A Weighty Topic.

One of the cookery books I recently quoted from used the term avoirdupois in relation to a quantity of some staple ingredient. It reminded me that I have been meaning to look up the origin of the word for a very long time. I thought the wordsmiths amongst you might be interested in my mini-summary. Naturally, my first and major source is the Oxford English Dictionary.

Avoirdupois is ‘a recent corrupt spelling’ of avoir-de-pois or aveir de peis, which translates roughly as ‘of good weight’, and, as you might guess, comes to us from the French. It is presumably a legacy of ‘1066 and All That’ as it has been in English use since at least the thirteenth century. ‘Avoirdupois weight’ is ‘the standard system of weights used, in Great Britain, for all goods except the precious stones, and medicines.’ The word avoirdupois alone is used to refer to ‘merchandise sold by weight.’

Why specify the standard system of weights? Because what constitutes a pound, or a pint, or a dozen, and many other units of measurement that you can think of, have varied over time and between products - and still vary between nations. Cooks know this of course, as this is a frequent source of grief when using recipes from other countries than one’s own.

The other standard system of weights - that used for precious stones - is troy weight (weight of Troy). Interestingly, for those of us interested in food, this was also formerly used for bread and ‘all manner of Corn and Grain.’ My first assumption was that Troy weight had something to do with the ancient site (in what is now Turkey) of the Trojan wars, and of the beautiful Helen whose face launched a thousand ships. According to the OED however ‘the received opinion is that it took its name from a weight used at the fair of Troyes in France’, and ‘a pound troy is less than the pound avoirdupois.’
Mrs. Dalgairns, in The Practice of Cookery: adapted to the business of everyday life (1830), uses the term in her lesson on cheese making, so this is our ‘recipe’ for the day. The recipe also nicely demonstrates that Scottish volume measures were different from English measures at this time.

Cheese.
In cheese-making, it is of the utmost consequence to have good rennet, which may be obtained from the stomachs of calves, hares, or poultry; that from the maw or stomach of calves is most commonly used, and the following Scotch method of preparing it seems to be the simplest and best:—When the stomach or bags, usually termed the yirning, in dairy language, is taken from the calf's body, straw, or any other impurity found in it, ought to be removed from the curdled milk, which, with the chyle, must be carefully preserved; a handful of salt is put inside; it is then rolled up, and put into a basin or jar, and a handful of salt strewed over it; after standing closely covered for eight or ten days, it is taken out and tied up in a piece of white paper, and hung up near a fire to dry, like bacon, and will be the better for hanging a year before it is infused. When rennet is wanted, the bag with its contents is cut small, and put into a jar or can, with a handful or two of salt; new whey, or boiled water, cooled to 65°, is put upon it. If the stomach is from a newly-dropped calf, about three pints of liquor may be employed. If the calf has been fed for four or five weeks, which will yield more rennet than that of one twice that age, eight pints or more of liquid may be put to the bag in mash. After the infusion has remained in the jar from one to three days, the liquid is drawn off, and about a pint more of whey or water put on the bag; when it has stood a day or two, it is also drawn off, strained with the first liquid, and bottled for use us rennet. Some people put a dram-glassful of whisky to each quart or choppin of the rennet. Thus prepared, it may be used immediately, or kept for months. One table-spoonful of it will coagulate, in ten or fifteen minutes, thirty gallons, or sixty Scotch pints, of milk, which will yield more than 24 lbs. avoirdupois of cheese. In England, the curdled milk is generally washed from the stomach, and in consequence, the rennet is so much weaker than that made in Scotland, that double the quantity is used, and it requires from one to sometimes three hours to form the milk into curd. The milk ought to be set, that is, the rennet put to it, at 85° or 90° of Fahrenheit, when the heat of the air is at 70°; but as the season gets colder, the heat of the milk should be increased, and covered till it coagulates.

Quotation for the Day.

A spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar.
Benjamin Franklin.

The Lost Art of Midnight Suppers.

Midnight suppers – who has them? Proper suppers I mean, not just snacks stolen silently by the light of the refrigerator. Once upon a time they were part of the social entertainment of the hoi-polloi, who had servants to get up at the crack of dawn to blacken the Master’s boots and whitewash the scullery steps and pluck the partridges for luncheon.

I included some details of a midnight supper provided by the City of London to Queen Victoria in 1851, in Menus from History. The menu was impressive enough, in the usual elaborate nineteenth century way, but the wine list was really something. It included an amontillado ‘of curious antiquity’ and a hundred and twenty-five year-old sherry which had been bottled for the Emperor Napoleon. Now THAT is a Midnight Feast, not a mere Supper!

Perhaps we should say To Hell with worrying about the morning chores, and restore the occasional habit of a genuine midnight supper? For catering ideas I suggest we consult May E. Southworth – the author of a couple of cookbooks we have used recently for our recipes for the day. May introduced us to the liberal use of sherry and other beverages in our invalid cookery, as well as some rather interesting ‘Mexican’ recipes in another post. As it happens, May also wrote a book on our topic of today - Midnight feasts; two hundred & two salads and chafing-dish recipes (1914). I liked her attitude in the previous books, so I just knew that she would be in favour of midnight feasts (note that she calls them feasts, not merely suppers - a positive start, I thought.)

May starts off by reassuring us that they are actually good for us:

“There was a time, in benighted ages, when it was considered the height of indiscretion to eat late at night, but in these advanced times, old-fashioned theories are gradually passing, and in eliminating one stupidity after another, we have come to consider suppers at night, after a sociable evening of any kind, both wholesome and beneficial. If we are hungry we are unhappy, and according to the most sensible philosophy, why should we go to bed unhappy, when alleviation lies right at hand, in our pantry?”

So there, if you need it, is a justification for midnight feasting. And don’t you love the idea of alleviation of potential unhappiness by judicious use of a well-stocked pantry? A café-delicatessen in my neighbourhood has a notice that says “The difference between a calm cook and a panicked cook is a well-stocked pantry.”

A favourite after-dinner savoury and supper snack in England in the nineteenth century was Welsh Rabbit. As regular readers will be aware, I am always keen to add to my collection of recipes for this delicious cheesy thing, and I have a good excuse today because May includes an interesting variant, which I give you below. Note that she gets the name wrong by calling it ‘rarebit’, and then demeans the dish itself to the level of a mere sauce – but she is American, after all, and we will forgive her as her heart is in the right place.

Halibut Rarebit
Sprinkle two small slices of halibut with salt and pepper, brush over with melted butter, and place in the greased pan and cook twelve minutes. Remove to a hot platter and pour over it a Welsh rarebit.

Welsh Rarebit
Place a tablespoonful of butter in the chafing-dish; add two pounds of good Eastern cheese chopped fine, a generous pinch of salt, one-third of a teaspoonful of cayenne, four dashes of Worcestershire sauce and stir vigorously until melted. Then add a wine-glass of porter or ale and a teaspoonful of Colman's mustard and stir until it bubbles. Serve on hot toast. Make over hot-water pan.

P.S For those of you who need a refresher on the topic, Welsh Rarebit is explicated HERE and HERE.


Quotation for the Day.

There in long robes the royal Magi stand,
Grave Zoroaster waves the circling wand,
The sage Chaldaeans rob'd in white appear'd,
And Brahmans, deep in desert woods rever'd.
These stop'd the moon, and call'd th' unbody'd shades
To midnight banquets in the glimm'ring glades;
Made visionary fabrics round them rise,
And airy spectres skim before their eyes;
Of Talismans and Sigils knew the pow'r,
And careful watch'd the Planetary hour.
From: The Temple of Fame, Alexander Pope, 1715

Bummer's Custard.

I am fond of custard (you can take a girl out of England… and all that), so naturally homed in on the phrase ‘Bummer’s Custard’ when it popped uninvited into my Google field of view one day recently. A less well-known brand than Bird’s perchance? A name for custard made especially for tramps or hoboes? A custard to compensate for a bummer of an outcome in something or other?

The recipe appears in two or three cookbooks of the 1909-1912 period, then seems to have sunk without a trace – or so it appears from my brief investigation. The real mystery however, lurks in the recipe itself.

Bummer’s Custard.
Take half a pound of Roquefort cheese, divide into three equal parts. Rub up one-third with olive oil, one third with Worcestershire sauce, and one third with cognac. Mix all together until it is of the consistency of custard, and add a dash of cayenne. This is delicious served on hot toast or crackers.
Two hundred recipes for making salads with thirty recipes for dressings and sauces, Olive Hulse, Chicago, 1910

In other words, it is the custard you have when you would really rather be having Welsh Rabbit, or vice-versa. How strange is this? And from whence did the strange name originate?

Another recipe book has it:

Bummers Custard Sandwich.
Take a cake of Roquefort cheese and divide in thirds; moisten one third with brandy, another third with olive oil, and the other third with Worcestershire sauce. Mix all together and place between split water biscuits toasted. Good for a stag lunch.
The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book,1909

Peripheral mysteries to the naming are (i) why would anyone use three bowls to mix this? (ii) what makes it so suitable for a stag party?

Quotation for the Day.

When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces. Women go right on cooking.
Gail Sheehy.

Cheese Cookery 101.

One of my recent themes has been single-topic cookery books, so naturally this week my thoughts turned to those dedicated to cheese. There have been many manuals written over the centuries for the dairyman and dairymaid, but for the cook – I am sad to say, my friends, there is a dearth. There is The Complete Book of Cheese, by Bob Brown (New York, 1955) – but 1955 is hardly historical, is it? Not for those of us born before that date anyway.

The best I can do for you is explore The Woman’s Institute Library of Cookery, Volume 2: Milk, Butter, Cheese, Eggs, Vegetables, published in the early 1920’s. The book manages quite a reasonable number of very uninspiring recipes for cheese, which are preceded by some general advice (or is it opinion?)

SERVING CHEESE.

Cheese does not lend itself readily to many ways of serving, still it frequently adds zest to many foods. When grated, it may be passed with tomato or vegetable soup and sprinkled in to impart an unusual flavor. In this form it may also be served with macaroni and other Italian pastes, provided cheese has not been included in the preparation of such foods. When sliced, little slices may be served nicely with any kind of pie or pastry and with some puddings, such as steamed fruit puddings. Thin slices or squares of cheese and crackers served with coffee after the dessert add a finishing touch to many meals. It will be well to note that crackers to be served with cheese should always be crisp. Unless they have just been taken from a fresh package, crackers can be improved by placing them in a moderate oven for a few minutes before serving. Also, firm crackers that do not crumble easily are best to serve with cheese, water crackers being especially desirable.

EFFECT OF COOKING ON CHEESE.

Because cheese is a highly concentrated food, it is generally considered to be indigestible; but this matter can be remedied by mixing the cheese with other foods and thus separating it into small particles that are more readily digested. The way in which this may be done depends on the nature of the cheese. Any of the dry cheeses or any of the moist cheeses that have become dry may be grated or broken into bits, but as it is difficult to treat the moist ones in this way, they must be brought to a liquid state by means of heat before they can be added to other foods. The cooking of cheese, however, has an effect on this food that should be thoroughly understood.

It will be well to note, therefore, that the application of heat to the form of protein found in cheese causes this food substance to coagulate and harden, as in the case of the albumen of eggs. In the process of coagulation, the first effect is the melting of the cheese, and when it has been brought to this semiliquid state it can be easily combined with other foods, such as milk, eggs, soups, and sauces. In forming such combinations, the addition of a small amount of bicarbonate of soda helps to blend the foods. Another characteristic of cheese that influences the cooking of it is that the fat it contains melts only at a low temperature, so that, on the whole, the methods of preparation that require a low temperature are the best for cooking these foods. However, a precaution that should be taken whenever cheese is heated is not to cook it too long, for long cooking makes it hard and leathery in consistency, and cheese in this state is difficult to digest.

Uninspiring they may be, but there is one treasure amongst the recipes for the collector (me) of variations on the theme of Welsh Rabbit (NOT Rarebit!)

ENGLISH MONKEY. - Another cheese dish that is frequently made in a chafing dish and served from it is English monkey, but this may likewise be made with ordinary kitchen utensils and served directly on plates from the kitchen or from a bowl on the table. A dish of this kind is most satisfactory if it is served as soon as the sauce is poured over toast or wafers and before they have had time to become soaked. English monkey may be made according to the following recipe and served for the same purposes as Welsh rarebit.

English Monkey

(Sufficient to Serve Six)

1 c. bread crumbs

1 c. milk

1 Tb. butter

1/2 c. soft cheese cut into small pieces

1 egg

1/2 tsp. salt

6 buttered wafers

Soak the bread crumbs in the milk. Melt the butter and add to it the cheese, stirring until the cheese is melted. Then add the soaked crumbs, the slightly beaten egg, and the salt. Cook for a few minutes and pour over wafers and serve. If desired, toast may be used in place of the wafers.

P.S You can find Welsh Rabbit HERE and HERE.

Quotation for the Day.

“What a friend we have in cheeses!
For no food more subtly pleases,
Nor plays so grand a gastronomic part;
Cheese imported - not domestic -
For we all get indigestic
From all the pasteurizer's Kraft and sodden art.”
William Cole, 'What a Friend We Have in Cheeses!'

A Plea for Cheese.

Meat rationing in World War II was a trial and a chore for most Britons, and it might be assumed, it not being an issue for them, that vegetarians had it easy in that regard. When a cheese ration was proposed in early 1940 however, vegetarians became vocal. The President of the Vegetarian Society, Mr.W.A. Silby, was moved to write to The Times newspaper on the issue, with a convincing argument that the general public had reason on a number of counts to be grateful to the vegetarians in their midst. His letter was published on February 6th.

A VEGETARIAN PLEA

“FAIR PLAY AND SUFFICIENT PROTEIN”

“ … Rather do we feel that we have some claim to the gratitude of the Ministry of Food and of the meat eating-majority, for not a single meat, bacon, or ham coupon have we used since the war began, nor do we take fish, lard, and dripping, and thus either there is more of these commodities for others, or shipping space is saved. … we now learn … that no more shipping space will be found for nuts. Surely, Sir, this is a mistake, from the national standpoint no less than our own. Concentration of nourishment and so also keeping qualities, give the advantage to cheese and nuts all along the line, for a very large part of the space and weight (estimated by some at as high a figure as 70 per cent) concerned in meat and its carriage is sheer waste. On the other hand a single cargo of cheese or nuts has enormous potentialities. … The vegetarians have yet another claim to the nation’s gratitude, for we are living examples of the good advice given in the broadcasts from “The Kitchen Front”, and in the appeals of Lord Woolton. The use of wholemeal bread, the daily consumption of salads, raw carrots, and green vegetables (cooked conservatively), potatoes eaten in their jackets, and all the rest of it have been preached and practiced by many of us from our youth up. …Sir, I beg of you to use your influence to persuade the powers that be to give us fair play and sufficient protein, in the shape of cheese and nuts. To many of us these last are not merely an occasionally after-dinner luxury, but a regular and substantial part of our daily diet."

The following day the newspaper reported that Mr. Silby’s letter had elicited a sympathetic response from the Ministry. “We admit,” stated an official, “that at the moment the vegetarian is pretty badly off [compared to earlier in the war]… I think the position of vegetarians will have to be considered again by this committee.”

Cheese rationing was set to begin on May 5. On April 2, the Ministry confirmed that vegetarians were to be allowed a significant amount of extra cheese – 8oz per person per week instead of 1 oz. There were of course, certificates and application forms to be signed and promises to be made (not to eat meat at a restaurant or other eating place, for example) by those wishing to claim this concession, but nevertheless, Mr. Silby had had a victory. Who said Letters to the Editors are a waste of time?

In mid-1945 the cheese ration stood at 4 oz. per person per week, and the Ministry’s “Recipe of the Week” was clearly designed to make little of it go a lot further.

Cheese Spread.
This filling between two good slices of bread makes an appetizing and nourishing meal especially good for heavy workers.
Ingredients: Left-over cold potato or cooked haricot beans. Grated cheese. Pinch of dry mustard.
Method: Mash the beans or potato and mix well with grated cheese and dry mustard. This can be spread directly on the bread, butter or margarine being unnecessary. To make the sandwiches a perfect meal, raw shredded cabbage, spinach, or sliced tomato, or well-chopped parsley should be added.

Quotation for the Day.

Swiss Cheese is a rip-off! It's the only cheese I can bite into and miss!
Mitch Hederberg.

A Cheesy Tale about Rattlesnakes.

Here in Queensland, Australia, we feel some affinity with Florida, USA. There is an ongoing friendly rivalry between our states as to which has the greatest number of sunny days and the highest incidence of skin cancer. I am not sure how or why that contest popped into my head in what was going to be a cheese-themed week. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that here in sunny Queensland we are having a cool wet spell which is most unseasonal and has made me put a pot of lentil and spinach soup on the stove (soup? In early March?) Or perhaps it is because I am reminded that today is Florida Admission Day - the day in 1845 that Florida became the 27th state in the USA.

The random series of thoughts put me in mind to give you some recipes from historical Florida cookbooks, of which, thanks to the ‘State University System of Florida PALMM Project’, there are a couple online.

Wait! I don’t need to abandon the cheese theme!

From Florida salads: a collection of dainty, wholesome salad recipes that will appeal to the most fastidious, Frances Barber Harris (1918) we have:

Cheese and Green Pea Salad.
Cut American cheese in tiny little blocks and mix with green peas which have been cooked and drained. Sprinkle with white pepper, lightly fold in mayonnaise and serve on lettuce.


Cheese and Nut Salad.
Mash American cream cheese with pimentoes and peanut butter. Form into balls and press between halves of blanched English walnut meats. Serve on lettuce leaf with mayonnaise.


From Canning in Florida (1944) – a decidedly non-cheesy but nevertheless irresistible bite of non-recipe information on a topic in which Queensland cannot compete:


Canned Rattlesnake.
A novelty for many years in the State’s canning industry is a plant at Rattlesnake, Florida, where rattlesnake meat is canned. From a small experiment in 1930 with an investment of $130, this business has grown into a substantial and profitable one with 1940 sales reaching 15,000 small cans, retailing at $1.25 per can. To this income was added that from profitable by-products: venom for medical laboratories, and skins for use in making such articles as shoes, belts, caps, purses and jackets. About 2,500 rattlers were used in the 1940 pack. Another source of income is from thousands of tourists annually, who pay admission to the plant to inspect the novel operation, and from the sale of souvenirs such as the vertebrae and rattles.
The canned meat is white and tender and is said to taste something like chicken-breast or quail. It brings fancy prices as a special dish in a number of hotels in America. The plant also produces “Snake Snacks,” smoked bits for hors d’oeuvres.
The process of canning rattlesnake meat is simple. The reptile is milked of its venom, then decapitated and the body hung up for 24 hours. It is then skinned and dressed and partially cooked, cut into small slices and a special sauce added, packed into cans, sealed and cooked again. It is marketed as “Genuine Diamond Rattlesnake Meat with Supreme Sauce.” A second cannery operates at Ocala.


Quotation for the Day.

What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?
Bertoldt Brecht

Cheese Rules.

‘Cheese Rules’- how did you read that? Cheese, does, without doubt, rule. There are also (or used to be) rules about the eating of cheese.

The fourteenth century book of manner for children, called The Babees Book advises to “have a clean trencher and knife for your cheese.”

A book of manners for children from the fifteenth century – The Lytlylle Childrens Lytil Boke advises not rushing at the cheese, with the words:

“And cheese come forthe, be not too greedy,
Ne cutte thow not thereof to hastely”

And also in the fifteenth century, the Latin poem Modus Cenandi (The Way of Dining) informs as to the polite way of taking cheese.

“Let old cheese be cut thin
And let fresh cheese be cut thick for those that eat it
Do not press the cheese & the butter on to your bread with the thumb.”

And getting closer to modern times, we have:

Another correspondent asks, “Should cheese be eaten with a fork?” We say, decidedly, “Yes,” although good authorities declare that it may be put on a morsel of bread with a knife, and thus conveyed to the mouth. Of course we refer to the soft cheeses, - like Gorgonzola, cream-cheese, Neufchatel, Limburger, and the like – which are hardly more manageable than butter. Of the hard cheeses, one may convey a morsel to the mouth with the thumb and forefinger; but, as a general rule, it is better to use the fork.”
[Manners and Social Usages (American), by Mrs John Sherwood, 1887]

Nowadays we make much ado about the pairing of food and wine, which some interpret as an opportunity to make rules (never red with fish, only white with chicken, sweet wines with dessert etc). There have always been some such folk:

It was formerly the custom to drink porter with cheese. One of the few real improvements introduced by the “Napoleon of the realms of fashion” was to banish this tavern liquor and substitute port. The dictum of Brummel was thus enunciated: “A gentleman never malts he ports”
[The Laws of Etiquette; Or, Short Rules and Reflections for Conduct in Society, 1836]

Good manners rule – that’s my opinion. And good manners stand the test of time. Five or six hundred years later, it is still considered correct to cut oneself a piece of cheese – especially blue cheese - from the side of the wedge, preserving the general wedge-shape, and ensuring that everyone gets a share of the rind and the centre.

For the recipe for the day, I give you an egg and cheese dish from the late fourteenth century The Forme of Cury.

Brewet Of Ayrenn.

Take ayrenn [eggs], water and butter, and seeþ hem yfere with safroun [saffron] and gobettes of chese [cheese]. wryng ayrenn thurgh a straynour [strainer]. whan the water hath soden [boiled] awhile: take þenne the ayrenn and swyng [mix] hem with various [verjuice]. and cast þerto. set it ouere [over] the fire and lat it not boile. and serueit forth.

Quotation for the Day.

Ladies must decline cheeses, and, above all, ‘must not touch the decanters.’
National Encyclopedia of Business and Social Forms, 1882.

The Moon and Green Cheese.

When you were little, did you ever wonder about the stories about the moon being made of ‘green cheese’? Perhaps it is not so strange or silly an idea to the generations of children reared on ‘green eggs and ham’, but it certainly mystified me as a child.

There are references to ‘green cheese’ as far back as the fourteenth century, but the name does not refer to the colour, but to the unripe newness of young (‘fresh’) cheese. The name might have needed a little clarification even as far back as the sixteenth century, for we find the monk Andrew Boorde noting in his Dyetary that ‘Grene chese is not called grene by the reason of colour, but for the newnes of it.’

I guess that explains the moon myth – the moon does look a bit like a ball of soft cheese with a lumpy surface, doesn’t it?

Green cheese also at times refers to an inferior sort of cheese made from skim milk or whey – good whey being said to have a greenish hue. The author of one eighteenth century dairying manual explains at one point in his cheese-making instructions:

“When the Whey is of a white colour the Curd is not fully settled, &; if it is so to any great degree, the Cheese is sure to be sweet, and in that case you are sure to cast away a great part of what should be Cheese, for the Whey thus put away would neither turn to Butter nor Cheese, though of a considerable substance, remaining of an undigested nature; If you pursue the method I have laid down, you will always find the Whey quite green, which is the colour it ought to be of;”
Dairying Exemplified, by J. Twamley, 1784

Finally of course, cheese can be made green by the addition of herbs. Here is a nice recipe from, of all things, an animal husbandry book with the full title of:

THE

MODERN FARRIER

 OR,

THE ART OF

PRESERVING THE HEALTH

AND

CURING THE DISEASES

OF

HORSES,

DOGS, OXEN, COWS, SHEEP, & SWINE.

Comprehending

A GREAT VARIETY OF

ORIGINAL AND APPROVED RECIPES;

INSTRUCTIONS IN

HUNTING, SHOOTING, COURSING, RACING &; FISHING

AND A SUMMARY OF GAME LAWS;

With an enlivening Selection of the

MOST INTERESTING

SPORTING ANECDOTES.

The whole forming an invaluable and useful Companion to all Persons

concerned in the Breeding and Managing of domestic Animals.

Green cheese.
Green cheese is made by steeping over night in a proper quantity of milk, two parts of sage with one of marigold leaves, and a little parsley after being bruised, and then mixing the curd of the milk thus greened, as it is called, with the curd of the white milk. These may be mixed irregularly or fancifully according to the pleasure of the operator. The management in other respects is the same as for common cheese. These are mostly made in Wiltshire.
The modern farrier … A.Lawson 1828

Quotation for the Day.

‘I haue no peny’, quod Pers, ‘poletes to bugge, Nouther gees ne grys, bote twey grene cheeses’.
The vision of William concerning Piers Plowman, William Langland (1362)

Ancient Cheese.

Any cheese that is not intended to be eaten very fresh (eg ricotta), is, therefore, by startlingly obvious definition, matured for some time before it is considered ready for consumption. We all have a general idea of what is meant by ‘mature’ cheese, don’t we? What then, is ‘ancient’ cheese – references to which do pop up from time to time?

There are two possible interpretations: either it means a particular variety which has been made since ancient times – such as Italian Taleggio or English Cheddar, for example. Alternatively, it may mean a particularly aged specimen.

An example of both may be the cheese called Saanen- a Swiss cows’ milk cheese made in the valley of the same name. It is usually aged for 3 to 7 years, and has exceptional keeping qualities. A custom is described of making a cheese to celebrate the birth of a child –that cheese then being kept and sampled on special occasions, and becoming part of that person’s bequest. It is said that the cheese can remain edible for 100 years, with some anecdotes describing 200 year old samples owned by some families.

On an entirely different tack altogether is a massive lump of cheese (or possibly butter) unearthed in 1987 in a peat bog in Tipperary, in Ireland. It is believed to be at least 1,000 years old, weighs about 50 kilos, and was enclosed in a wrapper made from an animal paunch. Peat provides a marvellous preserving environment (remember the long-dead Peat-Bog Human bodies?), and was regularly used by the ancient Irish for storing their butter for long periods. This ancient cheese was apparently sampled by several brave souls, who declared it edible, but who apparently did not enthuse about its taste. The story reminds me of the even braver souls who ate the 30,000 year old frozen bison in Alaska some years ago.

Today’s recipe provides a solution to a form of ancient cheese with which we are all familiar – the type found in the depths of the refrigerator during an overdue clean-out. It is from Cookery for Working-Men’s Wives (originally published in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1890)


Rice and Cheese with Green Peas.
One pound rice, 1 ½ d; three fourths pound dry green peas, 1 ½ d.; one fourth pound cheese, 1 ½ d.; vinegar, sugar, pepper, and salt, ½ d.; milk, ½ d.; total 5 ½ d.
Wash the rice and put it on to boil in 2 quarts water, with a teaspoonful of salt. When soft and all the water taken up, stir in the milk with more salt, if required, and pepper to taste. Grate the cheese (old cheese is best), mix it in, but keep a tablespoonful to put on top of the pie dish. Put tablespoonful of cheese on the top, and let it brown in the oven or before the fire. Get the common dry green peas, soak them for sixteen hours with a bit of soda the size of a bean in the water. Then boil in salt and water. When soft, drain, and add 2 tablespoonfuls of vinegar, 1 teaspoonful of sugar, pepper andsalt to taste; shake in the saucepan well. Serve hot.


[there is a recipe for Ramakins, suitable for old cheese, HERE]


Quotation for the Day.

A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated. Yet it remains cheese, milk's leap toward immortality.
Clifton Fadiman.

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.

Hard Cheese.

“Hard Cheese” is “Bad Luck”. Cheese so hard that you can use it to shoe your clogs with is Very, Very Bad Luck. Such cheese was the dinner-time luck of the peasants in olden times, along with the sort of very hard bread we heard about yesterday. It was made from the thin, several-times skimmed milk that was left over after the cream had been used for the landlord’s purposes. The older it was, the harder it got. It was hard work to cut, and hard work to eat.

“It has often been remarked, that farmer’s servants, or others who are condemned to this kind of food, find the time spent in eating it, the hardest part of their day’s work.”

One version of hard cheese for the peasants and labourers (read “slaves”) was the Whillimer cheese of Cumberland that featured in yesterday’s post, and it was reputed to be hard enough to sole one’s clogs. Every county seems to have had its own version. In Yorkshire, it was Whangby cheese – from ‘whang’ meaning anything unbearably tough, such as a piece of leather (particularly a leather thong), or Old Peg Cheese. In Suffolk it was Suffolk Thump or Suffolk Bang, perhaps because thumping or banging made little or no impression on it. Suffolk cheese made from thrice-skimmed milk was supposedly the worst in England, and jokes about it abound. It was said that “Hunger will break through stone walls, or anything except Suffolk cheese”, that knives wouldn’t cut it, fire wouldn’t sweat it, and even the dogs couldn’t eat it, but that it was eminently suitable for making wheels for wheelbarrows. In the Isle of Wight it was Isle of Wight Rock – a cheese that was “too big to swallow and too hard to bite”, that would “mock the weak efforts of the bending blade”, and was hard enough to make pins on which to hang the farm gates.

We are spoiled today. Most of us would throw out any cheese hard enough to use as shoe-leather. It is still good protein however, so perhaps we should make more of an effort to make it edible by using it in a recipe. Here is an idea from The West Australian, of Friday 9 January 1880 that would fit comfortably in the Welsh Rabbit (not Rarebit) series (chapter one and chapter two).



Cheese Curry.
Grate a teacupful of rich, hard cheese, and add to it a teacupful of milk, a teaspoonful of mixed mustard and one of curry powder. Stir it over the fire till thick and smooth, and spread it over slices of buttered toast. Brown a few minutes in the oven, and serve hot.

Quotation for the Day.

Age is something that doesn’t matter, unless you are a cheese.
[various forms attributed to various people]

Tyromancy.

Today is Twelfth Day, and the official end of the Christmas season. Every previous year of The Old Foodie blog, I have written about the food traditions of this day, but this year I have a different idea for you.

The end of the Christmas season is a time for looking ahead and wondering what the new year will bring. One way to find out, so the old books say, is by tyromancy. A bit of divination one-upmanship on your friends who merely read tea-leaves or tarot cards. Tyromancy is divination by cheese – by the interpretation of the signs that appear as the cheese coagulates. Unfortunately, no book written by an enlightened one has appeared to help us read those signs, so we must make it up as we go along, or rely on our intuitive interpretation.

So – go to it, and make yourself some cheese, and watch it carefully as it cheeses. There are some instructions HERE.

When you have made your cheese, make some Welsh Rabbit. The number of variations on the theme of cheese on toast is astounding, and the collection of recipes (HERE and HERE) grows very large.

You are not likely to come up with a good Camembert cheese in your own kitchen, but if you have some at home, and are sick of the damn stuff, you can use it up in an up-market version of Welsh Rabbit.

Camembert Toast
1 Camembert Cheese
slices of Graham or Boston brown bread or crackers
salt and paprika
Remove the crust from a creamy Camembert cheese, spread the cheese thickly on slices of bread or crackers, dust with salt and paprika, and bake in a quick oven – 375 degrees F. – from five to eight minutes, or until the surface of the cheese is golden brown.
Mrs. Allen on cooking, menus, service: 2500 recipes; 1924

Quotation for the Day ...

Cheese is the biscuit of drunkards.
John Keats

Lunch or Luncheon?

Lunch is interesting. We have a great tendency to shorten words, so assume that lunch is an abbreviation of luncheon, but in fact the reverse appears to be the case and luncheon appears to be an extension of lunch. The OED gives as evidence the analogies of punch and puncheon and trunch and truncheon. The word apparently derives from lump – as in the lump of bread or meat or cheese that you put in your pocket when you went out into the fields for the day – the analogy here being hump and hunch or bump and bunch. Any further delving into lump is fraught with theories: it may be old Dutch or Danish or German; it may relate to lap which may relate to lumpen which means to happen by chance (referrring in this argument to the random size of the portion, that is.)  Lunch was for a time in the early nineteenth century (according to one of the supporting quotations in the OED) the fashionable word, and luncheon “unsuitable in polished society”, but fashions change and later in the century that changed – and the un-posh tended to have dinner and tea anyway ( High Tea that is)

The word refers, of course, to the middle meal of the day by those who have dinner at night. Those who have dinner in the middle of the day have to forego lunch, but get tea (or supper) at the end of the day instead. Our source from yesterday was of the latter persuasion, so for lunch today I am going to see what her countrywoman the reliable Miss Marion Harland has to say in one of her books - Breakfast, Luncheon, and Tea (1875), from the Common Sense in the Household series.  The book has very common-sensicle chapters on individual topics such as ‘Kidneys’, ‘Haste or Waste?’ and ‘What I know about Egg-Beaters.’

She starts her chapter on Luncheon with a wonderfuly inspirational story. A “young friend … who had not long been a wife and housekeeper” returns from a morning drive one day to find her widower brother had arrived home with three gentlemen for dinner. The custom in the household being for an early “dinner”, and her husband not yet home, she goes to the kitchen with great trepidation to see how the preparations for the meal are progressing. They are not. The cook is already distressed. The usual “plethoric hamper” has not been delivered by her usually careful provision merchant. It is a few moments past twelve, the shops are closed and anyway they are not close. There is cake and pie, but not even a “pertater” never mind meat for soup. Even her angel of a cook cant make something out of nothing. The distraught young housewife “with a womans instinct of leaning upon rugged masculine strength when deserted by feminine wit” discreetly speaks to her brother, who reflects upon it momentarily, and, brilliant man that he is, comes up with the solution.

“I understand! I have it! We’ll be fashionable for once. Set on sardines, cheese, pie, cake, claret and sauterne, and a dish or two of fruit. Make a royally strong cup of coffee to wind up with, and call it luncheon!” [Ms Harland’s italics]

Within fifteen minutes the guests are summoned to the dining room, where they are welcomed by the pretty hostess, in becoming demi-toilette. She presides over the collation, wisely realising that “A lisp of apology would have spoiled all, and she had tact enough to avoid the danger.”

Phew! Another social disaster avoided! Let that be a lesson to us all.

Had she had a few more minutes the cook could have used some of the cheese (thank goodness for cheese!)  to make the following “eatable compound” from Ms Harland’s book.

Ramakins.

3 tablespoonfuls grated cheese.
2 eggs, beaten light.
1 tablespoonful melted butter.
1 teasponful anchovy sauce.
Pepper – cayenne is best
1 teaspoonful of flour, wet with cream.
Rounds of lightly toasted bread.
Beat the butter and seasoning with the eggs; then the cheese, lastly the flour; working until the mixture is of creamy lightness. Spread thickly upon the bread, and brown quickly.

This is a Dutch compound, but eatable despite the odd name.

Quotation for the Day …

One should never refuse an invitation to lunch or dinner, for one never knows what one may have to eat the next day. Edouard de Pomiane.

Yorkshire rabbit.

Yorkshire recipes will be the theme of the rest of the week – by which I mean they must have ‘Yorkshire’ in the title. Today, to add to our collection of variations on a theme of Welsh Rabbit (HERE and HERE) , I give you Yorkshire Welsh Rarebit, which you will all now realise is incorrectly named. It also uses Cheshire Cheese. But – my selection criterion was only that it must have Yorkshire in the name.

Yorkshire Rarebit.
4 oz Cheshire cheese
½ oz. butter
3 tablespoonfuls milk.
A little vinegar, mustard, pepper,
2 slices buttered toast.
2 poached eggs.
Cut cheese into small pieces, place them in a saucepan with the butter and milk, add a little made mustard, a few drops of vinegar, and pepper to taste. Stir and cook gently until the mixture resembles thick cream. Meanwhile prepare two slices buttered toast, and pour cheese preparation over toast. Then lay a poached egg on each piece of toast.
From: The Yorkshire Observer (newspaper) cook book, 1934-5.

P.S. Before you ask, Yorkshire Pudding (and Toad in the Hole) is HERE

Cheese for Supper.

July 22 ...

July 22 is said to be the anniversary of the day in 1376 that the Pied Piper led the children out of the German town of Hamelin. Undoubtedly a mythical date for a mythical event, but part of all our heritage thanks to Robert Browning’s poem.

“Rats! They fought the dogs and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles, And ate the cheeses out of the vats.”

The ‘anniversary’, real or not, made me think (as every story does) about food. Not rats, I will save the ratty food story for another day, but cheese. I feel that this blog has been sadly lacking in cheese stories and recipes. The Welsh Rabbit series (here and here) has been sadly neglected, and very few were able to shed any light on Potato Cheese.

I give you two cheese dishes, both now merely faint ancestral dreams, having suffered death by nutritional correctness. Battered deep fried cheese. For supper. Cheese Patties (with Cream). For supper. From a time when people were not frightened of food. From Domestic Economy for Rich and Poor, by a Lady (1827).

Cheese Fritters for Supper.
Prepare the cheese with pounded curd, bread-crums, raw eggs, rasped ham, &c. ; roll it in balls, dip them into a stiffish batter, and fry, keeping them separate. They
may be rolled in a little oyster truffle, morel, or anchovy powder : rasped ham or bacon may be put into the batter. They are good without either.

Cheese Patties for Supper.
Beat up some yolks, mustard, cheese, wine, or cream and butter ; fill some baked patties, and put them in the oven ; serve them very hot, after the company is seated.

Expect the series to be continued, at intervals, at whim. And do send your own ideas or requessts.

Quotation for the Day ...

… Cheeses, built up like bricks, formed walls and two cauldrons of oil, bigger than dyerÿs vats, were used for frying pastries, which were lifted out with two sturdy shovels and then plunged into another cauldron of honey standing nearby." One of the items described at the wedding feast of a farmer named Camacho. From Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)

Potato and Cheese.

May 3 ...

Any dish containing both potato and cheese has got to be good, right? Instead of potato AND cheese, how about ‘potato cheese’? Potato cheese is just what it sounds like – cheese made with the inclusion of potato. Cant be bad, can it?

I only discovered this concept recently, although it is apparently moderately old – and I have yet to actually try it. If you know anything about it, do please let us all know via the comments. In the meanwhile, here are my scattered gleanings on the topic.

There are a number of references in English writings of the nineteenth century to ‘potato cheese’ from Germany or the Savoy region. Some recipes sound more like a fermented cheesy potato pancake rather than a potatoey cheese.

From a magazine article of 1830:

Potato Cheese.—In many parts of Saxony, cheese is made in the following manner from potatoes :—Take the best potatoes and boil them ; when cold, beat them in a mortar into a pulp, adding a pint of sour milk to five pounds of potatoes. Keep the mass covered for three or four days, aud then beat it again. Make it into small cheeses, which are to he placed in baskets, to let the superfluous moisture escape. Dry hem in the shade, and then pile them on each other for fifteen days ; after which they may he put away in any manner in a dry place. They have a very pleasant flavour, and will keep good for years, improving with age.

A recipe from The American Frugal Housewife (1838) by Lydia Maria Child.

Potato cheese is much sought after in various parts of Europe. I do not know whether it is worth seeking after, or not. The following is the receipt for making : Select good white potatoes, boil them, and, when cold, peel and reduce them to a pulp with a rasp or mortar ; to five pounds of this pulp, which must be very uniform and homogeneous, add a pint of sour milk and the requisite portion of salt; knead the whole well, cover it, and let it remain three or four days, according to the season ; then knead it afresh, and place the cheeses in small baskets, when they will part with their superfluous moisture ; dry them in the shade, and place them in layers in large pots or kegs, where they may remain a fortnight. The older they are, the finer they become.

From an Agricultural journal (1846):

“In Savoy, an excellent cheese is made by mixing one of the pulp of potatoes with three of ewe milk curd, and in Westphalia a potato-cheese is made with skimmed milk. This Wesphalian cheese, while in the pasty state, is allowed to undergo a certain extent of fermentation before it is finally worked up with butter and salt, and made int shapes and dried. The extent to which this fermentation is permitted to go determines the flavour of the cheese.

From: Sketches of Germany and the Germans (an extract in a journal of 1859):

“Potatoes in Prussia: I have frequently seen them served in six different forms : the bread was made from them, the soup thickened with them, there were fried potatoes, potato salad, and potato dumplings ; to which may be added potato cheese, which, by the by, is one of its best preparations, and will keep many years, for which we are indebted to Prussian ingenuity.”

A recipe from the English cookbook Cassells' Vegetarian Cookery (1891)

Potato Cheese.
Potato cheeses are very highly esteemed in Germany; they can be made of various qualities, but care must be taken that they are not too rich and have not too much heat, or they will burst. Boil the potatoes till they are soft, but the skin must not be broken. The potatoes must be large and of the best quality. When boiled, carefully peel them and beat them to a smooth paste in a mortar with a wooden pestle. To make the commonest cheese, put five pounds of potato paste into a cheese-tub with one pound of milk and rennet; add a sufficient quantity of salt, together with caraways and cumin seed sufficient to impart a good flavour. Knead all these ingredients well together, cover up and allow them to stand three or four days in winter, two to three in summer. At the end of that time knead them again, put the paste into wicker moulds, and leave the cheeses to drain until they are quite dry. When dry and firm, lay them on a board and leave them to acquire hardness gradually in a place of very moderate warmth; should the heat be too great, as we have said, they will burst. When, in spite of all precautions, such accidents occur, the crevices of the burst cheeses are, in Germany, filled with curds and cream mixed, some being also put over the whole surface of the cheese, which is then dried again. As soon as the cheeses are thoroughly dry and hard, place them in barrels with green chickweed between each cheese; let them stand for about three weeks, when they will be fit for use.

And finally, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bulletin No. 608, found in The Complete Book of Cheese by Robert Carlton Brown 1959 (found in turn, via Gutenberg)

Potato Germany and U.S.A.
Made in Thuringia from sour cow milk with sheep or goat sometimes added. "The potatoes are boiled and grated or mashed. One part of the potato is thoroughly mixed or kneaded with two or three parts of die curd. In the better cheese three parts of potatoes are mixed with two of curd. During the mixing, salt and sometimes caraway seed are added. The cheese is allowed to stand for from two to four days while a fermentation takes place. After this the curd is sometimes covered with beer or cream and is finally placed in tubs and allowed to ripen for fourteen days. A variety of this cheese is made in the U.S. It is probable, however, that it is not allowed to ripen for quite so long a period as the potato cheese of Europe. In all other essentials it appears to be the same."

Is this cheese still made anywhere in the world? Perhaps some German speakers might be able to shed light on it? I would love to know more about its history, and I am sure many of you would too.

Tomorrow’s Story …

An important flavour.

Quotation for the Day …

Goat cheese ... produced a bizarre eating era when sensible people insisted that this miserable cheese produced by these miserable creatures reared on miserable hardscrabble earth was actually superior to the magnificent creamy cheeses of the noblest dairy animals bred in the richest green valleys of the earth. Russell Baker.

Living on Parmesan.

January 15

Today in 1622 was the birthday of the French playwright and actor Jean-Baptiste Molière. His health was poor in his last few years between 1667 and his death in 1673 and it is popularly believed that he subsisted almost entirely on Parmesan cheese during this time.

He could have done worse. Parmesan (or Parmigiano Reggiano) is a historic hard, dry cheese from a restricted and legally defined area of Northern Italy. The basic method of production has remained unchanged since the Middle Ages, because there is no need to mess with perfection. Sixteen litres of raw cow’s milk from grass-clover-lucerne-fed cows goes into the making of one kilo of the cheese. The real thing from the real country is termed grana, indicating that it is grainy or granular in texture, and has the words Parmigiano-Reggiano stamped all over the entire rind, so that even if you buy a small piece, you can tell it is the genuine article. It has been prized all over the known world for eight centuries.

Samuel Pepys appreciated it, and with the great fire of London approaching his home on September 4, 1666 saw fit to try to save his supply along with important documents and other valuables.

“…. And in the evening Sir W. Penn and I did dig another (pit) and put our wine in it, and I my parmazan cheese as well as my wine and some other things … Mrs. Turner …. and her husband supped with my wife and I at night in the office, upon a shoulder of mutton from the cook’s, without any napkin or anything, in a sad manner but were merry …”

Beware of imitations of this cheese – especially the pre-grated pre-packed version of ‘parmesan’-style, which may be fine and dandy for some purposes but don’t kid yourself it is close to the freshly grated real thing. And the real thing is far too good to be used merely as a pasta-topper. We far too rarely simply slice it thinly and dissolve it on the tongue, but if we do cook with it, there are other things to do with it than sprinkle it on the bolognese. We have had recipes in previous stories for Parmesan Cheese Ice-Cream (1830) and Macaroni with Parmesan (1769), so today I give you a parmesan-version of that other marriage made in heaven – cauliflower with cheese sauce - from Louis Eustache Ude’s The French Cook (1829).

Cauliflowers with Parmesan Cheese.
Prepare and dish the cauliflower as above*. Next mask the pieces with a little thick bechamelle, powder some rasped Parmesan cheese over them, and melt a little freshbutter, which pour gently in different places. Then strew them over with crumbs of bread and rasped cheese again, to which you give a fine colour with the salamander. Wipe the border of the dish, mix a little Parmesan cheese with some veloute and a little fresh butter, work the sauce, season it well, and pour it gently all round the cauliflower. If you should happen to have neither bechamelle nor any other sauce ready, a little melted butter with some glaze in it, will answer the same purpose; but it is more liable to turn to oil.

*to remove the snails or other insects, which are liable to creep towards the heart. For this purpose leave the cauliflower in cold water for an hour. Next throw it into boiling water, with a little salt and butter. This vegetable being very tender is soon done.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Funeral Bread.

Quotation for the Day …

“I live on good food, not fine words”. Jean-Baptiste Molière, Les Femmes Savants.

The Eighth Day of Christmas.

January 2

“On the Eighth Day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Eight Maids a-milking”

This one is easy. What would a food song be without cheese? Cheese, as Clifton Fadiman said, is milk’s leap toward immortality. It is one of the oldest ‘made’ foods in the world, and of infinite, wonderful variety. Only vegans can resist, and I truly don’t know how they do it.

Very few of us make our own cheese - it requires the time, space, attention, and constant environmental conditions that are all but impossible to achieve in the modern home. It is easy enough to make the yoghurt ‘cheese’ or labneh beloved of the Middle East; there are only three steps (1) place yoghurt in a sieve lined with muslin, or one of those thin disposeable cleaning cloths, or a coffee filter, (2) leave until the whey is mostly drained out, and (3) eat.

It should be possible to go a little bit further and make the little French cheeses called angelots at home. I have selected these for their angelic name, being suitable as it is, for the Christmas season. The name of the cheese comes, they say, from them being stamped with a gold coin called an angelot, whose name is a diminutive of angele, the French word for angel. The coin was originally struck by Louis XI, and got its name from the image it bore of St. Michael (of All Angels) and the dragon. Here is a seventeenth century recipe for this angelic cheese. You don’t have to embark on any great odyssey to find rennet - old fashioned junket tablets (the unflavoured ones) contain the same enzyme, and some supermarkets still stock them.

To make angellets.
Take a quart of new Milk & a pint of Cream, & put them together with a little Runnet, and when it is come well [ie curdled], take it up with a spoon & put it into the Vate softly and let it stand 2 days till it is pretty stiff, then slip it out & salt it a little at both ends, and when you think it is salt enough, set it a drying, an wipe them, and within a quarter of a year they will be ready to eat.
A True Gentlewoman’s Delights, 1671.

“On the eighth day of Christmas,
my good friend gave to me
Eight cheeses ripening,
Seven fish a-swimming,
Six eggs a-poaching,
Five golden fruits,
Four keeping cakes,
Three boiling hens,
Two chocolate tarts,
And a partridge in a pear tree.”

P.S. If you want to read further, an earlier story showed How to make Cheshire Cheese.

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Ninth Day of Christmas

Quotation for the Day …

Cheese has always been a food that both sophisticated and simple humans love. M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf (1942)

The invention of “American Cheese”.

December 11 …

The man who invented ‘American Cheese’ was born on this day in 1874 on a farm near Stevensville, Ontario. Why did this Canadian call his cheese ‘American’? Was he honouring the country that enabled him to make his fortune? Or was it some sort of ethnic slur/joke against the folk across the border from his birthplace (like ‘Welch Rabbit’ is in England? You decide which of these applied to James Lewis Kraft’s patented processed cheese - made from genuine milk solids, all pesky bacteria and mould killed, and virtually guaranteed not to spoil.

Kraft moved to Chicago in 1903 with $65 in his pocket and started peddling cheese from the back of a wagon. The problem is, the very nature of cheese makes it prone to spoilage (and this applied especially in summer in the days before refrigeration). There is a fine line between a perfectly aged cheese and a spoiled cheese and a spoiled cheese means loss of profit. Kraft was not a scientist, but he tried various ways around the problem – including canning. Shredding and heat-sterilising cheese solves the spoilage problem (or the ageing virtue, if you want to look at it that way), and the addition of emulsifiers stops the separation of fat from solid. If this mixture is then canned it will keep virtually indefinitely. This is what Kraft did – naming it ‘American Cheese’ for reasons which I have not been able to establish – and he patented the method in 1916.

Sterilised emulsified canned cheese may be absolutely consistent and may keep forever, but a lot of folk feel that it is bland and – well, just ‘aint cheese. Kraft’s timing however was perfect. One organisation that does not care a hoot about flavour but cares a lot of hoots about durability in food is the military. Six million pounds of his cheese ended up in ration packs during World War I; soldiers developed a taste for it (or at least a familiarity with it), it remained relatively cheap during the Great Depression, and Kraft’s name became famous, or to some – infamous, on account of its synonymity with “not cheese”.

Here is an American World War I recipe that uses cheese – no cheese specified, but presumably “real” as it is grated. It would have been a perfect recipe for a meatless day, and comes from Farmers’ Bulletin 487.

Corn and Cheese Souffle.
1 tablespoon of butter
1 tablespoon of chopped green pepper
¼ cupful of flour
2 cupfuls of milk
1 cupful of chopped corn
1 cupful of grated cheese
3 eggs
½ teaspoon of salt.
Melt the butter and cook the pepper thoroughly in it. Make a sauce out of the flour, milk, and cheese; add the corn, cheese, yolks, and seasoning. Cut and fold in the egg whites beaten stiff; turn it into a buttered baking dish and bake in a moderate oven 30 minutes.
Made with skimmed milk and without butter, this dish has a food value slightly in excess of a pound of beef and a pound of potatoes.

Tomorrow’s Story …

An Enchanting Christmas Pudding.

Quotation for the Day …

If antiquity be the only test of nobility, then cheese is a very noble thing … The lineage of cheese is demonstrably beyond all record. Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)

Family Fare

Today, October 11 …

Deciding what to have for dinner every night is a joyful challenge or a perennial chore, depending on your point of view (which of course may vary from day to day). In the nineteenth century a whole generation of housewives were assisted in this daily exercise by a host of books on the subject. I thought that today and tomorrow we might all be assisted in our challenge or chore by those self-same books.

Today I have chosen Cre-Fydd’s Family Fare, or Young Housewife’s Daily Assistant, published in 1864, in the immediate wake of Mrs Beeton’s Household Manual.

This book, like most of its contemporaries, was specifically aimed at the modest middle-class household, in which the young housewife would not have been expected to cook, but most certainly needed to be able to supervise the goings-on in the kitchen, lest she be ripped-off by the domestic staff. The preface states that the book contains “bills of family fare for every day in the year, which include breakfast and dinner for a small family, and dinner for two servants”, which does leave one wondering how on earth one is to solve the luncheon problem.

For October 11, the Authoress suggests:

BREAKFAST
Kippered salmon, mutton chops, eggs, hung beef.

DINNER
Scolloped fish.
Boiled aitchbone of beef (11 lbs), carrots, greens, potatoes.
Belgian pudding
Stewed cheese.

KITCHEN (i.e the servants)
Mutton chops, potatoes.

A “small family” tackling an 11 pound ( kg) aitchbone of beef for dinner sounds alarming until one reads ahead and sees “cold beef” on the family’s breakfast menu for the next two days, and on the servants’ dinner menu for the next three days. Come to think of it, it is still alarming when one realises that there would have been no refrigeration in this modest home.

Likewise, the Scolloped Fish was made from the remains of the previous day’s cod. The recipe describes it as a “second dressing”, which sounds infinitely more appetising than “leftovers”, and essentially consisted of reheating the cod fragments in a liberal amount of butter, with the addition of breadcrumbs or mashed potato.

Belgian pudding - there is never a dinner without pudding - for all its Continental name, is a variation on the very English theme of a suet pudding with dried fruit.

Now for the final course of Stewed cheese. It is a peculiarly English habit to end a meal with a small savoury dish. This one is a variation on the perenially popular theme of Welsh Rabbit (‘Rarebit’, if you insist on being incorrect), and is just the thing to fill up the gaps left by the fish, beef, and suet pudding.

Stewed Cheese.
Three quarters of a pound of rich cheese cut into thin slices (the rind taken off); season it with a teaspoonful of flour of mustard, half a saltspoonful of white pepper, and a cayenne saltspoonful of cayenne; put it into a pie-dish; pour over it a wineglassful of sherry, put in an ounce of butter in small pieces on the top, and bake in a quick oven till the cheese is dissolved (about twelve minutes); then add the yolks of two small eggs, well beaten; when well mixed, pour it into a tin dish, and bake for ten minutes, till the top is of a pale brown colour. Serve very hot, with a rack of fresh-made dry toast, very hot also.

On this Topic …

Welsh Rabbit Chapter 1

Welsh Rabbit Chapter II

Tomorrow’s Story …

Family fare from Phyllis.

Quotation for the Day …

The best way to eat the elephant standing in your path is to cut it up into little pieces. African Proverb