Bamboo, Episode 2.

I know I promised some vaguely Thanksgiving-related postings this week, but I seem to have been waylaid by my little grandsons the last couple of days, and the intended story for today needs too much tweaking for the lateness of the hour. Instead, I give you a story I have had up my sleeve for just such an occasion ….

I came across a reference to bread made from bamboo seed some time ago, and it continues to intrigue me greatly because I cannot find any decently detailed information on where and how it is made. The search led me back to one of my own blog posts, in which I quoted the Oxford English Dictionary to the effect that the first mention in English of ‘bamboo shoots’ as a culinary item was in the words of the writer Rudyard Kipling in 1899. This might technically be true, but only in so far as it applies to the phrase ‘bamboo shoots’ – clearly the English experience of the edible parts of the plant go at least a century further back.

The Cyclopaedia of practical receipts and collateral information in the arts, manufactures, professions, and trades, including medicine, pharmacy, and domestic economy, (London, 1879) has, under the heading ‘Bambusa’, the following information:

“There is, perhaps, scarcely any other plant besides the palm which serves for so many purposes usefl to man, as the various species of bamboo. Its grain is used for bread, the young shoots are eaten like asparagus, and are also pickled; the smaller stalks are made int walking canes …………”

Travellers returning from the exotic East brought back descriptions, and no doubt actual jars, of pickled bamboo shoots long before Kipling tasted them in Japan. The proof is in a recipe for mock bamboo, in A collection of above three hundred receipts in cookery ……by Mary Kettilby, published in 1734. Surely a dish can be said to have well and truly ‘arrived’ when it is popular enough to be imitated?


An Admirable Pickle, in Imitation of India Bamboo, exactly as that is done.
Take the largest and youngest Shoots of Elder, which put out in the middle of May, the middle Stalks are most tender and biggest, the small are not worth doing; peel off the outward Peel or Skin, and lay them in a strong Brine of Salt and Water for one Night, and then dry them in a Cloth, Piece by Piece; in the meantime, make your Pickle of half White-wine, and half Beer-Vinegar; to each Quart of Pickle you must put an Ounce of White or Red Pepper, an Ounce of Ginger, sliced, a little Mace, and a few Corns of Jamaica Pepper: when the Spice has boil’d in the Pickle, pour it hot upon the Shoots, stop them close immediately, and set the Jar two hours before the Fire, turning it often; ‘tis as good a way to green this or any other Pickle, as often boiling, though either way is certain, if you keep it scalding hot; always use Stone Jars for any sort of Pickle, if they can be got, the first Charge is inconsiderable, and they do not only last longer than Earth, but keep the Pickle better, because Vinegar will penetrate through all Earthen Vessels, and Glass will not bear the Fire: this is a very crisp pretty-tasting Pickle.

And here is another pre-Kipling version, from A new system of domestic cookery: formed upon principles of economy …(1808) by Maria Eliza Ketelby Rundell.

English Bamboo.
Cut the large young shoots of elder, which put out in the middle of May (the middle stalks are most tender); peel off the outward peel, or skin, and lay them in salt and water, very strong, one night. Dry them piece by piece in cloth. Have in readiness a pickle thus made and boiled: to a quart of vinegar put an ounce of white pepper, an ounce of sliced ginger, a little mace and pimento, and pour boiling on the elder-shoots in a stone jar; stop close and set by the fire two hours, turning the jar often to keep it scalding hot. If not green when cold, strain off the liquor and pour boiling hot again; keep it hot as before. Or, if you intend to make India pickle, the above shoots are a great improvement to it; in which case you need only pour boiling vinegar and mustard seed on them; and keep them till your jar of pickles shall be ready to receive them. The cluster of elder-flowers before it opens makes a delicious pickle to eat with boiled mutton. It is prepared by only pouring vinegar over.

Quotation for the Day.

When it comes to foreign food, the less authentic the better.
Gerald Nachman, San Francisco Chronicle.

Lemon Butter Many Ways.

Before I leave the subject of butter entirely, I want to briefly ponder on the nature of lemon butter. Where I grew up, we had a spread for toast called ‘lemon curd’. It took me some time to adjust to calling it ‘lemon butter’, and I don’t always get it right, even today. Lemon curd is a thick yellow paste which plays the same role on the breakfast menu as jam (or in filling tarts and cakes), but it is more like custard in the making. Strangely, in some parts of the world it has another name - ‘lemon cheese.’

Clearly, there is no cheese, curd or otherwise, in this spread, so why the name? It is for the same reason that damson cheese and almond cheese and Bavarian cheese are so named – because they have a similar consistency to soft cheese, or are made in a mould like some cheeses. Or, if you prefer the name ‘lemon butter’ it is because, and I quote the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘butter’ can be ‘a name for various substances resembling butter in appearance or consistence (butter of almonds, butter of mace etc).

I was delighted to discover that lemon butter or lemon curd or lemon cheese is also, according to the same logic, called lemon honey, as the following recipe shows.

Lemon Honey.
Cream six tablespoons of butter, adding slowly a cup of sugar, then heat in a double boiler until the butter is melted. Now mix in three egg yolks beaten until thick, and the grated rind of a large lemon. Stir until it begins to thicken, then add the juice of a lemon, and continue stirring until the consistency of honey is reached. Turn into sterilized jelly glasses and cover.
The Times, May 22, 1939

Of course, ‘lemon butter’ can simply mean butter flavoured with lemon, and sweetened, or not, depending on whether it is going to be poured over your fish or your pudding - but we might look at variations on that theme another day.

My mother-in-law keeps us supplied with magnificent home-made lemon butter of the spreading kind (I admit to stirring some through yoghurt the other day), but one day I am going to take the plunge and try the following recipe – a‘lemon butter’of the dessert kind.

Lemon Butter with Sweetmeats.
Blanch and pound very fine an ounce of sweet almonds, put them to a quart of boiling cream, add the whites of three eggs well beaten, a little orange-flower water, and sweeten according to taste. Then take a lemon, grate the rind into some lemon juice, add it to the cream and make it oil; the put it into a hair sieve, and when well-drained, beat it together, and lay it in a high dish, with sweetmeats or ratafia cakes all round.
The Cook’s Dictionary and House-keepers Directory, Richard Dolby, 1830

Quotation for the Day.

I believe that if life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade... And try to find somebody whose life has given them vodka, and have a party.
Ron White.

Mangoless Mangoes.

The mango season is just getting underway here in sunny Queensland, and if the early samples are anything to go by, a lusciously sweet and sticky time we are going to have of it this year. It occurred to me that I have not dedicated a post to this most delicious of all fruits, a fruit which compensates somewhat for the heat and humidity we suffer during summer in this state.

The mango (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) is ‘a sweet orange-fleshed drupe which is much eaten as dessert, especially in the tropics, and is used in its unripe state to make chutney and jam.’ It is the fruit of various species of the genus Mangifera, the most common of which is Mangifera indica (the Common or Indian mango), and which is native to India and Myanmar.

The OED gives several other definitions of the word mango. Two of these have nothing at all to do with food, but they too much fun not to share with you. A mango may also be
- ‘a dealer in slaves, esp. in prostitutes ( a 19th C usage, perhaps deriving from an ancient Greek word indicating ‘means of charming or bewitching others’ or perhaps from an Indo-European word ‘mangonel’, meaning to deceive.)
- In Ireland in the 19th C it was also ‘a substance used in the bleaching of linen’(perhaps related to ‘mangle’)

There is a third use, in evidence since the last half of the seventeenth century. A mango may also be ‘A pickle resembling that made of green mangoes; (later) spec. a pickle made of whole fruits stuffed with spices; a whole fruit stuffed and pickled in this way.’ This gave rise to the verb ‘to mango’, or ‘to pickle as green mangoes are pickled.’

The only mangoes to reach Britain in the early days were not the ripe variety, for obvious reasons, which gave rise to this last usage. A nineteenth century article explains it all:

It is much the fashion in this country to imitate the Indian mangoes as they are pickled at Bombay, namely, by being gathered green, cut open, the stone taken out, and bound together with string. Young melons are usually employted for this purpose, though they have not in taste the most remote resemblance to the flavour of the mango, which, when ripe and of a good species, is the most delicious as well as the most wholesome of fruits, and when unripe is more like the unripe apple than any other of our European fruits, And this similitude is so strong, that in India we have ourselves often had tarts made of the unripe mango to resemble the apple tarts of England. The apple is therefore the best fruit to pickle in imitation of the Bombay pickle ….

The Magazine of domestic economy, London 1839

The above magazine then went on to give a recipe for pickled melons, but today I give you a recipe for another common alternative – cucumbers – from a century earlier.

To Mango Cucumbers.
Cut a little slip out of the side of the cucumber, and take out the seeds, but as little of the meat as you can; then fill the inside with mustard seed bruised, a clove of garlick, some slices of ginger, and some bits of horse-radish; tie the piece in again, and make a pickle of vinegar, salt, whole pepper, mace, and boil it, and pour it on the mangoes, and do so for nine days together; when cold, cover them with leather.
The Compleat Housewife, or, Accomplished Gentlewoman’s Companion, E.Smith, 1728

Quotation for the Day.

The number of mangoes that a practiced person may eat with impunity is astonishing.
Sketches of India, 1850

Lets make a Condita.

I came across a new (to me) old word the other day. I was delighted, of course, as I love rediscovering old words. The fun was enhanced enormously by the fact that I found it in one of my favourite sources of old recipes – a druggists’ manual, or pharmacopoeia. The Supplement to the Pharmacopoeia, being a Treatise on Pharmacology in General (London, 1821) really is a treat – it has an entire chapter on ‘Condita.’

The Oxford English Dictionary tells me that the various forms of the word are ultimately derived from the Latin for ‘put or lay together, put or lay away, hide, etc’, which in reference to food means to preserve or pickle, and by extension ‘to season or flavour’. There is a medical usage too, with a condite often meaning ‘an electuary’ such as an apothecary might make as a sort of tonic. Sir Thomas Elyot in his Castel of Helthe (1533) refers to ‘Olyves condite in salte lykoure, taken at the begynnynge of a meale doth corroborate [strengthen] the Stomake’ – a nice early English reference to the custom of nibbling salty olives as an appetiser. If the remedial condite did not work, ‘to condite’ could also mean ‘to embalm’, so it is a useful word indeed.

This particular pharmacopoeia has instructions for ‘conditing’ vegetable and animal matter for botanical and zoological specimens, for medicinal ingredients such as ‘vipers, skinks, cantharides, cochineal etc’ as well as the expected herbs, flowers, and bark, and of course for prolonging the life of various foodstuffs. The relatively new method of preserving ‘vegetables as well as animals’ ‘by heating in well-closed vessels’ is mentioned too – this is the work of the Frenchman Appert which led to the entire canning industry we know now (remember, this was before the scientific understanding of micro-organisms as the cause of food spoilage and many human diseases.) Other food preservation methods which are mentioned are drying, freezing (natural of course, no refrigerators then), ‘bottling’ in water (for fruits), preserving ‘dry’ in sugar or ‘wet’ in sugar syrup or honey, picking in brine or vinegar, dry salting, covering with oil or butter, or a spirit such as brandy, and smoking (meats). Sauer Kraut has its own paragraph, and here it is:


Sauer Kraut. Brassica acidulata.
Large white cabbages are cut into thin horizontal slices, and placed in a barrel with a layer of salt at top and bottom, and between each layer of cabbages. A board with some weights on it is then put on the top, and it is kept in a cool place for some weeks: a kind of fermentation takes place, and vinegar is formed.
Some add juniper berries, coriander seeds, tops of anise, or carui [?caraway] seeds, to the salt, as a kind of spice. It may be dried in an oven without any loss of its flavour.


Quotation for the Day.
Cabbage as a food has problems. It is easy to grow, a useful source of greenery for much of the year. Yet as a vegetable it has original sin, and needs improvement. It can smell foul in the pot, linger through the house with pertinacity, and ruin a meal with its wet flab. Cabbage also has a nasty history of being good for you.
Jane Grigson.

Trendy? New?

I bought a jar of chilli jam at the Farmer’s Market recently, from a new stallholder, and very good it is too. I can still remember the first jar of chilli jam I ever bought. It was a few years – not a few decades – ago. Suddenly, it seems, every deli and grocery store and farmer’s market is selling chilli jam of one sort or another.

When I got home from the market, I made a cup of chai from the tea-bag selection that was part of a Christmas hamper gift. Over the last few years – years, not decades – it also seems that all of the coffee shops around the city now offer chai, and every supermarket stocks the prepared mixes.

There is no doubt about it, food fashions come and go – or do they just fade slightly between major appearances? It was yesterday’s source (For Luncheon and Supper Guests, by Alice Bradley, Boston, 1923) that got me wondering along those lines. This is why …

Spiced Syrup for Tea.
Put in a small saucepan
1 cup water and
½ cup sugar. Heat to boiling point and when sugar is dissolved add
1 tablespoon whole cloves, crushed, and a
2-inch piece stick cinnamon broken in pieces, tied together very loosely in a piece of cheesecloth. Boil gently to 215 degrees F. or to a thin syrup. When cool add juice of
2 lemons. Serve in small bowl, using
1 tablespoon syrup in each cup of tea.


Pepper Jam.
Drain
1 small can pimientos and force through food chopper. Put in saucepan, add
¾ cup sugar and
½ cup vinegar, stir until sugar is dissolved and boil gently to 220 degrees F. or until mixture is the consistency of jam. Pour in small sterilized glasses ad when cool cover with melted paraffin.
If preferred use,
3 sweet bell peppers in place of pimientos. Remove seeds, force through food chopper, sprinkle with
Salt, and let stand 3 or 4 hours. Drain, rinse, and finish as above.


Quotation for the Day.

Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world.
T'ien Yiheng

Eat Texan Today.

When I first started this blog, the theme was a very broad interpretation of “What Happened on this Day in Food History”. The source of inspiration each day was what, in my head, I grandly call my Food History Almanac (a computer file so large that even in cyberspace it is too heavy and unwieldy ever to be published – although, being the eternal optimist, I do live in perpetual hope.)

Methinks I shall return to this theme for the next week or so. OK?

Today, December 29th, is Texas Admission Day. That is, the anniversary of the admission of the state of Texas to the Union in 1845. So, today is a fine opportunity to address my neglect of this particular corner of the good old US of A.

My difficulty is that I know nothing about the food of Texas apart from what I have learned from watching cowboy movies. I do admit to being greatly intrigued by this dish called ‘chili’, as I love any dish containing ‘chillies’ (or is that ‘chiles’?).

A love of dishes containing chillies hardly, however, qualifies me to enter the ongoing debate about what constitutes an authentic recipe. I assume it is an interpretation of chili con carne? I can say that the dish was already a local delicacy (if anything containing chillies can be said to be delicate) by 1893, when a State chili booth was set up at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

To compensate for the void that is my knowledge of Texan food, I give you a small collection of other people’s thoughts on the topic, and I eagerly await feedback from those of you better informed.

“Texas does not, like any other region, simply have indigenous dishes. It proclaims them. It congratulates you, on your arrival, at having escaped from the slop pails of the other 49 states.”

Alistair Cooke.

“To the goggling unbeliever (Texans) say - as people always say about their mangier dishes – “but it's just like chicken, only tenderer.” Rattlesnake is, in fact, just like chicken, only tougher.”

Alistair Cooke

[On Texas chilli] “It can only truly be Texas red if it walks the thin line just this side of indigestibility: Damning the mouth that eats it and defying the stomach to digest it, the ingredients are hardly willing to lie in the same pot together.”

John Thorne, Simple Cooking

“Congress should pass a law making it mandatory for all restaurants serving chili to follow a Texas recipe.”

Harry James (band leader and trumpeter.)

To give an ‘authentic’ historic recipe for Texas chili clearly puts this little Aussie at far too great a risk of offending a large percentage of her readers. May I compromise, and instead give you a recipe for Chili Sauce, taken from a Texan newspaper (The Hearn Democrat) of October 7, 1927?

Chili Sauce.
5 quarts chopped ripe tomatoes.
2 cupfuls chopped red pepper.
2 cupfuls chopped green pepper.
1 ½ cupfuls chopped onions.
3 tablespoonfuls salt.
1 cupful sugar.
3 cupfuls vinegar.
1 teaspoonful cloves.
1 teaspoonful allspice.
1 teaspoonful cinnamon.
Combine the chopped vegetables, the salt, the sugar, and simmer this mixture until it begins to thicken. Then add the vinegar and spices and cook the mixture down until it becomes a thick sauce. Pour into hot sterilized jars and seal. Or bottle the sauce and seal with wax. This recipe yields about three quarts of sauce.

For dessert, may I suggest Texas Pecan Pie?
http://www.theoldfoodie.com/2008/11/thanksgiving-pie-no2.html

Postscript.

Today is also the 4th Day of Christmas: to read a previous blog post on this, go HERE.
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2007/12/fourth-day-of-christmas.html

The Kitchen.

This week I want to have fun with ‘kitchen’ words – starting with ‘kitchen’ itself. I also intend, for no reason other than writer’s privilege, to keep the recipe offerings firmly in the seventeenth century.


The word kitchen is very ancient; the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) cites the earliest known reference to it in the year 1000. The derivation is convoluted, to say the least, as a result of which there are many and varied spellings. It appears to be associated with Latin words relating to cookery - coquere (to cook), coquinas (of cookery), and coquus (cook), and the early example given by the OED also begins with ‘c’ - cycene . This became kitchene, kychene, or kechene in Middle English, the letter ‘t’ therefore being a late addition.


We don’t need the OED to know that a kitchen is “That room or part of a house in which food is cooked; a place fitted with the apparatus for cooking.” There is another use of the word cited in the dictionary however, which was certainly new to this little word fossicker:

Formerly also kitchen meat: Food from the kitchen; hence, any kind of food (as meat, fish, etc.), eaten with bread or the like, as a relish; by extension, anything eaten with bread, potatoes, porridge, or other staple fare to render it more palatable or more easily eaten. Thus butter or cheese is ‘kitchen’ to bare bread, milk is ‘kitchen’ to porridge. Chiefly Sc. or north. Ir. (= Welsh enllyn.)

So, I give you a nice recipe for some ‘kitchen’ to your bread – a ‘marmalade’ of plums - from The Queen’s Closet* Opened: Incomparable Secrets in Physick, Chyrugery, Preserving, Candying, and Cookery; As They Were Presented to the Queen By the Most Experienced Persons of our times … by W.M (‘one of her late Servants), 1658. This would have been a very stiff, dry, paste – not quite so much boiling would give a more acceptable modern ‘jam’ consistency.



To make Marmalet of any tender Plum.

Take your Plums, and boil them between two dishes on a Chafing-dish of coals, then strain it, and take as much Sugar as the pulp do weigh, and put to it as much Rose water, and fair water as will melt it, that is, half a pint of water to a pound of Sugar, and so boil it to a Candy height, then put the pulp into hot sugar, with the pap of a roasted apple. In like manner you must put roasted Apples to make Paste Roayl of it, or else it will be tough in the drying.


*A ‘closet’ was a private room or chamber, in the seventeenth century often specifically referred to one used to make or store sweetmeats and preserves.


Quotation for the Day.


I liked the energy of cooking, the action, the camaraderie. I often compare the kitchen to sports and compare the chef to a coach. There are a lot of similarities to it..

Todd English

Prescription Sausages.

Yesterday’s source - Pharmaceutical Formulas - A Book of Useful Recipes for the Drug Trade, published in 1898 – provides much other food for thought. The ‘Drug Trade’ includes all manner of fascinating formulas for household use, including cleaning materials, writing materials, perfumes, preparations for the hair and teeth and so on, as well as those with medicinal applications.

Quite a number of the recipes in the chapter on Household and Domestic Requisites (in which we found yesterday’s sauces), are decidedly difficult to reconcile with the health implications implicit in a publication for pharmaceutical professionals, but neither do they seem to fall on the industrial chemical side of things. Yesterday I said ‘I live in hope of the day when the friendly neighbourhood pharmacist will provide recipes for the daily dinner’. Even if this were to happen in the amazingly mysterious future, I cannot image that the meal prescription will ever, ever, ever, include sausages (although it should, with reservations, of course). In our source manual for the day however, we find the following recipe (without comments as to meat quality or type, it must be said) ….


Pork Sausage Flavouring.
White Pepper 2 oz.
Jamaica Pepper 6 dr.
Black Pepper 3 dr.
Ginger 3 dr.
Capsicum 2 dr.
Mace 1 dr.
Cloves 10gr.
All in fine powder, mixed. A little nitre helps to keep the colour of the meat.
(an alternative recipe suggests “tinting the powder a dark salmon colour by means of finely powdered red sanderswood.)

The pharmaceutical focus is evident in the use of pharmaceutical units of measurement in this recipe. The abbreviations and conversions are:

gr = grain (not gram!); one gram is about 60 grains
dr = dram, or drachm; one dram is approximately 3.89 gm.

Here is another lovely idea from the book.

Lemon Pickle.
Slit unpeeled lemons, previously cured, into quarters, without separating the pieces, sprinkle with salt, and lay aside in dishes for a week. Then pack in jars with two or three cayenne pods to each lemon and a good sprinkling of turmeric, and cover with hot vinegar.
[the instruction “previously cured” is odd here. It presumably means salted, but then the recipe goes on to describe the salting process. Perhaps an example of the inexact art of recipe writing?]

Quotation for the Day.

We are living in a world today where lemonade is made from artificial flavors and furniture polish is made from real lemons.
Alfred E. Newman

Jam, by name.

Yesterday’s story got me thinking about jam. Specifically, about the word “jam”. All sorts of versions of sugared fruit had been around for hundreds of years before there was “jam”. There were “wet” sweetmeats (or “suckets” – think of the Italian mostarda), “dry” sweetmeats – sometimes called quidonies (think of crystallised ginger or glacé apricots), and “marmalades” (which were thick pastes or dry blocks of any fruit – originally probably quince, and later any fruit, before we finally settled on oranges.)

So, we had plenty of ways of preserving fruit with sugar, and plenty of words to describe the various end-products, – but somewhere around the late seventeenth century, “jam” appeared. I understand the first known appearance of the word is in a manuscript written by a Rebecca Price in 1681, but I have no other information on her work. The first published recipe is usually attributed to Mrs. Eales, whose cookbook (1718) we have often used as a source in previous posts. She gives instructions for Apricock-Jam, Rasberry-Jam and Cherry-Jam. It does seem that around this time the fruit and sugar was more likely to be left “wetter” and put up in jars rather than dried in slabs, but we hardly needed another name.

The OED is puzzled, and half-heartedly suggests it may be from the method of “jamming” – that is, “bruising or crushing by pressure” – but is unable to resist the utterly charming and oft-repeated explanation that it derives from the French “j’aime” which means “I love (it)” - supposedly from the response of children to this form of sweetmeat. I am puzzled in turn as to why English children would have adopted a French phrase. I don’t know of any other phrases they adopted in the seventeenth century – and it seems unlikely that many children of the time learned French! Nonetheless, the explanation is so charming, I do hope the linguists eventually prove it true.

I am particularly and unreasonably fond of the spelling “giam”, so I give you Hannah Glasse’s version from her Art of Cookery (1747).


To make rasberry giam.
Take a pint of this [recipe above] currant jelly and a quart of rasberries, bruise them well together, set them over a slow fire, keeping them stirring all the time till it boils. Let it boil five or six minutes, pour it into your gallipots, paper as you do the currant jelly, and keep it for use. They will keep for two or three years, and have the full flavour of the rasberry.

Gallipots – now there’s another thing we don’t find in the kitchen any more.


Quotation for the Day.

The jelly - the jam and the marmalade, And the cherry-and quince-"preserves" she made! And the sweet-sour pickles of peach and pear, With cinnamon in 'em, and all things rare! - And the more we ate was the more to spare, Out to old Aunt Mary's! Ah!
James Whitcomb Riley.

Chutney, Again.

Yesterday’s post got me thinking about the interpretation of Indian food by representatives of Her Majesty's Empire when they returned to Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The general consensus is that it was pretty appalling – the addition of a few spoonfuls of a single type of store-bought generic curry powder added to everything from hard-boiled eggs (mixed with apple) to soup to bananas to devilled fowl being sufficient to label it “Indian” or “Bengalee” or somesuch name.

It wasn’t all a travesty however. Without getting into the always-unwinnable debate about authenticity, I continue yesterday’s chutney theme with the following delightful-sounding recipes from a lovely book called The Englishwoman in India: information for ladies on their outfit, furniture [&c.] by a lady resident (1864).

Mint Chutnee.
½ lb. green mint leaves.
1 ounce red chillies
¼ lb. salt.
¼ lb. raisins or kismis.
2 ounces green ginger.
¼ lb. brown sugar.
1 ounce garlic or onion.
Pound with a quarter pint of vinegar, mix well and pour over the chutnee half a pint of boiling vinegar: when cold, stopper the bottles.
N.B. Country vinegar answers perfectly for most chutnees.

Sweet Chutnee.
½ lb. tamarinds.
½ lb. dates.
1 lb. green ginger.
½ lb. kismis [raisins]
½ lb. onions.
¼ lb. chillies, without seeds.
4 tablespoons brown sugar.
2 tablespoons salt.
Pound these ingredients with vinegar, and rub through a piece of net, or a coarse sieve. Bottle and cork, and it will be ready in a fortnight.

Quotation for the Day.

“A chilli,'said Rebecca, gasping,'Oh, yes!' She thought a chilli was something cool, as its name imported, and was served with some.'How fresh and green they look,'she said, and put one into her mouth. It was hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it no longer. She laid down her fork.'Water, for Heaven's sake, water!'she cried.”
William Makepeace Thackeray.

A Chutney Emergency.

I have never suffered from a chutney emergency, but in case I ever do, I will go immediately to The Truth and Mirror Cookery Book (Australia, 1943). Dr. Cilento gives a great solution in her chapter on Emergency Recipes. My only problem might be, that I am highly unlikely at any point in time to have in my pantry six pounds of leftover jam.

Chutney, from left-over jam.
Six lb. jam, 1 quart vinegar, ¼ oz cayenne pepper, 3 oz. salt, 2 oz. ground ginger, ¾ lb. onions, cut small. Put all in a preserving pan and boil for 1 hour. Mixed jams may be used with the same success.

Chutney is one of my favourite food words. It is a legacy, like kedgeree, tiffin, (and indeed ‘curry’), of the British colonial era in India. The word is derived from the Hindi chatni, and refers (according to the OED) to “A strong hot relish or condiment compounded of ripe fruits, acids, or sour herbs, and flavoured with chillies, spices, etc.” The OED gives the first use in English as 1813, but there are numerous uses well before this, as one would expect given that British India was a well established institution long before that date. A quick and very superficial search found “… chutnee, a curious mixture much used in curries and Indian made dishes…” (Sketches of India, Henry Moses, 1750)

The OED does not hazard an opinion as to what the Hindi chatni means, but of course this is important if we are to come to a full understanding of chutney. I do hope that someone out there with an understanding of Indian languages will enlighten us via the comments. I have had to resort to earlier dictionaries for ideas.

From A grammar of the Hindoostanee language (1796), we have chaťna – to lick. Is this the underlying concept? Something so good it makes you want to lick your lips? Or am I barking up the wrong tree altogether?

There is an interesting definition of chutnee in A Compendious Grammar of the Current Corrupt Dialect of the Jargon of Hindostan (Commonly Called Moors) with a Vocabulary English and Moors, Moors and English published in 1801. Now there is a book with an impressive title! What do George Hadley and Mohommed Fitrut give as a definition of chutnee? Sallad, that is what they suggest. My puzzlement increases.

Quotation for the Day.

I feed him interesting food, like chutneys and sardines and jalapenos, because I'm training him to be an adventuresome eater.
Michael Gross.

Currant Jelly with that?

Here is a wonderful story about how we came to eat sweet preserves with meat. Is it true or not? who cares? I am saying it is story, not history. Bear in mind as you read this that the clear distinction between sweet and savory ingredients is a relatively modern concept – it was certainly not a startling new idea in 1715, the date of our story. Nor was the absence of potatoes on the dinner table in 1715 a strange situation – they were far from daily fare in Europe and Britain at that time. Perhaps, after all, it the story speaks more truth about food fashion and foodie-paparazzi, rather than the food itself.

“Currant jelly with hare was first eaten in 1715. There were no potatoes at table, when the Duchesse de Pentonville (then an emigrant), asked what there was. ‘Nothing but confitures’ was the reply of the maître d’hotel. ‘Bring me the confitures then’, siad the lively Duchesse; and she selected the currant-jelly, much to the amusement of all the nobles present. The king, however, hearing of this, ordered hare for dinner, purposely to try it with the currant-jelly, and he like it so well that he continued it for six days together; and so the currant-jelly spread all over London till it became an established fashion in the best English society.”

I have a very graphic mental image here of currant jelly spread all over London ……

Red or white currant jelly.

Strip off your fruit, and put it in a jug, stand the jug in a kettle of water, and let it boil one hour, then throw your currants into a fine sieve, and press out all the juice, to every pint of which add one pound of loaf sugar; put it in your preserving pan over a clear fire, and stir it till it becomes jelly, observing to scum it carefully; when done, pour it into glasses, and when cold, lay some brandy paper on top: then cover with white paper, pricked full of holes.
Modern domestic cookery, and useful receipt book, by E.Hammond. London, 1819.


Quotation for the Day.

The Law of Raspberry Jam: the wider any culture is spread, the thinner it gets.
Alvin Toffler.

To keep Venison Fresh.

Housekeepers and cookbook writers of olden times were much more pre-occupied with preserving food than they are today. Every item of food was much more hard-won and the attitude to waste was very different. Did I read somewhere recently that one fifth of all the food purchased in Britain is thrown out? That would have been an unthinkable idea once upon a time. Of course, some of the ideas in old cookbooks seem quite scary today – and many are unsafe.

Our sixteenth century source from yesterday (The widowes treasure …) has this interesting idea for preserving venison.


To keepe Venison fresh a long time.
Presse out the blood cleane, and put it into an earthen pot, and fill it with clarified Honey two fingers aboue the fleshe, and binde a Leather close about the mouth that no ayre enter.

Honey had been used in this way for since ancient times, and there are stories of its use as a preserving agent for the human corpse too. The Greek historian Herodotus claimed that the Babylonians and Assyrians buried their dead in honey. The kings of Sparta were said to be buried in this way too. It is commonly said that Alexander the Great’s body was preserved in a crock of honey (or in some stories a golden coffin) and kept for three years as it was returned to Egypt (or 300 years in some stories). This is likely apocryphal, but as his burial place is not known, the story will have to remain mysterious. It is possible that his body was only anointed with honey, but the amount got magnified as the centuries wore on!

Another story that is also trotted out when burial in honey is mentioned took place in the early 1800’s when some archeologists (or treasure seekers) were exploring some eight hundred-year old tombs in Egypt. They found a crock of honey and were amazed to find it still eatable – so they dipped into it. During their snacking moment, one adventurer found some hairs in the honey – and further investigation discovered an infant fully preserved in the bottom of the pot. Meal discontinued abruptly.

The exclusion of air was known to be important in preserving food for centuries before germ theory was proposed in the mid-nineteenth century by Louis Pasteur, as was the use of a lot of sugar – but was there more to this method than that? Honey is reputed to have anti-bacterial properties, and there has been a huge resurgence of interest in its external use for wounds and ulcers in recent times.There is clearly more to discover on this topic – so watch out for future posts.

Quotation for the Day …

History: an account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
Ambrose Bierce.

To make a Quiddany.

I think I will start a campaign to bring back lovely lost old food words. Yesterday's dunelm will be somewhere on the list, but the first will be quiddany (or quiddony or quidini or several other variations). The word appears to be related to the old French codignat meaning a fruit jelly – the ‘q’ perhaps coming from the association with quinces (although they were made from many fruits).

I don’t know why or how we lost the name, but it seems very remiss of us. I think I will start a campaign to bring back lovely lost old food words. All the campaign needs is a catchy name …

Some quidonnies are thick, syruppy, ‘wet’ preserves, but this one, from Hugh Plat’s Delights for Ladies (1602) appears to be more of a fruit paste. I love the idea of rose-water with the quinces.

To make Quidinia of Quinces.
Take the kernelles out of eight Quinces, and boyle them in a quart of Spring-water, till it come to a pint: then put into it a quarter of a pint of Rose-water, and one pound of fine sugar, and so let it boile til you see it come to be of a deep colour: then take a drop, and drop it on the bottom of a sawcer; and if it stand, take it off; then let it run thorow a gelly-bag into a bason; then set on your bason upon a chafing-dish of coales, to keepe it warm: then take a spoone, and fill your boxes as full as you please: and when they be cold, cover them: and if you please to print it in moulds, you must hove moulds made to the bigness of your boxe, and wet your moulds with Rose-water, and so let it run into your mould: and when it is cold, turn it off into your boxes. If you wet your moulds with water, your gelly will fall out of them.


Quotation for the Day …

I would stand transfixed before the windows of the confectioners' shops, fascinated by the luminous sparkle of candied fruits, the cloudy lustre of jellies, the kaleidoscope inflorescence of acidulated fruitdrops -- red, green, orange, violet: I coveted the colours themselves as much as the pleasure they promised me.
Simone de Beauvoir.

More on Martinmas.

Today is Martinmas, the feast day of St. Martin – and in the northern hemisphere it is the official end of the harvest season. It was the day when the surplus stock that could not be over-wintered were slaughtered, and what could not be “put down” by salting and smoking and sausaging was eaten in a final pre-winter gorging session – the reason the day was also called “Split-Stomach Day”.

In the background of course, the pickling and preserving of the fruit harvest had been going on for many weeks. This particular duty – along with preparing the household remedies and “cordial waters” - was the responsibility of the lady of the house, no matter how fine a lady she might be. Even if she did not take a hand in it herself, she was expected to be knowledgeable about it, and supervise it carefully because the health (and nutrition) of the household depended on it, especially over winter.

Mrs Wooley’s Gentlewoman’s Companion (1673) is our seasonal inspiration this week. She is adamant that Candying, Conserving, and Preserving “are Curiosities which are not only laudible, but requisite and necessary in young Ladies and Gentlewomen.” She is using “Curiosities” in its old sense of “Proficiencies.” Her instructions still hold good today – and I particularly like the idea of pears with ginger in wine.

Pears Preserved.

Take Pears that are found, and newly gather’d from the Tree, indifferent ripe, then lay in the bottom of an Earthen-pit some dried Vine-leaves, and so may a lay of Pears and leaves till you have filled the pot, laying between each lay some sliced Ginger, then pour in as much old Wine as the pot will hold, laying some heavy thing on the Pears that they may not swim.

Green Pippins Preserved.

Take half a score of Green Pippins, (from the tree if you can), pare them, and boil them in a pottle of water, till they are like a Pulpe; strain them from the Cores, then take two pound of Sugar, and mingle it with the liquor or pulp so strained, then set it on the fire, and as soon as it boileth, put in your Pippins you intend to preserve, so let them boil leisurely; till they be enough; when they are preserved, they will be green; in like sort you may preserve Quinces, Plumbs, Peaches and Apricocks, if you take them green.

Quotation for the Day …

The jelly - the jam and the marmalade,

And the cherry-and quince-"preserves" she made!

And the sweet-sour pickles of peach and pear,

With cinnamon in 'em, and all things rare!

- And the more we ate was the more to spare,

Out to old Aunt Mary's! Ah!

            James Whitcomb Riley.

Putting Food By.

Yesterday’s story about preserving juice for use in Punch all the year round made me think of the other end of the olden-day preserving routine. Nowadays we squeeze oranges for juice and throw away the cup of rind. Throwing away something (a) expensive and (b) tasty would have been unthinkeable in the eighteenth century. In spite of no refrigeration and no canning, it seems that almost everything was preserved in some way, and nothing was wasted.

Meat (and fish) was salted or pickled or dried or smoked, or cooked in great thickly-coffined pies which – if not cracked or damp – would kept meat for frighteningly long periods of time. Vegetables were a bit of a problem – so the winter supply depended on growing enough of the sort with naturally long keeping qualities such as cabbages, potatoes and onions, and storing them well in dry rooms or cellars. Fruit such as apples and pears also have naturally good keeping qualities if they are handled and stored carefully – or they could be bottled in syrup or made into fruit pastes. Even eggs were kept by a variety of methods – which deserve a post of their own, perhaps very soon.

The skins of oranges or other citrus used for juicing for punch was made into chips – the same as the candied peel that we put in Christmas cakes. Most of us wouldn’t bother to make this now – it is cheap to buy, and anyway we are time-poor. Here is how we would have done it in the eighteenth century – when there were no candy thermometers, and cooks had a variety of tricks to tell them when their syrup was ready.

How to make Orange Chips.
Take the fresh Skin of Seville Oranges, whose Juice has been used for Punch, and lay them in Salt and Water three Days; then boil them tender, shifting them as above, and take out all the Strings of the Insides; put them into an Earthen-pot, make a Syrup of common Lump-sugar, and boil it three Times a Week the first Fortnight; then let it stand a Month longer, and take the Skins out of the Syrup and wash them in clear Water, turn them into Chips, and according to Quantity, if three Pounds of Chips, two Pounds of Sugar, wet it with Water and boil it Candy-height; then put in your Chips and let them boil, dip a Slice into the Syrup and blow it through, if it flies like Snow, you must take them out and spread them on an Earthen-dish to cool, so keep them for Use.
Professed cookery: containing boiling, roasting, pastry, preserving, pickling, potting, made-wines, gellies, and part of confectionaries. Ann Cook. 1760?

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.

An Election Breakfast.

With the Big Election Race underway, a number of bloggers with a food history bent have been discussing Election Cakes (see a previous post from this blog on them HERE.)

Today, I thought I would give you something a little different – the bill of fare for an Election Breakfast in an English County (probably Westmoreland), in April 1761. It was given at the house of a candidate – but I have no idea whether it was to give an optimistic start to the day, to drum up last minute support, to feed the election workers, or to celebrate a success.

It was for a large number of people, obviously.

31 Pigeon Pies.
24 Sirloins of Beef.
6 Collars of Beef, sliced.
10 Hams, sliced.
244 Chickens to the Hams.
6 Dozen of Tongues, sliced.
10 Buttocks of Beef.
11 Ach-bones of Ditto.
13 Quarters of Veal.
44 Ditto House-lamb.
56 Pound of Cheese.
8 Pound of Chocolate [this was drinking chocolate].
5 Pound of Coffee.
20 Dozen Bottles of Strong Beer.
10 Hogsheads of Ditto.
3 Ditto of Wine.
2 Ditto of Punch.

It does seem like rather a lot of booze for breakfast, doesn’t it? I guess the media were not so attentive at that time.

“Punch” was usually “Milk Punch” at this time (which makes it closer to breakfast food, I guess), and we have had an early eighteenth century recipe for Milk Punch in a previous post. The following one is a little more interesting, because it also has Seville Oranges in it – and being in large quantity and prepared ahead of time, perhaps it might make a good Christmas Party beverage?

Milk Punch.
Pare fifteen Seville oranges very thin, infuse the parings twelve hours in ten quarts of brandy; ready boiled and cold, fifteen quarts of water, put to this seven pounds and a half of loaf sugar, mix the water and brandy together; add the juice of the orange [s?]; and of twelve lemons, strain it, put to it one pint of new milk; barrel it, stop it close, let it stand a month or six weeks. It will keep for years, the older the better.
The lady’s assistant for regulating and supplying her table, being a complete system of cookery, Mason, Charlotte. 1778.

Only one pint of milk in thirty gallons of brandy and water – it is clearly token milk punch. In the Olden Days, before Germ Theory, it was known that keeping out the air allowed things to be preseved, although no-one knew why it worked. Here is an eighteenth century recipe for ensuring a good supply of juice for punch (ready for the next election, perhaps?).

A Method to preserve the JUICE of SEVILE ORANGES or LEMONS all the Year for PUNCH, SAUCE, JULEPS, and other Purposes.
When you have got what Quantity you think proper of good sound Oranges, or so forth, squeeze them into a Flannel or Jelly Bag, thro’ which the Juice must pass till it is clear; which done you must put it into a deep Glass Vessel, well covered, and let it stand till it hath by fermenting purg’d itself of all Superfluities; then take Sallad Oil enough to cover it over, and pour upon it in the same Manner as it is on Florence Wine; then put it in a cool Place where the Sun doth not shine, which will preserve it so that the Air can’t have any Effect on it; but the Grounds and Lees will sink to the Bottom, betwixt which and the Oil, the Liquor intended for Use, will stand, which you must draw out by a Tin Crane put into it gently, taking care not to disturb the Grounds, and yet to put it deep enough to avoid drawing off the Oil, which will still follow the Juice, and continually preserve it from Putrefaction.
Note, You may likewise by the above Method preserve most Juices of Herbs, Flowers, &c.
From: The compleat confectioner; or, the art of candying and preserving in its utmost perfection. Mary Eales. 1753

Quotation for the Day …

Champagne and orange juice is a great drink. The orange improves the champagne. The champagne definitely improves the orange. Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.

A Mango a Day (soon).

The first mangoes are here in the shops in Queensland. I hope for a prolific local crop and therefore ridiculously cheap fruit as last year’s was not good, for reasons I do not remember – maybe the weather, or maybe the fruit bats won the annual battle.

I can give no better a description of the mango than that in the very Victorian English Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery (c1870)

“Of all the tropical fruit, the mango is one of the most grateful to Europeans. In form it is like a short, thick cucumber. The skin of the fruit is thick, and the interior consists of a pulp, which melts in the mouth with cooling sweetness.”

I love that old use of the word grateful in the sense of something ‘pleasing to the mind or the senses’.

The first mention of the fruit (as manga) in a European language was in Italian in 1510 - which is much earlier than I thought it would be, considering that not too many Europeans had travelled to its native countries of India and Burma (Myanmar) so early in the sixteenth century.

The interesting thing is that a mango in early English cookbooks also refers to any pickle resembling a mango, and particularly the sort made with whole fruit stuffed with spices and pickled (see the link below to the Cowcumber Pickle). India clearly gave the world this idea, and I am grateful for it. To pickle usually means to preserve by salting or immersing in vinegar, but the word is used loosely for other preserving methods, such as the following one, taken from a grand Anglo-Indian cookery book.

Mangoe Pickle in Oil.
Divide the mangoes into four parts rather more than half way down, having the bottom whole ; scoop out the kernel; stuff the space in each mangoe as full as it will admit of, with mustard seed, cayenne pepper, sliced ginger, sliced garlic, and grated horseradish; bind each mangoe with thread; put them into a quantity of oil sufficient to immerse the whole. Manner of preparing the mustard seed, &c. &c. - For fifty mangoes use five seers of mustard seed ; husk it, steep it in water for twenty- four hours, removing the water twice or thrice during the time, dry it afterwards for two days, reduce it into coarse powder; mix with it the ginger, garlic, cayenne pepper, and grated horseradish ; make the whole into a paste with vinegar; stuff the mangoes with it; reserve a fourth part of the mustard powder to mix with the oil into which the mangoes are to be immersed. The garlic, ginger, and horseradish are to be steeped in water, and allowed to dry for a day previous to being used.
Indian Domestic Economy and Receipt Book. By R. Riddell, 1860.

In case of a surplus of mangoes in your neighbourhood, please refer to the following recipes:

Queensland Christmas mincemeat

Mango Ice-Cream

Cowcumbers, to Pickle in the likeness of Mangoes (1705).

Bengal Recipe For Making Mango Chetney, from Mrs. Beeton (1861)

Quotation for the Day …

We owe much to the fruitful meditation of our sages, but a sane view of life is, after all, elaborated mainly in the kitchen. Joseph Conrad.

Blue Thoughts

We do eat with our eyes, which is partly why cooks like to play with food colours. What our eyes perceive as delicious is however, to some extent (or maybe full extent) pre-determined by ancestral and personal historic ‘knowledge’. Blue food, for example (a few M&M’s aside), is not relished. This is presumably because there is no truly blue food in nature. Blueberries are really purplish-black, and the veins in blue cheese are greenish, and from a colour point of view only serve to as a counterpoint to the creamy white background.

When blue food colouring is used, it generally performs the same visual function as these veins (think of the blue M&M’s). Occasionally it is used deliberately to be outrageous – such as in the luminescent blue ‘slushy’ drinks which stain the teeth of ghoulish pre-adolescents, who drink them because their parents hate them (the drinks, that is.) In the olden days, cooks used to use two very natural blue colourings: turnsole (Crozophora tinctoria) and lapis lazuli (a brilliant blue rock, finely ground and used also in paint). Today we have E133 abd E132, which may or may not be better than whatever chemical it is in turnsole that produces blue.

The movie director Alfred Hitchcock, who supplied the quotation yesterday was famous for his horror movies, and in real life apparently had a practical-joking sense of humor. He once famously held a ‘blue dinner party’, at which all of the food was dyed blue, just to see what effect it had on his guests. I have tried for years to find an authentic and detailed description of the event, but although I am certain it did happen, the details have escaped me. The menu is variously said to have included soup, trout, chicken, venison, fish, peaches, and ice-cream, with ‘even the bread and water dyed blue.’ It is said that the guests were repelled by the food and could not eat much of it, even though the flavour was not affected. It is also often quoted that Hitchcock did not like blue skies in film. I have no idea if this is true, but bright blue skies in horror films perhaps do not create the right mood.

Blueberries, as I have said, are purplish-black, really. Here is one way to make them even blacker. I am sure they would not taste like blueberries after a few weeks of this treatment however, so what is the point?

Pickled Blueberries.
Nearly fill a jar with ripe berries, and fill up with good molasses. Cover, and set away. In a few weeks they will be ready to use.
Miss Parloa’s New Cook Book. 1880

[Miss Parloa also gives us a Black Pudding (dessert not sausage-style) made from blueberries.]

Quotation for the Day …

I've often thought tomatoes are
Much better red than blue.
A blue tomato is a food
I'd certainly eschew.

William Cole, from A Song of Thanks.

Marmalade, modern.

I am in Bath, in Somerset – an enchanting town with a rich Roman heritage and some beautiful Georgian architecture. Say ‘Bath’ and it is impossible not to think of Jane Austen (1775 –1817) - but we have considered Jane and black butter and cheesecakes in previous posts, so we need something different today. The Word According to Wikipedia is that the Georgian era is defined as including the reigns of the four King Georges (1-IV), in other words, from 1714-1830. In the remaining four days of this week (while I am still on holiday) I will sample some cookbooks – more or less at random - from that period.

Right at the beginning of our chosen period, Mary Kettilby published her book A collection of above three hundred receipts in cookery, physick and surgery; for the use of all good wives, tender mothers, and careful nurses. It contains the earliest known recipe for marmalade as we know it today. We had a seventeenth century for Marmalat of Quinces in a previous post, but this was more like a fruit paste such as we now put on our cheese platters. The ‘modern’ way of making marmalade is no different than when Mary wrote her recipe in 1714 – although the bitterness that she clearly dislikes is surely the desirable feature of real marmalade made from Seville oranges.

To make Orange Marmalade, very good.
Take eighteen fair large Seville Oranges, pare them very thin, then cut them in halves, and save their Juice in a clean Vessel, and set it cover’d in a cool Place; put the half-Oranges into Water for one Night, then boil them very tender, Shifting the water till all the Bitterness is out, then dry them well and pick out the Seeds and Strings as nicely as you can; pound them fine, and to every pound of Pulp take a pound of double-refin’d Sugar; boil your Pulp and Sugar almost to Candy-height: When this is ready, you must take the Juice of Six Lemons, the Juice of all the Oranges, strain it, and take its full weight of double-refin’d Sugar, all which pour into the Pulp and Sugar, and boil the whole pretty fast ‘till it will Jelly. Keep your Glasses cover’d and ‘twill be a lasting wholsome Sweet-meat for any Use.

Quotation for the Day …

Marmalade in the morning has the same effect on taste buds that a cold shower has on the body. Jeanine Larmoth.