Food History

Battling wines are good for an extraordinary number of things. The post I did on the Medieval poem has been mentioned in this month’s Carnivalesque (thank you, a_d_medievalist, for alerting me so quickly). What’s really cool about this is that it’s an edition about “food, on drink, on violence, on sex, on spectacle and pageantry, on the startling and the surprising, on chance and vicissitude” and there are some great posts linked. There’s more history than food in it, however, so I’m giving you a wine ad here for your delectation and to balance things out.

Custard apple (annona reticulata - though I’ve seen it given other botanical names, so I could be wrong) is like a creamy, squishy tropical fruit salad. I’ve heard it called a cherimoya, but I’ve heard another green fruit (same size, creamy flesh, but with skin rather than scaly hide) called cherimoya as well. If I ever sort out why some custard apples get called cherimoyas, I promise I’ll let you know (if I remember!). I googled it and found four websites with four different opinions. One said they were the same. One said that ‘custard apple’ is a secondary name for cherimoya. One said that ‘cherimoya’ is a secondary name for custard apple. The other said that everyone was wrong and they are quite different fruits.

It’s a New World fruit, which means it has an interesting history. Why some New World foods became staples in the Western, why others (like custard aple) remained borderline exotic, and why still others remain to be discovered is a subject I hope to find a book on one day. It’s not just portability or how quickly a plant grows. There has to be politics involved, and where there’s politics there’s probably intrigue. In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy custard apples, which are popular in Australia.

Most people I know eat this somewhat squishy fruit by scooping the flesh straight from the green shell, but if you blend it with icy milk and some cinnamon or vanilla you get a great milk shake.

Here’s an interesting Philippino take on the fruit. Why Philippino? Firstly, because it’s partway between the New World and the old and has a fascinating food history. Secondly because I went to a Philippino cultural performance last night and sang along to ‘Dahil sa yo’, which fact deserves commemorating. What doesn’t deserve commemorating is how many of the words I’ve forgotten.

food history, ingredients, fruit, custard appple, chirimoya

A very wise friend gave me a cookbook for my birthday. It’s the 1980 edition of Benton Junior Auxiliary’s Calico Cupboards. She explained to me that this was the Arksansas cooking of her childhood, that recipe after recipe rang true when she read it. And it’s big - 350 glorious pages. It’s the perfect addition to my collection.

What struck me about it is partly the diversity of the recipes: I’m used to thinking of Arkansas as rural and therefore having a simple cuisine, but its cooking has a bunch of interesting influences and some curious complexities. I should stop making the typical city assumption that rural = unsophisticated. This cuisine takes from the north-east and from the south and from the south-west and just a touch from traders from far off. Chicken and rice are popular and desserts are very numerous.

I want to go out and make hush puppies immediately (and I would, if it weren’t nearly 1 am). It’s one of the type of recipes that make up the backbone of this book. Good plain cooking holds the cuisine together. Things like the chicken and dumplings recipes (which I’ll give you shortly).

A bunch of recipes have the trait that my (still mislaid) 1970s Louisiana Methodist cookbook has: lots of pre-prepared ingredients. Tins of this and packages of that.

I’m reconsidering those tins and packages. When I first came across them I thought they were shortcuts, because I was taught from childhood that ‘real cooking’ means preparation of everything possible from scratch. I was applying the principles of my own cuisine to someone else’s, and that was a mistake. The Regency tests may very well use sauces and additives in the same way Southern cuisine uses tins and packages. Right now this is a vague thought, and I will revisit the subject some day.

I do love regional and district and school cookbooks. This one has quilt patterns for each chapter, devotes a whole chapter to allergies, and has a final chapter with recipes from local dignitaries. I’m going to include one of the VIP recipes as well as the chicken one, because it’s very topical. Think about what was happening in Arkansas in 1980 and think what is happening in the US now. if you can’t work it out, just scroll down the page a little…

Chicken and Dumplings (recipe given by Sandra Hooker)

1 stewing hen
3 cups flour
1 egg
1 heaping tablespoon shortening
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup cold water

Cut chicken for stewing. Barely cover with water and cook until tender for about 2 to 3 hours. Remove chicken fro stock and remove bones. Put flour in mixing bowl. In center of flour put egg, shortening and salt. Gradualy add cold water. Work plenty of flour into the dough. Roll thin and cut in 2x 3 inch strips. Drop into fast boiling broth one at a time When all dumplings are added, lower heat and simmer about 12 to 15 minutes. Place chicken back in the stew. A little butter may be added if chicken is lacking in fat.

Oven Chicken Parmesan (recipe given by Hillary Rodham, First Lady of Arkansas, Little Rock, Arkansas)

1 fryer (cut up) or chicken breasts (split)
1 egg, beaten
2 tablespoons milk
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup flour
2 teaspoons paprika
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspon pepper
1/2 cup margarine (melted)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Dip chicken in egg and milk. Dredge in flour mixture and seasonings. Place in shallow baking dish. Pour margarine over chicken. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 1/4 hours.

foodhistory, foodways, Arkansas, Calico Cupboards, review, recipes, Oven Chicken Parmesan, Hillary Rodham, Chicken and Dumplings, Sandra Hooker

It’s amazing what slight differences in method or ingredient can make to a dish. It’s even more amazing how those slight differences can create a sense of “This dish belongs to this country.”

These differences operate over time as well as space - think of the higher fat of the food from the ‘Regency Gothic’ tests. Menu creators in the early nineteenth century used salt and acid to mask the fat in a dish, or to balance blandness. Sweet cakes were placed alongside chicken and other savouries to bring out the flavours. It all worked in the test last night, once our palates stoped expecting what we knew.

Tonight I’m giving you my grandmother’s pancake recipes to celebrate the particular palate of a given time and place. The pancakes of my childhood were far less American than the pancakes of my adulthood, and I didn’t know why until I looked in my grandmother’s little book.

Think back to the 1950s. Saturday night dances. 2d to spend on sweets (Jaffas to roll down the wooden aisles and upset the ushers, for preference) at the local corner shop during intermission (after the cliff-hanger series), then race back inside for the main film.

These are the pancakes Australians ate back then.
When I had the first recipe (except with less salt!) in the mid sixties, we would dribble lemon juice from the lemons we had just picked and sprinkle sugar over the pancakes before rolling them.

Pancakes
2 eggs, ¾ pint milk, ¼ pound flour, ½ teaspoon baking powder, 1 saltspoon salt.

Beat eggs. Mix in flour and a little milk till you have a smooth paste, add the rest of the milk and salt, let it stand for 1 hour. Just before frying add the baking powder. Fry in a very little butter rubbed on the bottom of a hot pan. Roll and serve hot!

French Pancakes
Half pint milk, 2 ounces butter, 2 eggs, 2 ounces sugar, a pinch of salt, ½ teaspoon baking powder.

Cream the butter. Add sugar, flour, milk and eggs. The flour and sugar should be warmed, the baking-powder and salt sifted into the flour. Mix well and pour into buttered saucers. Bake from 20 mts to ½ hr in fairly quick oven. Serve with cream and jam.

The end of all the recipe tests is in sight. From 4,000 pages of recipes, to 250 recipes to be tested, to devising a period menu from the successful tests (and testing a few more recipes to fill in gaps). We have one more big test and then we’re past all of that and can give the draft menu and tested recipes to Rydges. After that it’s up to the chef - he may not want to make everything. He may want to make substitutions. He may have questions. And it all happens in five months.

We tested the full array of sweet dishes a little while ago, if you can remember back that far. If you can, you’re doing better than me. It feels like a lifetime ago.

Today six of us sat down to a meal that comprised just one tableful of food from the banquet. The first third, in fact.

I can’t tell you what was on it, because we were happy with the selection and it will go as is straight to the chef for the on-high decisions.

I can say that anyone thinking of costumes should not be planning anything that is slim fitting. And you should absolutely not eat afternoon tea and maybe not lunch that day. We’re doing a ‘maigre’ version of the food of the time (correct, but somewhat lower fat) and it’s still just amazingly rich compared with normal Australian cuisine.

What’s really cool was that the vegetarian was just as full as the rest of us. He fitted in some fondue and a hot chocolate (made of Callebaut chocolate with spices and cream) afterwards, but then, so did I. It is just so important to have good hot chocolate and nibbles while watching Heroes on one’s birthday, after all.

It was a lovely evening all round. For anyone with birthday nerves, 46 is one you can look forward to with pleasure.

I do admit, I may not eat for two days. If ever you get to taste the richness of early nineteenth century southern English cooking, remember this. Don’t plan on meals the day after.

I’m being very self-indulgent tonight. I refuse to bake myself a birthday cake for tomorrow and I refuse to do without one, so I’m giving everyone a birthday cake entry here. Call it a virtual birthday cake.

Let’s start with the history of the word cake. The Food Museum suggests it comes from an Old Norse word kaka, which sounds quite possible. I won’t go into modern meanings of kaka - just accept that cake came from an good Old Norse root and has nothing in common.

This word-origin is important because it places the original concept of a cake (as oposed to a bread) with the pre-Norman inhabitants of England. In other words, it’s a little sunbeam of hope that people made cakes before they made recipe books. The fact that they probably made those cakes without leaving us much evidence is irrelevant - we need proof, and the history of the word cake gives us that hope.

The online Oxford English Dictionary traces the word cake to c 1230, which is good. It means I can accept cake existed from at least the thirteenth century and probably significantly earlier. There might even be a direct link with Roman cookery and cakes might be continuing and ancient. I rather suspect they might, but ‘rather suspect’ does not equal proof and I’ve never looked at cake history before.

Alas, the OED isn’t nearly as useful for the early entry of the phrase birthday cake. In fact, it’s not useful for birthday cake at all. There are a lot of theories about the origin of birthday cakes online. Some sites suggest they come straight from Ancient Greece, others from Medieval Germany. Actual evidence is rare. The most convincing site suggests that birthday cakes as we know them come from the nineteenth century. Why does this convince me more than the others? Mainly because this site points to major changes in transport and trade and tools, which would really have made birthday cakes a lot easier to achieve. It also doesn’t rely on assumptions about Medieval birthday cakes, for which no-one gives evidence. I need to investigate where these mysterious cakes were made that had prizes hidden in them and were served on birthdays. It’s not impossible they existed, but I like my evidence strong.

I don’t have a picture of a birthday cake to give you. How is this?

None of the pictures I could find had the right number of candles on them. Picture in your mind a chocolate mud cake or a nice sachertorte. Decorate it (not too much) and place 46 candles on it. Carry this in your head through 25 April and sing happy birthday to me from time to time. I won’t ask for proof you’ve done any of this - some things just have to be taken on trust.

Look what a kindly person sent me - a link to a recipe for ship biscuits with a nice reference to a Medieval version. One thing my very slow foray into biscuits and scones is that the hard cracker type of biscuit that was used on board ship has a continuing history. This we could have deduced, but it’s nice to know, and not to rely on deduction. So far it’s the oldest type of attested biscuit and the type that continues regardless of other developments. I still don’t know how the twice-cooked element fits.

It’s suddenly turned cold in Canberra. All around me people are asking for chocolate recipes and alcohol recipes. One person asked for a dalek recipe, but I had already found them one. Here.

The cold and the need for things that warm make me think of fondue. It was so popular in the sixties and seventies in Australia and the trend has come back. I might have to fish out my rather old fondue forks. These days it’s not the cheese fondue of my childhood, or the pizza-flavoured cheese fondue of my life in the eighties, but rich, dark chocolate fondue.

About.com has found what they think might possibly be the recipe that started the chocolate fondue craze. Their recipe comes from The Swiss Cookbook, by Nika Standen Hazelton. It’s here. Suitable for any weather, but especially suited for an icy Saturday night. The alcohol keeps out the cold.

Chocolate tomorrow. Today I’m playing with old files, since I’m moving all my digital cookbooks and some of my historical digital books to something more portable than my hard drive. I like finding food quotes in old books so much that I might do a few more of these sorts of posts, if no-one objects. If you want to object, please do so in the comments.

In the evening, the products were found to be one small nugget weighing a quarter of an ounce, and in gold-dust eight pennyweights, ten grains, being worth, at the digging price for gold, about thirty-five shillings. This was rather less than we hard less calculated upon, and Richard signified his intention of returning to Melbourne, “He could no longer put up with such ungentlemanly work in so very unintellectual a neighbourhood, with bad living into the bargain.” These last words, which were pronounced SOTTO VOCE, gave us a slight clue to the real cause of his dislike to the diggings, though we, did not thoroughly understand it till next morning. It originated in some bottles of mixed pickles which he had in vain wanted Frank, who this week was caterer for the party, to purchase at four shillings a bottle, which sum, as we were all on economical thoughts intent, Frank refused to expend on any unnecessary article of food. This we learnt next morning at breakfast, when Richard congratulated himself on that being the last meal he should make of tea, damper and muton, without the latter having something to render it eatable. The puddling and cradling work had, I fancy, given the finishing stroke to his disgust. Poor Dick! he met with little commiseration: we could not but remember the thousands in the old country who would have rejoiced at the simple fare he so much despised. William, in his laughing way, observed, “that he was too great a pickle himself, without buying fresh ones.”

from A Lady’s Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53 by Mrs Charles Clacy

It is not for my feeble pen to detail the glories of that day. The little township—buried as it was beneath the shadow of the purple hills, and yet preserving in itself all the petty malice, the local jealousy, the blatant conceit of larger towns—gave loose on this one occasion to the wildest merriment. Local feuds were forgotten, personal hatreds forgiven or suspended. Even Mr. McTaggart, a rabid Orangeman from Derry, forbore to attack Mr. Michael Murphy, a rabid Ribbandman from Clare, and going out into the solitude of the bridge, drank in silence his favourite toast of ‘Here’s the Pope in the devil’s belly, and Martin Luther pitching red hot priests at him!’ a toast which was wont to cause Mr. Murphy’s ‘bhlood to bhoil, bhoys,’ and to bring about wrathful combats. Fighting Fitz, the poundkeeper, who was at daggers drawn with Dick Mossop, Scabby Barton’s overseer, on account of a brindled poley bullock branded P.W. over T.S. on the off rump, with a notch in both ears, and a star on the forehead, consented to be friends again, and even offered to sell Dick a certain bay mare in defiance of the Impounding Act. Rapersole, of course, could not be kept from politics, and insisted on putting what he was pleased to call ’supposititious’ cases in such numbers that Neil Gow, vowing him a bletherin’ bumbee’s byke, took him by the collar, and flourishing the stump of his arm menacingly, deposited him in an empty buggy. The breakfast was an immense success. Tom Trowbridge presided, having formally asked permission to lay aside his unaccustomed coat, and carved a noble round of beef with the air of a gold stick in waiting. But a round of beef was not the only viand. There was mutton broth and cow-heel, and an ox’s head decorated with flowers, and rump steaks, and sweetbreads, and a haggis, and lamb’s head, and sheep’s trotters, and cold saddle of mutton, and preserved peaches, and tins of jam, and sago pudding, and plum duff, and bottled ale, and tea, and sweet cake, and brandy, and rum, and one bottle of champagne for the ladies.

‘My eyes that’s a merry tightener!’ said Chirrup, the mail-boy. ‘Could you eat any more, Archy?’ ‘No fear!’ said Archy, ruefully, ‘them blessed puff-tillooners did my business.’ After the breakfast and the speeches—you should have heard Rapersole’s!—and the digestive smoke, drinking and dancing commenced, Trowbridge doing his best to carry out his promise to Neil Gow and vindicate his self-impugned title to his name. Some notion of the result may be gleaned from a glance at his bill, duly paid by Mrs. Keturah Harris two days afterwards.

To Mr. George Harris’ weding brakefast:-
… … … Pounds shilg. d.
The brakefast … … … 10 0 0
Noblers … … … 0 2 0
8 spiders … … … 0 8 0
Dit o … … … 0 8 0
Refreshments for lades … … … 2 0 0
Peppermint drops … … … 0 1 0
ginger Bear and bitters … … … 0 0 6
Drinks, phromiskus … … … 1 10 0
Squar gin for six … … … 0 3 6
Kake speshul … … … 1 10 0
Shout round … … … 5 0 0
Dit o … … … 5 0 0
Music … … … 2 0 0
Drinks for same … … … 0 10 0
Rossin … … … 0 2 6
10 noblers … … … 0 5 0
24 spiders … … … 1 4 0
Tobaco … … … 0 2 0
24 noblers … … … 1 4 0
2 broken chares … … … 1 0 0
1 winder … … … 2 10 0
Hoarse feed … … … 9 0 0
Shout all round … … … 5 10 0
Dit o parting … … … 5 10 0
Beds for 12 … … … 2 0 0
Shampane for lades … … … 1 0 0
Tottal … … … 56 0 6
Received by cash … … … 56 0 6

T. TROWBRIDGE.

In the consumption of such items as those mentioned above did the day wear out; and Trowbridge nobly fulfilled his promise. Of the sixty or seventy persons present, but a very insignificant number went home sober. Indeed, had it not been for the coquetry of Jenny Joyce, who, riding her father’s bay horse, Walkover, dared any of the young men to give her five minutes’ start and catch her before she reached the Bluff, there is no saying what might have happened.

from Australian Tales, 1896, by Marcus Clarke

Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund

April 16, 2007, will be remembered as one of the darkest days in the history of the Virginia Tech community and the world beyond.

To remember and honor the victims of those tragic events, the university has established the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund to aid in the healing process and generate financial support.

The fund will be used to cover expenses including but not limited to:

• Grief counseling
• Memorials
• Communication expenses
• Comfort expenses
• Incidental needs

If you plan to give, please click the link below:

This is just the quickest of posts because I was just reading a post by Erinn in Parenting our Children and it made me think about my post yesterday. (I don’t know why 50% of my readers quaver in fear and hide under beds when I say “it made me think.” It’s a mystery to me.)

First of all, I’m not doubting the problems that obesity can cause: I’ve seen them and they worry me. I am interested in the eating and lifestyle patterns that may be at the heart of the problem. I’m even more interested in what is defined as obesity and why, and why some societies favour fat and other societies favour lean. These definitions and preferences have implications for us and our fat.

From a personal point of view, I believe that when fat interferes with your health and well-being then it becomes a problem. If you’re perfectly healthy and have a large waistline then that’s only a problem if other people make it so. But that’s my personal view.

My view as an historian is that we need to look more widely before we think we understand fat. It doesn’t mean we have to emulate other periods and places - there is no need to starve to death in apprecation of the Irish potato famine and there’s no need to overeat just because some people did in Edwardian England.

When I talk to the people who taste test the food for the Regency Gothic banquet, I keep hearing how rich it is. It has a way higher fat content than modern food. Heaps of vegetables. Good protein. Immense amounts of high fat dairy. There’s not much deep frying, so the fats are differently balanced to many of the ones US children eat today. They’re also often sourced diffferently. Fats and sugars both: fructose was only used when it came with its fruit-of-origin. And we don’t know what portions people ate every day, so we really don’t know how their bodies handled their diet. We don’t know their fat problems, bascially.

I guess I’m arguing that reality is complex. We should be looking at foodways (how food is eaten, what value a given food has for a person or a family or a society, how it’s cooked, where it comes from, what lore goes along with it). When we know how various foods fit into a given society then we’re better set up to think carefully about what it means for obesity in children. I really want to know all the main factors so that we can address the causes that are most liable to change, not just make a list of the things that look most obvious.

This is my answer to Erinn’s question “What can we do?”: understand the problem. Work out which aspects are real problems and which are part of our social construct of how much fat is good. All the health issues are real problems, and are measurable and so can be addressed - I’m not suggesting throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I want to say “Talk to historians. Talk to anthropologists. Talk to ethnographers.” Not instead of the people already involved - working with them.

This is part of the wider relevance of the Humanities (or the Liberal Arts, if you’re in the US). They help us understand the complexities of our lives and to develop solutions that will work. They help us see who we are and where we have come from. It was not co-incidence that most of the recruits had history degrees in the graduate program when I entered the Australian Public Service.

You really don’t want to hear about the doings of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild, do you? Pity. I have lots to say. We had a meeting tonight and wonderful stuff is happening. The only food-related parts of the wonderful stuff all relate to the Regency Gothic Banquet and you already know about that. There’ll be an update here just as soon as we do the next bit of testing. And no, I am not giving out the apricot icecream recipe until after the Convention in five months time. (everyone wants the apricot icecream recipe now, instantly, and their lives will be ruined without it - never go to meetings if you are the holder of crucial historical recipes, even if the meetings are all about fiction)

From Regency to Edwardian is barely a hop, step and jump to the mind of a Medievalist. A century, what’s that?

There is a new BBC program all about trying Edwardian food and seeing how big one’s belt has to get to encompass it. It may take a while to come here, but when it does I promise I will trot out some suitable recipes. For all those who get to watch it now, you get a link to an article by the subject of the exercise. He was so happy to become Edwardian for a week and then he had his cholesterol measured. He suddenly realised that for real time travelling you need a bit more physical awareness than HG Wells described.

May one of the free-to-air Australian TV stations buy this series, soon!

Foodways and food history are about communities and individuals. They’re the story of people and the food people eat.

We all know that, in theory. In practice what changes the life of a community and rips out its soul is not something that often gets discussed in food histories. Sometimes it does. The extreme stuff. One day I’ll talk about that, when I find courage.

One of our regular 451 bloggers lives in Blacksburg, VA. Today I think it’s important to stop and remember the people of that particular community.

Instead of reading about food today, I’d be grateful if you took a moment to stop and think about him and his friends, about the son of SF writer Michael Bishop, about everyone who was killed in the shooting at Virginia Tech. Remember that history is about people, and when we lose those people we lose a part of ourselves.

Small communities are ponds and the stones that get thrown into them ripple out and touch the wider world. The stones thown diminish the community and hurt its citizens. These stones might be the tsunami that hit the Solomons, or an earthquake in Indonesia, or it might be a crazed gunman in Virginia. All these things hurt real people - they’re not just words on a page.

We should never forget the people who create the foodways we love and we should never lose sight of how terrible it is when they die before their time.

Let me send you to what my fellow 451 blogger has to say.

My mild practical joke was yesterday and I am a sober and serious historian today, working on a paper on Australian Jewish foodways for a July conference so I thought you’d like a small collection of interesting links. They’re each and every one of them chosen for different reasons. All of them relate to food history, of course.

The first link perhaps needs some explaining. It’s a reference table for historians (and possibly historical novelists) and shows grain prices over time. What’s really cool about this sort of thing is that you can look at grain prices and find out about food and society and whether society gets the food it needs. Riots and misery result when basic foodstuffs can’t be had and changes of government can be forced when the society puts the blame squarely on government. Think of the English Corn Law or the earlier Assizes. One day I might do a post on the Assizes and another day I might do one on the Corn Law and its history, but in the interim, take a look at Richard Unger’s grain price pages.

I realised this morning that I haven’t put nearly enough chocolate on these pages, so here’s a web entry that has some gorgeous eighteenth century chocolate pots. I want me one of these. I’m curious to taste the effect of the frother/molenillo (the wooden device that slots into the lid) - right now I use a hand capuccino frother or my blender, but I can’t know how near or far I am from the correct texture until I taste it made properly.

The next link is an example of a type of site I want to see more of. It’s the food specific to St Louis (excuse me while I break into song - in fact ignore me while I break into song, because my voice sounds nothing like Judy Garland’s. On a good day I sing on key, and that’s the most you can hope for.). What’s cool about this site is that it lists some of the foodstuff that the people of St Luis treasure as part of their culinary history. You can argue all you like about what food came from where and when things were introduced, but until a great deal more local histories are done we don’t even know a small percentage of what foods people claim as their own. The French do local pride in food particularly well, but St Louis has a rather impressive list of foods that have historical resonance for them:

Toasted Ravioli
Gooey butter cake
Prosperity sandwich
Pork Steaks
The Concrete
Peanut Butter
The Slinger
Provel ™ cheese
St. Louis style Pizza
St. Paul Sandwich
Brain Sandwich
Soft drinks - Whistle™, Howdy, 7-UP™ (its first name was “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Sodas” - very catchy)
Ice Cream in a Cone
Hot Dog on precisely the right bun
Iced Tea
Hamburg Steak as a Sandwich (Hamburger)
Cotton candy (what us other countries call fairy floss)
Crab Rangoon
Bar-B-Que
Ham Steak
Bissinger’s™ chocolates

The great thing about lists like these is the minute we read them we think “But I know of such and such that was earlier” and “I know where they got that from.” And that’s the point. We need local claims so they can be substantiated and then we can look for patterns in what was eaten and when. We can find out who ate fairy floss and who ate cotton candy. We can look at different varieties of barbecue and work out what regions shared the same tastes.

If your town has a website that delves into the food it likes, invented or is proud of, I would love to see it. Same with local cookbooks. History is all about evidence, and there’s a lot of gorgeous material that never gets past the local school fete. This website is why St Louis is my favourite city this Monday.

The last website for now is one that balances the recipes for a Medieval dinner I gave a little while back. It’s a menu for < a href="http://www.kateryndedevelyn.org/eng1intr.htm"> fourteenth century meal.

Which reminds me, the next test for the Regency Gothic Banquet happens to be at my place and on my birthday. I think that after the meal everyone might enjoy my favourite fourteenth century hypocras recipe. It will mix periods in a shocking and delightful way.

A Sunday treat for everyone, dedicated to all the 451 bloggers. You’ll be able to tell which 451 bloggers read the 451 Press forum and read my blog by the comments below. I’m in the mood for practical jokes (alas for everyone in my vicinity) - be grateful that this one is marvellously mild.

I have to admit, what I wanted was an old vegemite ad. This one almost looks sophisticated in places, which is quite, quite wrong in the world of vegemite ads. If anyone can find me something earlier, I’ll put it in the blog, I promise. The world just cannot have too many vegemite ads. They are of vital importance to Australian foodways and to universal food history.