Food History

I started the day with a really fun food history interview, which I’ll blog about properly as soon as it’s webbed. I’m ending the day with a fiction-related interview. If that’s not enough reading for you, there’s another interview here. I do love the tendency of US interviewers to use my title :). It makes me feel extraordinarily educated.

The trouble is (as you might have guessed) tonight I don’t feel quite as educated as usual. No big insights into food history. I’m in the almost-over-virus-and-can’t-move-or-think stage of the week

It’s been a big week for insights (despite cold and virus and other impediments to normality): I had that paradigm shift earlier in the week and I’ve been processing it ever since. I have a much better understanding of the difference between what we think about a country’s food and the reality of that food and how they interplay.

There will be more insights, because over the next few days I’ll be preparing my half hour talk on “Ancient Food” for Australia’s National Science Fiction Convention. I think I promised them kosher butchers, suicidal gourmands and Medieval Viagra. I don’t know what that promise will lead to, but if it’s entertaining, iIll blog it.

Enjoy your extra reading tonight, and I’ll get back to ordinary programming just as soon as I can muster a bit more energy.

Today you get one of my grandmother’s recipes and not much in the way of fascinating commentary.

I had an emergency dental appointment, you see, and feel a little under the weather. It wasn’t actually the dental appointment, to be honest. It was missing the bus and standing in a snow-filled wind waiting for the next bus. See, ‘under the weather’? I had forgotten the cold because of the tooth, you see, and wasn’t wearing socks.

To compensate for my chilled feet and incipient sniffles, you need a comforting recipe. Welsh rarebit is what my grandmother would have served in the 1950s (either that or chicken soup) and someone asked for a recipe for it the other day, so here it is.

May your teeth stay whole and your toes unchilled.

Welsh Rarebit

4 oz cheddar cheese
1/3 teaspoon made mustard
2 tablespoon of milk
pepper & cayenne
1 oz butter
salt

Grate cheese & put in a pan with milk, salt, pepper & cayenne & mustard. Add about ½ butter & stir over the fire until mixture is perfectly smooth & beginning to thicken.

Have butter toast ready on hot dish, put on mixture & put under the griller till brown.

Serve immediately.

food history, recipe, 1950s food, Welsh rarebit

Today’s class was all about epiphanies. I announced I’d had one, you see. Except it really wasn’t an epiphany: it was really a paradigm shift. And it was all about overcooked vegetables.

For a while I’ve been looking at how people look at English food. Where they draw their stereotypes from and how this contrasts with what actually happens in English foodways past and present. How the French get labels of glorious gourmandise and the English get accused of soggy vegetables.

My explanation was complicated. Far too complicated for a short blog entry. It took two hours to explain to the class.

We began with Elinor Fettiplace and country house cooking and its relationship to standard views of Enlighsness. Then we talked about the effects of changing landscapes upon foodways. This included some discussion of enclosures and industrialisation - among other things - on moving people places and changing what they eat and how much time and resources they can spare for food.

We discussed the middle classes and the working classes and trade and Civil War and the roles of religion and of exploration. Celebrity chefs came up, and so did keeping up with the Jones’s. How perceptions of foodways shift in people’s minds as they move countries played a part in the discussion, as did technological change.

What we finally realised was that English food from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century wasn’t a simple thing at all.

Most people’s perception of the cuisine is straightforward: the roast beef of Old England, and all that.

The reality is far more fascinating: it’s a patchwork quilt, where some of the patches are old and some new, some patriotic and some sneaky, some traditional and some groundbreaking, some colourful and some dull, some almost hidden and some trumpeting their glory.

I decided the class needed to celebrate the amazing food history of England and so we drank malmesy. We also paused a moment to remember Karen Hess, one of whose books we looked at in her memory.

food history, foodways, teaching history, English food, English foodways, Elinor Fettiplace, the roast beef of Old England, Karen Hess

The only people who recognise locally famous people are locals. It was the result I expected, but I keep wanting to remind myself, because it’s so easy to blog about things I know and assume the rest of the world shares that knowledge.

The trouble is we live in a strange reality, with the internet making local culture look bigger than it is. We recognise the small number of big international celebrities and extrapolate from that to assume that others read the same books, watch the same TV, vote in the same elections as us. We also often assume that a recipe name hides the same foodways and the same ingredients.

All this makes me wonder what Honey Muesli Bars taste like made with American or English ingredients? And what on earth replaces a lamington pan in their cuisines?

Honey Muesli Bars

1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1 1/2 cups toasted muesli
2 1/2 cups rice bubbles
1/2 cup desiccated coconut
125 g butter
1/3 cup honey
1/3 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup raw sugar

Grease an 18 cm by 28 cm lamington pan. Toast sesame seeds and sunflower seeds on an oven tray in a moderate oven for about 5 minutes, cool to room temperature. Combine muesli, rice bubbles, desiccated coconut, sunflower seeds and seame seeds in bowl.

Combine butter, honey, peanut butter and sugar in saucepan, stir constantly over heat without boiling until butter is melted and sugar is dissolved. Bring to the boil, reduce heat, simmer gently uncovered, without stirring for 5 minutes; stir into dry ingredients. Press into prepared pan, refrigerate until set before cutting.

Will keep in an airtight container for 1 week.

For your Sunday amusement, a ‘drinking song’ from 1930. I guess it shows the difference between reality and composer/choreographed reality. Mostly though - because it’s Sunday - it’s just good fun.

I am having the most fun you can have and still call it work. I only got in a few minutes ago and am still all abuzz. It may be the chocolate we ate for dessert, of course, or the coffee I had afterwards, but mostly it’s the food and the company. The food is the bit you’ll want to hear about.

Tonight was the last of the tests for the Regency Gothic Banquet. Our consensus is (the main testing team and myself) that if the hotel accepts the menu as is, it will be a very special evening.

The soup was delectable and the meat frabjous. The salad was just as delightful as the first time round and all of the accompanying dishes worked rather well.

The moment I get the final recipes in modern form from the various cooks, I can put the menu together with the recipes and my diagrams of the table setting and it’s over to the chef. Vegetarians and coeliacs will have plenty to eat. No recipe has been bastardised to reach this stage. Life is just very good :).

I’ll post the menu when the chef has made his changes (hopefully small) and you can see for yourself what we’ve been eating. Then you’ll have to wait until October, when you’ll get all the recipes. Then you,too, will be able to sigh at the simple pleasures of the table.

The other thing I’ve done tonight that’s rather late eighteenth century in feel is read the latest issue of New Ceres. I was the initial creator of the world they’re using for the online magazine and the new stories are rattling good reads. I keep telling people that it costs less than a cup of coffee and a piece of cake to read the new issue. My favourite story is by Lucy Sussex. If Lucy has written a bad story I have yet to discover it - she is one stylish writer.

I do adore the New Ceres universe. I imagined it through food, of course, and the food on the planet is life or death. This issue is more about love and death on the planet, and how the secret police handle illegal technology. The food is there, in my mind, just as a draft New Ceres high society menu is sitting on my computer, waiting for me to finish the chapter of my New Ceres novel. While I work on other things, the project gets more exciting and better writers than I am develop the world in different directions. I had to mention it tonight, though, because the coincidence of writers doing amazing things using my foodie planet while I work on this Regency Gothic Banquet for an SF convention is just very amusing.

food history, recipes tests, SF writers, Conflux, Regency Gothic, banquet, New Ceres

It’s time for you to meet another exciting book from my ever-expanding library. This is a charity cookbook produced by the Uniting Church Share Community Appeal in 1998. It has particularly high production values and the friend who gave it to me said “I think you might like this.”

Why might I like it? First of all, it’s a lovely insight into who Australians think of as having the right sort of fame to donate recipes. It’s a particular sort of glory - known enough for the recipe to have value, but not unapproachable. There are a few foodies (including Stephanie Alexander, Stephanie Wood, Penny Smith, Gabriel Gate, Rita Erlich), more than a few sportspeople (David Boon, Dermott Brereton, the late Peter Brock, one after another, since the book is purely alphabetical, then a gap before the Jane Flemmings and Andrew Gazes), comedians and singers and TV personalities (Rhonda Burchmore, Kate Ceberano, John Clarke, Daryl Somers, Andrea Stretton, Mary Kostakidis, Eddie McGuire, Mark Mitchell), a few business figures and actors and glove puppets. Glove puppets? Yes, there’s a recipe from Dickie Knee. There’s also one from Humphrey B. Bear, which is proof that some bears can both write and cook, since this children’s cult figure is notoriously silent.

What strikes me is how few of the names are international, apart from perhaps the sportspeople. Dame Phyllis Frost and Margaret Fulton are amazingly important within Australian culture and Noni Hazelhurst is much-beloved by many TV viewers, but I doubt they figure in US or UK media.

I keep imagining a future historian a bit like me, looking for ways of establishing the precise relationship of famous people with their followers in, say, five hundred years time. I’d look at their appearances on TV and in newspapers and magazines. I’d look at how often the were asked to preside over charity auctions or appear at special gatherings. But I’d also look at fundraising cookbooks starring “$5 Feeds from Famous Cooks”.

All these figures have one particular quality in common. That quality ought to be that they can cook or love food. It isn’t. It’s the sense that they’re accessible. Friendly. One of the mob. A superior part of the mob, to be sure, but one of us, somehow.

Some celebrities want to be in this sort of volume (or their publicists want them to appear) in order to create that sense of familiarity, of being ‘ one of us.’ Most of the time, however, when a community is putting together a charity volume, they reach out first to the people they feel will say ‘yes’ and give recipes.

Determining who is too up themselves or too beyond contact (in essence, too alien) is a process rather than a decision. It starts from list of people targeted with the first letter asking “Would you like to donate a recipe. It’s for a good cause” and finishes with the final inclusion in the book. A few misplaced individuals will sneak in, but the vast majority of ‘famous cooks’ represent values or personality types that feel familiar and heart-warming.

In Australia’s case ‘familiar and heart-warming’ usually means approachable. We’re not a country for tall poppies (now I’m imagining “Sailing to Australia”, by Yeats’ grandson Bruce or maybe his grandaughter, Kylie “This is not a country for tall poppies. The young/ in one another’s arms, budgies in the trees/Those football generations” ).

I’m sorry I dissolved into silliness. I suspect it was me thinking that what I really want to do is stop thinking and give you a recipe. So I shall. Except .. not quite yet.

I’m very curious to know how far any of these people are known. If you’ve heard of any of the “famous cooks” then say so in the comments. You have until Monday to comment. On Monday I’ll count up who gets mentioned most and give you a recipe from that person. If there are no comments, then there will be no recipe.

Favourite Feeds from Famous Cooks, food history, review, recipes, Stephanie Alexander, Stephanie Wood, Penny Smith, Gabriel Gate, Rita Erlich, fund-raising, Australian cooking, David Boon, Dermott Brereton, Peter Brock, Jane Flemming, Andrew Gaze, Rhonda Burchmore, Kate Ceberano, John Clarke, Daryl Somers, Andrea Stretton, Mary Kostakidis, Eddie McGuire, Mark Mitchell, Dickie Knee, Humphrey B Bear, Dame Phyllis Frost, Margaret Fulton, Noni Hazelhurst, local personalities, foodways

Today is an ingredients post. It’s been too long since I’ve done one of these, so I’m making up for it with the number of ingredients covered in one simple idea.

Think mixed spices.

For as long as there has been cooking and people have had spices to mix, I rather suspect cooks have mixed spices to achieve the best possible end result. In the Middle Ages you could buy poudre fort, or poudre douce, or even poudre marchant. Poudre marchant wasn’t powdered salesperson; it was the spiceseller’s own blend - think of all the current purveyors of fine food who tell us about their secret herbs and spices: there’s nothing new under the sun.

Also not new is the thought that the spelling of the name of a spice mix varies according to what language it appears in. To me, the names of spice mixes are the equivalent of Elizabethan spelling: a source of endless charm and ocasional logic. (Actually, there is a logic in the names - but I’m too lazy to explain vowel and consonant shift in words borrowed from other languages.)

Anyhow, here’s my home list of spice mixes that are called ‘five’. It isn’t everything in the world. In fact, it isn’t nearly everything. It’s the mixes I came across during a year-long period when it entertained me to write them down - almost all of them are straight from the kitchens of various friends. If generous souls give me more recipes, I will add to the list and resissue it some day.

1. Panch phorum - Indian Five Spice Powder -a standard mix will often include cumin seeds, fennel seeds, mustard seeds, nigella seeds, and fenugreek seeds.
2. Chinese lo sueh liew - ginger, anise, cinnamon, coriander etc - I don’t remember what etc was, but this spice mix is great in a winter stew.
3. Yemenite. This mix goes very nicely with vegies: - grind all spices before measuring. 2 tbs cardamom, 5 tbs cumin, 5 tsp black pepper, 3 tsp turmeric, 2 tsp coriander.
4. “English” mixed spices (for cakes rather than curries) - Australians buy these from a packet, so I lack a recipe (alas).
5. Spice mix for punch (as opposed to panch phorum): cinnamon, allspice, several cloves, the merest trace of ginger, a skerrick of nutmeg.
6. Sri Lankan curry powder - not 5 spices, but one of the most versatile powders round - I really need to do a special post on this one day, so I’ll leave your need for a recipe unfulfilled.
7. Bulgarian - chili, mustard, coriander, savory and marjoram.
8. This one is really six herb powder “herbes de Provence� - rosemary, marjoram, savory, sage, thyme and oregano
9. An Iraqi version (which has a lot more than five spices) has allspice, black pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, cloves, ginger and rose petals in about the following ratios (I feel arithmetical): 32:8:8:8:1:1:1:1.

Panch Phorum slow-cooked with cabbage

An Indian friend and I invented this when I had to keep salt intake low and was missing pickles. It tastes a lot like sauerkraut.

Chop a white cabbage finely. Add 15 g (you can change the quantities to taste) panch phorum. Cook in a slow cooker until it’s soft and sauerkrauty.

ingredients, food history, spice powder, mixed spices, five spice

Today was Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea. I was teaching, and so the closest I got to it was walk through the tail end with my class. It was interesting to watch the class’s response to it. I told them that of course they could all join in if they wanted, showed them the brochure (it’s a charity fundraiser) and then said “But I’ll keep teaching while you’re away.” Each and every one of them chose to stay in class. This was the highlight of my day.

The lowlight of my day is my virus having returned (which means I have unintentionally shared it with two classes - sorry folks!). I have a lovely fever. I’m taking my sick self back to bed and I’m leaving you with the Carnival of Australia and with a cool website to visit.

I keep telling food history students that if they want to time travel, they need to be super-careful about what they eat. The Unadulterated History of Food Dyes tells you one of the reasons why.

Tonight’s course was very quiet. Canberra is in the middle of a rather nasty virus (the one that took me out) and so my students needed something special. I surprised them with a change in teaching plan.

What we were supposed to do this week was the effect of British politics on foodways. What we did instead was a brief overview of preserving (especially canning, so I could talk about lead poisoning and Arctic expeditions) and we looked at a few books of household management.

To my surprise, the book that attracted everyone’s attention was a rather battered 1848 Receipts book, which I just might have to photograph and blog one day. Robert Roberts was much appreciated (especially his cure for alcoholism), but not the volume everyone wanted to quietly take home. Not even the Nostradamus was as popular as that battered old list of household notions.

We ate mulligatawny soup (which is perfect for next week’s British stuff) and dolmades and met some barberries and had some fabulous icecream. I was very relieved that I could eat again (after three days of not being so enabled), with a class full of good cooks experimenting with interesting historical recipes.

Because I am in the post viral doldrums, I’m afraid I gave the class the main early ingredient of margarine and showed them a US tin (since we were talking about canning) that incorporates quicklime into the packaging. I don’t think they’ll be buying that coffee, now they know other uses for quicklime. Cannibalism got mentioned alongisde lead poisoning, too. Pity I only had two hours. Think of all the extra grue I could have snuck in.

food history, teaching, preserving methods

When I get ill, naturally I get a virus with gastric complications. What else could I do? It would be unfoodie to just get a fever and a bit tired, wouldn’t it?

Anyhow, I’ve been sick for three days and you haven’t even had an ad break. Here’s the ad break, and hopefully I’ll be back to normal tomorrow:

Some of the most interesting sources of food history are household accounts and directions for running a household. They show us a bit more than cookbooks. We can learn the price of grain, the amount of meat purchased, or how a table was set.

One very useful such book is Robert Robert’s 1827 guide to running a prosperous household. All the notes on it comment on how important it was that Roberts was African-American. For me what’s more important is that he was a lucid and careful writer and gave us a treasure trove of household management in Massachusetts.

He didn’t run just any household. We’re talking about the house of a family that was highly political and very successful at it. This makes the book a particularly useful tool for fiction writers.

From a culinary history point of view, it doesn’t tell us about the daily food of most people from Massachusetts. It’s like the household book of Elinor Fettiplace and it tells us about the lifestyle of an elite. It talks about it from the view of the ultimate insider: it’s a manual on how to maintain that lifestyle.

Roberts explains everything from how to keep squabbles among the staff to a minimum to how to remove ink spots from mahogany. He is a brilliant and insightful observer, and I intend to use his book in a class I’m teaching tomorrow on history for fiction writers. His explanations of the importance of cleanliness in a kitchen and the comparison between a cook and a chemist in terms of end effect are short, but say what they need to. A good mind and a good manager - and a way with pithy oneliners.

He has more than one recipe for lemonade. I think, though, you need his very own.

Another excellent lemonade, by R.R., the author of this book.

Take one gallon of water, put to it the juice of ten good lemons, and the zeasts of six of them likewise, then add to this one pound of sugar, and mix it well together, strain it through a fine strainer, and put it in ice to cool; this will be a most delicious and fine lemonade.

household history, food history, household management, African-American history, Robert Roberts, The House Servant’s Directory, lemonade recipe, Massachusetts history

I’ve been neglecting my grandmother’s cookbook. I filled a table with names of recipes written down by her and by other relatives. Twenty-four pages of table, as it stands. Stage one of a conference paper for July. When I finished, I was grandmothered out and forgot to give you any recipes.

Today I checked my statistics and found that the next most popular topic after items Medieval were my grandmother’s recipes. I applaud your amazing good taste. I also feel guilty, as I should (in my family, grandchildren feel guilty - it’s one of those things) so here’s a little something to assuage my guilt. What you need is a nice afternoon tea. Cake, and maybe something savoury.

Cream Tea Cake
Cream tablesp butter or a substitute and ½ cup milk, cup SR flour, 2 drops vanilla essence. Bake in mod oven 20 mins. While still hot butter top and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.

Queen Savoury
¼ pint cold water
1 oz butter
1 pinch salt
4 oz dry sifted flour
2 or 3 eggs
a moderate oven
Put water, butter & salt into a pan, when boiling fast add the flour all at once, stir over low gas until it forms a ball & leaves spoon also pan. Take pan from fire & let mixture cool, then beat in eggs 1 at a time thoroughly (as for cream puffs). Put on greased paper in teaspoonful cook slowly until golden brown.

While still hot cut tops open & fill with following paste. Grated yolk of egg, mustard, grated cheese, salt, enough anchovie sauce or paste to bind egg & cheese, add a little butter & warm thoroughly.

Fill puffs & grate cheese on top. Serve very hot.

food history, recipes, Cream Tea Cake, Queen Savoury

It’s midweek and everyone in my classes looks tired. I extrapolate unscientifically to read that everyone needs a story and a heartening recipe. This one’s from Elisa.

My Mother, having been raised a good Methodist, is quite fond of casseroles. (It is not for nothing that they are often referred to as the “Methodish” church.)
As you can imagine, I had quite a few different casseroles for dinner as a child. (This would have been in the 1980s-1990s, back when we lived in Sacramento, California.) Sometimes these casseroles had names and arrived on the table exactly as written down in the cook book. Sometimes they were “Dianne’s Special Surprise” and sometimes the names were changed to suit her opinion of the dish. One such occasion arrived in the guise of “Crusty Beef, Cheese & Noodle Casserole,” or so my recipe card says. It turned out
that this particular casserole was a huge success at the dinner table. We wanted it again, we told her. I wanted it for my birthday dinner. My sister became a vegetarian and wanted a meatless version. My father wondered if it might be made with ground turkey instead. Yes, it was just that adaptable.

Now, Mum would change the name of the casserole to suit the version she was making that evening. It was “Turkey Cheesy Noodle Casserole.” It became “Cheesy Noodle Casserole.” But, no matter how many times she served it, we wanted more. Not my Mum. She was tired of this casserole we had become so enamored of, and declared it to be “quite mundane.” Not to be deterred, we asked her if she would please make us some Mundane for dinner.

She gave in.

By the way, my recipe card also notes that this casserole is best served with green salad and garlic bread. So, don’t forget the bread in the oven the next time that you are serving Mundane.

Crusty Beef, Cheese & Noodle Casserole (word for word from the recipe card)

2 Tab. veg. oil
1 onion, Chopped
2 lbs ground meat
4 cans (10 1/4 oz. each) meatless mushroom spagetti
sauce
1 tsp. salt
1 lb. fine noodles, cooked & drained
1 lb. sharp cheddar cheese, grated & shredded

- Heat oil, add onion & cook until golden
- Add meat & cook until meat loses its color,
stirring. Add spagetti sauce, heat.
- Arrange in casserole half of noodles, half of sauce
& half of cheese.
- make another layer of noodles; add sauce, & top with
cheese. (I just alternate layers until I run out of
room or supplies ending with cheese.)
- Bake in preheated moderate oven (325º F) for 1 hour
or until top is nicely browned.

makes 8 to 10 generous servings

Serve with:
Green salad
Garlic bread

————
Written longhand by my mother on a lined card. I believe that it was included in the recipes gathered for me as a wedding gift. (Wedding date - 6/29/02) -Elisa

food history, family history, Mundane casserole, recipe

Tonight’s class took up where last week’s left off. We started with another non-cookbook source of potential recipes (Inquisition records) and ended with a 6 point plan for identifying reliable cookbooks for people who want to cook historical recipes. One of my students explained it back as “There’s the gold standard, and it descends from that.” Absolutely all my neat historical parallels failed and the class got to laugh at them far too much. I don’t think I need to hear the names John Howard, Paris Hilton or Martha Stewart for a while.

Along the way, we talked about why a pennyloaf is called a pennyloaf, what John Evelyn did for the world of salads, how cuisines changed over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, how fast and why cooking styles change, and recipes. Tonight I brought in a dozen books with recipes in and we did a number of exercises using them and analysing them and drooling over them. To help us in our drooling, one student brought in pomesmoille (a Medieval apple dessert) and another brought in the early nineteenth century ‘pretty dish of eggs.’ This led to a rather nice discussion of why it’s important to check back with original recipe descriptions rather than relying on someone else’s interpretation.

And that was tonight’s class. Next week I think I might do something really fun, like take in various types of chocolate to taste. It would be cool to sort out what processing does to the bean, although I can’t manage beans proper. I can manage Mexican chocolate and 99.45% pure chocolate couverture, and 85% couverture, and 100% baking chocolate, and Dutch cocoa. I suspect we might have fun :).

food hsitory, teaching