Breakfast Afloat.

Today I would like you to join me, and the other ‘Second Cabin’ passengers aboard the Cunard liner RMS Mauretania, for breakfast on this day in 1921. There is something about breakfast aboard a cruising vessel, isn’t there? Here is what we are offered today.

Compote of Figs

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Oatmeal Porridge Fresh Milk.

Grape Nuts Corn Flakes

Fried Plaice

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Grilled Smoked Bacon

Fried and Boiled Eggs

Minced Veal a la Crème

Mashed Potatoes

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Radishes Spring Onions

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Breakfast Rolls

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Tea Coffee Cocoa

I am not altogether convinced about raw radishes for breakfast, but their inclusion on this menu made me realise that they have featured in only one measly story on this blog in well over a thousand posts. To read that particular post is to believe that radishes only ever appear in salads. Surely there are other alternatives for this particular vegetable? Perhaps even in some recipes suitable for breakfast?


Eliza Acton comes to the rescue in Modern Cookery, in all its branches (1845) with a method of cooking radishes to serve on toast ‘like asparagus.’

Boiled Turnip Radishes.
These should be freshly drawn, young and white. Wash and trim them neatly, leaving on two or three of the small inner leaves of the top. Boil them in plenty of salted water from twenty to thirty minutes, and as soon as they are tender send them to table well drained, with melted butter or white sauce. Common radishes when young, tied in bunches, and boiled from eighteen to twenty-five minutes, then served on a toast like asparagus, are very good.


Quotation of the Day.
The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.
Tom Robbins

Anglo-Mex Anyone?

My gift to those of you celebrating Cinco de Mayo today was to be the best of all gifts (well, one of them anyway), it was to be the gift of something to think about. I wanted to give you Anglo-Mex food. Sadly, a prolonged search of English cookery books and newspapers produced a single recipe. It is from The Times, and although it is Mexican in name, I have to say that it is a recipe whose nationality is scarcely identifiable, a recipe which singlehandedly makes the whole authenticity debate utterly hilarious.

Mexican Refresher.
Dissolve 6 oz of loaf sugar in a pint of boiling water. Pour in by degrees a quarter of a pint each of sherry and of lemon juice. Then add three quarters of a pint of cold milk. Stir well and pass through a jelly bag until clear. Serve icy cold.
The Times, Monday, Jul 24, 1939.

The magnificent and thoroughly English Victorian tome - Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery (1892 ed) - did however ease the dearth of recipes with this description of a much more authentic (I think) Mexican beverage:

Pulque:- This is a beverage much delighted in by the Mexicans and inhabitants of
some parts of Central and South America. It is made from the juice of different species of agave. The juice is collected by cutting out the flowering stem just when it is beginning to grow from the midst of the leaves, and scooping a hole for the juice. The cavity being formed, large quantities of juice are removed daily from it for months. When fresh, pulque is an agreeable drink, but it is more frequently drunk after fermentation, when its taste is more
pleasant. The great drawback is a putrid smell, but one gets over that in time. Mixed
with water and sugar, and allowed to ferment for a few hours, pulque forms a beverage called
Tepach.

Quotation for the Day.

I never ask God for anything, I only ask him to put me where things are.
Mexican proverb.

Why is English Mutton So Good?

I understand that mutton is making a come-back in Britain. I do hope I have not been misinformed, as, in the light of this information, I have put mutton on my list of must-eats when I next visit the country of my birth.

I am intrigued by the idea that the flesh of an animal tastes differently depending on its diet. The scientist in me asks “What are these flavourful dietary molecules that become incorporated in muscle tissue – and how do they get there?” I wonder if anyone has actually done taste tests with a panel of experts with discriminating palates on, say, pork reared three ways (solely on peaches? on ginger biscuits? on potato peelings?) If it has not been done, why not? If you have heard of such an event, I would love to know about it.

There was an interesting article on the topic in the New York Times in February 1870, submitted by their Own Correspondent in England. I am unable to detect any tongue in the cheek of this reporter, but surely it must be there?

“I have learned at last what gives its peculiar flavour to English mutton. It is fattened on Egyptian mummies. These are bought from the catacombs on camels to the Nile, loaded on English vessels, and brought to England and ground up for manure. A field of English turnips is only a crowd of ancient Egyptians in a new form, and the sheep eat them with avidity.”

The article also provides our quotation for the day, which I found vastly amusing, and you will find below.

The recipe for the day is for human turnip-eaters (to whom I especially dedicate the quotation). It is from Isabella Beetons’ iconic Household Manual (1861).

TURNIPS, German Mode of Cooking.
Ingredients.8 large turnips, 3 oz. of butter, pepper and salt to taste, rather more than ^ pint of weak stock or broth, 1 tablespoonful of flour.
Mode. Make the butter hot in a stewpan, lay in the turnips, after having pared and cut them into dice, and season them with pepper and salt. Toss them over the fire for a few minutes, then add the broth, and simmer the whole gently till the turnips are tender. Brown the above proportion of flour with a little butter; add this to the turnips, let them simmer another 5 minutes, and serve. Boiled mutton is usually sent to table with this vegetable, and may be cooked with the turnips by placing it in the midst of them: the meat would then be very delicious, as, there being so little liquid with the turnips, it would almost be steamed, and, consequently, very tender.
Time.- 20 minutes. Average cost, 4d. per bunch. Sufficient for 4 persons. Seasonable.- May be had all the year.


Quotation for the Day.
The ethnologists are right. We are all cannibals, only vegetarians who live on the turnips are only one stage nearer direct cannibalism than those who eat the mutton.
‘Monadnock’: from the article quoted above.

Easter Bread.

A week of Easter food would not be complete without some comments about Easter bread, so that is what is on our blog menu today. There are many forms of Easter Bread, and many associated traditions. Nowadays Easter bread is usually soft, sweet bread – verging on cake – enriched with butter, eggs, and milk, and often containing currants or other dried fruit. Easter Sunday seems to be the traditional day for enjoying this special loaf, but I am giving you a recipe today, because I don’t post at weekends, and also it will give you time to stock up on the ingredients, if you are of a mind to make your own this year.

One English regional tradition is described in the chapter on ‘Ancient Payments” in An historical account of the origin of the Commission appointed to inquire concerning charities in England and Wales, and, an illustration of several old customs and words which occur in the reports,by Nicholas Carlisle (1828)

“At Swerford, in the County of Oxford, the Rector supplies a small loaf for every house in the parish, on Easter Sunday, which is given after Evening Service. It is understood, that this is given on account of a bushel of Wheat, which is payable out of a field, called “Mill Close,” part of the glebe. Each house, whether inhabited by rich or poor, receives a loaf.”

There are many of these traditional doles and ancient symbolic rents in Britain, although the origins of most of them are long forgotten. I doubt if the inhabitants of Swerford still claim their bread (which would most likely have been a plain bakers loaf), but if they do, I would be pleased to have the tradition confirmed.

Easter Bread.
One yeast cake, two cups each flour and water; mix and set to rise overnight; in the morning take six cups flour, two cups milk, one and one-half cups currants, one and one-half cups raisins, one-half cup sugar, butter the size of a large hen's egg rubbed in cold, one teaspoon salt; mix and let rise until light, then mold and put in pans until light, then wet top with melted, butter, and bake one hour.
The Original Buckeye Cook Book and practical housekeeping: a compilation of choice and carefully tested recipes (1905) by Estelle Woods Wilcox.

Today is of course, Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday according to the Christian calendar. We have had stories in previous years on some of the food-associated traditions of the day (here, and here.) In Germany the day is called Gründonnerstag, or Green Thursday. It is usually said that the name derives from the symbol of a green branch which represents the journey of repentance that is the purpose of Lent, or perhaps it is intended to be a reminder of Christ’s crown of thorns. There may be another explanation however. Easter in the northern hemisphere occurs of course in Spring, and as with so many days of celebration, what we call ‘traditions’ are a blend of many centuries-worth of both religious and seasonal symbols and references – so perhaps ‘green’ simply indicates Spring. On Green Thursday it is traditional to eat green leafy salads or green soup. We had some recipes for soup in Monday’s post, if you want a traditional and healthy option for today’s dinner.



Quotation for the Day.

Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbour is a spiritual one.
Nikolai Berdyaev.

The Many Colours of Easter Eggs.

The Easter food theme would hardly be complete without some instructions in the art of making and decorating your own Easter Eggs, now would it?

In the days before little bottles of violently intense artificial food colouring, there were other artificial food colourings (some quite alarming-sounding) and even a few very natural ones.

From Jenny June’s American Cookery Book (1866), two recipes containing multiple ideas for colouring eggs.

Easter Eggs 1.
Immerse eggs in hot water a few minutes, inscribe names or dates etc., on the shell with the end of a tallow candle or with grease, then place them in a pan of hot water saturated with cochineal or other dye-woods; the parts over which the tallow has passed being impervious to the dye, the eggs come out presenting white inscriptions on colored grounds. Or boil the eggs hard and paint subjects on them with a camel’s hair brush, or etch them with a steel pen in India ink. Or dye the shells first, then scrape off the dye in any design desired.

Easter Eggs 2.
An egg boiled in the coat of an onion will turn to a beautiful brown color. To give a blue color, boil the eggs in powdered indigo with the addition of a tea-spoonful of dilute sulphuric acid. To give an egg a mottled appearance, with bright colors blended, and contrasted, obtain pieces of silk of the brightest colors, cut them into bits an inch long, half an inch wide, add a few chips of logwood and a little tumeric; let the egg be well inbedded in this so that the silk may form a thick layer round it, sew it up in very coarse brown paper and boil it half an hour or more.

And from Cookery for Working Men’s Wives (1890)

Colored eggs for Easter.
Eggs can be dyed a pretty colour with the juice of a beet root, or the peel of onions boiled in the water; or, if you have a patch of fancy print, bind it round the egg and boil it, and it will leave the impression. Wash the eggs clean before boiling. Easter eggs should be boiled for ten minutes.

If you want to make your own ‘eggs’ from blanc mange as in the recipe given yesterday for the nest of eggs, but found the instructions intimidating, here is another version with rather clearer instructions.

Easter Eggs.
Make a quart of blanc-mange in the usual way. Empty 12 egg shells through a small hole in one end and rinse well with cold water. Divide the blanc-mange into four parts. Leave one white; stir into another 2 beaten yolks; into a third chocolate; into the fourth cochineal coloring. Heat the yellow over the fire long enough to cook the egg. Fill the shells with
the various mixtures, three of each. Set upright in a pan of meal or flour to keep them steady, and leave until next day. Then fill a glass bowl more than three-fourths full with nice lemon jelly, broken into sparkling fragments. Break away the egg shells, bit by bit, from the blanc-mange. If the insides of the shells have been properly rinsed and left wet, there will be
no trouble about this. Pile the vari-colored "eggs" upon the bed of jelly, lay shred preserved orange peel, or very finely shred candied citron about them, and surprise the children with
them as an Easter day dessert.
Cookery Craft: As Practiced in 1894 by the Women of the South Church, St Johnsbury, Vt. (1894)

Quotation for the Day.

Good Idea: Finding Easter eggs on Easter Sunday.
Bad Idea: Finding Easter eggs at Thanksgiving.
(by Anon.)

And Now for Easter Pudding.

The Easter food theme continues today with three very different versions of Easter Pudding.
Firstly, from The Original Buckeye Cookbook (1905)

Easter Pudding.
One pint sweet milk, yolks of three eggs, two tablespoons corn-starch, three of sugar, and a little salt. Put milk in custard kettle, and when boiling add sugar, then starch dissolved in
a little cold milk, and lastly yolks ; beat, and let cook a few minutes, and turn out in broad dish to cool. When it stiffens around the edges, transfer it, a few spoonfuls at a time, to a bowl, and whip vigorously with an egg beater. Flavor with rose-water. It should be like a yellow sponge; when put into a crown mold.
Make day before wanted. When ready to serve turn out upon dish, fill centre with whipped cream, flavored with vanilla and heaped up as high as it will stand. Pile more whipped cream about the base.
Or With Fruit, while the corn-starch mixure is still hot put a little in a large mold and turn to let it run and leave a thin coating all over inside. Ornament by sticking candied cherries to this in any regular forms liked, fill loosely with fresh or preserved fruits, macaroons and crumbed sponge cake, soaked in orange juice, and a little citron cut very thin; then pour in slowly until full remainder of corn-starch, which must have been kept warm by standing in hot water so that it would not stiffen.
Let stand in cold place all night to become very firm and serve with Marigold Sauce.
Marigold Sauce.
Four tablespoons butter seven of best powered sugar, half cup fruit juice, cup cream, half a nutmeg, yolk of six eggs ; scald cream in custard kettle, beat butter, sugar and eggs together; add nutmeg, pour hot cream over all, add juice and serve.

Secondly, a very elegant dish for gentlefolk, from The Country Gentleman’s Magazine (London, 1868) – a recipe which appears, of course in the section for Country Gentlewomen.


An Easter Pudding.
To 4 oz of fresh rice flour. add by slow degrees half a pint of cold new milk. being careful to keep the mixture free from lumps. Pour it into a pint of boiling milk. and stir it without intermission over a very clear and gentle fire for three or four minutes; then throw in 2 oz. of fresh butter and 2 of pounded sugar, and continue the boiling for eight or ten minutes longer. Let the rice cool down, and give it an occasional stir to prevent the surface from hardening. When it has stood for fifteen or twenty minutes, pour to it a quarter of a pint of cold mil,k and stir well into it a few grains of salt, the grated rind of a large sound lemon, five full sized or six small eggs properly cleared and well whisked, first by themselves and then with two additional ounces of pounded sugar. Beat up these ingredients thoroughly together, pour them into a deep dish which has been rubbed with butter, and in which about a tablespoonful should be left liquefied, that it may rise to the surface of the pudding; strew lightly upon it 4 oz. of clean dry currants, and bake it gently from three quarters of an hour to a full hour. Some nutmeg, a spoonful or two of brandy, and an ounce or two of citron sliced thin can be added if thought desirable. The pudding will be excellent if the baking be well conducted. A border of ratafias laid on the edge of the dish and fastened to it with a little beaten white of egg mingled with a dust of flour, after it is drawn from the oven, will give a nice finish to its appearance; or cakes of pale puff crust not so large as a shilling, may be used for the purpose when preferred. Should a richer pudding be liked, use for it the yolks of seven or of eight eggs and the whites of four, and if it be baked in an American oven, let it be placed sufficiently high in front of the fire for the heat to be well reflected to the under part; for when this is not attended to, recipes will often fail from want of more uniform baking - the surface of a dish being even overdone, while the inside has been but slightly acted on by the fire. When time will permit it, is better to allow the rice for this pudding to become nearly or quite cold before the eggs are stirred to it.

And last, but by no means least, a dish guaranteed to delight the little ones. From the San Rafael Cook Book (1906), I give you the recipe for a nest of Easter eggs:

Easter Pudding.
Make 1 quart of wine, orange or lemon jelly; mold in a round basin in the center of which you have three saucers turned upside down. Save 1 dozen egg shells opened at the small end, and put them in cold water. Make 1 quart of corn starch blanc mange; fill three of the shells, and stand them in a pan of bran or meal. Bruise a few spinach leaves, squeeze out a few drops of the color, add to a little of the mixture, and fill three more shells. Color some with chocolate, some with the yolks of eggs, and some pink from a little of Knox’s pink gelatine. While you are preparing the eggs, have the skin from 2 oranges or 2 lemons boiling; when tender, remove all of the white inside [and discard], and cut [the colored peel] in little strips with scissors; then boil in syrup until clear, and spread out to dry. The next day, turn out the jelly; around the edge of the nest put the peel for straw. Remove the shells from the eggs and pile in the nest; put whipped cream all around the jelly. This is a very pretty dish and delights the children.

Quotation for the Day.

The best part of Easter is eating your children’s candy while they are sleeping, and then trying to convince them in the morning that the Easter rabbit came with one ear.
Anna Quindlen.

Easter Eating.

Easter approaches, and for me and mine that means several days at the beach – with frequent meal breaks of course, so food is very much on my mind (what else is new, you ask?)

There have been many previous Easter food stories in this blog, so before I start today, let me re-cap what we have considered over the last few years.

We have learned that at different times and in different places such things as Primrose Pottage, Sedgemoor Easter Cakes, and Oatmeal Pudding have been enjoyed at this season. Another post in another year left us awestruck by the scale of the Lord Mayor of London’s Easter dinner in 1848. One year we found out that in 1879 the United States’ President Rutherford Hayes, and First Lady Lucy Hayes, hosted the very first Easter Egg Roll on the lawn of the White House.

As for recipes, there have been many with an Easter theme. One post in the past gave three different Easter Cake recipes, and in case that was not enough we have also had a White Easter Cake from an Australian wartime cookery book (1943), and a British wartime Chocolate Cake for Easter made with the dreaded and dreadful dried egg. Yet another post had Easter Biscuits and Bunny Rolls. In the posts of Easter 2007, we celebrated the egg in a whole week of posts containing five centuries of recipes (here, here, here, here, and here.)

It might be thought that we have exhausted the topic of Easter food, but I assure you we have not. We have not yet had Easter Soup. Sadly for those of us in the Southern hemisphere who are wending our way through autumn, this recipe is for spring greens, especially those of the wild variety – which should inspire the urban foragers amongst you.


Easter Soup.
Gather the young sprouts and leaves of wild herbs when their first shoots appear, such as dandelion, sheep-sorrel, yarrow, nettle, lady’s mantle (Alchemilla vulgaris), strawberry leaves, etc. Take a handful of each; rinse repeatedly in cold water and drain in a colander. Do not squeeze them, lest you lose some of their juices. Chop fine; put into some good broth, and boil gently for about half an hour. Mix butter the size of a walnut with a teaspoonful of flour and drop it into half a cup of boiling cream or milk. When cooking has dissolved it, add it to the soup. Serve with poached eggs on top, or the custard the recipe of which I give you in my last.
Letters to a Young Housekeeper (New York, 1892) by Marie Hansen Taylor

Quotation for the Day.
Large, naked, raw carrots are acceptable as food only to those who live in hutches eagerly awaiting Easter.
Fran Lebowitz

Food fit for a Cottager.

Household hints are not the only treasures to be found in the depths of books such as yesterday’s source, Cottage comforts, with hints for promoting them, gleaned from experience: enlivened with authentic anecdotes, by Esther Copley (London, 1830.) Sometimes they give us recipes for things long-forgotten – forgotten to most of us city-dwellers and supermarket-shoppers that is. Occasionally they even supply the instructions for some of the down on the farm dirty peasant stuff that no cottager’s wife would have needed to read because she would have learned the skill growing up. Such stuff is chitterlings.

Esther’s instructions for the preparation of chitterlings give the distinct impression that she had never actually prepared them from scratch, herself. Before I give you her instructions for this decidedly not-modern dish, I cannot resist sharing her introductory platitudes, which perhaps go some way to explaining why she does not appear to have put her own hands inside a pig and pulled out its innards. She was in an entirely different social class than the folk who normally prepared such stuff, that’s why.

‘The writer of this little volume has long been accustomed to observe the habits, resources, and privations of the labouring classes of society, and to cherish a lively interest in their welfare and happiness. Under a conviction that the outward condition of these classes might be materially meliorated by an improvement in their moral and prudential habits, she has often indulged the wish that some enlightened and benevolent friend to their true interests would furnish them with a familiar compendium, calculated to meet their daily round of wants, feelings, circumstances, and duties, and to suggest friendly and profitable hints relative to each.’

When the hocks, feet, or cheeks are boiled, it would never enter into the head of a wasteful slattern, that the liquor was good for any thing—it would never enter the head of a careful manager to throw it away. She knows very well, that when cold there will be a cake of fat settled on the top, enough to make a good pudding: and that the liquor boiled up with a few peas and herbs, will make good soup; (a capital breakfast this for a hard labouring man, on a cold frosty morning.) Even from the liquor in which bacon has been boiled, very good fat may be gained, and freed from salt, by skimming it from the liquor while warm, and dropping it into a vessel of cold water—the salt will go to the bottom, and the fat remain at the top. Even the brine that runs off from salting the bacon is useful. A spoonful or two of it put into the saucepan with potatoes, causes them to boil light and flowery: this is particularly useful during the latter part of the winter and spring, when potatoes are old and indifferent, and other vegetables scarce.

Chitterlings.— I am surprised that I cannot, in any cookery book that I have seen, find directions for preparing these: it is a shame they should be wasted — however, I believe all the matter is, immediately they are taken out of the pig to turn them inside out, and give them many, many washings in salt and water, till they are perfectly sweet and clean, and then slowly boil them for several hours.

Quotation for the Day.
He fell upon whate'er was offer'd, like
A priest, a shark, an alderman, or pike.
Lord Byron

Household Hints, Part 2.

Today’s household hints come from Mrs. Ellis's housekeeping made easy, or, Complete instructor in all branches (Sarah Stickney Ellis; 1843.)  On the surface of it, it is advice that makes me very grateful to have a refrigerator, freezer, airtight storage jars, and plastic food wrap. But in the deep of it, it reminds me that there are times and places and circumstances when there may not be electrical power, and discarding meat fat and bread crusts are a wicked waste, and plastic an environmental disaster.

How and Where to Keep Things.

Crusts and bits of bread should be kept in an earthen pot, closely covered in a dry cool place. Keep fresh lard and suet in tin vessels. Keep salt pork fat in glazed earthen ware. Keep yeast in wood or earthen. Keep preserves and jellies in glass, or china, or stone ware. Keep salt in a dry place. Keep meal in a cool dry place. Keep ice in the cellar, wrapped in flannel. Keep vinegar[r] in wood or glas[s].

Mrs. Ellis also gives the following piece of advice, which made me ashamed to admit how rarely I peer into the depths of my tea-kettle to assess its crustiness.

To Prevent the Formation of a Crust on Tea-Kettles.

Keep an oyster-shell in your tea-kettle and it will prevent the formation of a crust on the inside of it, but attracting the stony particles to itself.

Naturally, Mrs Ellis’ hints include several other ways for avoiding waste, and the recipe for the day, taken from her book, shows you how to renovate bad butter and rancid lard.

Tainted butter.

Some good cooks say that bad butter may be purified in the following manner: Melt and skim it, then put into it a piece of well-toasted bread; in a few minutes the butter will lose its offensive taste and smell; the bread will absorb it all. Slices of potatoe fried in rancid lard will in a great measure absorb the unpleasant taste.

Quotation for the Day.

A lucky person is one who plants pebbles and harvests potatoes.

Greek proverb.

Household Hints, Part 1.

I am particularly fond of the sort of household manual that is not afraid to meet the challenge of assisting the housewife to cope with the myriad demands that the role requires. Sadly, no-one seems to publish these any more, and I am left to fend for myself in the matter of removing stains from silk gowns, making blacking for the stove, and concocting remedies for the green sickness. The Victorian housewife was luckier, for the publishing industry went wild for these books at the time, and she had a vast choice of such books to make her life easier, her servants better behaved, and her husband happier.

Methinks that there may still be much to learn from these books, in spite of their advice being nearly two hundred years old. To test the theory, I went first to Household Hints to Young Housewives, published in London in 1852. I chose this one because of the author’s name - or rather, her pseudonym – ‘Mary Careful.’ The name itself positively breathes reassurance, doesn’t it? It is just the thing that a new bride needs. The fact that the author chose a pseudonym is interesting in itself too. It is difficult to imagine, living in an age when celebrity rules as it seems to do today, that anyone wanting to publish a cookery book – or any book for that matter – would choose anonymity.

Mary Careful, in her lengthy preface, mentions her seventy-five years, her arthritis and her eight sons as if these in themselves give her some authenticity – and perhaps they do. She advises the newly-wedded wives to whom the book is addressed that ‘the helm of a vessel fully freighted with affection, wealth, and happiness is placed in your hand to guide – one false step may cast you on a rock of sorrow.’ The advice in her book will ‘place young housekeepers at once within the magic ring of wedded happiness’ by assisting them with ‘the trifles which make up the sum of human bliss.’ Now, I say without fear of correction, that those sentiments are not to be found in any current books on cookery or marriage, or life, - seafaring for that matter.

Mrs Careful gives some sample menus and this one caught my eye for its odd fragment of food etiquette advice below the menu proper.

MONDAY’S DINNER.

Soles – Melted Butter

Minced Beef, with Potatoe Wall.

Bread and Butter Pudding.

Spinach.

It is not etiquette to serve up potatoes with fish. If you fancy them, a distinct order must be given.

Believe me, faithfully yours

Martha Careful.

I have never come across this piece of advice before, and this demonstrates to me the need for a return of the general household manual. I might have been saved from the culinary faux pas of serving potatoes with fish, had I had the benefit of such a manual on my kitchen bookshelves in my formative cooking years.

Perhaps it was part of the longstanding prejudice (and its accompanying misinformation) about potatoes that persisted into the early nineteenth century? Another book of the time,
Cottage comforts, with hints for promoting them, gleaned from experience: enlivened with authentic anecdotes, by Esther Copley (London, 1830), has this to say:

Potatoes should not be boiled in the liquor of which soup is made; they render it unwholesome. If you choose to have potatoes with your soup, let them be boiled in another vessel.

Another regular bad habit of mine exposed – actually cooking potatoes in the soup.

A second, minor point: I am equally intrigued by Mrs Careful’s placing of the spinach on her menu after the pudding.

Here is her recipe for the pudding, which is a rather nice version of this English staple.

Bread and Butter Pudding.

Cut very thin bread and butter; grate on it lemon peel, almond and nutmeg; place it in layers in a dish, strewing a few well washed currants or marmalade between each piece; till the dish up with custard a quarter of an hour before baking; a quart dish will require three quarters of an hour. The pudding may be turned out on a flat dish, and powdered with white sugar.

Custard for this, or any baked pudding, is made as follows:—Beat three eggs with whites, well sweeten and flavour it, then stir it into pint of new milk. An extra egg will increase the richness when required, and varied flavourings can be used—lemon, almond, noyeau, ratafia, cinnamon, coriander, orange, nutmeg, &c.

Bread and butter pudding flavoured with coriander – now that’s an idea!

Quotation for the Day.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
Douglas Adams.

Anchovies anyone?

Today I want to consider one more of the classic compound butters – made with anchovies - before I move on to another topic tomorrow.

People seem to either love or hate anchovies, but I suspect that many of those who admit to hating them have been prejudiced by the cheap, over-salty, pasty-textured versions packed in unidentified oil and stored for far too long. Perhaps their minds might be changed with exposure to some of the admittedly more expensive anchovies which still resemble little fish, not gritty, salty, mush.

The anchovy is ‘a small fish of the Herring family (Engraulis encrasicholus) found on the European coasts, especially in the Mediterranean, where it is extensively caught, and pickled for exportation (Oxford English Dictionary).

I don’t remember seeing anchovy butter in any modern textbooks or restaurant menus, but it certainly used to be a staple in kitchens with a long British heritage. Nowadays virtually the only way most of us meet an anchovy is on a pizza or in a Caesar salad.

An enjoyment of salty, fishy condiments is common to many cultures. The British no doubt got a taste for it thanks to the Roman garum, and this taste was no doubt reinforced by contact with food discovered during their Empire adventures – such as the Asian fish sauce we are familiar with today.

As we found with garlic butter, there are many interpretations of the simple concept. This one clearly shows the influence of the Empire:

Anchovy Butter.
Put anchovy essence into a boat with a little lemon pickle and corach; put melted butter to it.
A Complete System of Cookery, by John Simpson, 1808


This one is in the strictly European classic tradition:

Anchovy Butter Sauce, Sauce au Beurre d'Anchou.
Take three or four anchovies; wash them well; rub them so that no scales may remain; take off the flesh, beat them with the size of an egg of butter, gather it together; hare four skimming spoonfuls of Espagnole; warm the sauce without allowing it to boil; having put in the anchovy butter just at the moment of serving, add the juice of one or two lemons to freshen it; pass it through a search [sieve] and vannez it well; if too thick add a little comommé and serve.
Art of French Cookery, Antoine B. Beauvilliers. 1827

And finally, from that classic cookery book Modern Cookery (1845) by Eliza Acton, another which demonstrates the British love of cayenne pepper – another legacy from the Empire.


Anchovy Butter.
(Excellent.)
Scrape the skin quite clean from a dozen fine mellow anchovies, free the flesh entirely from the bones, and pound it as smooth as possible in a mortar; rub it through the back of a hair-sieve with a wooden spoon; wipe out the mortar, and put back the anchovies with three quarters of a pound of very fresh butter, a small half-saltspoonful of cayenne, and more than twice as much of finely grated, nutmeg, and freshly pounded mace; and beat them together until they are thoroughly blended, if to serve cold at table, mould the butter in small shapes, and turn it out. A little rose pink* (which is sold at the chemists') is sometimes used to give it a fine colour, but it must be sparingly used, or it will impart an unpleasant flavour: it should be well pounded, and very equally mixed with it. For kitchen use,

*I found this inclusion interesting. The OED says of ‘rose pink’ that it is ‘a pinkish pigment made by colouring whiting or chalk with a decoction of Brazil wood or other coloured wood. I have always wondered why some bottled anchovies have that strange pinkish colour. What are they coloured with today, I wonder?


Quotation for the Day.

Anchoua's, the famous meat of Drunkards, and of them that desire to haue their drinke oblectate the pallate.
T. Venner Via Recta 1620

Random Ideas for Milk.

The title says it all today folks. I have something different planned for you tomorrow, so to end our milk series I give you a little cache of milk recipes that didn’t fit in the posts earlier in the week.

Milk Yeast.
Take a pint of new milk, a tea-spoonful of salt, and a large spoonful of flour stirred in; set it in a warm place, and it will be fit for use in an hour. Twice the quantity of common yeast is required for use. It must be used soon, as it will not keep.
The Family Doctor, or guide to health, (1844) by H.B.Skinner

Milk Soda.
Half fill a tumbler with milk, and pour upon it soda water.
The Invalid’s own book, Lady Mary Anne Boode Cust, 1853.

Milk Jelly.
Ingredients: One ounce of Iceland Moss. One quart of milk or water. Two tablespoonfuls of powdered loaf sugar.
Time required (after the Iceland Moss has soaked all night), for ‘Water Jelly’, about one hour; for ‘Milk Jelly’, about two hours.
To Make [Milk] Jelly with Iceland Moss:
1. Wash one ounce of Iceland moss well in cold water.
2. Then put it in a basin of cold water and let it soak all night.
3. After that time, take it out of the water and squeeze it dry in a cloth.
4. Then put it in a saucepan, with one quart of cold milk.
5. Put the saucepan on the fire and let it boil for two hours; you must stir it frequently.
6. Then strain it through a sieve into a basin, and sweeten it with loaf sugar, according to taste.
7. When it is cold, turn the jelly out of the basin onto a dish, and it is ready for use.
Lessons in Cookery: Handbook of the National Training School for Cookery (London, 1879)


A Delicious Candy.
Milk Candy is a delicious one for children. It can be made with either brown, castor, or loaf sugar. When made with brown sugar it becomes very hard, with castor sugar slightly sticky, with loaf sugar it is crisp. The method is the same whichever sugar is used, and it can be flavoured to suit the tastes of those who are going to eat it. Lemon juice, vanilla, and peppermint essence can all be used to flavour it. For brown or castor sugar, take a breakfastcupful of sugar and the same quantity of milk. Put the milk and sugar into an enamelled pan, bring it to the boil, and boil it 20 minutes, when the candy should set; pour it into a greased tin, and score it well with the point of a knife before it is cold or it will not break into nice neat pieces. When using loaf sugar, use half a pint of milk to a pound of sugar, and treat exactly as above described. A breakfastcupful of milk and one of sugar will only make a small quantity of candy, as it reduces so much in the boiling.
The Echo, [newspaper], London, July 11, 1905.

Quotation for the Day
I won't eat any cereal that doesn't turn the milk purple.
Bill Watterson

Milk Cake & Biscuits.

Today I want to continue the milk theme and give you a small selection of bread and cake recipes.

Novice bread bakers are often advised to start with milk breads of the softer, sweeter, quicker rising breakfast variety on the grounds that the dough is more forgiving and the final product closer to cake - so overall it is a less intimidating experiment. Here is a nice easy version from The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-day Cookery, (1877), by Juliet Corson. You can, of course, substitute regular yeast for the hop yeast, which not too many of us have to hand these days.

Milk Bread.
Take one quart of milk, heat one-third of it, and scald with it half a pint of flour; if the milk is skimmed, use a small piece of butter; when the batter is cool, add the rest of the milk, one cup of hop yeast, half a tablespoon of salt, and flour enough to make it quite stiff; knead the dough until it is fine and smooth, and raise it overnight. This quantity makes three small loaves.

As we have often discussed before, early cakes (before the widespread use of baking powders) were in effect yeast-raised sweet breads. I give you a good example – which we would now call fruit bread - from a source with a most unlikely title for a cookery book.

Sour Milk Cake
Take two pounds of flour, three-quarters of a pound of butter, four eggs, one pound of sugar, one pound of currants or raisins, one-half pint of good yeast; wet it with milk, and mould it on a board. Let it rise overnight. A loaf should bake in three-quarters of an hour.
The Family Doctor, or guide to health, (1844) by H.B.Skinner

The instructions in the next recipe are minimalist to the point of non-existence, reminding us once again that in the not so distant past cooking skills were sufficiently widespread that cookery book writers could assume much knowledge on the part of their readers. Slightly more detailed recipes with the same title have the mixture rolled out and made up into small pieces – so perhaps are ‘cake’ that some of you would call ‘biscuits’?


Hot Milk Cake.
4 eggs, 2 cups sugar, 2 cups flour, ¾ cup hot milk, 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder.
Hanover Cook Book 1922.

For those of you who prefer your cake to be honest-to-goodness, properly cakey cake, may I refer you back to the Chocolate Malted Milk Cake recipe we enjoyed several years ago?


Quotation for the Day
I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.
Woody Allen

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.

Nic-Nacs for a Nic-Nac?

Yesterday’s source - The Complete Bread, Cake, and Cracker Baker, J. Thompson Gill, (Chicago, 1881) – taught me something new (two things actually), which is always fun. The introductory pages are not wildly exciting either in content or style, but they did include this description:

‘Nic-Nacs is a name given to hard sweet biscuits or crackers, to distinguish them from other. As their name implies, they are small, and are a combination of fancy shapes. They were first made in London.’

Naturally, as I had never heard of these biscuits, I wanted to know more. Equally naturally, the Oxford English Dictionary was my first step on the road to enlightenment. The primary spelling was ‘knick-knack’, and the first definition was ‘A petty trick, sleight, artifice, subterfuge’. An extended usage can refer to ‘a light, dainty article of furniture, dress, or food; any curious or pleasing trifle more for ornament than use’ – which explains our biscuits, I suppose.

What delighted me even more was the subsequent usage of ‘nick-nack’ to refer to ‘A feast or social meal to which each guest contributes in kind.’ A ‘pot-luck’ or ‘bring a plate’ meal , in other words. The supporting quotation for this use is about 1777, showing us that this sort of community catering has been happening for well over two hundred years. The sound is perilously close to ‘pic-nic’ too, isn’t it (although I am not sure if that is at all relevant to anything)?

So that you can take some nic-nacs to your next nic-nac, I give you two very different recipes from the book. Note that the industrial quantities specified are because the book was meant for commercial bakers – which also explains the minimalist instructions.

I love it that there was something called a nic-nac cutter too.

Nic-Nacs (1)
16 lb flour
1 ½ ozs soda
½ oz tartaric acid
2 ½ lb sugar
1 ¼ lb lard or butter
½ gal sour milk
Oil lemon to flavor.
Cut with nic-nac cutters.

Nic-Nacs (2)
2 lbs flour
2 lb butter
4 oz fine loaf sugar.
Make into a stiff paste with milk; roll out thin and cut into fancy shapes; brush with a little milk; bake in a quick oven; when done, glace with a brush dipped in egg.

Quotation for the Day.

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
Carl Sandburg

Blood Bread.

The simplest recipe in the world is for bread: take flour, water, and yeast; mix, leave, and bake. You can even avoid the nuisance of adding the yeast yourself, by ignoring the dough long enough that it picks up its own supply from the atmosphere. This simple formula gives us the basic, sustaining, staff of life. But how marvellous are the ways that we have learned to embellish this blank canvas over the millennia.

I thought I had seen all possible bread ideas, until I came across the following ‘health food’ recipe recently:

Blood Bread.
“Make as ordinary wheat bread, using about 20 per cent of uncoagulated blood from raw flesh, preferably beef. It is nutritious and anti-scorbutic.”
The Complete Bread, Cake, and Cracker Baker, J. Thompson Gill, (Chicago, 1881)

For those not forbidden by their religious beliefs to eat it, blood is highly nutritious; for those not held back by an apparently not uncommon repugnance, it is also pretty tasty. Culinary history includes a long litany of recipes specifying blood as an ingredient. Blood sausage (‘black pudding’) was a tradition at the annual harvest time pre-winter animal slaughter, and is still by many considered an essential component of a traditional British breakfast (whatever that is – but don’t get me on that topic.) Blood Pie was not unknown either, and it featured in a blog post some time ago. Another idea, suggested in a recipe from 1790, was that a pig be rubbed over with ‘a little rosin beat exceeding fine and its own blood …’ before it was put to be roasted.

Pig’s blood mixed with vinegar was supposedly the base for the infamous and maybe mythical melas zomos (‘black broth’) that supposedly gave the famous and apparently fearless Spartans of Ancient Greece their fighting edge (see the quotation below for a theory of why it might have worked.) And at the five-star end of the culinary spectrum, the blood of the hare is a key ingredient in the famous dish Lièvre a la Royale.

But blood in bread? Wouldn’t have thought of it in my wildest vampirest cooking dreams? What do the bread enthusiasts amongst you think?

P.S Blood is also an ingredient in ‘American Cutcheree Soup’ (1827)


Quotation for the Day.
“Now I do perceive why it is that Spartan soldiers encounter death so joyfully; dead men require no longer to eat; black broth is no longer a necessity.”
Supposedly said by ‘a certain native of Sybaris’ after he tasted the soup.

Short, Sweet Story.

I have for you today a fine romantic tale in which the food is as much a star as the two lovers. It has only a tenuous connection with food history, its sole excuse being that I found it in a marvellous book from which I have previously drawn blog material - Morton’s Sixpenny Almanack and Diary published in 1876.

For those wordsmiths amongst you, this story inspires a challenge. The story is a mere 149 words long – but every word begins with the letter ‘S’. Can you do better with another letter of the alphabet (the story must include mention of food)? I promise to try my best to find a historical recipe for any entries submitted. There is no prize except the honour of your clever work being included in a blog post.

Here is the story:

Sam Small sauntered slowly scullery-ward, supperless. Saw Sal Swift sitting silently-shelling small sweetpeas. Says Sam, snappishly, "Some supper, Sally ?" Says Sal, "S'pose so." Says Sam, "Stir smartly, Sal, Sam's starving." Says Sal, smilingly, "Some soup Sam, sauer-kraut, sausages. Say something suits." Says Sam speedily, "Stir some shortcake. Some strawberries, syrup, sugar. Some such sweet stuff suits Sam." Sal stirred self spryly, stepped swiftly, spread sideboard speedily; supper soon stands smoking side Sam. Says Sam, sheepishly, " Soon's supper's swallowed shall say something, Sally." Sal sat stirring sweetmeats. Sam stole several sidelong squints Sally-wards. Sal started, simpered, stammered, spying, " Speak Sam." Says Sam, " Shall select spouse sometime. Sally, s'pose Sam'll suit? Shall Sam stand side Sal?" Sal stole swiftly Sam's side, saying softly, "Sam suits Sally." Sam seized Sal's slender self, stole several sweet smacks speedily, sealing Sal securely. Sal seemed supremely satisfied. So story stops short.

For the recipe for the day I give you Strawberry Shortcake from Jennie June’s American Cookery Book, published in 1866, a decade before our short sweet story for the day.

Strawberry Shortcake.
Mix dough as for soda biscuit; that is to say, one quart of sifted flour, piece of butter size of an egg, two tea-spoonsful of cream of tartar, one of soda, a pinch of salt, and sweet milk to form a soft dough. Put cream of tartar in the flour, and soda in dry also, and, when thoroughly mixed, roll out half an inch thick and bake in a shallow pan fifteen or twenty minutes; have ready two quarts of fresh, fine strawberries; split the cake, place half the strawberries between and cover thickly with white sugar and cream; put the other half on the top and cover in the same way; send to the table immediately. This is the method of making at the finest city restaurants.


Quotation for the Day.

“Even the coeur flottant merveilleux aux fraises, presented with a great flourish, made little impression, for it was no more than what may happen to the simple, honest dish of strawberries and cream once it falls into the hands of a Frenchman.”
Dr. Watson in 'Sherlock Holmes and the Hapsburg Tiara' by Alan Vanneman (2004)

To Dress Frogs.

I seem to have become distracted somewhat from my original intention to focus on liqueurs this week. I am going to give you a brief glimpse of frogs-as-food instead. I guess no-one makes a liqueur out of frogs, do they?

Amongst the English, the idea of eating frogs is so indelibly associated with the French, that the affectionate (not) nickname for persons of that nationality is, as you probably know, ‘frog.’ It may be somewhat surprising then, to find out that severable venerable English cookery books of the nineteenth century do include recipes for cooking frogs (albeit with a rather apologetic tone and a reference to the frog-eating habit in France. Here is what the author of The Domestic Dictionary and Housekeeper’s Manual, (G Merle; London, 1842) has to say on the topic.

"The use of frogs as an article of food is almost peculiar to France, although from the delicacy of the dish it is worth figuring on every table. As only the hind quarters, however, are used, this dish is an expensive one. The flavour resembles very much that of a very fine chicken, but is superior: and the flesh is more light of digestion than that of chicken. There are two ways of cooking frogs; the one is en fricassee, the other is by frying them in batter."

Frogs en Fricassee.

Cut off the hind legs, with so much of the loin as will hold them together. Having put them in boiling water, and subsequently allowed them to lie in cold water for ten minutes, put them into a stewpan with some champignons, a little parsley, chibols*, and some butter. After having given them two or three turns with the butter, add a little flour, a glass of French white wine a little stock, and some salt and whole pepper. Let them stew gently for a quarter of an hour, and then thicken with some yolks of eggs, butter, and a little parsley.
*usually taken to mean a type of young green onion (spring onion).

Quotation for the Day.

France has found a unique way of controlling its unwanted critter population. They have done this by giving unwanted animals like snails, pigeons, and frogs fancy names, thus transforming common backyard pests into expensive delicacies. These are then served to gullible tourists, who will eat anything they can't pronounce.
Chris Harris (2001)

The Other Chartreuse.

I am tempted by a good liqueur or two this week, and I am going to start with Chartreuse. The name of this yellow/green liqueur name tells its origins very simply, for it is said to have been developed in the Maison Chartreuse – the monastery of the Carthusian monks - in Grenoble, France. Orders of monks have been responsible for many classic liqueurs because many of them began as distillations of medicinal herbs – and herb gardens and medicine preparation was an important function of religious orders in medieval times. It is said that the Carthusian monks of Grenoble have been making this liqueur since the 1740’s – but I suspect that they had in fact been making it for a very long time, but the ‘branding’ and commercial marketing dates from this era. So many stories to research, and so little research time…..

What I have been unable to fathom is the connection between religious orders and the ‘other’ chartreuse, which the Oxford English Dictionary gives as ‘an ornamental dish of meat or vegetables cooked in a mould’, and also ‘fruits enclosed in blancmange or jelly.’

The first citation given for this meaning of chartreuse in English is from John Simpson’s A Complete System of Cookery (1806). It is for a Chartreuse of Roots and Sausages, which I was going to make the recipe for the day, until I realised that in the past we have had recipes for Chartreuse of Mutton and Chartreuse, or Casserole, of Fish. Instead, I give you Chartreuse of Apples and Fruit, from The French Cook, (1822) by Louis Eustache Ude, because we should have a recipe from a Frenchman – and he explains the method in detail, which is useful.

Chartreuse of Apples and Fruit.
A Chartreuse is the same thing as a suédoise, only instead of raising the fruit with the hand over the marmalade, you oil a mould of the same size as the dish you intend to use, and arrange symmetrically fruit of different colours, such as angelica, preserved oranges, lemons, &c. in short, whatever may offer a variety of colours. Apples and pears are in more general use for the outside, but then they must be dyed as directed above, No. 3*. When you have decorated the middle or bottom, proceed to decorate the sides. Next use some thick marmalade of apples to consolidate the decorations. When you have made a wall sufficiently strong that you may turn the Chartreuse upside down, take the whitest apple jelly you can procure, some stewed pears cut into slices the size of a half-crown piece, and some cherries, &c. and mix the whole with the jelly, so as to represent a Macedoine. Do not fill the cavity too full with the miroton, as you are to close it with apple-marmalade that has more substance in it. Then turn over the Chartreuse and dish it. Glaze the fruit over with some thick syrup. This syrup gives additional lustre to the colours, and a fresh gloss to the fruit.

* To dye them you need only dilute with syrup a little carmine or saffron; and give them a boil. Next let the apples cool in the syrup, that the colour may be spread equally over them.

Quotation for the Day.

Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.
Ogden Nash

Married (and Divorced) Eggs.

Huevos Divorciados is (as I understand it) a Mexican breakfast dish in which two eggs go their separate ways under two different coloured and flavoured sauces, their separation on the plate ensured by a row of chilaquiles (pieces of tortilla, cooked in salsa.) I love the sound of this dish, and am going to make a completely inauthentic Aussie version one day, when I get around to it.

I would love to know the origins of Huevos Divorciados. Is there a Spanish precedent? Or a similar dish elsewhere?

In the meanwhile, I give you Married Eggs, from Oscar Tschirky’s The Cook Book, published in 1896. I wonder how one arranges something ‘systematically’ on a dish?

Married Eggs.
Blanch eight artichoke bottoms, then cook them in some gravy. Make a preparation with four hard-boiled eggs chopped up very fine, mix in plenty of very finely-chopped fine herbs that have been parboiled in hot water, add three raw egg yolks, salt, a little cayenne pepper and a little tomato sauce; mix all together well and cover the artichokes with this, smooth the surface nicely with the blade of a knife, strew with breadcrumbs and melted butter and set them in the oven for four minutes. Arrange them systematically on a dish, and serve.

On the same topic, you can find recipes for Matrimony Pudding and Matrimony Sauce, and Matrimonial Cake, in previous posts.


Quotation for the Day.

My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked.
Winston Churchill.