never had them in America, but that I thought them the most delightful form of social life. He seized upon the idea as he often does, and turned it playfully inside out, and shook it upon all sides, just as one might play with the lustres of a chandelier - to see them glitter. He expatiated on the merits of breakfast parties as compared with all other parties. He said, ‘You invite a man to dinner because you must invite him ; because cause you are acquainted with his grandfather, or it is proper you should; but you invite a man to breakfast because you want to see him. You may be sure if you are invited to breakfast, there is something agreeable about you.’ - This idea struck me as very sensible; and we all, generally, having the fact before our eyes that we were invited to breakfast, approved the sentiment.”

I am not sure that a meal between 10 and 11 o’clock can rightly be called breakfast, except for the leisured classes, but brunch had not been invented yet, so it must stand as breakfast. Which reminds me that brunch must be added to the expanded list of possible Hobbit-Meals, giving us it eight.

I am totally baffled by the reindeer's tongues enjoyed by Miss Sedgwick in England, she must have been much further north than I have ever travelled in that country. As for the muffins,these would have been the “original” English muffins – made with yeast batter and cooked on a griddle. Somewhere along the way, methinks after their migration to America, they became sweeter, and turned into cakes. Here is a recipe for the English version, from the same book.

Muffins.
One quart of milk, one egg, salt, half a cup of yeast, table-spoon of melted butter, flour to make a thick batter. To be made late in the evening, and stand all night for breakfast, or if you wish them for tea, mix them at noon, and keep the pan in a warm place and it will rise in a few hours. Heat the griddle, then butter it and the muffin rings ; put the latter upon the griddle and pour in the batter ; turn them once only.

Quotation for the Day …

I went to a restaurant that serves "breakfast at anytime". So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance. Stephen Wright.

Thoughts on Breakfast.

When we have breakfast we are literally breaking the (overnight) fast. We all agree that it is the first meal of the day, although we may follow it with lunch and dinner or dinner and tea or lunch and supper. The word has been used in this context since at least the mid-fifteenth century. I have no idea what it was called before then. Perhaps there was no word, which suggests there was no “meal” as such. This makes sense as what happened until very recent times seems to be that everyone individually grabbed whatever was available – usually leftovers from the night before. They did not sit down first thing in the morning in a sociable fashion. Cereals for breakfast are an American phenomenon of the second half of the nineteenth century, and the “traditional” English breakfast is a phenomenon of the second half of the twentieth century. One thing is certain – however adventurous we may be with our food the rest of the day, we are creatures of habit when it comes to breakfast.

Hobbits and Bavarians and Poles have an official Second Breakfast, which seems to me to be a wonderful idea. Hobbits apparently have seven meals a day - breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, supper – an idea we should perhaps all aspire too. I am going to explore these meals over the next few days and maybe even add a few more.

This theme will allow me to plumb the depths of a book called Breakfast, Dinner, and Tea, viewed Classically, Poetically, and Practically, which seems to me a fine way to view every meal as well as being an inspirational guide to titling books. It contains three hundred modern receipts, and was published in New York in 1860. The author starts off with some random thoughts on the meal, including this:

“Southey alludes to the different preferences of various nations in regard to food when he describes a man of universal taste, as one who would have eaten "sausages for breakfast at Norwich, sally lunns at Bath, sweet butter in Cumberland, orange marmalade at Edinburgh, Findon haddocks at Aberdeen, and drunk punch with beef-steaks to oblige the French if they insisted upon obliging him with a dejeuner a l’Anglaise. He would have eaten squab-pie in Devonshire, sheep's-head with the hair on in Scotland, and potatoes roasted on the hearth in Ireland ; frogs with the French, pickled herrings with the Dutch, sour-krout with the Germans ; maccaroni with the Italians, aniseed with the Spaniards, garlic with anybody; horse-flesh with the Tartars ; ass-flesh with the Persians; dogs with the North-Western Indians, curry with the Asiatic East Indians, birds' nests with the Chinese, mutton roasted with honey with the Turks, pismire cakes on the Orinoco, and turtle and venison with the Lord Mayor ; and the turtle and venison he would have preferred to all the other dishes, because his taste, though catholic, was not indiscriminating."

I don’t know what pismire cakes are, but they sound alarming. I will endeavour to find out and let you know. In the meanwhile, I give you this breakfast dish from the book, because everyone aught to be bewitched at breakfast once in their lives.

Veal Bewitched.
Take the hind-quarter of veal, three slices of salt pork, three slices of bread, three eggs, salt and pepper to your taste. Chop the meat, pork, and bread fine, add the beaten eggs,
and wet the whole quite soft with milk. Put it into a baking dish, and bake two hours. When done, it will turn out in the form of the dish. To be sliced and eaten cold.

Quotation for the Day …

When dressed, I to the yard repair,
And breakfast on the pure, fresh air;
But though this choice Castilian cheer
Keep both the head and stomach clear,
For reasons strong enough for me,
I mend the meal with toast and tea.
From Breakfast, Dinner, and Tea, viewed Classically, Poetically, and Practically.

Kedgeree, otherwayes.

November 26 ...

Kedgeree is a peculiarly Anglo-Indian concoction. It apparently began with khitchr – a dish based on a mixture of rice and pulses from the Indian subcontinent. In the hands of returning colonials it became a capital breakfast dish of rice, eggs and leftover fish.

Here is the wonderful Eliza Acton’s take on it (1845).

Kedgeree Or Kidgeree, An Indian Breakfast Dish.
Boil four ounees of rice tender and dry as for currie, and when it has cooled down put it into a saueepan with nearly an equal quantity of cold fish taken clear of skin and bone, and divided into very small flakes or scallops. Cut up an ounce or two of fresh butter and add it, with a full seasoning of cayenne, and as mueh salt as may be required. Stir the kedgeree constantly over a clear fire until it is very hot: then mingle quickly with it two slightly beaten eggs. Do not let it boil after these are stirred in; but serve the dish when they are just set. A Mauritian chutney may be sent to table with it.
The butter may be omitted, and its place supplied by an additional egg or more.
Cold turbot, brill, salmon, soles, John Dory, and shrimps, may all be served in this form.

The following early nineteenth century version from Domestic Economy, and cookery, for rich and poor, by a lady.(1827) is closer to its roots as a pulse and rice dish.

Indian Cutcheree.
Steep a pint of split peas, and add a large tea-cupful of rice, with an onion, ginger, pepper, mace, and salt; boil till the peas and rice are swelled and tender, but not
clammy ; stir them with a fork till the water is wasted. Serve it up in a dish garnished with hard eggs and whole boiled onions. The stirring it with a fork is to prevent the grains being broken.

But from the same book is this “American” variation, with an intriguing sub-variation which takes it about as far as it is possible to go from its essentially vegetarian origins.

American Cutcheree Soup.
Prepare and pulp some of the nicest dry green peas; put them into any nice seasoned white soup with coriander mint, or any determined sweet herb; to 1 lb. of peas, add 2 ounces of rice, and finish it with egg and cream, or keep out the egg, and add curry-powder, or make it of brown soup, with fried onions, all-spice, and sage, and thicken it with blood.

Tomorrow’s Story …

More Foreign Food.

Quotation for the Day ..

Eat what is cooked; listen to what is said. Russian Proverb

A Fashionable Brunch.

Today, August 1st ...

The concept of brunch was invented – or rather, promoted, on this day in 1896 if the OED is correct. An article in Punch announced that “To be fashionable nowadays we must ‘brunch’ ” , and attributed the idea to Mr. Guy Beringer who had coined the ‘portmanteau word’ the previous year in the Hunter's Weekly, to indicate a meal which combined the features of ‘breakfast’ and ‘lunch’. Some humourless word-pedants think the word ‘brunch’ is silly, but in its defence let me point out that the official French name for the same thing is le grand petit déjeuner, which translates as ‘big little lunch’, which is far sillier. Naturally almost all French people (excepting the members of the Académie Française) prefer to use the English word ‘brunch.’

It is not surprising that the idea came from someone who was involved in hunting. Hunting parties traditionally (in the elegant parts of England at any rate) have always had two breakfasts – a light snack before embarking on the arduous work of shooting grouse and pheasant and such like, and a heavier reward on returning home with the kill. Mr Beringer’s idea was perhaps intended to enable this second breakfast for non-hunters, although he gave various other justifications in his article “Brunch: A Plea”. In particular, he said, it had the potential to increase human happiness by avoiding the need to get up early on a Sunday morning after the Saturday night before.

It is all very well, this sleeping in late on Sunday, secure in the knowledge that a hybrid meal awaits you on waking, but someone has to be up early to get it ready for you, don’t they? I wonder what Mrs Beeton would have thought about the idea of brunch ? She would certainly have disapproved I think, as the early-to-rise and be-prepared philosophy is repeated many times throughout her extraordinarily comprehensive manual – for it is not simply a cookbook. Perhaps we can glean some organisational ideas from it to assist us in getting ready for brunch.

Naturally, the most important thing is to instruct and supervise one’s servants well. It must be quite clear who is responsible for which household chore. To summarise: the footman will normally set the breakfast table , and indeed, if one’s circumstances do not allow the employment of a butler, it will also be the footmans duty to prepare and serve the breakfast. The footman necessarily has to get up early, for he has many responsibilities before the family breakfast hour:

‘The footman is expected to rise early, in order to get through all his dirty work before the family are stirring. Boots and shoes, and knives and forks, should be cleaned, lamps in use trimmed, his master's clothes brushed, the furniture rubbed over; so that he may put aside his working dress, tidy himself, and appear in a clean jean jacket to lay the cloth and prepare breakfast for the family.
At breakfast, when there is no butler, the footman carries up the tea-urn, and, assisted by the housemaid, he waits during breakfast. Breakfast over, he removes the tray and other things off the table, folds up the breakfast-cloth, and sets the room in order, by sweeping up all crumbs, shaking the cloth, and laying it on the table again, making up the fire, and sweeping up the hearth.’

If one’s resources only stretch to employing one single servant, then the ‘Maid of all Work’ as she is very accurately called, must get up extraordinarily early to do ‘all the work which in larger establishments is performed by cook, kitchen-maid, and housemaid, and occasionally the part of a footman's duty.’

The mistress of the household must not be a lazy lay-abed while the staff are scurrying around trimming lamps and blackening grates, as she too has many responsibilities. Let us be unashamedly honest here: in these impecunious times, the Mistress may be servantless (Gasp!) and may have to do the actual preparation of the first meal of the day herself. There is no reason for being slatternly no matter how much work is to be done, and Mrs Beetons instructions are clear on the proper attire for the Mistress at this time of the day:

‘The dress of the Mistress should always be adapted to her circumstances, and be varied with different occasions. Thus, at breakfast she should be attired in a very neat and simple manner, wearing no ornaments. If this dress should decidedly pertain only to the breakfast-hour, and be specially suited for such domestic occupations as usually follow that meal, then it would be well to exchange it before the time for receiving visitors, if the mistress be in the habit of doing so. It is still to be remembered, however, that, in changing the dress, jewellery and ornaments are not to be worn until the full dress for dinner is assumed.’

Sadly, Mrs Beeton does not give any instructions for the responsibilities of the Master in regard to breakfast. So, Modern Man, you are on your own: just apply the basic principles of adapting your attire to the circumstances, and at least change out of your pajamas.

Brunch did not exist in Mrs Beeton’s day, so she does not give any recipes specifically for it. She does however give a number that are suitable for either breakfast or luncheon, so these will serve us nicely for today.

BROILED PHEASANT (a Breakfast or Luncheon Dish).
1 pheasant, a little lard, egg and bread crumbs, salt and cayenne to taste.
Cut the legs off at the first joint, and the remainder of the bird into neat pieces; put them into a fryingpan with a little lard, and when browned on both sides, and about half done, take them out and drain them; brush the pieces over with egg, and sprinkle with bread crumbs with which has been mixed a good seasoning of cayenne and salt. Broil them over a moderate fire for about 10 minutes, or rather longer, and serve with mushroom-sauce, sauce piquante, or brown gravy, in which a few game-bones and trimmings have been stewed.
Time: Altogether 1/2 hour. Sufficient for 4 or 5 persons.
Seasonable from the 1st of October to the beginning of February.

POTTED HAM , that will keep Good for some time. Seasonable at any time.
(A nice addition to the Breakfast or Luncheon table.)
To 2 lbs. of lean ham allow ½ lb. of fat, 1 teaspoonful of pounded mace, ½ teaspoonful of pounded allspice, ½ nutmeg, pepper to taste, clarified butter.
Cut some slices from the remains of a cold ham, mince them small, and to every 2 lbs. of lean, allow the above proportion of fat. Pound the ham in a mortar to a fine paste, with the fat, gradually add the seasoning and spices, and be very particular that all the ingredients are well mixed and the spices well pounded. Press the mixture into potting-pots, pour over clarified butter, and keep it in a cool place.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Mulberries and Silk in the Kitchen.

Quotation for the Day ….

Pooh and Piglet walked home thoughtfully together in the golden evening, and for a long time they were silent. “When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?” “What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?” “I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It’s the same thing,” he said. A.A. Milne.

New Year Breakfast.

Today, January 1st …

Samuel Pepys started the New Year in January 1661 with breakfast with his father, brother, uncle and two cousins. He gave his guests a rather substantial and impressive meal, but unfortunately the day then went rapidly down-hill, food-wise.

… and I had for them a barrel of oysters, a dish of neat's tongues, and a dish of Anchoves, wine of all sorts, and Northdown ale. We were very merry till about eleven o'clock, and then they went away. At noon I carried my wife by coach to my cozen, Thomas Pepys, where we, with my father, Dr. Thomas, cozen Stradwick, Scott, and their wives, dined. Here I saw first his second wife, which is a very respectfull woman, but his dinner a sorry, poor dinner for a man of his estate, there being nothing but ordinary meat in it. … and so returned to Mr. Pierces, and there supped with them, and Mr. Pierce, the purser, and his wife and mine, where we had a calf's head carboned [carbonadoed] but it was raw, we could not eat it, and a good hen. But she is such a slut that I do not love her victualls.

First, some explanation of Sam’s victuals is probably in order:

Neats tongues are calves tongues.
Northdown ale refers to the type of hops used in the manufacture – the Northdown hop making a full-bodied, characteristically British ale, apparently.
‘Ordinary Meat’ meant basic beef – usually considered a bit low class, unless it was in the form of something like a grand chine of beef.

‘Carbonadoed’ means ‘A piece of fish, flesh, or fowl, scored across and grilled or broiled upon the coals’.

The breakfast was a little unusual for the times in that Pepys clearly planned it and catered for it. A more usual way of breaking the overnight fast was with something simple, taken informally - a piece of bread and cheese perhaps, or leftovers from the night before, or most commonly a “morning draft” at an alehouse. As Pepys indicates, the main meal of the day in the seventeenth century was in the middle of the day, which meant that there was little need for a substantial early meal. Over the intervening centuries, the dinner hour has moved progressively later in the day necessitating a parallel increase in the significance of breakfast – for the well-to-do that is. The poor have always started work at the crack of dawn, and eaten whatever they can whenever their masters allow a meal-break. What we think of as a traditional British breakfast is largely a nineteenth century invention of wealthy households - although even the heartiest breakfast today would be unlikely to include anchovies and tongue.

Unfortunately Pepys does not give us any clue as to how his breakfast dishes were prepared, but luckily a contemporary cookbook comes to our rescue. Here is an elegant dish from Robert May’s The accomplisht cook (1660).

To stew a Neats Tongue whole.
Take a fresh Neats tongue raw, make a hole in the lower end and take out some of the meat, mince it with some bacon or beef-suet, and some sweet herbs, and put in the yolks of an egg or two, some nutmeg, salt, and some grated parmisan or fat cheese, pepper and ginger; mingle all together, and fill the hole in the tongue, then wrap a caul or skin of mutton about it, and binde it about the end of the tongue, boil it till it will blanch: and being blanched, wrap about it the caul of veal with some of the forcing, roll it a little brown, and put it in a pipkin, and stew it with some claret and strong broth, cloves, mace, salt, pepper, some strained bread or grated manchet, some sweet herbs chopped small, marrow, fried onions and apples amongst; and being finely stewed down, serve it on fine carved sippets with barberries and slic’t lemon, and run it over with beaten butter. Garnish the dish with grated or searced manchet.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Sweet Beets.

Quotation for the Day …

Breakfast is a notoriously difficult meal to serve with a flourish. Clement Freud.