Food History

I did try to make golden syrup dumplings once. I got as far as buying the jar of golden syrup at the local shop and carrying it home. I dropped the shopping bag at the front door, shattering the jar and spreading golden syrup far and wide across the landing. Never tried again.

My own list of favourites, foods to give you a sense of me, would run more like this: caeser salad, chicken soup, beef, black olive and fetta pie, chicken pie, pad thai, Anzac cake, butter chicken, any kind of tagine but I always leave out the prunes, Greek potatoes and roast chicken, spaghetti alle zucchini and prawn curry. This is my favourite prawn curry, inspired by the local Suva restaurant Singh’s Curry House.

Kaaron’s Singh’s Curry House’s recipe for Prawn Curry

Grind 4 tablespoons coriander seeds and 4 tablespoons cumin seeds.
Mix with 2 tablespoons paprika, 1 teaspoon turmeric and 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper.
Fry that for two minutes, or until fragrant, as they say.
Add 8 finely crushed cloves of garlic, 1 grated onion, some ghee or butter, a piece of grated ginger, a pinch of salt and 4 finely diced tomatoes.
Add a litre of coconut milk. That’s easy here because I make my own coconut milk.
Simmer for ten minutes.
Add a heap of peeled and deveined prawns. How many depends on how many you are and how much you like prawns!
Squeeze some lime juice over.
Sprinkle some freshly chopped coriander over.

After all that cooking, and after a hard day’s writing and book-launching, there’s nothing better than a lovely glass of “Tail of the Monkey”, a drink from Chile.

6 cups milk
1 cup sugar
2 cinnamon sticks plus a pinch of cinnamon
¼ cup instant coffee
2 cups tequila
1 teaspoon vanilla essence plus a bean if you have it.

Boil milk, sugar and cinnamon. Dissolve coffee in the milk. Add vanilla. Cool for an hour or two, then add tequila.

I think it’s important to separate yourself from your character in many ways to ensure you aren’t writing yourself, unless you are, then go for it.

My character Steve has an almost adversarial disinterest in food, which is very, very, very different from me. It’s part of her character. I do tend to judge people in part on the way they deal with food. I don’t think this is shallow. I remember winding a friendship down when a woman refused to eat nuts because they were fattening. She wouldn’t even eat one nut and she loved them, because she wanted to stay a size 10 for her husband. All this was stated clearly. We had nothing in common beyond our sons, so it wasn’t a friendship lost with sadness, but it was certainly one I never bothered building on. By contrast, my husband and I spent our first year or so eating out, and those many hours of food and conversation built a deep and abiding friendship.

Quick congrats and shout-out to Toybender for reaching 1000 posts.

Later today (or early tomorrow, if you’re somewhere otherwhere) Kaaron will tell you more about her writing and her food. Don’t miss the cocktail recipe!

My first guest writer is Kaaron Warren. I’ll let her introduce herself.

I’m an Australian writer living in Fiji. We’re nearly finished our three-year stint here and it’s been very inspirational for my writing. I have two children and a husband and at the moment we have five cats, but at three grand each to take them home, I believe we’ll be going home without any. I’m talking about the cats, of course.

“Slights” is my first published novel. It’s the story of Stevie, who accidentally kills her mother in a car accident and almost dies herself. Her vision of the afterlife is terrifying; she doesn’t see a golden path, her mother and father waiting for her with welcoming arms. She sees everyone she’s every slighted, waiting to slice her, flay her, destroy her. The thing is, she is so lonely in her real life, so out of place, she goes back to this place because at least there she is centre of attention.

She’s strong, though. She believes in herself and the decisions she makes. She is confident to the last that she is right. She’s funny; some of the things she says and does still make me laugh.

My publisher is Angry Robot Books, a new imprint from Harper Collins. Their website is here.

You can download a sample of the first chapter there. I blog my Fijian adventures and some writing stuff at my livejournal and I blog mostly writing stuff, including interviews, reviews etc over at wordpress

I’ve made a list of all the food I mention in my novel “Slights”. It’s a long list, and includes: chicken breast with camembert, salad with blue cheese dressing, golden syrup dumplings, fried sandwiches, scones, lemon biscuits, chicken drumsticks, chocolate slice, baby quiches, prawn cocktails, Beef Wellington and fried rice. I’m fascinated by the fact that cold rice can harbour as much bacteria as raw chicken. Food poisoning is a bit of a thing with me, and once Gillian posts her research on ergot, the hallucinogenic mould on bread, I may well write a story about it.

Does that list make you hungry? It doesn’t me, because I deliberately avoided choosing my very favourite foods, in order to separate myself from the character. Mind you, I’d happily eat all those things, but they are not my cravings. Mind you, chocolate slice is a something we eat a fair bit of in this house. My friend calls it “cupboard slice”, because you sneak bits of it in the cupboard when the kids aren’t looking. I call it Three Piece Slice, because you can’t possibly eat only two. I love this recipe because it has melted butter. I hate that whole ‘cream the butter and sugar’ part of cooking.

Three Piece Slice

½ cup plain flour
½ cup self-raising flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2/3 cup caster sugar
¾ cup desiccated coconut
125g butter, melted
½ teaspoon vanilla essence
1 egg, lightly beaten.

Get your oven light to turn off at 180 degrees. Prepare a slice tin of some kind with melted butter and line the base with baking paper.
Sift flours and cocoa, then stir in sugar and coconut. Make a well, then add cooled melted butter, vanilla essence and the egg.
Press the yummy mixture into the tin. Don’t eat any off the spoon until the slice is in the oven. Smooth the top a bit unless you like it bumpy, which I kinda do. Cook for about 15 mins for a nice chewy slice, 25 for a crunchy one.

Top with chocolate icing and sprinkle with coconut, if you like. You’re supposed to toast the coconut, but I burn it every time so I gave up.

The Receipt of him who wrote at Marchena, is this: Of Cacaos, 700; of white Sugar, one pound and a halfe; Cinnamon, 2. ounces; of long red pepper, 14. of Cloves, halfe an ounce: Three Cods of the Logwood or Campeche tree; or in steade of that, the weight of 2. Reals, or a shilling of Anniseeds; as much of Agiote, as will give the colour, which is about the quantity of a Hasell-nut. Some put in Almons, kernells of Nuts, and Orenge-flower-water. Concerning this Receipt I shall first say, This shooe will not fit every foote; but for those, who have diseases, or are inclining to be infirme, you may either adde, or take away, according to the necessity, and temperature of every one: and I hold it not amisse, that Sugar be put into it, when it is drunke, so that it be according to the quantity I shall hereafter set downe. And sometimes they make Tablets of the Sugar, and the Chocolate together: which they doe onely to please the Pallats, as the Dames of Mexico doe use it; and they are there sold in shops, and are confected and eaten like other sweet-meats. For the Cloves, which are put into this drinke, by the Author aforesaid, the best Writers of this Composition use them not; peradventure upon this reason: that although they take away the ill savour of the mouth, they binde; as a learned Writer hath exprest in these verses:

Foetorem emendat oris Cariophilia foedum; Constringunt ventrem, primaque membra juvant.

Cloves doe perfume a stincking Breath, and Bind The Belly; Hence the prime members comfort find.

And because they are binding (and hot and dry in the third degree) they must not be used, though they help the chiefe parts of Concoction, which are the Stomacke and the Liver, as appeares by the Verses before recited. The Huskes or Cods of Logwood, or Campeche, are very good, and smell like Fennell; and every one puts in of these, because they are not very hot; though it excuse not the putting in of Annis-seed, as sayes the Author of this Receipt; for there is no Chocolate without it, because it is good for many cold diseases, being hot in the third degree; and to temper the coldnesse of the Cacao; and that it may appeare, it helpes the indisposition of Cold parts, I will cite the Verses of one curious in this Art:

Morbosus renes, vesicam, guttura, vulnam, Intestina, jecur, cumque lyene caput Confortat, variisque Anisum subdita morbis Membra: istud tantum vim leve semen habet.

The Reyns, the Bladder, throat, & thing between– Enatrailes and Liver, with the Head, and spleen And otherParts, by [C] it are comforted: So great a vertue’s in that little seed.

Today I have two posts and none of my own words. This is because I’m not in the mood for food (though I did manage a bad internal rhyme) due to the rather interesting side-effects of medication. Nothing’s wrong with me. I really just don’t want to think about food. This is why you’ve got extracts from the 1652 text “Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke”, translated by Capt. James Wadsworth from the 1651 Spanish work by 1651 Don Diego de Vadesforte. It’s a case of “When in doubt, have chocolate.” You can find the whole thing at Project Gutenberg, and it’s worth the finding.

Today, however, you get two posts. First, the translator’s introduction, then a random but interesting excerpt from the pamphlet itself.

THE TRANSLATOR, To every Individuall Man, and Woman, Learn’d, or unlearn’d, Honest, or Dishonest: In the due Praise of Divine CHOCOLATE.

Doctors lay by your Irksome Books And all ye Petty-Fogging Rookes Leave Quacking; and Enucleate The vertues of our Chocolate.

Let th’ Universall Medicine (Made up of Dead-mens Bones and Skin,) Be henceforth Illegitimate, And yeild to Soveraigne-Chocolate.

Let Bawdy-Baths be us’d no more; Nor Smoaky-Stoves but by the whore Of Babilon: since Happy-Fate Hath Blessed us with Chocolate.

Let old Punctaeus Greaze his shooes With his Mock-Balsome: and Abuse No more the World: But Meditate The Excellence of Chocolate.

Let Doctor Trigg (who so Excells) No longer Trudge to Westwood-Wells: For though that water Expurgate, ‘Tis but the Dreggs of Chocolate.

Let all the Paracelsian Crew Who can Extract Christian from Jew; Or out of Monarchy, A State, Breake `all their Stills for Chocolate.

Tell us no more of Weapon-Salve, But rather Doome us to a Grave: For sure our wounds will Ulcerate, Unlesse they’re wash’d with Chocolate.

The Thriving Saint, who will not come Within a Sack-Shop’s Bowzing-Roome (His Spirit to Exhilerate) Drinkes Bowles (at home) of Chocolate.

His Spouse when she (Brimfull of Sense) Doth want her due Benevolence, And Babes of Grace would Propagate, Is alwayes Sipping Chocolate.

The Roaring-Crew of Gallant-Ones Whose Marrow Rotts within their Bones: Their Bodyes quickly Regulate, If once but Sous’d in Chocolate.

Young Heires that have more Land then Wit, When once they doe but Tast of it, Will rather spend their whole Estate, Then weaned be from Chocolate.
The Nut-Browne-Lasses of the Land Whom Nature vayl’d in Face and Hand, Are quickly Beauties of High-Rate, By one small Draught of Chocolate.

Besides, it saves the Moneys lost Each day in Patches, which did cost Them deare, untill of Late They found this Heavenly Chocolate.

Nor need the Women longer grieve Who spend their Oyle, yet not conceive, For ’tis a Helpe-Immediate, If such but Lick of Chocolate.

Consumptions too (be well assur’d) Are no lesse soone then soundly cur’d: (Excepting such as doe Relate Unto the Purse) by Chocolate.

Nay more: It’s vertue is so much, That if a Lady get a Touch, Her griefe it will Extenuate, If she but smell of Chocolate.

The Feeble-Man, whom Nature Tyes To doe his Mistresse’s Drudgeries; O how it will his minde Elate, If shee allow him Chocolate!

‘Twill make Old women Young and Fresh; Create New-Motions of the Flesh, And cause them long for you know what, If they but Tast of Chocolate.

There’s ne’re a Common Counsell-Man, Whose Life would Reach unto a Span, Should he not Well-Affect the State, And First and Last Drinke Chocolate.

Nor e’re a Citizen’s Chast wife, That ever shall prolong her Life, (Whilst open stands Her Posterne-Gate) Unlesse she drinke of Chocolate.

Nor dost the Levite any Harme, It keepeth his Devotion warme, And eke the Hayre upon his Pate, So long as he drinkes Chocolate.

Both High and Low, both Rich and Poore My Lord, my Lady, and his — With all the Folkes at Billingsgate, Bow, Bow your Hamms to Chocolate.

Don Diego de Vadesforte.

Happy thousandth posting!

Rather than give you a recipe (which is what I intended to do) I want to chat a bit. I guess I’m in a chatty mood.

I blame Jenny Blackford (who will be one of my writer guests, soon – the first writer guest post is on July 1, and you’ve met her before, too – the amazing Kaaron Warren. Right now there are twenty guest fiction writers whose posts will appear over the next year, and I rather suspect the number might grow). I was tossing up between Apicius, showing how the Five Books of Moses contain a bunch of viable recipes (my mother and I discussed the socio-economics behind that one earlier today) and seeing just what the very oldest recipe I possess is (and how reliable it is ie whether the history behind it is good or not) when she told me about a blogpost of her where she talked about chickpeas.

What it got me thinking about was how the basic taste of a cuisine starts with the ready-to-hand ingredients. Think local. Not local now, but local at different times. Tomato is local in Canberra now and is essential to Canberra cooking. It was not around 300 years ago.

Food styles change with agriculture, but the basic taste of a cuisine tends not to depend on imports. Except…

The obvious exception is seasoning. Peppers and salt and soy sauce all travel far distances. Seasoning travelled in the Roman Empire and pepper voyaged further than most people knew exited in the Middle Ages.

The trick is, with every single cuisine, in every single place and time you examine, to find out exactly what people ate, and how they ate it and where they sourced their food. Most of it was local. I think of core flavours as being local plus. The plus helps us see how those basics, that mouthfeel, fit into the different elements of society.

It’s complex. I can’t explain it simply. It’s important, however. Desperately important. You can’t understand food history without understanding that ingredients are not automatically stable across space and time. Just because it’s possible to eat something, doesn’t mean that foodstuff was eaten. Just because we make a recipe using ingredients that were available in southern England in the Middle Ages, or in Ancient Sumer, doesn’t mean that people in England in the Middle Ages or in Ancient Sumer ate that same recipe.

Continuity is not a given, especially with food. Just because the ingredients have the same botanical name doesn’t give them the same taste or feel. We change our food and change our palate with the food. Modern Lebanese cucumbers re crunchier and sweeter and less garlicky than their older counterparts. Iceberg lettuce has lost all the bitterness of some of the older lettuce variety.

I’m using my thousandth post to remind myself that I should not make assumptions. The healthiest diet for an historian is one full of questions.

I’m going to have to check the numbers, but this is either post 998 or post 999. That means you get something ancient either tomorrow or Monday. In the interim , please get something to me so I can give away cheese. I don’t go giveaways with charm or style, but I want two addresses to be able to forward to the Perfect Italiano people and I want more recipes to share with all of you.

On matters more substantial, today I’m introducing you to a book. I took it from the precise centre of my never-decreasing stack of books that you really need to meet.

It’s much-loved. Someone has used masking tape to bind the spine together and very insecure binding it is. It’s from Melbourne. It has a fading reddish cover and is so soft and flexible and crowded that my first reaction to it was “I bet this was published during World War II.” There were paper shortages in Australia in World War II, you see. Publication continued, but lots of book appeared on cheaper paper and with every page chockers with joy. Less luxury. Fewer blank pages.

I was right. 1943. By someone called “Miranda”. In fact it’s titled ‘”Miranda’s” Cook Book.” Inside we find out that it’s compiled by her and she is of the “Weekly Times.” Also that the recipes are all signed. “Western District Lover.” “Hard Up Mother of Two (N.S.W.).” “Scotty Bob.” “Dollar Bird.” “Mimosa.” “Mother of Seven.” “A Mere Aussie.” “Cooee Lover.” Miranda’s correspondents give just as much information about Australia of the time as the recipes.

There’s infinite joy in this book and I do want to share a recipe. Which one? There are over a thousand and they are all loved by the original donor, and compiled by Miranda and used for sixty years by previous owners of the book. “Broken Gum Nut” has a recipe for coffee essence (p. 210) that looks interesting, so I’ll give you that and one other, sort of related, from “Dinah” who I rather suspect lacks taste buds.

Coffee essence

Put ½ lb. good ground coffee into a saucepan with 3 pints of water, and boil it until there is only 1 pint of liquid left; cool, and put into another saucepan and boil again; as it boils, add enough sugar (white) to make a thin syrup. Strain through muslin before boiling second time. Bottle when cold, and seal the bottles with sealing wax.

Coffee, Wheat (Delicious)

Wash 3 cups wheat and dry in oven; then mix in 3 large tablespoons black treacle, and bake slowly until what absorbs treacle; then stand in tins. It looks all burnt and lumpy like toffee. Take a piece as big as 2 walnuts and cover with boiling water, and boil half an hour. Strain this into as much boiling milk as you like. Result, a beautiful beverage, far better for you than coffee, although it tastes the same.

PS In case you were wondering, Miranda lives. I neeed to blog her story, some day.

A bit of an announcement right now, and I’ll do you a proper post later in the day.

The banquet is all ready for booking. I have forms. Just send me an email address (use the comments or the contact me button if you don’t know my email address) and I’ll send you one right away. It will be held on the first Saturday in October. Fancy dress is optional and there will be vegetarian choices (yummy ones, too).

You DON’T have to attend the Convention to come to the Banquet.

“Secrets of the Bayou”

“Dr Gillian Polack is planning a fascinating banquet experience this year! As always, the recipes and menu are authentic to the time periods. Pre-dinner drinks will be set in 1945 – the first Mardi Gras after the war. Cocktails set the scene! Then for the dinner we move back in time to the culinary delights of the 1880s.

You have been invited to this Mardi Gras celebration by the great hostess Severine Sallier. Miss Sallier is upholding the old ways - she knows they’re going to fade. The railway has come to Lake Charles, it could soon be just another town on the line from New Orleans to Houston. Contraband Bayou’s pirate past and its pre-war elegance will be forgotten. This last dinner is her fight against mediocrity.

The Bayou is full of mystery and secrets – perfect for our Convention theme. There are many excellent horror and mystery novels in this exotic setting. Creatures from the Black Lagoons, Vampires, dark family secrets, and pirates’ hidden treasure all have resonance on Contraband Bayou in 1883.

The Banquet will be held on Saturday evening at the Marque Hotel Canberra, commencing 7pm with pre-dinner drinks. Tickets are $52 per person (drinks extra).”

I promised that tonight I would give you something a little more interesting than stray announcements. What I did with the time I should have spent writing you a scintillating post, was explore the new online offerings from the John Rylands University Library.

Why was this so distracting? Well, it’s a low resolution facsimile (complete, including end-papers, which are distractingly blank) of a Forme of Cury, one of my favourite cookbooks. It’s been up for a little while, but I was totally defeated by the interface, mainly because my browser blocks up pop-ups and I couldn’t disable that for long enough to access the right pages. Then someone incredibly nice created a page with direct links to each and every part of the manuscript.

My evening has been spent looking at exactly how the manuscript appears.

The thing is – the very important thing is – that manuscripts are way more individual than modern books. Good editions are wonderful to work from, but until you see what the words are on the page – how they’re formatted – what abbreviations are used – what emphasis is given to which elements – you don’t really know how to interpret them fully. I don’t, anyhow.

Three things really struck me. First, that there was a table of contents. Second, that some of the instructions were for things that I consider fairly basic. Third, that there are abbreviations.

OK, so lots of manuscripts have abbreviations. Even the most elegant literary hands are likely to erupt in occasional flourishes, which are just shrinkages according to form. I just wasn’t expecting it here. As far as I know, there was no tradition of cookbooks in the Middle Ages, and so there were (at least in theory) no special set of culinary abbreviations the way we have today, or the way twelfth century legal texts had.

In fact, they’re stock abbreviations. Nothing hard to read. Nothing specific to a text. This says a bunch about the scribe and it suggests that I’m right – that there was no specialist trade in cookbooks. Only suggests, though. I need to look at more actual manuscripts and do some thinking and cross-comparisons and make lists of abbreviations and check the patterns they make.

That’s in an ideal world. In the real world, I have no time. All I can do is note here, that the cookbook abbreviations really need exploring.

Last night and today I have done many things and the closest anything came to food history was a chocolate sequence in a novel. I’m still behind on my non culinary things, but it has only just dawned on me that I never blogged yesterday. And that maybe, just maybe, I ought to blog today. Then I can get back to catching up on everything else.

Today is really newsday, too. I( think I might have to give you an extra-interesting post tomorrow, to make up.

First up, a reminder. Please send recipes, family food stories to me or put them in the comments. Do it soon and you (or your Australian friends) could win cheese. My inner child is amused that I have cheese to give away, but my serious self says it’s a great opportunity to get good recipes.

Secondly, a bit of news some of you (again, mostly Australians – sorry) have been waiting for. The chef at The Marque has priced the banquet menu for this year’s banquet and it’s only $52. This gets you everything except the alcohol.

The place and time for this year’s banquet is 1883, on Contraband Bayou, and everyone who tested the recipes can tell you just how wonderful the food is. My mouth is watering just thinking about it, and we finished the recipe testing ages ago.

For everyone else, since you can’t get to Canberra and if you’re not in Australia the cheese can’t reach you, I thought you might like some of the recipes we wanted to use in the banquet but that didn’t quite fit, for one reason or another. I’ll post them from time to time from now until Conflux. After Conflux I’ll post the recipes that ended up on those groaning boards.

I think that was all my announcements. If I remember any at 3 in the morning, I’ll just have to blog some more.

Today is announcement day again. I used to have none and now I’ve had two in a week. Must be a sign of the times. Do announcements mean end of world, paradigm shifts, or simply that people send me emails?

The first announcement is about cheese. Perfect Italiano liked my testing historical recipes using their products. They liked it so very much that they’ve offered free packages of cheese to two Australian readers. Anyone within reach of Coles or Woolworths home shopping is eligible. If you live outside Australia you can enter, but you will have to give an Australian address. If you have a second cousin twice removed who could do with ricotta, then enter and if your name gets pulled out of the hat at the end, nominate them for the cheese.

What do you have to do to win c$35 worth of fresh cheese? I want family recipes. This is because, from 1 July, I will start posting guest posts by some awesome fiction writers. We’ll discover a bunch about their foodways and you may find yourself driven to read a few more books. I’ve got about 20 writers (ranging from fantasy and SF to historical fiction to literary) lined up already, and there may well be more. I’ll start with one a week, so that people who want my normal posts don’t miss out and so the joy of finding out what writers ‘ foodways are like lasts a bit. I’ll taper off after a little so that we get the joy of these posts well into next year.

Because of the writers series, I’m asking for your foodways as entries for the cheese - anything you like to tell us about them, plus the recipe or recipes that belong with them. I’ll blog all entries, because this is something that we’re all interested in. On 30 June I’ll put all your names in a hat and announce the two winners. If you’ve won something before, you’re still eligible. The only restriction is that Perfect Italiano needs an Australian address (that can get supermarket delivery). So, if you like packaged cheeses, especially ricotta and parmesan and if you’re maybe curious to try angel food or beignets my way and see just how reliable my tastebuds are, this is your chance.

I had other announcements, but I’ve forgotten them. They can wait. I can’t wait though. I want to hear everyone’s stories and read their recipes!

Cookbook time! My stack of books has a stack of paper which has now developed its own stack of books. This makes for a very exciting desk, but unless I put something away, the excitement will become too great and the paper/book tower will topple. This means I get to introduce you to yet another piece of history.

Tonight’s though, isn’t paper in form. My friend Emma sent it to me for my birthday. I can’t give you a picture of it, because that would infringe copyright, but it’s such a different piece of food history. Very Australian.

It’s a piece of cloth designed by Julie Nabangardi Shedden. It tells a bush tucker story, with three women and their equipment (digging stick, coolamons) and pictures of fruit, honey ants, lizards, snakes and witchetty grubs. You can see this kind of art here.

It’s an easy picture to interpret in some respects. It defines the relationship of these women with the food that they find and prepare. It’s a difficult picture in others. It contains no information about daily routines or about the actual food preparations.

Our cookbooks mostly ignore the landscape. They tend to be about the last section of a long foodtrail, that final part of it that includes the kitchen and the eating of the food. This is the other end of the tale. It tells of these women’s relationship with the land and where the food is found and how it’s gathered.

This misleads far too many people into assuming that the rest of the story is not important. Let me remind you of the post I made when I visited the Melbourne Museum, and the curators had devised food displays. The indigenous side of things was simply a garden. The people who developed the space were obviously using documents such as the one in front of me and focusing on the gathering, not the preparation or eating. This implied that the complex rituals of preparation and eating and the socialisation involved in both and the maintenance of that side of culture, were unimportant.

Just because something isn’t documented in a way we’re familiar with, doesn’t mean it’s not important. It might be that the path of communication for this aspect of a culture is oral. It might be that it’s not something that European Australians have asked about or that sells when drawn.

To put it baldly, I have no idea what the status of food preparation and eating is in Julie Nabangardi Shedden’s background. All I have is one piece of cloth. It shows me a relationship with foodstuffs, but not a relationship with cooking.

Reading too much into a piece of evidence, whether that evidence contains words or not, is to rely on a bunch of assumptions. Where we draw those assumptions from is fascinating, but what we do with them can be to propagate stereotypes and misunderstandings.

The correct approach to understanding a living artist’s approach to bushfood is to ask the artist about the contexts for the picture. It’s not to interpret the picture as if it contains all the knowledge we could possibly need. For me, this is one piece of evidence (a rather beautiful one) in a complex web that I’m just starting to build. I don’t know anything yet – but I’m developing my first questions.

In between doing a thousand things, tonight I’m watching The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It struck me (not for the first time) how important a role food symbolism plays in the book. A bit less so in the film, but it’s there, nonetheless. Lucy’s friendship with Tumnus is sealed with tea and toast. Edmund’s betrayal is sealed with Turkish Delight. The friendship of three of the children with the fauns is celebrated with a proper meal. The joyous recovery of happiness in Narnia is celebrated with grapes. As a child I used to look for those perfect grapes. Alas, I knew too much about Bacchus and the maenads to want to search for them.

We talk about the role of food in cementing relationships. We discuss the importance of food in explaining and revealing social distinctions. It strikes me as particularly important (’particularly’ is my word of the day, in case you were wondering) that food is key to understanding Narnia.

Only it isn’t just Narnia. There’s a whole range of children’s books which use food in various ways. Two years ago I started a discussion about them. I got exactly two posts into it when something called my ever-straying mind away.

Watching the Narnia film has made me think that it’s about time I returned to looking at food in literature, and especially in books for children. It will nicely balance my celebration of modern writers and food (as explained by the writers themselves). Call this due warning. We are about to delve in strange places and lands forlorn. I wonder if I have any Billy Bunter?

Welcome to the June Carnivalesque. I’ve been waiting anxiously for the thousands of fascinating posts about Medieval and Ancient history to wend my way, but they didn’t come. Rather than leaving you with slim pickings (I shan’t make music-related puns today, Canberra is in the grip of cold, cold winter and any puns at all are beyond me) I’ve explored a few of my favourite blogs. This month’s theme is therefore obviously exploration. Very much the stuff of the round earth’s imagined corners. I’m going to label those imagined corners macrobiusly (according to climates, just to warm myself up a bit – I can dream of torrid zones, even if my heater is working hard to stop my computer developing icy innards), and this shall serve.

Freezing Zone (far, far, far north)

It’s impossible for me to have no food blog posts referred to in this Carnivalesque. It would be all wrong for a food history blog. It would also be all wrong for me to refer to something I wrote. So here is something someone else wrote. Right now, the thing on that list that I crave most is hypocras. Must be the cold. I did say I live near the Snowy Mountains, in Australia and it is winter? Very much winter.

Temperate zone (less north, and probably where most of you live)

It’s not quite the weather for making hay, but it’s the weather for blogging about it, with pictures from manuscripts, to boot.

It’s also the perfect time to blog 1381 and to make jokes about revolting peasants.

Torrid and wondrously warm equatorial zone

Modern Medieval maps of Charlemagne (and makes me wish I had the skills to do this section of the blog on an actual equatorial map, with links rather than descriptions).

Steve Muhlberger on Joan of Arc.

Plus some marginalia to help cure heatsickness. It’s almost impossible to have too much marginalia.

Temperate zone (south – currently freezing – the posts in this section don’t come from the south, but I do find them cheering, somehow)

Something warming: Zenobia on Zenobia. There’s also a follow-up post that includes a ring. The Ring of the Zenobias. Someone ought to write an opera about it.

Jason gave me two posts suggesting that maybe one of them didn’t entirely suck. It’s very mean and nasty of me to report his comment, so I’m including both his posts here. Besides, you need to make up your own mind on the level of suckitude (I need an Old French word meaning ’suckitude’. It would transform my life.)

Freezing Zone (south of here – you really don’t want to go there right now)

This is intensely depressing. Though there is some cheering news on Medieval News if you explore a bit.

Chaucer is in trouble with his wife after his trip to Vegas. Ice represents the family climate rather nicely.

PS All similarity between my descriptions and any extant map (whether linked to Macrobius or not) is probably in error.

I’ve been out all day. It was Monday of a long weekend, you see, and some friends had the day off and I joined them, even though I really didn’t have the day off. It was wrong and wicked and absolutely fun. I intend to take the evening off tomorrow and also on Wednesday. So there!

What this means is you get not-very-original entries. I would apologise, but I found a copy online of The London and Country Brewer, by Anonymous, second edition, dated 1736. I haven’t given you anything from this book before, so three nights of it should be rather nice for all of us. It’s too long since I’ve had anything drinkable, so that’s another good thing.

The table of contents says everything about it and is fascinating. I would love to work through it and try everything, but alas, all I can do is taste with my mind’s eye. It’s good to see what someone in the eighteenth century thought a proper guide to brewing should look like.

Containing an Account,

I. Of the Nature of the Barley-Corn, and of the proper Soils and
Manures for the Improvement thereof.

II. Of making good Malts.

III. To know good from bad Malts.

IV. Of the Use of the Pale, Amber, and Brown Malts.

V. Of the Nature of several Waters, and their Use in Brewing.

VI. Of Grinding Malts.

VII. Of Brewing in general.

VIII. Of the London Method of Brewing Stout, But-Beer, Pale and Brown Ales.

IX. Of the Country or Private Way of Brewing.

X. Of the Nature and Use of the Hop.

XI. Of Boiling Malt liquors, and to Brew a Quantity of Drink in a little Room, and with a few Tubs.

XII. Of Foxing or Tainting of Malt Liquors; their Prevention and Cure.

XIII. Of Fermenting and Working of Beers and Ales, and the unwholesome Practice of Beating in the Yeast, detected.

XIV. Of several artificial Lees for feeding, fining, preserving, and relishing Malt Liquors.

XV. Of several pernicious Ingredients put into Malt Liquors to encrease their Strength.

XVI. Of the Cellar or Repository for keeping Beers and Ales.

XVII. Of Sweetening and Cleaning Casks.

XVIII. Of Bunging Casks and Carrying them to some Distance.

XIX. Of the Age and Strength of Malt Liquors.

XX. Of the Profit and Pleasure of Private Brewing and the Charge of Buying Malt Liquors.

To which is added,

XXI. A Philosophical Account of Brewing Strong October Beer. By an Ingenious Hand.

PS This post was *supposed* to appear two weeks ago. The magic of the ether prevented it. It makes sense of the two posts about 18th century English drinking!!