Vegetarianism, 17th C Style.

Thomas Tryon (1634 -1703) was an interesting man for his time – or for any time, for that matter. He was the archetypal self-taught, self-made man who rose from poor beginnings to become a successful businessman (in the hat industry) and widely-read author (especially of books that we would now call ‘self-help.’) He seems to have espoused every possible ethical cause of the time: temperance, pacifism, animal rights, and anti-slavery.

Tryon was also a vegetarian, (although it would be several centuries before the phrase was invented) which was certainly not a common choice in the seventeenth century, for those in a position to choose. He believed that man should not be careless of what goes into his mouth, because essentially – he is what he eats. Here are his words on the subject:

“Likewise this Prince, the Taste or Pallate hath another powerful Officer placed in this great Gate the Mouth, or common Road that leads into the Metropolitan or Human City, which is called the Expulsive Faculty, by whose Innate power it can, at the command of its Superior Prince the Tafte or Pallate, immediatley Expel or Spit forth, (and that with great vigour) what Meat, Drink or other thing is distafteful or unpleasing to the Pallate or Sense of Tasting, so wonderfully hath our Creator guarded the Gate, Road or common Passage, that nothing might pass into the Body or Stomach but only what is proper and agreeable to sustain and preferve the Human Nature in a due regular Temperature and Union.

For if this Gate or common Passage be kept from being violated or forced upon, by Adulterers and Thieves, and that no unclean thing enters, then all the whole Body and Mind is Sound, Healthy, and free from all cloudy Burthensom Diseases.

But on the other side, if the Prince the Pallate, or Superior Officer be adulterated, and hath by intemperance and improper Meats and Drinks lost its intire and natural Taste or true distinguising Power, then presently all the under-graduated Officers and Centinels are thereby made heavy, sleepy, dull, idle, careless and impure, and then this great or wonderful Gate or Road stands open to all Intruders, and there is no Uncleanness nor Intemperance that is withstood but all Viciousness doth freely pass without any Examination of the said Officers or sentinels so that the Human City must needs be Defiled, Wounded and Distempered."

Tryon did not write cookery books, but one of his works is particularly relevant to this blog. It was published in 1696, and its extended title was:

Wisdom’s Dictates: or Aphorisms and Rules, Physical, Moral, and Divine; For Preserving the Health of the Body and the Peace of the Mind, fit to be regarded and practiced by all that would enjoy the Blessings of the present and future World.

To which is added, A Bill of Fare Of Seventy five Noble Dishes of Excellent Food, far exceeding those made of Fish or Flesh, which Banquet I present to the Sons of Wisdom, or such as shall decline that depraved Custom of Eating Flesh and Blood.

My plan for the remainder of this week is to troll through these ‘seventy five noble dishes of excellent food’, and see what we make of them in the twenty-first century. To start with however, I give you a recipe from a very early ‘vegetarian’ cookery book called Primitive Cookery: or, the Kitchen Garden display’d. Containing a Collection of Receipts for preparing a great Variety of Cheap, healthful and palatable Dishes without either Fish, Flesh, or Fowl, published in 1691. Please note that the book is not exclusively vegetarian in the modern sense – it contains at least one recipe which uses ‘mutton-gravy.’

Artichoke Soup.
Wash the bottoms of the artichokes, and boil them in blanched water, putting in a large piece of butter, kneaded up with a little flour and salt. When they are boiled, take them out, mash them through a sieve, as you do pease; then let them simmer in a stew-pan over a gentle fire, putting in butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and cloves pounded in a mortar, also a bunch of young onions, thyme, and a bay leaf. When it is almost ready, pound in a mortar some blanched sweet almonds, candied lemon peel, biscuits, bitter almonds, yolks of hard eggs, sugar, and a little orange-flower water; put this to your soup, set it a little over the fire, then serve it.

Quotation for the Day.

Let none of your food be attended with the dying Groans of the innocent Creatures.
Thomas Tryon, 1691

Good Friday dinner with the Brothers.

I thought it would be interesting on this Good Friday to dine with the seventeenth century brethren at the Hospital of St.Cross. This was a hospital in the old sense of the word meaning a place for hospitality, in this case to ‘distressed travellers.’ The hospital was instituted (in England) by the Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem, and its history was recorded in 1868 in the Memorials of the Hospital of St. Cross and alms house of noble poverty, by Lewis Macnaughten Humbert.
Details of the meals of the brethren for the special days of the year are noted in the book, for the period 'after the restoration of the monarchy’ (specifically in 1675). I have included the whole segment so that you can see the range of food offered on all of the days, including Good Friday.

“The diet and allowances of the brethren are very minutely recorded, both for ordinary and extraordinary occasions. An extract in reference to the latter will be interesting, the more so, as it describes, with few alterations, the present custom. "That there are five Festival days in the year, to wit, - All Saints, Christmas, New Year’s day, Twelfth-day, and Candlemas-day: on which days the brethren have extra-ordinary commons, and on the eve of which days they have a fire of charcoal in the Common Hall, and one jack of six quarts and one pint of beer extraordinary, to drink together by the fire. And on the said Feast-days they have a fire at dinner, and another at supper in the said hall; and they have a sirloin of beef roasted, weighing forty-six pounds and a half, and three large mince pies, and plum broth, and three joints of mutton for their supper, and six quarts and one pint of beer extraordinary at dinner, and six quarts and one pint of beer after dinner, by the fireside; six quarts and a pint at supper, and the like after supper. And on Wednesdays before Shrove-Tuesdays at dinner every brother hath a pancake; and on Shrove-Tuesdays at dinner every brother hath a pancake besides his commons of beef, and six quarts and one pint of beer extraordinary, among them all; and at supper their mutton is roasted, and three hens roasted, and six quarts and a pint of beer extraordinary. And in Lent-time every brother hath in lieu of his commons eight shillings in money paid. And on Palm Sunday the brethren have a green fish, of the value of three shillings and fourpence, and their pot of milk pottage with three pounds of rice boiled in it, and three pies with twenty-four herrings baked in them, and six quarts and one pint of beer extraordinary. And they have on Good Friday, at dinner, in their pot of beer a cast of bread sliced, and three pounds of honey, boiled altogether, which they call honey sop.”

So, honey-sop for Good Friday. Sounds good, doesn’t it? There was no shortage of honey in religious houses on the time – bees were kept primarily to supply wax for candles, and honey was the useful by-product.

I am not going to give you a ‘recipe’ for honey sops, because the text above explains it (‘sops’ are simply pieces of bread soaked in a liquid; it is the word from which we get ‘soup.’) Honey is still the theme however, and I really cannot resist the following recipe for an interesting variation of honey mead.

Walnut Mead.
Put seven pounds of honey to every two gallons of water, and boil it three quarters of an hour. To every gallon of liquor put about twenty-four walnut leaves, pour your liquor boiling hot over them, and let it stand all night. Then take out the leaves, and pour in a cupful of yeast, and let it work two or three days and then make it up. Let it work two or three days and then make it up. After it has stood three months bottle it cork it tight and keep it for use
The accomplished housekeeper, and universal cook, by T. Williams (1797)

Quotation for the Day.
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.
Mahatma Ghandi.

Easter with Samuel Johnson.

James Boswell, the diarist and author best known for his biography of Samuel Johnson, was very excited to be invited to his hero’s home for dinner on Easter Sunday in 1773.

He wrote:
'To my great surprize he asked me to dine with him on Easter-Day. I never supposed that he had a dinner at his house; for I had not then heard of any one of his friends having been entertained at his table. He told me, "I have generally a meat pye on Sunday: it is baked at a publick oven, which is very properly allowed, because one man can attend it; and thus the advantage is obtained of not keeping servants from church to dress dinners."’

When the big day came, he wrote in his journal:

April 11, being Easter-Sunday, after having attended Divine Service at St. Paul's, I repaired to Dr. Johnson's. I had gratified my curiosity much in dining with JEAN JAQUES ROUSSEAU, while he lived in the wilds of Neufchatel: I had as great a curiosity to dine with DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON, in the dusky recess of a court in Fleet-street. I supposed we should scarcely have knives and forks, and only some strange, uncouth, ill-drest dish: but I found every thing in very good order. We had no other company but Mrs. Williams and a young woman whom I did not know. As a dinner here was considered as a singular phenomenon, and as I was frequently interrogated on the subject, my readers may perhaps be desirous to know our bill of fare. Foote, I remember, in allusion to Francis, the negro, was willing to suppose that our repast was black broth. But the fact was, that we had a very good soup, a boiled leg of lamb and spinach, a veal pye, and a rice pudding.

From Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1784), here are the instructions a boiled leg of lamb and spinach such as Samuel Johnson may have provided for his guests.

To boil a Leg of Lamb.
Let the leg be boiled very white. An hour will do it. Cut the loin into steaks, dip them into a few crumbs of bread and egg, fry them nice and brown, boil a good deal of spinach, and lay it in the dish; put the leg in the middle, lay the loin around it, cut an orange in four and garnish the dish, and have butter in a cup. Some love the spinach boiled, then drained, put into a saucepan with a good piece of butter, and stewed.

Quotation for the Day.

"I, Madam, who live at a variety of good tables, am a much better judge of cookery, than any person who has a very tolerable cook, but lives much at home; for his palate is gradually adapted to the taste of his cook: whereas, Madam, in trying by a wider range, I can more exquisitely judge."
Samuel Johnson, quoted by James Boswell.

Fool’s Food.

Today is April Fool’s Day. I just know I am going to get an email from someone (who assumes that this is my April Fool joke – or that I am just stupid) pointing out that ‘today’ is still Thursday. Believe me when I tell you that here in Australia it is already Friday.

The origins of April Fool’s Day traditions are lost in the mists of antiquity, and as such are subject to much conjecture and fanciful embroidery. There is much about the day that suggests a spring festival of renewal – it is a day of organised havoc, with rules. Beware that you don’t continue your pranks beyond midday or …. I am not sure what will happen, but you just don’t do it, it is the rule. Perhaps the April Fool Gods will turn your nose into a stick of rhubarb, or you will be doomed until the next Fool’s Day to wear your underpants on the outside of your trousers, or you will be forced to eat only low-fat, low-carb, high fibre chocolate until Christmas.

The day is strongly associated with fish, for some (to me) very obscure reason. This is relevant to us today because this is a food blog after all. The fish symbolism is particularly strong in France (some experts do blame the French for originating the tradition) where the day is called Poisson d’Avril, or April Fish Day. They even have a fish called the April Fish, as is explained in Kettner’s Book of the Table, (London, 1877)

MACKEREL: A great authority, Grimod de la Reynière, says : “The mackerel has this is common with good women – he is loved by all the world. He is welcomed by rich and poor with the same eagerness. He is most commonly eaten à la maître d’hôtel. But he may be prepared in a hundred ways; and he is as exquisite plain as in the most elaborate dressing.” (au maigre comme au gras). This is immense praise, and is a complete justification of the common English method of serving him – plain boiled, with fennel or with gooseberry sauce. Nevertheless I give my vote to those who assert that there is but one perfect way of cooking a mackerel – to split him down the back, broil him, and serve him with maître d’hôtel butter. Still better, take his fillets and serve them in the same way.

The name of mackerel is supposed to be a corruption of nacarel, a possible diminution of nacre – from the blue and mother-o’-pearl tint of the skin. In one of the dialects of the south of France he is called pies d’Avril, the April fish – or as we should say, and April fool, both because he is a fool coming easily to the net, and because he first comes in April. He is not only quickly caught, but he spoils so quickly that the law accords him a peculiar privilege: he is the only fish that may be hawked about the streets on a Sunday. For the same reason he is the only fish besides the salmon that is much soused or marinaded in this country.

For those of you living in the other hemisphere, where April means Spring, not Autumn, and who can source a mackerel in season , I give you a simple version of the traditional gooseberry sauce to serve with him.


Gooseberry Sauce.
Put some scalded gooseberries, a little juice of sorrel, and a little ginger, into some melted butter.
The universal cook: and city and country housekeeper (1792), by By Francis Collingwood.

There is a slightly different version of the sauce (from 1709), intended to be served with goose here, and one for mock gooseberry sauce (made with rhubarb) here.


Previous April Fool’s Day stories are here, here, and here (my favourite, the amazing spaghetti trees of England.)


Recipes for Fools are here and here.

Fun Pudding is here.


Quotation for the Day.

Food is so fundamental, more so than sexuality, aggression, or learning, that it is astounding to realize the neglect of food and eating in depth psychology.
James Hillman.

Milk Soup.

No-one utters the phrase ‘milk soup’ anymore, which I guess means that no-one makes it. If one did want to make milk soup, one would first of all have to decide on the style of the soup, for it seems that there are several.

In the time of the inimitable Hannah Glasse, author of The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747), milk soup was essentially a custard or a custardy bread pudding.

Milk Soup the Dutch Way
Take a quart of milk, boil it with cinnamon and moist sugar; put sippets in the dish, pour the milk over it, and set it over a charcoal fire to simmer, till the bread is soft. Take the yolks of two eggs, beat them up, and mix it with a little of the milk, and throw it in; mix all together, and send it up to table.

One of the early vegetarian medical men included two recipes for milk soup in his book, Dr Allinson’s Cook Book (1915) The first one is a wheatmeal and vegetable puree, the second one ‘for children’ is another milk pudding.

Milk Soup.
2 onions, 2 turnips, 1 head of celery, 3 pints of milk, 1 pint of water, 2 tablespoons of Allison fine wheatmeal, pepper and salt to taste. Chop up the vegetables and boil them in the water until quite tender. Rub them through a sieve, return the whole to the saucepan, add pepper and salt, rub the wheatmeal smooth in the milk, let the soup simmer for 5 minutes, and serve.

Milk Soup for Children.
1½ pints of milk, 1 egg, 1 tablespoonful of Allinson fine wheatmeal, 1½ oz of sultanas, sugar to taste. Boil 1¼ pints of milk, add the sugar, beat up the egg with the rest of the milk and mix the wheatmeal smooth with it; stir this into the boiling milk, add the sultanas, and let the soup simmer for 10 minutes.

For a decidedly savoury option, we have, from Modern Domestic Cookery, and Useful Receipt Book, by William Augustus Henderson (1828.)

Milk Soup with Onions.
Take a dozen of onions, and set them over a stove till they are done without being coloured. Then boil some milk, add to it the onions, and season with salt alone. Put some butter onions to scald, then pass them in butter and when tender add it to the soup and serve it up.

And finally, a soup (or is it a custard?) which can be savoury or sweet at whim, from Food in Health and Disease, by Isaac Burney Yeo (1890)


Vermicelli Milk Soup.
Into a quart of boiling milk put a level saltspoonful of salt (or celery salt); add slowly (stirring constantly) 2 oz. of vermicelli; keep stirring for fifteen or twenty minutes, until quite soft. The yolks of two eggs should be added when the soup is ready to be removed from the fire. This soup may also be flavoured with cinnamon and sugar.

Quotation for the Day.

There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.
Winston Churchill.

Sour Milk.

I thought I might give you a milk diet this week, as I don’t seem to have given much blog time to one of my favourite foods. A brief look at past posts suggests that the only story to date which focussed on milk was about koumiss and artificial asses’milk, although I have alsogiven you recipes for milk punch from 1724 and 1778, and of course a lot of milk puddings. I’ve hardly scratched the surface of milk, really, have I?

So, today I want to look at yoghurt – specifically the early Western experience of it, for the good reason that I can’t read very early references in Arabic or Turkish or other languages of its countries of origin!

The Oxford English Dictionary describes yoghurt as ‘a sour fermented liquor made from milk, used in Turkey and other countries of the Levant; now common in many English-speaking countries as a commercial semi-solid, often flavoured, foodstuff.’ It gives the first reference in English as appearing in 1625, as ‘Neither doe they [sc. the Turks] eate much Milke, except it bee made sower, which they call Yoghurd’ (S. Purchas Pilgrimmes II)

The Monthly Magazine, and American View for the Year 1800, in its section on Useful Economical Information included an extract from Eton’s Survey of the Turkish Empire which described the preparation of yoghurt in its native land, and which will serve for our recipe for the day.

The Arabians and the Turks have a preparation of milk, which has similar qualities to the kumiss of the Kalmuks: by the first, it is called leban; by the Turks, yaourt.

To make it, they put to new milk, made hot over the fire, some old leban, or yaourt. In a few hours, more or less, according to the temperature of the air, it be comes curdled, of an uniform consistence, and a most pleasant acid; the cream is in great part separated, leaving the curd light and semitransparent. The whey is much less subject to separate than in curds made with rennet with us, for the purpose of making cheese. Yaourt has this singular quality; that left to stand, it becomes daily sourer, and, at last, dries without having entered into the putrid fermentation. In this state, it is preserved in bags, and, in appearance, resembles pressed curds after they have been broken by the hand. This dry yaourt, mixed with waiter, becomes a fine cooling food or drink, of excellent service in fevers of the inflammatory or putrid kind. It seems to have none of those qualities which make milk improper in fevers. Fresh yaourt is a great article of food among the natives, and Europeans soon become fond of it.

No other acid will make the same kind of curd-: all that have been tried, after the acid fermentation is over, become putrid. In Russia they put their milk in pots in an oven, and let it stand till it becomes sour, and this they use as an article of food in that state, or make cheese of it, but it has none of the qualities of yaourt, though, when it is new, it has much of the taste. Perhaps new milk curdled with sour milk, and that again used as a ferment, and the same process continued, might, in time, acquire the qualities of yaourt, which never can be made in Turkey without some old yaourt.

They give no rational account how it was first made; some of them told me an angel taught Abraham how to make it, and others, that an angel brought a pot of it to Hagar, which was the first yaourt (or leban).

It merits attention as a delicious article of food, and as a medicine.

It seems that popularisation of yoghurt in the English-speaking world took more than three centuries from that first mention in 1625. It was still essentially unknown in the very working class post-WWII community in the North of England in which I grew up. I do not remember when I first tried yoghurt myself, or when it became part of my daily (almost) routine, but I do remember making it myself in the ‘80’s when we lived in the country with no shops nearby but a house cow which provided more milk than we could use.

Literary references suggest however that the better off and better informed in England did appreciate yoghurt before my time – although it is still surprising that the first mention of it in The Times newspaper was not until 1938, and the first of it being used in cookery not until 1961, in a brief mention of it being a good addition to briefly cooked shredded beetroot.


Quotation for the Day

I asked the waiter, 'Is this milk fresh?' He said, 'Lady, three hours ago it was grass.'
Phyllis Diller

‘Foreign’ Recipes.

Part of the fun of exploring this week’s cookery book choice (Adam's Luxury and Eve's Cookery, or, the Kitchen-Garden display’d, published in 1744) has been considering old recipes as a source of new inspiration. I am sure I have gone on about this before, but I am constantly surprised, and more than a little disappointed, that modern cooks rarely seem to use history for inspiration. We are very comfortable with cultural inspiration however, and think nothing of incorporating ingredients and ideas from other countries in our recipes, even if we revert to familiar dishes for their comfort value.

It seems that ‘foreign’ food ideas were also appealing to cooks and diners in 1744. Here are a couple of recipes for peas with an international flavour, from Adam's Luxury and Eve's Cookery.

Peas the Portuguese Way.
Wash your Peas, cut in some Lettuce with a Lump of Sugar, some fine Oil, a few Mint Leaves, cut small, with Parsley, Onions, Shallots, Garlick, Winter Savory, Nutmeg, Salt, Pepper, and a little Broth; put some over the Fire, and when ‘tis almost ready, poach some new Eggs in it, making a Place for each Egg to lie in; then cover your Stew pan again, and boil your eggs with a little Fire upon the Cover; then slide them into your dish, and serve them.
Fine beans may be dress’d in the same manner, but you must blanch them, and put them in as they are, without putting them in Butter.


Peas the French Way.
Shell your Peas, and pass a quarter of a Pound of Butter, gold colour, with a Spoonful of Flower; then put in a Quart of Peas, four Onions cut small, and two Cabbages cut as small as the Onions; then put in half a Pint of Gravy, seasoned with Pepper, Salt, and Cloves. Stove this well an Hour, then put in half a Spoonful of fine Sugar, and fry some Artichokes to lay round the Side of the Dish; serve it with a forced Lettuce in the Middle.

Quotation for the Day.

LAUREL, n. The laurus a vegetable dedicated to Apollo, and formerly defoliated to wreathe the brows of victors and such poets as had influence at court.
Ambrose Bierce, Devil’s Dictionary.

A Different Spin on Salad.

Our source for the week, Adam's Luxury and Eve's Cookery, or, the Kitchen-Garden display’d, (1744), has, I think, singlehandedly put to rest the myths that vegetables were essentially neglected by our ancestors, and if they were served at all, the recipes were uninspiring.


One of the other things the book demonstrates is that at the time, many of the plant foods that we consider as salad vegetables were much more likely to be cooked before serving. As a sweeping generalisation, raw vegetables and fruits were considered with some suspicion in the past as being unhealthy. Remember the story of Samuel Pepys, who believed his neighbour died from eating ‘cowcumbers’? This was the topic of my very first blog post over five years ago.


One of the other things that stands out in cookery books of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is the number of recipes for cooking the vegetables that we now mostly eat raw in salads. When was the last time you had a dish of celery or cucumber cooked, as a side dish? I I am not talking about a couple of sticks of celery added to a stew, or cucumber to a stir-fry here, I am talking about these vegetables performing solo.

From our cookery book of the week, I give you a couple of ideas worth reviving.

Cellery with Cream.
Tie up your Branches and boil them tender; then cut them into Bits three Inches long, and put to them half a Pint of Cream, four Yolks of Eggs, a little Butter, and season it with Salt. Shake it together and serve it.

A Regalia of Cucumbers.
Slice twelve Cucumbers, put them in a Cloth, beat and squeeze them dry, flower and fry them brown; then add half a Gill of Claret, a little Gravy [broth], and some Salt, Pepper, Cloves, Mace, Nutmeg, and Butter work’d in Flower; toss them together, and serve them.


Quotation for the Day.

We can get fuel from fruit, from that shrub by the roadside, or from apples, weeds, saw-dust - almost anything! There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There is enough alcohol in one year's yield of a hectare of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the field for a hundred years. And it remains for someone to find out how this fuel can be produced commercially - better fuel at a cheaper price than we know now.
Henry Ford.

Take Some Wild Thistles ….

I have never eaten cardoons. I know a little about them, of course, but it is all theoretical. Now that I have realised this, deficit in my life, eating cardoons is on my A list, which I prefer to call my TTT-list (Things To Try list). I don’t remember ever seeing cardoons at any of the Brisbane farmers’ markets, but perhaps this will change now that they are on my curiosity radar.

I did consider the cardoon in a post a long time ago (here), but this week I am seeking vegetable inspiration from Adam's Luxury and Eve's Cookery, or, the Kitchen-Garden display’d, published in 1744. What does this lovely book have to give us on cardoons (which it calls chardoons) ? Four recipes, as it turns out – which is four more than any of the high profile celebrity chef cookery books that have ended up on my bookshelves over the last few years. How come we keep losing vegetable recipes from our cookery portfolios?

A couple of the recipes are quite substantial – chardoons with cheese, and one with bacon and marrow and more cheese, and one is for buttered chardoons. I am going to give you the first one in the book, which shows that if you prepare them right, they can substitute for asparagus, or even peas.

Chardoons Fried and Butter’d.
They are a wild Thistle that grows in every Ditch or Hedge. You must cut them about ten Inches, string them, tie them up twenty in a Bundle, and boil them like Asparagus: Or you may cut them in small Bits, and boil them as Pease, and toss them up with Pepper, Salt, and melted Butter.


Quotation for the Day.
I am better off with vegetables at the bottom of my garden than with all the fairies of the Midsummer Night's Dream.
Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) 'Lord, I Thank Thee'

Red is Good.

The Cabbage has been a staple vegetable for humans for millenia. We probably domesticated the wild form well over two thousand years ago, which has given us plenty of time to develop the different varieties from which we can now choose. The one I want to focus on today red cabbage.

As you well know, red cabbage is the litmus vegetable of the garden and kitchen – turning bluish if it is grown or cooked at the alkaline end of the pH spectrum, and red if it senses an acidic environment. This ability is due to the presence of one of the flavinoid pigments called anthocyanins – the same pigments that give the red colour to blood oranges, red apples, and autumn foliage, and which may well act as powerful anti-oxidants when we eat red foods.

Blue food on the other hand is not ‘natural’ to humans, probably because there are no really, truly blue foods in nature – only a few at the purplish (reddish) or blackish end of the spectrum such as blueberries and blackberries. Truly blue food is therefore quite repellent to humans – a fact exploited by the famous film-maker and practical joker Alfred Hitchcock when he held his legendary ‘Blue Dinner’ for some selected industry guests. And it is the reason why recipes for red cabbage almost always include a little vinegar or other acid, as this ensures the desirable red does not become disgusting blue in the cooking process.

As promised yesterday, my recipe inspiration this week is coming from Adam's Luxury and Eve's Cookery, or, the Kitchen-Garden display’d, published in 1744. Amongst its cabbage offering, this book has three methods for stuffing the vegetable – I don’t know of any modern or celebrity cook books that include that number for stuffed cabbage - but I digress. The red cabbage recipe is my focus today, and a fine one-pot dish this book recommends too, and ideal for a winter night or your slow-cooker. The ‘gravy’ referred to probably means meat broth, not the thickened ‘sauce’ that the word usually refers to today. The touch I like is that not just any vinegar is added at the end to preserve the colour and give the dish an edge, but elder-flower vinegar is specified.

To Stew Red Cabbage.
Cut your cabbage very fine, and stew it with Gravy, Sausages, and Ham, and season it with Pepper and Salt. Before you serve it, put in a little Elder-Vinegar, and mix it well together.

Quotation for the Day.

Botany, n. The science of vegetables - those that are not good to eat, as well as those that are. It deals largely with their flowers, which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and ill-smelling.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) 'The Devil's Dictionary' (1911)

Beetroot à la 1744.

In the year of 1744, France declared war on one old enemy (England), and made peace with another (Prussia), James Bradley, the English Astronomer Royal, discovered that earth periodically wobbles on its axis, Abigail Adams (wife of President John Adams) was born, and William Byrd of Westover (Virginia) died.

But what really important things were happening? What was going on in the kitchens around the country? Some pretty good things with vegetables, it seems.

There is a common assumption that in the past vegetables played an insignificant role on the dinner table. The assumption has been fuelled, I think, by the study of menus and meal descriptions of the time. Menus (or Bills of Fare, if you like) were kept or recorded only for important events, so no inference can be drawn from them as to the daily meals of most ordinary folk. Meat was the star at important meals and in wealthy households, because protein food was more valuable and more expensive (and not easy to preserve), so is presence was emphasised – leaving us to assume that vegetables were the poor relations.

Vegetables were grown and used extensively of course in the eighteenth century. There was a great flourishing of the herb and vegetable garden at this time, and great interest in horticulture and the development of new and useful food plants. One of my favourite food books was published in 1744, the chosen year for this post. It is Adam's Luxury and Eve's Cookery, or, the Kitchen-Garden display’d , and I like it in part because of its title, and in part because of the range and variety of recipes included at the end of the book.

I have given a couple of recipes from this book in previous posts: To butter Onions, and an interesting sweet Bean Tart made with green beans. There are more delights within it, and this week I want to feature the book, and see if it gives us inspiration several centuries later.

One of my favourite themes is the re-discovery of old recipes that would seem interesting and innovative on a modern restaurant menu. The recipe I have chosen today fits this bill, I think. I am not sure whether or not beetroot is still trendy, but if it is, it is no doubt the small roasted beet, served with goats cheese or similar. I have never seen anything on a modern menu like today’s recipe for what is essentially fritters of beetroot – especially fritters in the shape of fish.

To Fry the Roots of Red Beets.
Wash your Beet-roots, and lay them in an Earthen glaz’d Pan, bake them in an Oven, and then peel the Skin off them: After this is done, slit them from the Top to the Tail, and cut them in the Shape of a Fish call’d Soal, about the Thickness of the third Part of an Inch. Dip these in a thick Batter, made of White Wine, [fine] Flower, sweet Cream, Eggs, Pepper, Salt, and [?] beaten, and all well mix’d. As you dip each Beet-root in this Batter, strew them over thick with fine Flower mix’d with grated Bread and Parsley shred small, and then fry them in lard. When they are enough, let them dry, and serve them with a Garnish of Lemon. These likewise may be put about Carps, Tench, and roasted Jacks, by way of Garnish.

Quotation for the Day.

A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables.
Gertrude Stein.

Beating Butter.

I am sure I have neglected butter in my posts (but not in my real life, I assure you) over the last five years. I intend to try to remedy that situation, starting right now.

Many folk think margarine is an acceptable substitute for butter. I am not one of those folks, for two reasons that come to mind immediately. One is that I feel vaguely uneasy about margarine – a feeling summed up nicely by the quotation (attributed to Joan Gussow) “As for butter versus margarine, I trust cows more than chemists.” This logic may have nothing at all to do with scientific evidence - it is a logic which perhaps proves that that butter is an emotional concept as well as a physical fact. The other reason is more pragmatic. Butter tastes better.

I give you a recipe from the famous Hannah Glasse. A recipe that makes me enormously grateful that I live in the era of electric beaters, not the good old days of beating by hand (literally.)

Butter Cake.
You must take a dish of butter, and beat it like cream with your hands, two pounds of fine sugar well beat, three pounds of flour well dried, and mix them in with the butter, twenty-four eggs, leave out half the whites, and then beat all together for an hour. Just as you are going to put it into the oven, put in a quarter of an ounce of mace, a nutmeg beat, a little sack or brandy, and seeds or currants, just as you please.
The Art of Cookery, made plain and easy; Hannah Glasse, 1747

Quotation for the Day.
Eat butter first, and eat it last, and live till a hundred years be past.
Old Dutch proverb

How to Cook a Snake.

After the dinner-party standby of garlic butter as the topic for yesterday’s post, I feel the need to be a little outrageous. It is time to cook a snake.

I start with the instructions on the Australian ‘native method’ of catching and preparing snake from a book which today has a very un-PC The Uncivilized Races of Men in All Countries of the World, by J.G. Wood (1882)

Although the idea of snake eating is so repugnant to our idea that many persons cannot eat eels because they look like snakes, the Australian knows better, and considers a snake as one of the greatest delicacies which the earth produces. And there is certainly no reason why we should repudiate the snake as disgusting while we accept the turtle and so many of the tortoise kind as delicacies, no matter whether their food be animal or vegetable. The Australian knows that a snake in good condition ought to have plenty of fat, and to be well flavored, and is always easy in his mind so long as he can catch one.

The process of cooking is exactly like that which is employed with fish, except that more pains are taken about it, as is consistent with the superior character of the food. The fire being lighted, the native squats in front of it and waits until the flame and smoke have partly died away, and then carefully coils the snake on the embers, turning it and recoiling it until all the scales are so scorched that they can be rubbed off. He then allows it to remain until it is cooked according to his ideas, and eats it deliberately, as becomes such a dainty, picking out the best parts for himself, and, if he be in a good humor, tossing the rest to his wives.

Snake hunting is carried on in rather a curious manner. Killing a snake at once, unless it should be wanted for immediate consumption, would be extremely foolish, as it would be unfit for food before the night had passed away. Taking it alive, therefore, is the plan which is adopted by the skilful hunter, and this he manages in a very ingenious way.

Should he come upon one of the venomous serpents, he cuts off its retreat, and with his

spear or with a forked stick he irritates it with one hand, while in his other he holds the narrow wooden shield. By repeated blows he induces the reptile to attack him, and dexterously receives the stroke on the shield, flinging the snake back by the sudden

repulse. Time after time the snake renews the attack, and is as often foiled; and at last

it yields the battle, and lies on the ground completely beaten. The hunter then presses

his forked stick on the reptile’s neck, seizes it firmly, and holds it while a net is thrown

over it and it is bound securely to his spear. It is then carried off, and reserved for the

next day’s banquet. Sometimes the opossum-skin cloak takes the place of the shield, and the snake is allowed to bite it.

The carpet snake, which sometimes attains the length of ten or twelve feet, is favorite

game with the Australian native, as its large size furnishes him with an abundant supply

of meat, as well as the fat in which his soul delights. This snake mostly lives in holes at

the foot of the curious grass-tree, of which we shall see several figures in the course of

the following pages, and in many places it is so plentiful that there is scarcely a grass-tree

without its snake.

One compelling reason for eating snake is hunger. In a situation of necessity, when unappealing protein substitutes are all that is available, the disappointment (or disgust) can be eased by re-naming. This is in the hope that the nostalgia triggered by the name will fool the tastebuds. Snake, in some parts of the world has, when being used for culinary purposes, been re-branded (as we would say today) ‘Hedge Eel’ or ‘Bush Eel’ (or anguilles des haies, if you want to be French about it.) This, of course, was in a time when eel was a desirable dish – I can’t see the real thing being much more popular than the substitute in  our more fussy age, when folk reject eels because they look like snakes..

Vipers were once highly sought after for medical use, and in a previous post I talked about viper wine. Another way of preparing the snake for therapeutic purposes was in soup. I discuss this in the chapter on Medicinal Soups in my book Soup: A Global History, which you can buy, if you wish. Here, to tempt you (to buy the book, not to make the soup) is the recipe from the book.

Viper-Soup.
TAKE Vipers, alive, and skin them, and cut off their Heads; then cut them in pieces, about two Inches in length, and boil them, with their Hearts, in about a Gallon of Water to eight Vipers, if they are pretty large. Put into the Liquor a little Pepper and Salt, and a Quart of White Wine to a Gallon of Liquor; then put in Some Spice, to your mind, and chop the following Herbs, and put into it: Take some Chervill, some white Beet-Cards or Leaves, some Hearts of Cabbage-Lettuce, a Shallot, some Spinach-Leaves, and some Succory. Boil these, and let them be tender; then serve it up hot, with a French Roll in the middle, and garnish with the raspings of Bread sifted, and slices of Lemon.
The Lady's Assistant for Regulating and Supplying the Table, Charlotte Mason, 1787

Quotation of the Day.
Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
Ambrose Bierce

A Chocolate Life.

I spent last evening at a tasting session arranged for food bloggers by Brisbane providor Black Pearl Epicure. We began with tastings of various olive oils, vinegars (including a 20 year old Balsamic), and several salts. We went on to chocolate and other things, and ended with the best Roquefort cheese I have ever eaten. Dinner was somewhere in there too.

Needless to say, it was such a fine evening (following upon a busy day) that I belatedly realised that, once again, I have not polished the intended story for the day. So, once again, I give you a tweaked version of a previous article, written for a bakery magazine.

Life without chocolate is barely imaginable for most of us, but that was the unhappy position of Europeans before they discovered the New World at the end of the fifteenth century. Once they had found it however, they certainly added value to the product over the next few centuries, for the chocolate that the ancient peoples of Central and South America had been consuming for millennia was nothing like the chocolate we enjoy today.

The first Europeans to see cacao beans were Christopher Columbus and some of his crew in 1502. They had no idea what a culinary treasure they dismissed as a boatload of some sort of primitive native “money” - although they were partially correct as the beans were indeed used as currency at that time. A subsequent explorer, Hernando de Oviedo y Valdez, recorded their purchasing power in 1513: for example - four beans would buy a rabbit, eight to ten the services of a prostitute, and one hundred would get you a slave.

The beans were also, of course, made into a drink- but quite a different one from hot chocolate as we know it now. It was a bitter, unsweetened beverage flavoured with all sorts of different spices – chilli, black pepper, vanilla, achiote etc - and whipped with a wooden tool, or poured from a great height to make it frothy. It was a luxury drink for the elite, and a strength-giving potion for warriors - but again, the early explorers initially viewed it as a curiosity, and were quite unimpressed with it themselves as a drink – one soldier saying “Chocoatl [sic] is fit to be thrown to the pigs”.

Eventually the value of the beans was gradually realised by the Spanish, who took it home with them. One day, an unknown someone in Spain had the brilliant idea of adding sugar to it, and chocolate never looked back. Nevertheless, it was still a hundred years before it became well known and loved in the rest of Europe, and a couple of hundred more before it evolved into a piece of solid confectionary.

Chocolate – as a sweet drink – was, like many newly introduced “foreign” foods, at first viewed with varying degrees of scepticism, suspicion, or enthusiasm. The French initially considered it “a barbarous product and noxious drug”, but it quickly became fashionable when it got royal approval, and Samuel Pepys was drinking it fairly regularly for his hangovers in the flourishing chocolate shops of London in the 1660’s.

The medicinal value of every foodstuff was an accepted tenet of the time, and although physicians did not always agree on the exact properties of the chocolate drink, it was generally thought to be somewhat of an aphrodisiac. It was also a bonus that it helped make people fat, for fat was equated with health in a society where thin meant starvation or sickness.

The confection made of Cacao called Chocolate or Chocoletto which may be had in diverse places in London, at reasonable rates, is of wonderful efficacy for the procreation of children, for it not only vehemently incites to Venus, but causes conception in women . . . and besides that it preserves health, for it makes such as take it often to become fat and corpulent, fair and amiable. [William Coles, 1657].

At the end of the seventeenth century Sir Hans Sloane, whose bequest gave us the British Museum, is credited with adding milk to chocolate to improve its value as an invalid food. It was still a drink however, not a solid, and required some heavy work pounding either the actual beans or pre-prepared “cake” in a mortar. There were two more steps needed before chocolate bars could happen. In 1828, Conrad van Houten devised a process we now call “dutching” – removing about half the fat from the beans, and treating the residue with alkali, resulting in a cocoa powder which mixed easily with water. Then, in 1847, Joseph Fry in England found a way of mixing some of the fat back into the “dutched” cocoa, adding sugar, and pressing the paste into moulds. It seems that the initial aim was still to produce an easier base for making chocolate drinks, but it was quickly discovered that the bars were very pleasant indeed to eat as they were. The final refinements came in the 1870’s with the development of milk chocolate, and then the “conching” process which produces the ultra-smooth texture and mouth-feel that is so much part of chocolate’s appeal.

Now, chocolate is cheap and easily available, and we can afford to use it in many dishes, but this is a relatively new development in culinary history. A couple of the earliest recipes (perhaps the earliest) using it as an ingredient are in the extensive sweet and confectionary section of The Court and Country Cook, by a French celebrity chef called Francois Massialot, first published in 1691. One is for a chocolate custard, and the other - most interestingly - is for a duck dish!

Chocolate Cream.
Take a Quart of Milk with a quarter of a Pound of Sugar, and boil them together for a quarter of an Hour: Then put one beaten Yolk of an Egg into the Cream, and let it have three or four Walms*: Take it off from the Fire, and mix it with some Chocolate, till the Cream has assum’d its colour. Afterwards you may give it three or four Walms more upon the Fire, and having strain’d it through a Sieve, dress it at pleasure.

*A ‘walm’ is a brief boiling-up.

In the following recipe from 1710 for what sounds like chocolate meringues, the chocolate would have been in the form of the compressed cake of pounded beans.


Chocolate-Biskets.
Having scrap’d a little Chocolate upon the White of an Egg, to give it a Tincture, work it up with Powder-Sugar, and the rest of the Ingredients, to a pliable Paste: Then dress your Biskets upon Sheets of Paper, and set them in the Campagne-Oven, to be bak’d with a gentle Fire, both on the top and underneath.

By the time Mary Abel’s book Practical Sanitary and Economic Cooking Adapted to Persons of Moderate and Small Means was published in New York in 1890, the chocolate in the recipe would probably still have been a solid cake of ground cocoa-nibs, not expensive eating chocolate. But what a fantastic idea it is for an interesting dessert!

Chocolate Soup.
¼ lb. chocolate, 2 ½ qts milk and water, sugar to taste, 1 egg yolk, a little vanilla or cinnamon.
Cook the chocolate soft in a little water, and add the rest; when boiling put in the other ingredients, and cook the beaten white of an egg in spoonfuls on the top. Serve with fried bread.

Quotation for the Day.

Chocolate is a perfect food, as wholesome as it is delicious, a beneficent restorer of exhausted power. It is the best friend of those engaged in literary pursuits.
Baron Justus von Liebig

Casserole or Stew?

Once upon a time, I used to think that a ‘stew’ was a utilitarian family dish that was cooked on the top of the stove, and a casserole was a posher dish suitable to serve to guests that was cooked in the oven. The older I get and the more I learn the less I know, it seems, for today I am unable to distinguish between the two – as exemplified in a previous post in which we had a recipe for 'Baked Irish Stew’.

The origin of both words is interesting however. ‘Casserole’ (a word derived from French or Spanish) originally referred to a ‘kind of stew-pan’. During the eighteenth century in England, it came also to refer to the contents (which ultimately necessitated the changing of the name of the container to casserole dish.) Sometimes ‘casserole’ also means ‘the edging or outer portion of certain dressed dishes.’

‘Stew’ is much older old word with many meanings, as we have discussed previously. To recap: in the fourteenth century it meant ‘a pond or tank in which fish are kept until needed for the table’, ‘a stove, heated room’ and ‘a vessel for boiling’; to make matters more amusing, it also meant a bath house, and as these were often used for ‘immoral purposes’, a ‘stew’ also meant ‘a brothel.’ Think on that next time you make a nice stew for the family. The word came into its modern meaning of ‘a preparation of meat slowly boiled in a stew-pan, generally containing vegetables, rice, etc’ round about the same time as the casserole was adapted to English use – somewhere in the eighteenth century.

Here is a nice early recipe for ‘casserole’, which is eminently doable today.

To Dress Rabbets in Casserole
Divide the rabbits into quarters. You may lard them, or let them alone, just as you please, shake some flour over them and fry them with lard or butter, then put them into an earthen pipkin with a quart of good broth, a glass of white wine, a little pepper and salt, if wanted, a bunch of sweet herbs, and a piece of butter as big as a walnut rolled in flour; cover them close and let them stew half an hour, then dish them up and pour the sauce over them. Garnish with Seville orange, cut into thin slices and notched; the peel that is cut out lay prettily between the slices.
The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747)

And as an example of a ‘casserole’ as an edging for another dish, I give you the following rather tricky recipe from The Practice of Cookery, adapted to the business of everyday life, by Mrs Dalgairns (1830)

Casserole of Rice.
Having cleaned and drained about half a pound of rice, moisten it in a stew-pan, with some fat - that which gathers on the top of liquor in which meat has been boiled; strain some broth or soup, add to it a large quantity of grease, some pieces of fat bacon, and a little salt, and mix it with the rice, to make it swell as much as possible; stir it frequently over a slow fire to keep it from sticking; when it is soft strain it through a cullender, and press it well with a wooden spoon. The mould being selected for the casserole, rinse it with the fat drained from the rice, taking care that every part of the inside of the mould be well greased, then cover it with rice, and place a piece of the crumb of bread in the middle, and cover it with rice also; press it in equally with a spoon, and let it cool. When the rice has become firm, dip the outside of the mould into boiling water; put a covering of paste made with flour and water; flatten it all round with a spoon, and make an opening in the top with a knife, then put it into the oven, which cannot be too hot for a casserole, baste it with the grease, and when it has become of a fine colour, take it out of the oven, remove the crust, and take out the bread carefully, so that the casserole may not be injured ; next remove some of the rice from the inside; taking care to leave enough to resist the weight of whatever may be put inside of it. Fill it with minced meat, ragout, blanquette, fricassee of chickens, macaroni, or scollops of fish, that have been already served at table; return it to the oven, and when nicely browned, serve it.

Quotation for the Day.
This is not that, and that is certainly not this, and at the same time an oyster stew is not stewed, and although they are made of the same things and even cooked almost the same way, an oyster soup should never be called a stew, nor stew soup.
M.F.K. Fisher (1908-1992)

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.

To Dress Snayles.

It is strange, what we each consider disgusting in the way of food. Most of us would not consider eating cockroaches, largely because of their perceived dirty scavenging eating habits yet lust after lobsters, which are sometimes called ‘the cockroaches of the sea’ for their similar eating preferences. Snails are another opinion-dividing food – are they a disgusting garden-destroying, slimy, rubbery vermin, or a delicious appetiser?

I make no apologies for using for at least the second time the quotation at the end of the post. I think it is very funny, and it does reinforce the notion that snail-eating is a decidedly French habit. This is not, or was not true, of course. Snails were commonly used in England and many other countries in previous times, both for their perceived medicinal value and as a valuable and nourishing food.

I give you three recipes for snails – one each from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The sliminess of snails suggested their use for soothing the chest, hence their recommendation in cases of consumption and other lung complaints.

To dresse snayles.
Take your Snayles (they are no way so as in Pottage) and wash them very well in many waters, and when you have done put them in a White Earthen Pan, or very wide Dish, and put as much water to them as will cover them, and then set your Dish or Pan on some coales, that it may heat by little and little, and then the Snayles will come out of the shells and so dye, and being dead, take them out and wash them very well in Water and salt twice or thrice over; then put them in a Pipkin with Water and Salt, and let them boyle a little while in that, so take away the rude slime they have, then take them out againe and put them in a Cullender; then take excellent sallet Oyle and beat it a great while upon the fire in a frying Pan, and when it boyls very fast, slice two or three Onyons in it, and let them fry well, then put the Snayles in the Oyle and Onyons, and let them stew together a little, then put the Oyle, Onyons, and Snayles altogether in an earthen Pipkin of a fit size for your Snayles, and put as much warm water to them as will serve to boyle them and make the Pottage and season them with Salt, and so let them boyle three or foure hours; then mingle Parsley, Pennyroyall, Fennell, Tyme, and such Herbs, and when they are minced put them in a Morter and beat them as you do for Green-sauce, andput in some crums of bread soaked in the Pottage of the Snayles, and then dissolve it all in the Morter with a little Saffron and Cloves well beaten, and put in as much Pottage into the Morter as will make the Spice and bread and Herbs like thickening for a pot, so put them all into the Snayles and let them stew in it, and when you serve them up, you may squeeze into the Pottage a Lemon, and put in a little Vinegar, or if you put in a Clove of Garlick among the Herbs, and beat iti with them in the Morter, it will not tast the worse;serve them up in a Dish with sippets of Bread in the bottom. The Pottage is very nourishing, and they use them that are apt to a Consumption.
The Compleat Cook, Nathaniel Brook, 1658

To Stew Snails.
Scour them, and cleanse them well, put them into a Pipkin with Claret and Wine-vinegar, Salt, Pepper, Mace, grated Bread, Thyme shred, Capers, and the Yolks of a hard Egg or two, minc’d. Stew all these together, then put in a good piece of Butter, and shake them well together, warm a Dish, rub it with a Clove of Garlick, lay Sippets in the Dish, put on the Snails, garnish with Barberries and slices of Lemon.
The Cook’s and Confectioner’s Dictionary (1723) John Nott.

There is no sense in the previous two recipes of needing to be apologetic about the main ingredient. By the nineteenth century, perhaps sensibilities had changed – at least, that is what is suggested by the final recipe, in which the author notes that some repugnance may have to be overcome, and that the taste may be ‘mawkish’.

Snail Broth.
Wash them extremely well, and throw them into very hot water; take them out of the shell, and pass them through several waters; working them well with the hand; slice them, pound the shells, and put all into a saucepan, with as much water as will cover; boil, skim, and let them simmer for several hours; add a little salt, sugar, and a very small quantity of mace, to correct the mawkish taste: a tea-cupful may be taken four times a day, with or without conserve of roses. Should the patient have any repugnance to it in this form, let it be put into some weak veal broth; this is far preferable to slater [woodlouse] wine …
Domestic economy, and cookery, for rich and poor, (1827)

This final recipe is included in the chapter on Medicinal Soups in my new book Soup: a Global History, which is available now. You can read about it at Reaktion Press, and you can even buy it from Amazon or your preferred book supplier.

Quotation for the Day.
The French are not rude. They just happen to hate you. But that is no reason to bypass this beautiful country, whose master chefs have a well-deserved worldwide reputation for trying to trick people into eating snails. Nobody is sure how this got started. Probably a couple of French master chefs were standing around one day, and they found a snail, and one of them said: "I bet that if we called this something like `escargot,' tourists would eat it." Then they had hearty laugh, because ‘escargot’ is the French word for ‘fat crawling bag of phlegm.’
Dave Barry

Eggs and Bacon, Not.

If the illusory bacon and eggs tickled your fancy yesterday, then I have a variation on the theme for you today.

To make Eggs and Bacon in Flummery.
Take a Pint of stiff Flummery, and make Part of it a pretty pink Colour, with the Colouring for the Flummery, dip a Potting-pot in cold Water, and pour in Red Flummery, the thickness of a Crown Piece, then the same of White Flummery, and another of Red, and twice the thickness of White Flummery at the Top; one Layer must be stiff and cold before you pour on another, then take five Tea Cups, and put a large Spoonful of White Flummery into each TeaCup, and let them stand all Night, then turn your Flummery out of your Potting Pots, on the Back of a Plate wet with cold Water, cut your Flummery into thin Slices, and lay them on a China Dish, then turn your Flummery out of the Cups on the Dish, and take a Bit out of the Top of every one, and lay in half of a preserved Apricot; it will confine the Syrup from discolouring the Flummery, and make it like the Yolk of a poached Egg: Garnish with Flowers. It is a pretty Corner Dish for Dinner, or Side for Supper.
The Experienced English Housekeeper (1769), Elizabeth Raffald.

You don’t have to stop at bacon and eggs while you are in flummery-making mode. How about this offering, also from Elizabeth Raffald?

To make Cribbage Cards in Flummery.
Fill five square Tins the Size of a Card, with very stiff Flummery, when you turn them out, have ready a little Cochineal dissolved in Brandy, and strain it through a Muslin Rag, then take a Camel's Hair Pencil, and make Hearts and Diamonds with your Cochineal, then rub a little Chocolate with a little eating Oil upon a Marble Slab, 'till it is very fine and bright, then make Clubs, and Spades; pour a little Lisbon Wine into the Dish, and send it up.

What is flummery, do I hear you ask? Flummery is tomorrow’s topic, that’s what.


Quotation for the Day.

I have never regretted Paradise Lost since I discovered that it contained no eggs-and-bacon.
Dorothy Sayers.

Entertaining with Almonds.

I would have been impossible to put on a feast in medieval times without huge amounts of ‘marchpane’ (marzipan), and it continued to remain supreme at special occasions well into the eighteenth century for the preparation of ‘banquetting stuffe’ (sweetmeats for what we would now call the ‘dessert’ course.) The quantity (and cost) of almonds imported into Europe for the purposes of sweet treats for the wealthy, must have been staggering over these centuries – and the amount of labour to pound them all to powder by hand hardly bears thinking about.

The cooks of the time were kitchen-artists, and marchpane was a wonderful medium for their creative efforts. Marchpane could be shaped and coloured (even gilded) in a myriad ways, and all sorts of ‘subtleties’ and other wonderful items were fashioned - in 1562 Queen Elizabeth received as a New Year gift from her master cook, a chessboard made of ‘faire marchpane.’ A pale legacy of this art is in the boxes of marzipan fruits that appear in the shops in the lead-up to Christmas.

Marchpane was not just used to make ‘toys’ and gifts, it had another role in the kitchens of the wealthy. During the many strict ‘fast’ days of the religious calendar, and especially during Lent, the eating of animal products was forbidden. Almond milk could of course stand-in for real milk, and it was used preferentially much of the time anyway in many recipes – but how to ease the craving for real animal flesh? Provide the illusion of bacon and eggs made with almonds,as I showed you in previous posts, that’s how.

It has occurred to me that in the lifetime of this blog (five years and six days), I have never given you a recipe for marchpane, so here it is.


To make a March-pane.
Take two pounds of almonds being blanched and dryed in a sieve over the fire, beate them in a stone mortar, and when they bee small, mixe them with two pounds of sugar beeing finely beaten, adding two or three spoonefuls of rose-water, and that will keep your almonds from oiling: when your paste is beaten fine, drive it thin with a rowling pin, and so lay it on a bottom of wafers; then raise up a little edge on the side, and so bake it; then yce [ice] it with rose water and sugar, then put it into the oven againe, and when you see your yce is risen up and drie, then take it out of the oven and garnish it with pretie conceipts, as birdes and beasts being cast out of standing-moldes. Sticke long comfits upright into it, cast bisket and carrowaies in it, and so serve it; you may also print of this march-pane paste in your moldes for banqueting dishes. And of this paste our comfit-makers at this day make their letters, knots, armes, escutcheons, beasts, birds, and other fancies.
Delightes for Ladies, 1608

And if you like almonds, and like fun illusion food, but marzipan is not your thing, here is a delightful idea to bring a child-like pleasure to your next party.

Hedge-Hog.
Take two pounds of sweet almonds, put them into boiling water, take off the skins, save about four ounces whole, put the rest in a mortar and beat them with a little canary and orange-flower water to keep them from oiling; then beat up the yolks of twelve eggs, the whites of six, put them in and beat them well, put in a pint of cream sweeten with powder-sugar to your palate, then put it into a stew-pan; put in half a pound of fresh butter melted, set it over a stove, and stir it till it is stiff enough to be made into the shape of a hedge-hog, then put it into a dish, and cut the rest of the almonds in long slips, and stick in to represent the bristles of a hedge-hog. Boil a pint of cream, sweeten it with sugar, beat up the yolks of four eggs, the whites of two,, mix them with the cream set it over the fire, and stir it one way till it is thick then pour it round the hedge hog; let it stand till it is cold. Garnish the dish with currant jelly, and serve it up; or put a rich calf's foot jelly made clear and good instead of the cream &;c.
The English Art of Cookery (1788), by Richard Briggs.


Quotation for the Day.
Don’t eat too many almonds, they add weight to the breasts.
Colette (French novelist)

Whey,What?

I came across a rather odd definition in the venerable Oxford English Dictionary recently, and I am hoping, once again, for your valuable insights. I was browsing the meaning of cheese, when I came across this tiny entry:

‘cheese-water, a water distilled from cheese.’

The sole reference to the phrase offered by the OED comes from The Boocke of Physicke, a medical text published in 1599, by ‘Oswaldus Gabelhouer. The short extract says ‘Wash yourselfe with the cheese-water mixed with the Camphir [camphor].’

‘Distilled’ immediately suggested a potent alcoholic drink to me, not a medicinal remedy for external use. I became suddenly excited . Is there (or was there ever) a cheese-brandy in the world? A beverage so secret that it has only ever been mentioned once in print?

I was so excited by the prospect of a nip of Parmesan Ratafia or a shot of Camembert Vodka that, clearly, I forgot my elementary physics. To distil, of course, means simply ‘to vaporize a substance by means of heat, and then condense the vapour by exposing it to cold, so as to obtain the substance or one of its constituents in a state of concentration or purity.’ Distillation therefore is a process that can be performed on any liquid, but not of course, to cheese. Equally clearly then, the early copy-editors of the illustrious OED also missed the error. For this they can be forgiven, however, as there does not appear to have been any more reported sightings of the phrase ‘cheese-water’ to cause them to refine the definition.

I went to the full text of the Boocke of Physicke, hoping for greater understanding of cheese-water. Here is the full recipe for the remedy:


For all manner of itchynge of the body whatsoever.
Take Lillywater, Rosewater, and water of Mayflowers, ana a like, distil also Goates cheese, and reserve that water apart, adde thereto a little contundede Camphir. First inugate the itch with good Aqua vitae, then madefye a sponge in the first foure waters, and wash yourself therewith, and at the last wash yourself with the cheese-water mixed with the Camphir. Does this always after fomentatione, or in bathinge. Probatum.

So, it appears that cheese-water is in fact, whey, which is ‘the serum or watery part of milk which remains after the separation of the curd by coagulation, esp. in the manufacture of cheese’. Perhaps the explanation of the use of ‘distil’ in this recipe/formula is merely that it was an incorrect choice of words for a man of science.

Whey has been in and out of fashion as a health-drink for centuries. Samuel Pepys was fond of it as a tonic in the mid-seventeenth century, and I do believe that in some circles it is popular again. I don’t believe I have seen fresh whey for sale anywhere, however. The modern version seems to be as whey-powder to ‘boost up’ other foods, or parts of the body, or something – which is a highly unnatural ‘health industry’ interpretation of the super-sizing concept, if you ask me.

In previous times it was the whey itself that was ‘boosted up’ with the addition of alcohol, to make a ‘medicinal’ drink such as ‘wine-whey’, ‘sack-whey’, or ‘whey-posset’. A non-alcoholic version which sounds delightful was ‘whey-whig’, a ‘beverage made of whey flavoured with herbs [especially] mint, balm, and walnut leaves.’

An important point is that whey was never wasted. It could replace the water when cooking up the breakfast oats to make whey-porridge or whey-brose. It was commonly converted into pork by being fed to the pigs, which is why pork and cheese industries often developed side by side (think of Melton Mowbray pork pies and Stilton cheese, in Englands Midlands region.)

You can even make whey yourself in the comfort of your own home. Here is a version from the inimitable Hannah Glasse.

Orange [or lemon] Whey
Squeeze the juice of a lemon or orange into a quarter of a pint of milk, when the curd is hard, pour the whey clear off, and sweeten it to your palate. You may colour some with the juice of spinach, some with saffron, and some with cochineal, just as you fancy.
The Art of Cookery (1774), Hannah Glasse.

Quotation for the Day.

Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap.
Robert Fulghum.