Food History

Trudy over at Elementary Chef has a rather tempting recipe for Eggs benedict, which is part of her family’s food tradition at this time of year.

These almonds are doubly suitable for Chanukah, while not being traditional at all. They are a 1920s recipe from my father’s Anglo-Australian-Jewish family.

How are they doubly suited to the festival? Well, firstly they are fried. And secondly (as my parents made us prove when we were children - I had a very scientifically-inclined and Jewish childhood) a large almond will keep a flame for just long enough so that it can be considered kosher for Chanukah because of its high oil content. Once you get it to light, a really good peeled almond will last a full half hour. The trouble is getting your almond to light in the first place. It’s much simpler to get it to stand upright - just lop the bottom off.

Devilled Almonds

Blanch Almonds and fry in butter till brown then put onto brown paper which has been sprinkled with cayenne pepper & salt. Leave till cold then shut in a tin.

This recipe has been one of my favourite Medieval English delights for a long time now. When I teach it in class I call it ‘junk food’ because it has the instantly addictive quality of all the best junk food. In texture it’s more a pancake than a doughnut, but it is most certainly deep fried and it has to be eaten as soon as you make it. It’s a lovely party dish, because you can cook it and your friends can stand around and sprinkle sugar on the crespez and then eat them at once.

If you want to see the recipe in Middle English (with a modern tested recipe by historians) you can find it in Pleyn Delit, by Constance Hieatt, Sharon Butler etc. This is one of my favourite cookbooks for things Medieval and I will introduce you to it as a book properly one day. In the meantime, the version below is mine own, straight from the Middle English. This means all the errors in it are my own too. And that it’s sadly messy in its instructions - all my most loved recipes enter a certain disorderly zone in my mind - I cook them by feel and memory and don’t worry too much about measuring or having forgotten to get the flour out until everything else is mixed.

Crespez

Beat egg white, milk and flour together with a bit of sugar and salt. You want a mixture you can dollop (”so that it be renneng” are the original words). Hieatt and her co-authors suggest adding yeast, and they suggest adding it to milk that has been warmed early in the process. The yeast gives it a doughnut scent. Without yeast it’s more like a fried pancake - still nice, but not nearly as addictive.

Take “freysshe grece boyling” - I use canola oil which is inauthentic but doesn’t smoke. An animal fat (e.g. lard) would give it an interesting flavour and be authentic, but I’ve never tried it. Deep fry a little at a time. The recipe actually suggest dribbling, but I prefer to dollop with a teaspoon to make round snacks.

When each fritter is a nice, light brown, drain well, and sprinkle some sugar and eat it at once.

I thought you’d like some URLs about Chanukah. The reason I thought you’d like them is that it’s a lot easier to give you URLs than to write a potted history of the festival. Besides, I won’t be writing a potted history of Christmas and fairness is important.

As of tomorrow, I will be giving traditional Christmas recipes as well as Chanukah ones. If you have any foodways or stories or recipe you would like to share, just send them my way and I will post them. My favourite Christmas story is about the pork pie that killed Uncle Bob. I don’t have permission to blog the story (alas - it’s very funny) but I will give you the recipe, I promise.

In the meantime, here are two handy URLs to impress people with (just cite the URLs; no need to impress them by explaining the content ):

. the short food history of the festival

. a bunch of recipes.

I’m still waiting for reports from recipe testers, but all but one of my new recipe testers have recipes. I rather suspect I will get scads of notes all at once. There are still lots of recipes to play with, so if you’ve always had a deep desire to play with food I am happy to help.

The sources this bunch of recipes come from are an 1806 cookbook and an 1830 cookbook. The 1830 cookbook is backup rather than first port of call, because it really is a fraction late.

The new old recipes given to my enthusiastic friends are:

a mushroom and egg dish
lemon puffs
heart cakes
asparagus and eggs
spinach and eggs
to ragoo asparagus
eggs and broccoli
apple pie
shoulder of lamb, stuffed
lamb steaks ragout
fricassee chicken (I was this to work because if it does it may well go with that mushroom fricassee that is #1 on the dishes we’ve tested so far)
chicken pulled
Windsor syllabub
Staffordshire syllabub

Dishes I need help with (or will cook myself) from this new list are:

to fry a neck or loin of lamb
grass lamb steaks
to force chickens
to fry chickens
lemon sauce
fennel sauce
mint sauce
gooseberry or apple trifle
raspberry or strawberry cream
small tarts and puffs of fruit
small puffs
apple puffs
lemon or orange puffs
to stew a ragout or brisket of beef
fowl with mushrooms

I still haven’t found a decent after-dinner drink. And I am suddenly reading Jane Austen with a whole new eye. She uses cooking terms far more liberally than I realised :).

My next task is to locate a dinner party scene from an Austen novel that we can use in the webpage for our Regency Gothic Feast. Nicole (Chair of the SF convention) suggested Emma, but I can’t help thinking that Northanger Abbey is the place to look first. I love the way Northanger Abbey mocks people who read fiction as an alternative reality (I get readers like that, sometimes and I give them sad bewildered looks and say “I wrote it as fictional, you know”). If any of you have favourite Jane Austen dinners, please share them!

The secret Jews of Spanish lands suffered under the Inquisition. Some of the records of the Inquisition contain the most amazing food history - people’s food habits were used to determine if they were practising Jews (with their religion in hiding) or good pork-eating Catholics. One of my favourite (but saddest) cookbooks is a reconstruction of recipes and a memory of some of the lives from the trial records taken at the end of the fifteenth century in Valencia. The reconstructors are David M Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson and the book is A Drizzle of Honey. The Lives and Recipes of Spain’s Secret Jews.

Chanukah is a festival of freedom and it doesn’t hurt to remember that these Jews weren’t free. The culinary tradition from A Drizzle of Honey records Jews who chose conversion and also chose to celebrate their culture through cooking. The freedom to cook and eat the dishes you choose and that your ancestors chose before you became potentially fatal. When I make these I always remember that the freedom to eat food that helps you remember your heritage is an important freedom.

Bunuelos

Dough: 1 package dry yeast, 1 1/3 cups warm water, 3 cups white flour, 2 beaten eggs, generous pinch salt, 1 tbs olive oil
Syrup: 3 cups honey, 1/4 cup water
Topping: Cinnamon mixed with icing sugar

Dough method: Dissolve yeast in 1/3 cup water warm water. Wait ten minutes. Stir all of the yeast mixture, eggs, salt, oil into the flour. Gradually add the rest of the water until the dough is slightly tacky. Cover and let rise until doubled in bulk.

Syrup method: Mix honey and water in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and summer for 5 minutes. Reduce heat further to keep syrup hot until needed.

Fry fritters in oil*, a teaspoon at a time. Do not crowd the pan. When they puff up and become golden (c 8 minutes) they should be ready. Drain on paper towels. When they are drained, drizzle the syrup over them and then sprinkle with the cinnamon/sugar mixture.

*Olive oil is the correct oil but vegetable oil gives a browner finish.

I was tired and playing round with statistics (I do that when I’m tired and have real work to do - it’s a bad, bad habit) and I noticed that for some reason my post on strudel dough is mammothly popular. I wish I knew why. Does strudel dough have a hidden sexiness?

Today’s recipe is from the Nu Kooka, in celebration of the Chanukah of my childhood. The latke recipe from my childhood can be found here.

Apple fritters

1 lb Granny Smith apples (peeled, cored and cut into thick slices)
2 tbs matzah meal or plain flour
2 eggs
cinnamon and sugar to taste

Make a batter with eggs and flour or meal. Coat each slice of apple and fry in oil or fat until golden brown. Drain and sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar. Eat immediately.

I’ve just been through two early 19th century books in search of more recipes. I have a host, but they’re all in pdf files. Some of them will need retyping or scanning, while others I can just print out and hand over to the enthusiastic victims. I have cakes and meats and all sorts of delectables. No negus though. In fact, finding authentic and delicious recipes for drinks is harder than I thought. Maybe we will just have wine. Or maybe something else will come to hand - after all, we have six months of testing remaining.

Don’t trust my pronunciation, but enjoy the tonguetwister anyway. It is the easiest way to remember that different types of stone fruit are closely related and share histories. Truly, it’s easy to remember :). Just keep repeating the same syllables very, very quickly. It’s especially easy after a few festive drinks.

Sumomo mo momo, momo mo momo, sumomo mo momo mo momo no uchi.

This version was taken from this site, which gives a translation: A Japanese plum is a kind of peach, a peach is also a peach, both Japanese plum and peach are kinds of peaches.

The version I learned from my friends is shorter and simply means “The plum and peach are both kinds of peaches.”

I’m on a quest.

I’m always on a quest, aren’t I? It’s because a part of me is a specialist in Arthuriana and the quest thing is somehow hardwired into my brain. This quest is for this blog. I have decided that the entire universe needs a recipe for a different fried food for each day of Chanukah.

If any of you have favourite recipes for doughnuts, fritters, anything delectably fried (except make it meat free and fried in oil rather than animal fats) either email them to me or put them in the notes and I will blog them day after day after day for the whole of the Festival of the Grand Coronary Arterial Buildup.

I have recipes in my collection - enough for about 398 days - but it would be fun to have a mixture of current recipes as well as historical ones. Food history gets made by people like us, after all :). So send me recipes as soon as possible, because Chanukah will be upon us awfully soon. This Friday, in fact. I know where my candles are for Friday night, don’t I? I must. Surely. Excuse me while I go looking.

I thought it was about time I gave you something unexpected. This book has lots of the usual components of a Jewish cookbook. There are chapters on all the holidays and sections for salads, soups, rice, fish and everything normal. Plus there are fritadas and bourekia and fylla and a lot of other stuff. Yummy stuff. This is a cookbook that is full of really delicious recipes. It’s one of my favourite summer cookbooks: the recipes are that good.

The historical element isn’t substantial by my greedy standards (just a few pages), but it’s fascinating. Jews have been in Greece for well over 2,000 years and Stavroulakis explains how the Romaniote Jews developed strong cultural differentiation. Communities in Bulgaria, Serbia, Sicily and Asia Minor as well as in Greece proper were Greek-speaking and developed rich cultures which are - alas - little known.

There are very few of this ancient Jewish community left in Greece (Stavroulakis estimates c. 6,000). The biggest decimation was caused by the Shoah. Jews whose families have spoken Greek for over 2,000 years and who have been a part of the very rich histories of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires are rare and special. So are their recipes. Here’s one for you to enjoy now - let it tempt you into getting hold of the book. It’s an ornament to any collection.

The next Jewish festival is too soon (I say this because I’m in the throes of preparation). It’s Chanukah (or Hanukkah, depending on who’s doing the transliteration) and we traditionally eat fried foods. Zvingous (pp.125-6) are a variant on the doughnuts and fried pastries that can be found throughout the Jewish culinary world this season.

Zvingous

Ingredients

2 tbs olive oil
3/4 cup water
pinch salt
1 1/2 cups flour
4 beaten eggs
enough additional olive oil for frying
sugar syrup (well-chilled) made with water, honey, sugar and lemon
crushed walnuts and almonds

Bring oil, water and salt to the boil. Remove from heat and quickly stir in flour. Beat into a thick batter then stir in eggs.

Heat the olive oil you’re frying the pastries in until the mixture sizzles then a drop is drizzled in. Fry a spoonful at a time (dip the spoon in olive oil and push the batter off with your finger). Fry the pastries a few at a time. When they’re golden-brown, place them on absorbent paper and pour syrup over them immediately. Sprinkle with the nut mixture.

Can one ever have too much good fruit? This is a slightly different list to the one I developed. It doesn’t show varieties extant at a certain date, but the ancestry of a range of varieties you can buy currently.

Today’s URL is dedicated to all those individuals who have looked for more about Ancient Rome since my Apicius post and found instead many recipes for scones. I rather suspect that this blog has something for all foodies, but that sometimes you have to wait for its moment to come round.

The Society of Biblical Literature had a seminar this year on meals in the Greco-Roman world. Many of the papers have been put online - I’ve linked you to the main page. Just be aware that some of the files are not tiny. It’s fascinating stuff and just what you need to keep your mind from going slack during the silly season.

I won’t examine you when you come back from holiday. I won’t examine myself either. I’m linking to the papers purely for our enjoyment.

My grandmother made her living with home made sweets. She became diabetic and her son became a dentist. Now that I’ve discouraged you from ever eating antique sweets, here’s a recipe from her notebook.

Cocoanut ice

1 cup sugar
1/4 cup milk
2 tbs grated or dessiccated cocoanut

Boil everything for six minutes. Remove from fire and stir until mixture thickens. Pour into a wet dish and let cool. Cut into squares before entirely cold.