Food History

A group of bloggers at 451 Press is busy looking at each others blogs and getting to know each other. We thought it was a good idea. My blog-to-look-at this week is Mom is Teaching and it has provided an unexpected bonus.

Yesterday I promised you a recipe from Dr Morse and I promise I will give you one, but Summer’s latest post has reminded me why I started collecting ephemera (technical term for leaflets and pamphlets and stuff) in the first place: leaflets and pamphlets and stuff are exceptionally good for teaching. I often add a leaflet or something to my briefcase for class and plan a lesson that will include hands-on contact with the past. I especially do this when I teach subjects such as family history, because it really helps bring the history alive.

In Summer’s case - looking for activities for home schoolers - this gives her an eleventh way of keeping homeschooled children busy.

Pieces of paper have words. Words have meaning. Extracting the meaning from an old leaflet is a wonderful way for children to discover the past and to interact with it. If they’re very lucky, they might try out some recipes from a page entitled “Biliousness” and discover why layout really does affect how we read a text. Lessons in publishing, in the past and in people. What more could you want? Apart from a recipe, of course.

Raisin Pie

Two cupfuls of seeded raisins, one cupful and a half of boiling water, half a cupful of sugar, two tablespoons of cornstarch, two tablespoonfuls of grated lemon rind, juice of one orange, one tablespoon of grated orange rind, one cupful of chopped walnuts. Cook raisins in boiling water for five minutes, pour into it sugar and corn sarch, which have been mixed. Cook until thick, remove from fire, and add other ingredients. Bake btween two crusts. Walnuts may be omitted, if desired. All measurements for this recipe are level.

First the ‘thank you.’ I was rather surprised to see Food History in the list of the top 100 Aussie blogs, but it is there and the only reason I can think for it being there is people reading it, which means you. Thank you!

Today I want to introduce you to another little leaflet. I bought this in Katoomba last year. This is the kind of leaflet that appears by happenstance, when you’re doing something else. In Katoomba I was writing a novel and was doing research in a second hand shop. The leaflet gently slipped into my hand and told me firmly “Buy me.”

It’s not very big: sixteen internal pages. It has a foxed and faded pink paper cover which says “Cooking Recipes and Home Hints Published by the Proprietors of Dr Morse’s Indian Root Pills.”

The back has calendars for 1927 and 1927 and proudly announces “Dr Morse’s Indian Root Pills. Australia’s National Remedy.” Date and country all nicely laid out, with the publication printed in Pitt Street, Sydney. Despite this, Dr Morse’s Indian Root Pills were from the US, apparently originating in Buffalo, NY in 1854. Project Gutenberg has put up a history of the pills and the patent medicine business they were a part of. It’s worth checking out.

What I love about this pamphlet is its incredibly bad layout. Let me give you the headings first. There will be recipes later, so be concerned.

Made in Australia By Australians for Australians.

Disordered Liver
Are you an Indoor Worker
Headache
Bilious Attacks
Always Tired
Indigestion
Biliousness
Save Money
Woman’s Daily Duties
Nervous depression
Comstock’s “Dead Shot” Worm Pellets
Comstock’s Nerve & Bone Liniment
Keep your system in fighting trim

Just typing that in exhausted my nervous sytem. There was a message in them, not very subliminal. We’re told “Bilious Attack” then given recipes. The recipes can wait till next time. In the meantime I intend to worry about a sentence my mind keeps framing which goes “Women’s Daily Duties Nervous depression.”

I can’t guarantee any of the details in the story because my chief source for it - who was told it by the wife of one of the gentlemen involved - is currently unavailable. Such is oral history. Your response to me saying “I might have got some of it wrong” ought to be “OK, I won’t believe you.”

I’m an unreliable narrator. My fiction-writing self has eaten the historian part of my mind. That would make a strange kind of horror movie, where bits of our minds cannibalise other bits. Anyway, on with the tale of the two shochetim*.

Once upon a time and in an exotic place (1960s Cairns, Queensland) someone noted the wonderful quality of Australian grassfed beef and set up an exporting business to Israel. There were no kosher butchers in Cairns, so they flew a couple out from Israel. No problems.

Now, these shochetim were Ultra-Orthodox blokes. Think big black suits and big black hats and those locks of hair (peyotim) lopping down their cheeks. Cairns airport had never seen such a sight and especially had never seen such big blokes sweltering in the tropical heat while dressed for a Polish autumn. Maybe it was because of the incongruity and identicality of the men with their beards and in their suits and with their lack of English that someone was a bit concerned and decided to check their cases, even though Carins in the sixties was pretty laid back.

The two shochetim willingly opened all their cases. The smallest case, flat as a briefcase, was filled with sharp blades polished and bright and dangerous. Big enough to kill a cow with one stroke and cause it no pain. Big enough and sharp enough to worry Customs. Customs called Security and the two Israelis were taken to a side room for further investigation.

The Australian who was supposed to interpret was unacountably detained and the Israelis didn’t have much English so they sat in the side room, trying to work out what to do.

“All we need,” said one to the other in Hebrew, “Are the English words for ‘Anachnu shochetim’ and they’ll understand the knives.”

“I know the words for that,” the other said, confidently. “I know how to say ‘We’re kosher butchers’ in English.”

When the security team asked them again what they were doing in Australia, he replied proudly “We are killers. We kill for Jews.”

Fortunately for the path of international trade in beef, the Australian who had been supposed to meet them (and whose plane had been delayed) arrived at that point and the pair escaped custody for being butchers.

*shochetim are butchers, basically. They kill cleanly and humanely and according to Jewish law, facing in the right direction and saying the correct blessings. I can do a separate post on kosher killing if enough of you exhibit curiosity. Kashruth isn’t a great secret, though, and you can probably find out more than you’d ever want with the help of the amazing Mr Google.

This is a little note to let you know I’ve been nominated in two categories for the Blogger’s Choice Awards (actually, three categories, but the third is for my other blog. If you have a few minutes and feel like voting, I hope the cute icons below will take you to the right place. You’ll have to register and login first, but there is much bloggy goodness to explore, so it’s worth it.

PS This announcement doesn’t replace my regular Thursday posting, I promise. I might include a bad joke in the post later as a kind of celebratative torture, though.

While I’m thinking about longterm slow-but-small projects, there is my little collection of biscuit and scone recipes which one day will be big enough to help me work out the geographical limits of the terms biscuits and scones and a hundred subtle interpretations appertaining unto each of the words. Or maybe it will just provide many yummy recipes. Either is good.

Anyhow, another 451 blogger (Kelly, of Kidsdish) has kindly added to my little haul. Her biscuits are of the Southern US variety, so not sweet and not at all hard. I always thought that biscuits made like this were just poor scones, but the recipe is quite different. Lard and buttermilk. I’m not sure about the lard - but I might follow Kelly’s recommendation and make them with vegetable shortening. I can’t even imagine what they’ll taste like with butter and molasses. Warm in this autumn chill, I suspect.

I have been quietly pursuing a little mystery recently. The probable answer was staring me in the face, as it so often does with little mysteries.

Chorizo is the classic Spanish pork sausage. It ought to have nothing in common with Jewish cooking. Except that old Jewish recipes from the right sort of background (a branch of Sephardi that retained its Spanish cooking heritage with particular vigour) contain something called chorissa and it serves close enough to the same function as chorizo in that cuisine. They have to be the same thing. And they can’t. Pork is not commonly part of Jewish foodways. This was driving me quietly crazy.

I found half an answer in Chaim Raphael’s edition of The Jewish Manual. Chorissa was a specifically Jewish sausage, sold at a specialist Jewish butcher in nineteenth century London. It was used in recipes that were decidedly Sephardi.

But what was in the sausages? Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been pork. They were probably smoked beef sausages. The only evidence I have is here, however, and this may be a local variant.

From a general standpoint, my mystery is solved, but from the point of view of an historian, it has only really just started. Knowing that an ingredient existed and was used in a certain way in 1846 in London isn’t the same as tracing it from 1492 Spain to 1846 London. America in the late eighteenth century is the first step of my link and probably close enough to London so that I can assume that chorissa were smoked beef sausages. I need more evidence, though.

I don’t have time for a proper search, but I’ll keep my eyes open and report in as I find more links. To celebrate having come this far though, tomorrow I’m going to tell my Jewish butcher story. If I don’t, remind me. You’ll be really sorry to miss it if I forget. Trust me on this.

One thing that comes up whenever I play with historical recipes is the different scents we like to give our food. Orange blossom was quite popular in the 1810s and lemon essence was a staple in Melbourne cupboards in the 1960s.

One day I will do a lengthy post on the difference between essences and oils and waters and spirits and cordials and other products made from an important base ingredient. In the interim, let me titillate your palate with a very brief introduction to lemon eseence.

Technically, lemon essence is the oil extracted from lemon peel. It’s also known as lemon oil. There is a cold pressed variety and a hot pressed variety - go for cold pressed if you can find it.

Lemon peel contains an extraordinary amount of essential oil. In fact, most citrus fruits do. Most ‘essences’ have been extracted with alcohol or using other techniques - the best lemon essence is simply pressed from the fresh peel.

Lemon peel has been used as an ingredient for as long as lemons have been known. Lemon oil can substitute for peel in dishes where you only want the fragrance. If you need the pectin, however (eg in marmalades) then the oil will not work.

If you need a non-acid form of lemon fragrance, then lemon myrtle is your baby. It’s the most perfect lemon scent nature produces (in my unbiased opinion) and is almost completely acid free. I use far less lemon essence than I used to and lemon myrtle is to blame.

I can’t be serious today. I really am sorry about it, but the eighth day of Passover hitting the exact moment that Easter eggs go half-price in the supermarket prevents it. I bought a half price Hilliers egg (dark chocolate, of course) to eat tomorrow night and I cackle to myself, hen-like. It’s as if two festivals have been discounted at once….

I was going to do an in-depth food report on how the food served at the National Folk Festival reflects the Australian psyche. Or something.

I can talk about the music more easily than the food. I can talk about the street stalls that sold shawls made of yak wool and the pre-teens who made bird noises at passers-by in the hopes of being mistaken for street performers and given money. I can talk about all sorts of things. But not food.

All the food stalls that were at the Canberra Royal Show were at the National Folk Festival: lots of hamburgers and chips. Add to this all the regular food stalls that do the folk festival circuit: vegetarian food and a touch of the exotic, ranging from Marrakesh hot pots to Turkish pancakes. What results are norms for Australian fairs of a certain kind and size.

When we go to fairs we go for the atmosphere of the fair. The food there reflects the specific tradition of ‘there’ and doesn’t necessarily demonstrate vast inner meaning about the external scoiety. It can, but it’s a slightly different connection to the one I was expecting.

This is the special food we eat at large folk festivals. Festive foods include chips and souvlaki and (Canberra specific) Ethiopian delicacies. Folk-specific food includes stalls by groups such as Hare Krishnas and Ananda Marga. Folk-specific food also includes mulled wine and much beer. A wide variety of different beverages, in fact, both alcoholic and non-alcholic, because folkstuff includes singing and dancing and selling handmade crafts and each activity has different drinking needs. Much of the food was fair trade and small business: fair fare in so many ways.

It’s interesting that Australia has food specific to fairs above a certain size and that it’s different to the food of smaller fairs and that it has quite particular qualities that reflect the nature of the fair. This is good food history, just not the development and changes in cultural fusion that I was looking for.

Emma has asked me for some historical ice-cream recipes. The great thing about them is that if you’re lactose intolerant or glucose resistant you can adjust ingredients or experiment with alternatives if you make your own ice cream.

I can’t give the early nineteenth century recipe yet, because it’s part of the Regency Gothic banquet stuff, but I’ve found some recipes from my grandmother’s notebook which should do the trick. I can find older recipes if anyone wants. As with all recipes, just say and I will find something … eventually.

What’s particularly interesting about my grandmother’s ice cream recipes is that you can see at least two decades in their making. Note the difference between the normal ice creams especially and the war time one. World War II in Australia didn’t know anything like the deprivation of Europe, but it did have food restrictions, and the ice cream shows it.

Ice Cream
Beat 2 eggs and a scoop of sugar, add 1 pint of milk and a little vanilla. Stir over fire until it thickens, but do not boil. Let cool add a little cream and fruit if liked. Freeze.

Carmal Sauce (for ice cream)
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cold water
1 ½ cups hot water
1 tablespoon corn starch
1 tablespoon butter
1 teasp vanilla

Put the sugar & cold water into a pan & stir until syrup is a clear brown, then add the hot water & stir until well blended. Add cornstarch mix with a little cold water & boil for 5 mts. Continue cooking for 15 mts stirring all the time. Beat in butter & vanilla.

Strawberry Ice Cream
Take 1 lb picked & hulled strawberries, sprinkle with ¼ lb castor sugar & crush. Add a table lemon juice & let stand 1 hr. Put through sieve, whip ½ pt cream & add. Also add 6 blanched & chopped almonds. Freeze.

Marshmallow Ice Cream
2 oz marshmallows
½ cup milk
½ cup strong coffee
1 cup cream (whipped)
salt to taste
1 teasp vanilla essence

Cut the marshmallows into quarters, add them to the milk & melt in a double saucepan. Add coffee. Chill until slightly thickened. Whip cream add salt & vanilla & beat into the cold marshmallow mixture. Turn into a freezing tray for 2 to 3 hrs. If preferred 1 cup of fruit jucie may be used instead of the coffee & milk.

Chocolate Sauce (for ice cream)
Melt in basin over boiling water 1 square of unsweetened chocolate, add 1 tablesp butter & very slowly 1/3 cup boiling water. Bring to boiling point add 1 cup sugar & 2 tablespoon maize syrup. Cook until desired consistency (about 5 mts). Cool & add 1 teaspoon vanilla & pinch of salt. Serve hot or cold.

Lemon Chiffon Ice Cream
4 egg yolks
½ cup powdered sugar
the juice of 2 lemons
1 cup cream

Beat egg yolks until very thick, then add gradually the sugar, beating all the time & until sugar is dissolved. Stir in the juice of the lemons. Whip cream until fluffy, but not stiff. Fold into the egg mixture & spoon into freezing tray & freeze about 2 hr. Requires stirring only once after first hr. Any other fruit juice may be used instead of the lemon.

Vanilla Ice Cream
1 ½ pts thick cream
1 cup caster sugar
¼ teasp salt
1 tablesp vanilla
½ pt milk

Stir milk into cream gradually, add salt, stir in sugar, stirring occasionally until sugar is dissolved, then freeze. If preferred put milk, sugar, salt in a double saucepan & when sugar is dissolved cool milk. When quite cold, add to cream.

Ribbon Ice Cream
Beat 2 egg yolks with 3 oz castor sugar. Boil 1 ½ pts milk & pour it on beaten yolks then replace over fire & stir until it thickens. Divide this custard into 3 parts. Mix raspberry syrup in first, add ½ oz melted chocolate into second, & a few drops vanilla with the third. Then whip up ½ pt cream & divide equally between the 3 portions. Freeze each portion in separately & place in layer in a mould & put in the refrigerator till set. When quite firm cut into slices & serve.

Toffee Ice Cream
1 cup milk (small)
½ teasp golden syrup
1/3 cup sugar
few drops vanilla

Mix well together, melt 1 teasp gelatine in tablesp cold water & add to first mixture. Strain into refrigerator pan & chill till jelled, then take out & beat, add 1 cup whipped cream, return to refrigerator to freeze.

To make toffee:
8 level dessertsn sugar
4 dessertpn vinegar
2 dessertspon butter

Boil altogether until it forms a hard ball in cold water. Pour into a buttered tin & when cold pound until it looks like breadcrumbs. Sprinkle this over ice cream before serving.

War Time Ice Cream
Place in bowl ½ contents of tin sweetened condensed milk, 2 cups fresh milk, 4 heaped tablespn powdered milk. Add pinch of salt & vanilla to taste. Add 1 scant dessertspn gelatine, dissolved in cup hot water, beat well. Place in refrigerator on quick freeze 20 mts, take out, beat well, return to refrigerator at usual temperature, leave till set.

The contents of school lunchboxes haunt me.

When I was in Melbourne, the museum had a display of school lunchboxes past and present and you could see them lined up against a wall. Sandwiches, health food bars, drinks, carrot sticks, apples, cheese sticks. I missed the Sunny Boy (everyone’s favourite drink when I was in primary school - triangular long life packs that I only ever notice now in UHT milk sachets).

Kids dish has started a conversation on lunchboxes present. Things are different where she lives (Kelly is in the US) and part of the fun of the school lunchbox for her is quite obviously translating the potpourri of organic vegetables in her box of vegetables into something that can be enjoyed by children in a lunch box.

It’s all about translation. For Kelly the translation is from organic box to lunch box. For my sisters and I when we were young it was what we were comfortable making: we did our own lunches - we started learning to cook when we were four, from memory, so buttering bread and putting things on it and closing it and cutting it was achievable from very early primary school. It wasn’t just what our cooking skills could achieve, however, it was also what we were happy having other kids comment on. The limits on the translation in both cases include what are available and what parents will veto.

If you call this stuff “history of childhood nutrition” it sounds dead boring. But if you turn and ask someone “What did you have in your lunchbox when you were nine?” everyone gets involved in convoluted analyses and explanations and the history of the mundane turns out to be much more fun than the deaths of kings. After all, kings don’t die that often or that interestingly, but you never know what’s going to be in a stranger’s school lunchbox. Opening the lid is always just a little bit astonishing.

My mother, my sister and I are all feeding people chicken soup. It is what our family has done in the middle of Passover for as long as family memory can take us. Chicken soup with kneidlach (matzah meal dumplings). I put a bit of cumin in my kneidlach this year because I can never stick to rules, but it was still funny to find that we’re all eating and serving chicken soup tonight.

My first night seder was a wild success. The keftikes were a particularly wild success. I think I shall be making more festive foods from my Jewish Greek cookbook, to see if everything is as magic as that spinach/meatball dish. It’s strange to be changing tradition by falling back on someone else’s older culinary custom, but that’s Jewish cooking for you.

Australia tends to adopt Mediterranean cuisine very easily. We used to be all about British cooking (plus green salads) and now we’re all about dolmades and pide and souvlaki. It fits the climate. Those meatballs were eaten outside at dusk and the weather was perfect for them. As the day faded we were all warm and happy.

No, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if more traditional Jewish Greek dishes edged their way into my family cuisine. And I rather suspect I’m going to be the person doing the introducing. Want to lay bets that next time I’m in Melbourne I do some careful cooking?

It’s very sad, but of the thousands of cocktail booklets that various liquor producers have circulated, I only possess two and neither of those are particularly antique or special. Well, my Vickers cocktails booklet is special, but only in a minor way.

Cocktails have only quite recently entered Australian culture. There have been various attempts by liquor manufacturers to hasten their adoption, and this little booklet is one of them. It was produced by Vickers and is undated. The illlustrations and the lack of metrication suggest the late fifties or early sixties and the National Library of Australia’s copy is listed as 1950s.

When you flick to the back pages there is a four page spread lauding the virtues of Corio Whiskey, made near Geelong. This firmly places the manufacturers near Geelong and gives the reason for the booklet. If I could get my scanner to work, I would give you a picture from it, but alas, today everything is revolting - from the TV to my scanner - and such things aren’t possible.

Instead let me give you some pithy quotes (shortly) to show you the sort of customer Vickers was wooing and maybe a recipe or two.

Why do I love this booklet? So much of it reminds me of the peculiar distance between Australia and the rest of the world at the time of its making. Cocktails were daring, cosmopolitan and needing much explanation. By the time mixed drinks became a normal part of our entertaining, we had lost a lot of our cultural cringe and even more of the slight innocence of distance.

Compare the recipes and glossy paper to the atmosphere of speakeasies in the US during Prohibition or to the decadence of gin and absinthe drinking in Europe earlier. This attempt by an Australian manufacturer to encourage Aussies to venture into the more frequent use of spirits and strong alcohol seems oddly safe. An ocean of dangerous spirits and the Australian manufacturer offered its patrons a swimming pool protected by a safety fence.

Think of the booklet as a moment of small attempted elegance in a much more vigorous history of alcohol.

I promise there will be more posts on drink history, sometime. Also I promise I will watch out and expand my drink ephemera collection. I didn’t realise how impoverished I was in this regard!!

Quotes from “Vickers Cocktails”

“A good host makes a good guest”

“Opening this book can mean, to many, the opening of a new chapter in their lives - a chapter of enjoyment, entertainment, good fellowship.”

“While cocktail mixing is child’s play, it is not, in fact, recommended for children.”

“Don’t strain friendship bu giving a drink that looks like the fruit salad.”

Recipes

Shady Grove Cooler

1/2 tbs sugar
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 oz. Vickers Gin
Mix in long glass and fill with iced ginger beer.

Mildura Fizz

Half fill shaker with large pieces of ice and add -

juice of 1/2 lemon
juice of 1/2 orange
1 oz. Vickers Gin
dash of orange bitters
Grenadine to taste

Shake well, strain into long glass, fill with cold soda and top with slice of orange.

Note: soda in Australia at this time was unflavoured, unsweetened and made using a soda siphon.

Sydney Southerly

Juice of 1 orange
1 tsp cherry brandy
2 oz. Vickers Gin

Mix well in long glass and fill with ginger beer, icy cold.

The Adelaide (for 6)

Into a shaker put broken ice the add -
6 oz. Vickers Gin
6 oz. Dry Vermouth
1/2 oz. orange bitters
1 oz. Curacao
Shake well and serve with cherry and a piece of lemon rind.

Paul who blogs at Toybender suggested I look at YouTube as a source for blogmatter. My immediate reaction was “But what on YouTube would actually add to your joy of food history?” The answer is, lots of things.

Bear with me while I learn how to post from YouTube. Things might be a bit creaky and amateurish at first, as I learn a bit of new blogging technique. Thank you, Paul - I see much fun in this (which makes sense, given your blog is a great deal of fun).

This advertisement has so much information in it I don’t know where to start. I think just this once it can be its own commentary. I will return to my Passover preparations and leave you to the joy of new Jello Instant Pudding (”easy, nourishing and so delicious” but terribly, terribly unkosher, being full of gelatine).

Have you ever yearned to be part of an annual event that repeats the very best of a two thousand (and the rest) year old tradition? Think of it, an ages-old way of celebrating freedom, one that adjusts for technology but never quite sufficently? I’m in the middle of it now.

Some of my big pots and cookware are in the library and others will be sealed off shortly with gloriously red tape. Glassware has been soaked for three days and metalware boiled beyond belief. I have washed and scrubbed and cleaned and I’m not sure where the skin on my hands went. The state of my hands makes me realise that almost all the rabbis who have such fine ideas on the amount of cleaning needed to maintain our important traditions are male, and that the cleaning itself is traditionally a female job. Maybe one of these dead rabbis will send me more handcream?

The extreme re-enactment goes back to Jews having to leave Egypt in rather a hurry a rather long time ago and so we avoid leavening. We don’t just avoid bread. We eat nothing that’s touched bread or been breathed upon by bread or sat in an open bag near anything that might have touched bread or breathed on bread.

It’s historical re-enactment at its most authentic. Like extreme sports, but involving the grand and highly flammable cleaning of kitchens. (By highly flammable I’m specifically referring to the kashering-using-a-blowtorch method, which I do not myself use but which led to an extremely interesting court case in Canberra some years back.)

You can trace the development of Jewish food across countries and time and trace the development and change of food technologies likewise. Whenever a new way of manufacturing kitchen equipment has come into being, rabbinical decisions have also come into being to deal with them. Pyrex, for instance, can be soaked for Passover but only if it hasn’t been used as bakeware. Plastic can’t be soaked for Passover, so all my favourite plastic storage containers are sealed behind red tape.

Why red tape? Well, to the best of my knowledge I’m the only person round here over the next week who understands the complexities of using this cupboard and not the other, so I’m making it simple. Adapting old traditions to new circumstances. My friends can use the kosher for Passover dishes on the bench and open the taped cupboards at their own risk. See, red for danger.

My Passover menu (shorter than my mother’s because I’m cooking for 12 people and have limited dishes and also because I’m plain lazy):

Charoset (a Greek recipe with currants and raisins and sweet red wine), unleavened bread, the usual ritual suspects (bitter herbs, salt water etc)

Boiled eggs and potatoes dipped in salt water

Meat dishes: roast chicken with citrus/ginger sauce; spinach and beef keftikes
Vegetarian main dish: huevos kon tomata
Roast potatoes and sweet potatoes
Side dishes: pickled cucumbers, olives, a salad or two

Khoshav (Sephardi dessert)

Bittersweet chocolate, almonds, grapes

Afikoman (official piece of unleavened bread that completes the meal)

PS Recipes can be supplied on request. Please ask - it means I don’t have to spend time researching blog entries when I’m supposed to be celebrating Passover.