Fragrant Food.

After pasties and pulpatoons of multiple ingredients and complicated methods, I think it is time for something lighter and more fragrant, don’t you? The decision allows me to indulge myself in something rose-scented. Regular readers will be aware of my weakness for rose-flavoured Turkish Delight. Recently I was delighted to come across a rose-flavoured (non-alcoholic) beverage that is like drinking liquid Turkish Delight, and which for sheer rosiness surpasses both the rose & vanilla tea, and the pure red rosebud tea that have been recent indulgences of mine.

Rosewater was used in Europe (in the kitchens of the rich) from at least medieval times. It was included in all manner of dishes, both sweet and savoury (although as we know, this distinction was not made back then.) I don’t know of any book detailing the definitive history of the use of rosewater in Europe, so someone surely ought to write it? In the meanwhile, I must resort to sweeping generalisations, such as suggesting that it was imported from the exotic east and not home-made, and that the use of it began to decline when vanilla became more accessible in the nineteenth century. Certainly it essentially disappeared from English cookery, even from baked goods, by the end of the century. A sad loss, which makes one think that the good-old days did indeed have some good aspects to them.

There are many recipes in this blog which include rosewater, but today I give you one of my particular favourites.

To make a cake the way of the royal princess, the Lady Elizabeth, daughter to King Charles the First.

Take halfe a peck of Flowre, half a pint of Rosewater, a pint of Ale yest, a pinte of cream, boyle it, a pound and a half of Butter, six Egges (leave out the whites), four pounds of Currants, one half pound of Sugar, one Nutmeg, and a little salt, work it very well, and let it stand half an hour by the fire, and then work it again, and then make it up, and let it stand an hour and a half in the Oven; let not your Oven be too hot.
The Queen’s Closet Opened, by W.M (1655)


Quotation for the Day.

How many flowers there are which only serve to produce essences, which could have been made into savory dishes.
Charles Pierre Monselet (1825-1888)

Sauces Galore.

I thought it might be interesting to look briefly at some of the ‘traditional’ sauces served with certain foods, and see how many have stood the test of time. It was tempting to go back as far as possible, but I decided on the seventeenth century as the recipes and ideas seem more accessible to many of us.

An interesting book called Panzoologicomineralogia, or, a Compleat History of Animals and Minerals … published in Oxford in 1661 gives us an interesting perspective. In the chapter on animals the author includes their use as meats, even going so far as to tell which sauces were considered appropriate for each. The specific choices were in accordance with the prevailing medical opinion of the day, which was still largely rooted in the ancient humoral theory.

As for Sawces therefore, they are either hot, serving, if the stomach want appetite, by reason of cold and raw humours furring it, and dulling the sense of feeling in its orifices, &c; are made of dill, fennel, mints, organy, parsly, dried gilliflowers, galingal, mustard seed, garlick, onions, leekes, juniper-berries, sage, time, vervain, betony, salt, cinamon, ginger, mace, cloves, nutmegs, pepper, pills of citrons, limons, and orenges, grains, cubebs, &c.mixe 1.2. or 3. of them, as need requireth, with wine or vinegar, made strong of rosemary or gilliflowers: or cold, helping the stomach and appetite, hurt by much choler, or adust and putrifyed phlegm; as those made of sorrel, lettuce, spinache, purselane, or saunders; mixt with vinegar, verjuice, cider, alegar, or water; or the pulp of prunes, apples, and currens &c. some help also for slow digestion, which is caused by coldnesse of the stomach or hardnesse of the meat, and helped by hot things; mustard therefore is to be used with beefe, and all kinds of salted flesh and fish; and onion sauce with duck, widgin, teal, and all water foule; salt and pepper with venison, and galingal sawce with the flesh of cygnets; garlicke or onions boiled in milk with stubble goose; and sugar and mustard with red deere, crane, shoveler, and bustard; and others are for temperate meats, and speedy of digestion; as pork, mutton, lamb, veale, kid, hen, capon, pullet, chicken, rabbet, partridge, and pheasant &c these therefore must have temperate sauces; as mustard and green-sauce for pork, verjuice and salt for mutton, juyce of orenges or limmons with wine, salt and sugar for capons, pheasants and partridges; water and pepper for wood-cocks; vinegar and butter, or the gravet of rosted meat with rabbets, pigeons, or chickens; for such meats, their sawces being too cold or too hot, would quickly corrupt in the stomach, being else most nourishing of their own nature; but others are to be corrected by artificial preparation, and appropriated sawce, which nature has made queazy or heavy to indifferent stomachs. These are the chief meats, sawces, or matter of Aliment ……

Now, isn’t that an impressive repertoire of sauce ingredients and sauces? There certainly some good ideas back in the good old days. Why have we forgotten some of them? Galingal doesn’t figure large in too many English recipes nowadays. And when did you last use gilliflowers in your sauce?

The recipe for the day is from Gervase Markham’s The English Housewife (1668)

To make an excellent Sauce for a rost Capon, you shall take Onions, and having sliced and peeled them, boyl them in fair water with Pepper, Salt, and a few bread crums: then put unto it a spoonful or two of claret Wine, the juyce of an Orange, and three or four slices of Lemmon peel: all these shred together, and so pour it upon the Capon being broke up.

Quotation for the Day.

What is sauce for the goose may be sauce for the gander, but it is not necessarily sauce for the chicken, the duck, the turkey or the Guinea hen.
Alice B Toklas.

Adding Fragrance.

Every baker knows that the smell of hot bread and pastry is a powerful lure for customers. When the VAT legislation was being formulated in the UK, bakers successfully argued that hot meat pies should be VAT-free, as the main reason for having them hot on the premises was to create an enticing smell. Real estate agents have a similar trick, and say that the smell of coffee helps sell a home.

In the words of Alan Hirsh, director of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago “Odorants are potentially more efficacious than any other modality in increasing sale ability of consumer products”. In simpler words: “smell sells”.

Why is it so? One reason is that smell has a powerful alliance with memory, which always comes with a lot of associated emotion. All it takes is a whiff of something familiar – so small as to be almost un-noticed by the conscious brain – to trigger a whole flood of nostalgia, so that the smell of bread or coffee make us feel at home, or drawn to a comforting feeling of what a home should be.

The other, more primitive, reason why smell sells is that we are hard-wired to believe that whatever smells good will also taste good. This makes sense of course, because our sense of smell IS intimately tied to our sense of taste. We are all familiar with the lack of a sense of taste that goes with the lack of sense of smell when we have a cold, and the party trick that fools you into thinking you are eating an apple when your eyes are closed and your nose pinched shut and someone puts a piece of pear in your mouth.

Our taste buds can actually only distinguish four basic “tastes” – sweet, sour, salty, and bitter - or five if you include the controversial “umami” or “savoury”, as researchers are increasingly inclined to do. At least 70% of the flavour that we perceive as “taste” actually comes via our sense of smell, and although humans are very limited in comparison with dogs, we can still discriminate between 5-10,000 different odour molecules. In all sorts of permutations and combinations these molecules detected by our noses make up all of the “tastes” beyond the basic four (or five), so that when we taste the “spiciness” of Christmas cake or the “earthiness” of mushrooms, or the sheer “apple-y-ness” of apple pie, what we are actually doing is smelling it.

It makes sense then, to consider carefully the smell of baked goods, and how this might be used to make them even more delicious. We can use flowers for example – and there does seem to be a resurgence of interest in using flowers in food over recent years. We can learn (or re-learn) a great deal from the past in this regard, when flowers were much more freely used - partly it is true, on account of their supposed medicinal qualities, but also for the sheer joy of their colour and fragrance.

We usually associate rose-water with the sweet foods of the Middle East, but in medieval times until the end of the eighteenth century it was a common ingredient in England in many foods, both sweet and savoury. One recipe for “lamb stones” (testicles) sprinkled with rose-water comes to mind, but I think it unlikely it will become a trendy dish no matter how popular flowers might become in food.

Rose-water was particularly freely used in bread and pastry dough, partly because being distilled, it was clean and pure, and without the muddy taint of water bucketed out of the well. The other reason of course was that it tasted (smelled) good. Rose-water and rose-oil were made in the still-rooms of grand homes, often from roses grown on the estates specifically for that purpose, and the preparation was an occupation of the Lady of the household.

One such Lady was Elinor Fettiplace of Appleton Manor in Berkshire, who left us her handwritten cookbook dated 1604. Rosewater appears in many of her recipes, and in this one for sweet bread it is clearly added because it would make the bread more fragrant and delicious – not overpoweringly and obviously rose-scented, as this quantity of dough is sufficient for five large loaves, but it would surely provide a lovely floral note to underpin the nutmeg and sweet buttery flavour.

To make buttered loaves.
Take the top of the morning milk, warme it, &c; put thereto three or fowre spoonfuls of rose water, then run it, and when it is hard come take some flower, the yolks of two eggs, the white of one, &c; some melted butter, &c; some sugar, &c; some nutmeg, then temper this together with the milk, &c; mould it up into loaves, then set them on paper, &c; so bake them, if you make five loaves as big as manchets, you must put half a pound of butter to them, when they are baked, straw some sugar upon them, &c; so serve them.

Quotation for the Day.

The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94)

Bottled Beer.

I have no idea how true today’s story is, but I love it – and you will too, if you have ever wondered about the origin of bottled beer.

Once upon a time, ale and beer were drawn from the barrel as needed. If liquid refreshments were required to be carried out for a day labouring in the fields or, - as in our story today - a day of labouring to catch fish, then a suitable container was pressed into service.

‘The origin of bottled beer is thus quaintly recorded by Fuller. “Dean Newall* [Nowell], of St. Paul’s, in the reign of Queen Mary [1553-1558], was an excellent angler. But while Newall was bent on catching of fishes, Bishop Bonner** was bent on catching of Newall, and would certainly have sent him to the shambles had not a good London merchant conveyed him away upon the seas. Newall was fishing on the banks of the Thames when he received the first intimation of his danger, which was so pressing that he dared not go back to his own house to make preparation for his flight. Like an honest angler, he had taken provisions for the day; and when, in the first years of England’s deliverance, he returned to his own country, and his own haunts, he remembered that, on the day of his flight, he had left a bottle of beer in a safe place on the bank of the stream in which he had fished; there he looked for it, and found ‘no bottle, but a gun,’ for such was the sound emitted at the opening thereof.” And this is supposed by many to be the origin of bottled beer in England.’

*Alexander Nowell, an Anglican clergyman and Dean of St. Paul’s whose style of preaching displeased Queen Elizabeth I, and who fled to Europe on the accession of the Catholic Queen Mary.
** Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London who assisted Henry VIII’s schism from Rome, then returned to Roman Catholicism, and was responsible for the brutal persecution of heretics (Protestants) during Queen Mary’s reign.

Instead of a recipe for beer, in order to prepare you for tomorrow’s post I give you one for bread. Bread recipes did not often find their way into early cookbooks. ‘Everyone’ knew how to make it, so instructions were not necessary. Here is a pretty exception, from the seventeenth century – a lovely soft, rich, white bread perfect for breakfast.

Lady Arundel’s Manchet.
Take a bushel of fine wheat-flour, twenty eggs, three pounds of fresh butter; then take as much salt and barm as to the ordinary manchet; temper it together with new milk pretty hot, then let it lie the space of half an hour to rise, so you may work it up into bread, and bake it: let not your oven be too hot.
True Gentlewoman’s Delight (1676)


Quotation for the Day.
A fine beer may be judged with only one sip, but it is better to be thoroughly sure.
Proverb.

Bacon Week: Part the Second.

Yesterday we considered bacon and eggs as they were described and cooked in the early seventeenth century – which is pretty well the same way as they are cooked today. Sadly, one thing that has not persisted since early times is the enormous pie. Nowadays we have shaped metal containers to hold the food we wish to bake in an oven, but before the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution, the only baking ‘dish’ for a large joint of meat was a thick pastry shell or ‘coffin.’

The source for yesterday’s recipe, The English Houswife, by Gervase Markham, published in 1615, also gives a wonderful description of how a whole gammon (leg) of ham could be baked at that time. Notice that the ‘pie’ is shaped to make it look like a pig, the ‘head’ being modelled separately out of pastry and attached to the ‘body’ – a nice take on the ‘Sham Pig’ idea of a few days ago.

A Gammon of Bacon Pie.
Take a Gammon of Bacon, and onely wash it clean, and then boyl it on a soft gentle fire, till it be boyl’d as tender as is possible, ever and anon fleeting [skimming]it clean, that by all means it may boyl white: then take off the sward [skin], and farce it very well with all manner of sweet and pleasant farcing herbs: then strew store of Pepper over it, and prick it thick with Cloves: then lay it into a coffin made of the same proportion, and lay good store of Butter round about it, and upon it, and strew Pepper on the Butter, that as it melts, the Pepper may fall upon the Bacon: then cover it, and make the proportion of a Pigs Head in paste upon it, then bake it as you bake red Deer, or things of the like nature, only the Paste would be of Wheat-meal

William Salmon’s The Family Dictionary, or Household Companion (1695) describes how to dress ‘in the neatest way’, a Gammon of Bacon. I love this book: the next entry in this very useful general household manual is ‘Gangreen’.

Gammon of Bacon.
To dress this the neatest way, having water’d it [soaked it to remove the excess salt], scrubb’d it with a Brush, and scraped the Rind, and dry’d it again with a Cloth, put it into a Kettle wherein it may have sufficient room: then take Sage, Marjoram, Fenel, Sprigs of Bays and Rosemary, and boil it till it is enough; then split the Skin, and so curiously carve it, and stick the places so stript with Cloves; strew some Pepper on it, and serve it up with Mustard, Pepper, Vinegar, and the Herbs small minced, cut up in fine slices of what length you please, but of very indifferent thickness.


Quotation for the Day.

He describes it as a large apartment, with a red brick floor and a capacious chimney; the ceiling garnished with hams, sides of bacon, and ropes of onions.
Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers.

Bacon Week: Part the First.

There is something about bacon, isn’t there? I am not sure what it is, but aside from vegetarians and those who eschew it for religious reasons, bacon rules, doesn’t it? Is it the fat, the salt, the umami, the smell of it frying (especially early in the morning)? The sheer efficiency of it as a flavour additive to almost any savoury dish? Or perhaps it is some sort of ancestral memory thing? Bacon is an ancient comfort food at the most basic level. A flitch of bacon hanging in your chimney in the days before refrigeration and convenience stores meant that all was well with the world, even when it wasn’t.

It is time for this blog to give bacon its due reverence. When I feel stronger and better informed, in a future post I will attempt to clarify American, English, Canadian, Australian and other national interpretations of bacon, but for today, a short glossary of bacon-related words might be in order.

Bacon: the word originally comes from an old German word for ‘back’, because originally it referred to salted meat from the back (and sides) of a pig. Nowadays it often refers to cured meat from the belly of the pig, and at different times in-between and since it has also meant the entire pig, live, fresh, or salted. The salted (cured) element being crucial to most of its usage, there was in medieval times such thing a thing as whale blubber ‘bacon’ – and now we have the modern descendants such as turkey bacon etc, as well as 'mutton ham' and other cousins.

Ham: The Oxford English Dictionary gives the origin of this word as ultimately deriving from an Old German word hamm meaning crooked (is this where we get ‘ham-fisted’ from?) The first definition given by the OED is ‘that part of the leg at the back of the knee; the hollow or bend of the knee’, and this usage is recorded over two thousand years ago. By the seventeenth century it was being used to refer specifically to ‘the thigh of a slaughtered animal, used for food; spec. that of a hog salted and dried in smoke or otherwise; also, the meat so prepared.’

Gammon: the word is related to the words jamon (Spanish) and jambon (French), and refers to the ‘haunch of a swine’. As the ‘j’ is pronounced ‘h’, you can hear that it is really another way of pronouncing 'ham'. ‘Gammon’ has been used in English since the fifteenth century, if the OED is to be believed, and I see no reason why it should not be.

Flitch: I love this word. It is much older, it seems, than ‘ham’ or ‘bacon’, but essentially means the same thing – ‘the side of an animal, now only a hog, salted and cured.’ In other words, it is a whole side of bacon. The OED records its use as far back as about the year 700.

Rasher: The word has been used in English to refer to ‘a thin slice or strip of bacon, or (less commonly) of other meat, intended to be cooked by grilling, broiling, or frying; a slice of meat cooked in this way’ (OED) since the sixteenth century. Interestingly however, in spite of such ‘recent’ usage, the origin of the word is uncertain. The OED notes a ‘recurrent suggestion’ that it may be a borrowing from the Middle French rasure, or shaving, but ‘this is implausible on phonological grounds’. I await suggestions from the linguists’ world.

Now, onto our recipe for the day - and where else to start but with its best-known application - our breakfast bacon and eggs? One upon a time this was called 'collops and eggs', and we have previously had word fun with ‘(s)collops' too. I doubt that even the most inept or disinterested amongst us needs an actual ‘recipe’ for bacon and eggs (or ‘eggs and bacon’ if you prefer - some folk seem to be pernickety about which is correct), but it is always interesting and edifying to read the instructions and appreciate the style of old cookery books, isn’t it? Here is how the inimitable and profilic Gervase Markham described the process in 1615.


Collops and eggs
To have the best Collops and Eggs, you shall take the whitest and youngest bacon; and cutting away the sward, cut the Collops into thin slices; lay them in a dish, and put hot water unto them, and so let them stand an hour or two, for that will take away the extreme saltness; then drain away the water clean, and put them into a dry pewter dish, and lay them one by one, and set them before the heat of the fire, so as they may toast sufficiently through and through: which done, take your Eggs and break them into a dish, and put a spoonful of Vinegar unto them, then set on a clean skillet with fair water on the fire, and as soon as the water boileth put in the Eggs, and let them take a boil or two, then with a spoon try if they be hard enough, then take them up, and trim them, and dry them; and then, dishing up the Collops, lay the Eggs upon them, and so serve them up: and in this sort you may poach Eggs when you please, for it is the best way and most wholesome.
[The English Housewife, Gervase Markham, 1615]


Quotation for the Day

We plan, we toil, we suffer in the hope of what? A camel-load of idol’s eyes? The title deeds of Radio City? TheEmpire of Asia? A trip to the moon? No, no, no, no. Simply to wake in time to smell coffee and bacon and eggs.
J.B.Priestley.

Colly-feasts.

Samuel Pepys, who is a dear friend to this blog, made mention one day of a style of dinner that was unfamiliar to me.

“… At noon went by water with Mr.Maylard and Hales to the Swan in Fishstreete at our colly-feast, where we were very merry at our Jole of Ling.”

The world of dictionaries is pretty quiet on the topic of colly-feasts, but the definition which pervades the Internet is that a colly-feast is ‘a feast of collies (cullies, good companions) at which each pays his share.’ The OED doesn’t seem to know colly-feast (which seems strange to me since it was mentioned by Pepys) but it does have an interesting definition of ‘cully’ (etymology uncertain), which it says is ‘a man, fellow; a companion, mate.’ It seems, then, that a colly-feast was an early version of a boys-only meal.

It also seems difficult not to believe some connection with the word colleague, doesn’t it? The OED opines that colleague derives from the French, and originally meant ‘one chosen along with another, a partner in office.’ The idea of choice in relation to work colleagues is intriguing, isn’t it? Anyhow, perhaps you have a new name for the next office get-together – one that makes it quite clear who is paying, which might save embarrassment.

The other words in Pepys’ diary entry that might need explaining are – ling and jole. Ling we have dealt with previously. A ‘jole’ is a jowl, or a jaw, but in the case of fish (especially salmon, sturgeon, and ling) usually refers to the ‘head and shoulders’ which used to be considered a delicacy in Britain, and still are in many parts of the world.


The following recipe, from a very popular cookbook of Pepys’ era -The Accomplish’t Cook, or, the Art and Mystery of Cookery, by Robert May (1660) can be adapted to ling, if you want to eat fish seventeenth century style.


To broil Sturgeon, or toast it against the fire.
Broil or toast a rand or jole of sturgeon that comes new out of the sea or river, (or any piece) and either broil it in a whole rand, or slices an inch thick, salt them, and steep them in oyl-olive and wine vinegar, broil them on a soft fire, and baste them with the sauce it was steeped in, with branches of rosemary, tyme, and parsley; being finely broiled, serve it in a clean dish with some of the sauce it was basted with, and some of the branches of  rosemary; or baste it with butter, and serve it with butter and vinegar, being either beaten with slic’t lemon, or juyce of oranges.

Quotation for the Day.

Good cookery is not an extravagance but an economy, and many a tasty dish is made by our Continental friends out of materials which would be discarded indignantly by the poorest tramp in Whitechapel.
General Booth, in Darkest England and The Way Out.

Having Your Plate and Eating it too.

Earlier in the week we considered the lost art of picnic-catering. The idea of course at a well-catered anything is that the amount of food prepared is exactly right. This applies even more to picnic meals - because no-one likes waste, but it is tedious to have to re-pack previously transported food and carry it home again. What do you do about the other picnic accoutrements? Take paper plates and plastic cutlery and bin them on the way home? Or do the elegant thing and take the china and crystal and take it home (carefully) to wash and put it away?

For the ultimate in biodegradable picnic ware – next time why not consider taking edible plates? Any one of the flat breads or ‘wraps’ would work of course, but if picnic one-upmanship is your thing, you could make the white-glazed bread trenchers from Hannah Wooley’s [Woolley’s] book The Queen-like Closet, or, Rich Cabinet: stored with all manner of Rare Receipts for Preserving, Candying, and Cookery. Very Pleasant and Beneficial to all Ingenious Persons of the Female Sex.(1672)

To make white Trencher-Plates which may be eaten.
Take two eggs beaten very well, Yolks and Whites, two spoonfuls of Sack, one spoonful of Rosewater, and so much flower as will make it into a stiff Paste, then roule it thin, and then lay it upon the insides of Plates well buttered, cut them to fit the Plates, and bake them upon them, then take them forth, and when they are cold, take a pound of double refin’d Sugar beaten and searced, with a little Ambergreece, the White of an Egg and Rosewter, beat these well together, and Ice your Plates all over with it, and set them into the Oven again till they be dry.


Quotation for the Day.

I've liked lots of people 'til I went on a picnic jaunt with them.
Bess Truman.

The Buttery.

The last of our kitchen words for this week is ‘buttery’. The buttery was another ‘room’ in a medieval household which has long since become obsolete, for a whole lot of reasons, not merely technological change and shortage of servants.

The word ‘buttery’ – as with our other words this week – has a French origin and a usage in English dating to medieval times. The first thing to clarify about the buttery is that it was not the place where butter was stored - at least, not originally or solely - as even the largest medieval household would not have required an entire room for this purpose.

The buttery was where the butts and bottles (of liquor and wine) were stored – the French connection being obvious in the word bouteille for bottle. In a relatively short time the word was extended to include a room where other provisions were stored (the similarity to the word ‘butter’ no doubt helping this transition) – in other words it was the same as the pantry.

The buttery was the domain of the butler. The modern concept of a butler is of a glorified table servant, standing to attention at the periphery of the range of vision of the Master or Mistress at mealtimes, supervising minutely the work of the staff serving the food, and ready at any instant to pour the wine. Originally however he (it was always a ‘he’) had complete control of the wine and other liquor stores for the household. Because of the high level of responsibility and trust implied by this role, he had a high status in the servant world. A dishonest and poorly supervised butler could, and no doubt often did, divert some of the liquor and wine to his own purposes – this giving rise to the phrase ‘a butler’s grace’, meaning a discretionary drink.

Yesterday we had Hannah Woolley’s comments on scullery maids from her book The Gentlewoman’s Companion (1673). She had a warning to those employing butlers:

“In the Buttery and Cellars, that the Butler be careful of not making every idle fellow drunk that comes to the House, and so squander away without credit the Wine, Ale, and Beer.”

Today’s recipe must be for a nice discretionary drink. And who better to advise us than the inimitable and authoritative Sir Kenelme Digby, in his The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digby …. (1658)

To Make Wine of Cherries alone.

Take one hundred pounds weight, or what quantity you please, of ripe, but sound, pure, dry and well-gathered Cherries. Bruise and mash them with your hands to press out all their juyce, which strain through a boulter [a cloth], into a deep narrow Woodden tub, and cover it close with clothes [cloths]. It will begin to work and ferment within three or four hours, and a thick foul scum will rise to the top. Skim it off as it riseth to any good head, and presently cover it again. Do this till no more great quantitiy of scum arise, which will be four or five times, or more. And by this means the Liquor will become clear, all the gross muddy parts rising up in scum to the top. When you find that the height of the working is past, and that it begins to go less, turn it into a barrel, letting it run again through a boulter, to keep out all the gross feculent substance. If you should let it stay before you tun it up, till the working were too much deaded, the wine would prove dead. Let it remain in the barrel close stopped, a month or five weeks. Then draw it into bottles, into each of which up a lump of fine Sugar, before you draw the wine into it, and stop them very close, and set them in a cold Cellar. You may drink them after three or four months. This wine is exceedingly pleasant, strong, spiritful, and comfortable.


Quotation for the Day.
It is well to remember that there are five reasons for drinking: the arrival of a friend, one's present or future thirst, the excellence of the wine, or any other reason.
[attribution ?]

The Scullery.

It has taken until this, day four of our exploration of ‘kitchen’ words, for me to fully realise the extent to which modern technology has enabled entire rooms to be omitted from modern house design. Food processing, transport, and supermarkets have allowed the pantry room(s) to be replaced by a glorified cupboard and the larder has been made obsolete by the refrigerator. Today we are considering the scullery – also long since gone, albeit with no-one mourning its demise.

The scullery has disappeared thanks to modern plumbing, cleaning products, and especially the dishwasher. Originally it was ‘the department of a household concerned with the care of the plates, dishes, and kitchen utensils … also the room or rooms in which the work of this department is carried on’. By the eighteenth century it was no longer a ‘department’ but merely ‘a small room attached to a kitchen, in which the washing of dishes and other dirty work is done; a back kitchen.’

The scullery was occasionally separate from the main house, presumably in order to distance the dirty and noisy work from the Master and Mistress, thus avoiding offending their aristocratic sensibilities. Sometimes it was where the laundry and brewing were carried out, but primarily it was the place where the big cleaning jobs got done. A large and wealthy household might even have a ‘silver scullery’ where the good cutlery and plate was cleaned and polished.

The first reference for ‘scullery’ cited in the OED is from 1330 – and as with ‘pantry’ and ‘larder’, the word has French connections. The word has its roots in the Latin scutella, meaning a salver or dish-stand. In French this gave rise to esculier ( escuillier, esquelier)- a maker or seller of dishes. The word was further adapted in English to give squiller – the name for a servant in charge of the scullery.

In the servant hierarchy of big houses, the scullery maid was the lowest of the low. Her job (it was always a ‘her’) was to clean, clean, clean. Hannah Woolley in her Gentlewoman’s Companion (1673) has this to say about her duties (although it is highly unlikely that a seventeenth century scullery maid would have been literate, so presumably the instructions would be passed on verbally).

To Scullery-maids in great Houses.

There are several Rooms that you must keep sweet and clean, as the Kitchen, Pantry, Wash-house, &c.

That you wash and scowre all the Plates and Dishes which are used in the Kitchen, also Kettles, Pots, Pans, Chamber-pots, with all other Iron, Brass, and Pewter materials that belong to the Chambers or Kitchen; and lastly you must wash your own Linnen.

The recipe for the day has to be something in a large pot, methinks, to give the scullery maid something to work on. I am returning to my promise of a seventeenth century recipe, and give you the following, from one of the most important cookbooks of the time – William Rabisha’s The Whole Body of Cookery Dissected (1661)

To make Stewed-Broth.

Take your shins of Beef or Mutton, otherwise what meat is allowed, being washed and set on, scum it clean; then slice your brown bread and soak it in the said Broth; when it is so soaked, rub it through a strainer with your hands, put in as much as you judge will make your Broth thick in the boyling; when it is half boyled, at thereto your Raisons, Currans, and Pruins, according to the quantity of your Broth, with beaten Cloves, Mace, and Cinamon, and Ginger; taking a good quantity of your Pruins up when they are boyled, mash them together, and strain them as you did the bread with the Clarret; so let it continue till its boyled, then season it further with sugar and Rose-water, and serve it up with some of the best of your meat.

Quotation for the Day.

Have you any idea how many kids it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen? Three. It takes one to say, "What light?" and two more to say, "I didn't turn it on."
Erma Bombeck

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

Turnips, by many other names.

Lets be brutally honest here - the turnip is not a sexy vegetable. It is too old, for sure - being an ancient crone of the vegetable kingdom, unable to claim even the slightest residual menopausal allure. It is the wrong shape, probably – being centrally obese rather than asparagusly phallic-like. It is wintry and old-fashioned rather than light (or lite) and trendy, and poor and wholesome rather than rich and elegant. It is decidedly not exotic.

The turnip has changed its name regularly over the centuries, perhaps in a series of desperate attempts to re-brand itself, but, sadly, to no avail. Once upon a time in ancient times it was neeps – as it still is in some resolutely old-fashioned Celtic parts of the world. At some point it became rapes – a misguided choice of name, considering the other connotations of the word. At some other (turning?) point it became tourn- or turn-neeps – but it would take a linguistics expert to unravel the significance of that quantum change. One variety took on an exotic foreign persona as the swede, but still could not manage to look tall, blond, and sexy.

Even a wealthy, hard-working sponsor did not help. The the eighteenth century gentleman farmer ‘Turnip’ Townshend got his nickname (his avatar?) on account of his great interest in the vegetable. The problem may be that he emphasised its useful, practical, agricultural value of the turnip – not its culinary significance. Perhaps he should have written a turnip cookbook. However hard you look at it, it seems that the turnip cannot shake its pedestrian, poverty-associated image.

The only slight chance the turnip has to gain any hint of sexiness, in my view, is to refuse to answer to anything other than its French name of navets – a drastic re-branding idea that seems to be working in respect of prunes vs dried plums.


The staple of the poor, historically, has been some form of bread – particularly bread that does not use too much aristocratic, expensive wheat. To bulk out bread dough – albeit at the expense of good bread texture – almost any starch will do. The turnip, being cheap and easily grown even in despicable climates, was ideal. Here is how you do it, according to William Salmon’s Household Companion of 1695. It sounds quite tasty – and medicinal too.

Turnip bread.
Take about half a Bushel of middling sort of Turnips, not sticky, but such as will boil soft: being pared and boiled, press out the Water very hard until they are quite dry, beat them in a Mortar, and mix with the Pulp about two pound of fine Wheat-flower, and two ounces of Carraway-seeds; put in a pint, or somewhat more of new Ale-yeast, mould it up as other Bread, and let it be well soaked, and it will not only look, but tast like Bread. This is not only made for saving Charges in poor Families in a dear Year, but of late has been much in esteem for Consumptions, and those troubled with shortness of Breath and Ptissick; being very wholesome and nourishing.


Quotation of the Day.

One who is proud of ancestry is like a turnip; there is nothing good of him but that which is underground.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

Not-Cheese.

When is a cheese not a cheese? I became puzzled during my research for Menus From History when I came across fromage on several otherwise scrupulously observant bills of fare for dinners taken during Lent. Scrupulously observant Christians of the past were expected to abstain from all animal products the forty days of Lent – and at many periods there were secular penalties too, for breaking the rules.


Historically the word cheese could also mean something compressed or moulded or shaped like a cheese. In the words of John Pinkerton, the author of Recollections of Paris, in the Years 1802-5, “… fromage at Paris is a lax term for any substance compressed. Thus a fromage d’Italie is a Bologna sausage and a fromage glacé is a kind of ice.”

I don’t know of any other references to Bologna sausage that describe it in this way, and suspect it was not universal. Even in Pinkerton’s time I would suspect that most travellers who ordered fromage d’Italie would have expected a nice slice of Gorgonzola or something, not a slice of sausage.

The best known form of non-cheese cheese today is probably that made from fruit pulp – such as the quince paste we eat with real cheese, or the damson cheese we met in a previous post – a form that would certainly have been allowed during Lent.  A form highly unlikely to be found on a modern menu is head cheese – otherwise known as brawn (or souse, or collared head). The name seems to be American in origin, and seems to have appeared sometime in the nineteenth century. The explanation is obvious, of course, the cheese being made from the head and other relatively scrappy sources of meat.

Occasionally on a modern menu we might find a bavarois or bavaroise – a sort of custard or flavoured cream set with gelatin. It was once more commonly called Bavarian Cream or Bavarian Cheese, or even Bavarian Cream Cheese.

I give you two interesting variations on this theme. The first is for a fromage glacé (iced cheese) which, interestingly, the author indicates is English in style, presumably because of the well-known love of the nineteenth century English for iced and moulded puddings. The second is from the seventeenth century and would make a fine accompaniment to a dessert of fresh fruit.

Fromages Aux Epingles ou à’l Anglaise.
This fromage is called épingle, because the cream only receives the first icing; it is put quite liquid into the mould, and is neither to be stirred or worked; thus it will form in threads of ice; these are called épingles. All sorts of creams, &c., can be served thus when not boiled, for if boiled they will not answer
Manner Of Preparing It:
Make a cream with any fruit you like; when well mixed put into a mould à fromage, and put this mould in ice well pounded, and mixed with salt or saltpetre; let it remain three or four hours without stirring or working, only taking care it is well surrounded with ice, then serve. There will be threads of ice on the cream called epingles
French confectionary adapted for English families, by Frances Crawford (1853)

[épingle translates, according to Google, as pin]

Almond-Cheese.
Take Almonds beaten fine, make a Sack-Posset made only with Sack and Cream, take off the Curd and mingle it with the beaten Almonds, set it on a Chafing-dish of Coals and put some double refined Sugar to it with a sufficient quantity of Rose-Water, then in a Pye-Plate fashion it into the form of a Cheese; put it into a Dish, and scrape a little Sugar over it, and when it is cold, serve it up.
From William Salmon’s Household Companion (1695)


Quotation for the Day …

Cheese when given with a sparing hand is wholesome.
Aphorism from the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum (the School of Health at Salerno, about 12th or 13th century)

t7c4yi5hsu

Spice and other essentials.

A large manorial estate such as Gawthorpe (see yesterday’s story) was largely self-sufficient in the early seventeenth century. There were a few things considered necessary in a wealthy household that could not be produced by even the best run English farms however - such as spices and dried fruit. These expensive imported items were purchased from suppliers in London, and the costs recorded meticulously in the steward’s accounts book.

In June of 1601, the steward of Gawthorpe noted a purchase of:

“spyce, viz. ii pound of prunes, vjd ; j pound of cowraynes [currants] vjd ; halfe a pound of anelseedes [aniseeds] vd ; and saveron [saffron], ii”jd

To those who think that English food is (or was) bland and boring, please look again at this list! There were other spice purchases during the year – more aniseeds and saffron, as well as nutmegs and pepper and several other ingredients for cooking and household medicine.

Saffron is said to have been first brought to England by a pilgrim (probably from Arabia) in about 1339, and to have been first grown in England in 1582. The best home-grown saffron came from Essex, in the area around Cambridge and Saffron Walden. By November 1617, the steward’s book specifies “English saffron”, at a cost of twelve pence for half an ounce.

Saffron was valuable for a number of reasons: for its medicinal value, its brilliant colour, and of course, for its inimitable flavour. The herbalist John Gerard, writing in 1597 says “ … in good years we gather four score of 100lb of wet saffron of an acre, which, being dried, doth yield 20 lb. of dry and more …” and notes that “ besides the manifold use which it hath in kitchen and pastery, also in our cakes, (at bridals and thanksgiving of women) it is very profitably mingled with those medicines we have for the diseases of the breast [chest], of the lungs, of the liver, of the bladder, &c.”

The culinary uses of saffron were well established by the end of the fourteenth century in England, and continued to be expanded over the next few centuries. Here is a recipe idea (with medicinal comments) from Sylva sylvarum: or, a naturall historie: In ten centuries, by Francis Bacon (1635)

Mincing of meat, as in Pies, and buttered Minced Meats, faveth the Grinding of the Teeth; And therefore (no doubt) it is more Nourifhing; Especially in Age, Or to them that have weake Teeth; but the Butter is not so proper for weake Bodies; And therefore it were good to moiften it with a little Claret wine, Pill of Limon, or Orenge, cut small, Sugar, and very little Cinnamon, or Nutmegg. As for Chuetes, which are likewise minced Meat, infead of Butter, and Fat, it were good to moiften them, partly with Creame, or Almonde, or Pistachomilke; or Barley, or Maiz Creame; Adding a little Coriander Seed and Caraway Seed, and a very little Saffron. The more full Handling of Alimentation we reserve to the due place.

And here is a nice Saffron Cake (what we would call saffron bread today) from Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, 1747.

To make a fine seed or saffron-cake.

YOU muft take a quarter of a peck of fine flour, a pound and a half of butter, three ounces of carraway feeds, fix eggs beat well, a quarter of an ounce of cloves and mace beat together very fine, a pennyworth of cinnamon beat, a pound of sugar, a pennyworth of rofe-water, a pennyworth of faffron, a pint and a half of yeaft, and a quart of milk; mix it all together lightly with your hands thus: firft boil your milk and butter, then fkim off the butter, and mix with your flour, and a little of the milk; ftir the yeaft into the reft and ftrain it, mix it with the flour, put in your feed and fpice, rofe water, tincture of faffron, fugar, and eggs; beat it all up well with your hands lightly, and bake it in a hoop or pan, but be fure to butter the pan well. It will take an hour and a half in a quick oven. You may leave out the feed if you choofe it, and I think it rather better without it; but that you may do as you like.

Quotation for the Day.

A man who is stingy with saffron is capable of seducing his own grandmother.
Norman Douglas (1868-1952)

Clap Bread.

Celia Fiennes (1662-1741; reputedly an ancestor of actor Ralph Fiennes) did an amazing thing for a seventeenth century Englishwoman – she made extensive journeys around the country on horseback (riding side-saddle, of course), and alone (two servant women didn’t count in those days). Luckily for us she kept extensive notes of her adventures - and especially luckily for those of us interested in food, she often commented on and described regional foods that now seem to have been lost.

During her journey northwards in 1698, she described ‘Clap Bread’ as it was then made in Westmoreland. Clap bread is a sort of oatmeal (or sometimes barley) cake so called because it is clapped or beaten until it is thin, and then baked on an iron griddle. Her diary entry serves as the recipe for today.

“Here it was I saw ye oat Clap bread made. They mix their flour with water, so soft as to rowle it in their hands into a ball, and then they have a board made round and something hollow in the middle riseing by degrees all round to the Edge a little higher, but so little as one would take it to be only a board warp'd, this is to Cast out the Cake thinn and so they Clap it round and drive it to ye Edge in a Due proportion till drove as thinn as a paper and still they Clap it and drive it round, and then they have a plaite of iron same size wth their Clap board, and so shove off the Cake on it and so set it on Coales and bake it; when Enough on one side they slide it off and put the other side; if their iron plaite is smooth and they take Care their Coales or Embers are not too hot but just to make it Looke yellow, it will bake and be as Crisp and pleasant to Eate as any thing you Can imagine, but as we say of all sorts of bread there is a vast deal of difference in what is housewifely made and what is ill made, so this if its well mixed and Rowled up and but a little flour on the outside which will drye on and make it mealy is a very good sort of food. This is the sort of bread they use in all these Countrys, and in Scotland they breake into their milk or broth or Else sup that up and bite off their bread between while they spread butter on it and Eate it with their meate. They have no other Sort of bread unless at market towns and that is scarce to be had unless the market dayes, soe they make their Cake and Eate it presently, for its not so good if 2 or 3 dayes old. It made me reflect on the description made in Scripture of this Kneeding Cakes and bakeing them on the hearth whenever they had Company Come to their houses, and I Cannot but thinke it was after this manner they made their bread in ye old tymes Especially those Eastern Countryes where their bread might be soone dry'd and spoil'd.”


Quotation for the Day.

I have eaten your bread and salt. I have drunk your water and wine. The deaths ye died I have watched beside; And the lives ye led were mine.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Holy Water Recipe.

I cannot fathom the recipe I am giving you today. It is from Officers of the Mouth, by Giles Rose, published in 1682 (the English translation of Riboule's L'escole parfait of 1662). We have had some fun with this book earlier this year (March 23-27), but barely touched on the recipes. This one really puzzles me. It is time for you to do some of the work around here, and suggest some explanations. Here it is:

Partridges a leau beniste, or Holy Water.

Take Partridges and rost them, and when they are rosted, cut them into little pieces, and put them into a Dish with a little fair Water and Salt, and make them boyl a little, and serve them away.

I presume ‘a leau beniste’ is ‘à l’eau bénite’, which does mean Holy Water (when it is not a brand of Belgian Beer. Seriously. What a marketing idea.)

I know that ‘fair Water’ simply means pure clean water. It does not, as far as I am aware, imply any degree of holiness.

Roast partridges are probably heavenly, but not as heavenly as if they had been stuffed with foie gras and truffles, and basted with butter and ancient cognac as they cooked, and followed with chocolate and champagne.

Not having access to the original French text, and in any case being illiterate in French, I don’t know if this is a translation error or not.

So, tell me the connection between this recipe and Holy Water, please.


Quotation for the Day.

A cook, when I dine, seems to me a divine being, who from the depths of his kitchen rules the human race. One considers him as a minister of heaven, because his kitchen is a temple, in which his ovens are the altar.
Marc Antoine Desaugiers (1772-1827).

A Rare Fricasse.

Samuel Pepys has not graced us with his presence for some time, but today he is back with inspiration for dinner. On this day in 1664 he wrote:

“Thence to dinner where my wife got me a pleasant French Fricasse of veale for dinner.”

A fricasse, according to the OED is ‘meat sliced and fried or stewed and served with sauce. Now usually a ragout of small animals or birds cut in pieces.’ In other words, it is a posh name for stew. The first supporting quotation is from 1568, so fricasses were not a new dish when Pepys sat down to dinner on this night. It was already a “French” dish (or the name was), as it comes from the French verb fricasser, meaning to mince and cook in sauce – which is another example of the circular definitions that occur in dictionaries. The dictionary admits that this verb is ‘of unknown origin.’ How can that be, that dictionary does not even make a guess as to the origin of the word? What do linguists do all day, for heaven’s sake?

French food became fashionable in England after the restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660. The King had spent his exile in the courts of Europe, and inevitably brought back a taste for European dishes – and what the King liked naturally soon became all the rage (some things don’t change). Pepys was always keen to be up-to-date and in the fashion, so he would have been inclined to like a “French” dish for dinner, even if it was only veal stew.

Here is a ‘rare fricasse’ from the popular seventeenth century cookbook The Accomplish’t Cook, by Robert May (1660)

A rare Fricase.

Take six pigeon and six chicken-peepers, scald and truss them being drawn clean, head and all on, then set them, and have some lamb-stones and sweet-breads blanch'd, parboild and slic't, fry most of the sweet-breads flowred; have also some asparagus ready, cut off the tops an inch long, the yolk of two hard eggs, pistaches, the marrow of six marrow-bones, half the marrow fried green, & white butter, let it be kept warm till it be almost dinner time; then have a clean frying-pan, and fry the fowl with good sweet butter, being finely fryed put out the butter, & put to them some roast mutton gravy, some large fried oysters and some salt; then put in the hard yolks of eggs, and the rest of the sweet-breads that are not fried, the pistaches, asparagus, and half the marrow: then stew them well in the frying-pan with some grated nutmeg, pepper, a clove or two of garlick if you please, a little white-wine, and let them be well stew'd. Then have ten yolks of eggs dissolved in a dish with grape-verjuice or wine-vinegar, and a little beaten mace, and put it to the frycase, then have a French six penny loaf slic't into a fair larg dish set on coals, with some good mutton gravy, then give the frycase two or three warms on the fire, and pour it on the sops in the dish; garnish it with fried sweet-breads, fried oysters, fried marrow, pistaches, slic't almonds and the juyce of two or three oranges.


Quotation for the Day.
Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.
Fran Lebowitz

Food for Fool’s Day.

Naturally today’s story must have an April Fool Feel. Last year someone thought that the Old Foodie Joke was that I published the story a day early. I didn’t. It was already April Fool’s Day in this part of the world. I won’t tell you which country the person came from, but when I related the story to The Old Foodie Spouse, he rolled his eyes and said “Only in A….., Only in A….. ” . Sometimes (sigh) the rest of you need reminding that those of us down here Down Under have done a full day’s work before you have your first caffeine fix for the day. Think of me as an early-reminding system for special days, if you like.

I cannot send you back to 2006, because Fool’s Day fell on a Saturday, so no post. In 2007 there was a concession to the joking spirit of the day with a story on ‘Surprising Food’. In 2008 we had the Great Spaghetti Harvest - complete with 1950’s BBC footage (thankyou, You Tube) – still the best ever April Fool’s Day joke. Ever. Ever. Ever. No matter how Ba! Humbug! you feel about Fool’s Day, do yourself a favour and click on that link and laugh out loud. Only in Britain, folks, Only in 1950’s Britain could that joke have been played out so well.

The spaghetti harvest story is impossible to top. Today, at risk of appearing drearily obvious, I am going to talk about Fools. No, I don’t mean those of you who can’t think outside your own time-zone. I mean the very old-fashioned dessert dish. A food ‘fool’, according to the OED is “a dish composed of fruit stewed, crushed, and mixed with milk, cream, or custard”. The first supporting quotation given is from Florio’s Italian/English Dictionary of 1598 (so contemprary with Shakespeare), which is a curiously roundabout way of explaining an English dish. The definition is “Mantiglia, a kinde of clouted creame called a foole or a trifle in English.”

So, did a ‘fool’ always contain fruit? And what is the difference between a fool and a trifle? We would probably say today that a trifle has cake in it (the Old Foodie Spouse refers to trifle as ‘wet cake and custard’), but does that mean that a fool cannot have cake? And if not cake, what about ‘sippets’ (bread), as in this definition-that-is-almost-a-recipe, from Holme’s Armoury of 1688:

“Foole is a kind of Custard, but more crudelly; being made of Cream, Yolks of Eggs, Cinamon, Mace boiled: and served on Sippets with sliced Dates, Sugar, and white andred Comfits, strawed thereon.”

Mantiglia - the dish - remains a mystery to me. Google Translate tells me that mantiglia means mantilla. Someone with a good knowledge of sixteenth century Italian food please explain the food connection. Is it somewhat like the English ‘Cabbidge Cream’ in which the very thick cream is rippled and spooned and arranged like crinkly cabbage leaves? Is the cream made to suggest a lace mantilla?

P.S. There was a Rhubarb Fool from the 1870’s and Hannah Glasse’s Gooseberry Fool from 1747 in previous posts, should you want more substance to your recipes.

Quotation for the Day.

Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.
Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet.

The Master Confectioner and Master Pastryman.

The roles of Master Confectioner and Master Pastryman were too obvious to need explaining to seventeenth century readers of The Perfect School of Instruction for the Officers of The Mouth (1682). Elaborate pies (‘bake-meats’) and tarts, clever marzipan (marchpane) shapes, colourful sweetmeats and so on were prestigious dishes at great dinners, and royal and aristocratic households had no problem in keeping both departments very busy.

The Perfect School advised the Master Confectioner that he would be shown how to make ‘… all sorts of Sweetmeats, both wet and dry, with the Compounds of Fruits and Sallets, with the manner how to make all Delicious Drinks, very Pleasant and delightful to the Taste and Pallat. The Master Pastryman needed to know how to ‘… make all Bake-meats in Perfection, with the Composition of all Pastes, as Biskets, Makaroons, and Marchpains.’

Virtually everything in those times was made ‘from scratch’, including spice mixes and food colourings. The mortar and pestle got a great workout, as the following recipes (from The Perfect School) show:

How to prepare all Spices for a Pastry-man’s use, call’d Sweet Spice.
You should take two ounce of Ginger, one ounce of Pepper beaten to powder, and mingled together, then add Cloves, Nutmegs, and Cinnamon beaten, of each one ounce, this quantity of the Spices may serve to put to a whole pound of pepper, either more or less, these being mingled together must be kept in a Box, for use.
You may keep them each by himself, because some will use pepper only, but all together is more pleasant, and for your Spice and Salt you should put the weight of your Spice in Salt well bruised, and keep it in a dry place for your use.

[Green Colouring]
When you would prepare your green for colouring of either your Preserves or Paste, take the young leaves of a Pear-tree, beat them in a Mortar, strain out the juice into a dish, and set it upon the fire, and when it begins to boil put it into a strainer or cloath, and take the scum that stays upon the Cloath or Strainer, and keep it for your use when you would colour anything green, either Paste or Preserve.


Quotation for the Day.

Bad cooks – and the utter lack of reason in the kitchen – have delayed human development longest and impaired it most.
Freidrich Nietzche, Beyond Good and Evil

The Master Cook.

Finally, the job description you have been waiting for with bated breath all week – that of a seventeenth century Master Cook, as portrayed in our book of the week - The Perfect School of Instruction for the Officers of The Mouth (1682). Unfortunately, the description of his duties – unlike that of the other officers we have looked at this week – is short. In fact, it is non-existent. No notes on uniform (grubby, probably), working hours (long, certainly), behaviour (same as modern chefs? – people havent changed all that much), or ceremonial appearances (none). The Master Cook simply cooked (or more likely ordered other, lesser cooks about).

The Perfect School assisted the Master Cook by:

‘Shewing you in a very familiar way how to make all manner of new Dishes and Ragoues, and the manner how to season all Meats, both Fish and Flesh, as also the method of Services for all the four Quarters of the Year, as well as Inter-messes as Deserts. … Meats fitting for Feasts, Banquets, and Collations of all sorts, &c’

In other words, it simply provided the wannabe Master Cook with recipes. We can glean a little of interest from the above paragraph however. It was clearly important for the cook in the second half of the seventeenth century to be aware of new and fashionable dishes, and it was important to take the seasons into account when planning meals. Some things have changed little, after all, in several hundred years.

Although I am all for taking inspiration from the past, a modern Master Cook would probably be best advised not to send a dish of Sheeps feet and Hogs feet to table with hot charcoal buried within the dish itself, as in the following recipe taken from this week’s book, which was written when litigation was less of an issue.

Sauce d’Enfer, or Hell-sauce.
Boil Hogs feet in good Broth, and when they are boiled take them out and broil them upon the Gridiron; this done, cut your Hogs feet into good handsom pieces, and lay them in a Dish, and put green Sauce over them. Or if you will, after they are broiled, take Onions minced very small, put them into a Dish, and set them a stewing with some Verjuice; and when they are stewed put some Mustard to it, then take Sheeps feet cut in pieces into a Dish, but very hot, put in at the same instant some burning Charcoal a top of the Sheep’s feet, and then put the Hogs feet on top of that, with their sharp Sauce with them: And serve this at the entry of the Table, or as an Entermesse.

Quotation for the Day.

People have been cooking and eating for thousands of years, so if you are the very first to have thought of adding fresh lime juice to scalloped potatoes, try to understand that there must be a reason for this.
Fran Lebowitz.