Food History

Summer is kicking in here, and I’m feeling the heat. That’s my excuse for more ingredients and it will remain my excuse for at least the next few days. The real reason is the heat + deadlines. I will try to take some time off during 2009, because I’m certainly not getting any off right now!

Your letter of the day is ‘c’ and the first ingredient is one I strongly suggest you keep out of your cooking.

camphor - (cinnamonum camphora) great for keeping off moths, but keep it away from your mouth; white camphor crystals extracted from the wood of the tree.

capers (capparis spinosa var. rupestris) - I have known since I was a kid that you could make fake capers from nasturtium buds, but until I was doing this list of ingredients I never actually stopped to think what a caper was. I think it’s capparis spinosa, but, in case I’m wrong, pickle your own using nasturtium. Capers are native to the northern part of Africa and to the Mediterranean region. Pliny mentions it, which does not necessarily mean a great deal, as Pliny sometimes wrote the way I talk, covering a lot of subject matter at not much depth.

cardamom (elettaria cardamomum) - French cardamome, Italian cardamomo, Malay buah pelega, Arabic hale, Hindi elaichi - cardamom pods and cardamom seeds are used in different recipes. One of my favourite types of coffee has cracked pods in - so you get the flavour of both. Also related to grains of paradise (used in some medieval European recipes and in my favourite 17th century Spanish stew) and ginger. Green cardamom is the whole unbleached pods, white cardamom is the same thing, bleached. There are various other varieties of cardamom (eg a Chinese one) and they tend to be fairly substitutable, but I stick to the green. How many types of one spice can one have in one’s larder, after all? My record is 97, with only one type of cardamom.

carrots (daucus carota) - Turkish havuc - not just good is soups and glorious in salads, the Japanese and Thai have wondrously elegant ways of cutting carrots so that they decorate whatever you cook. It started off as Queen Anne’s Lace, which is not safe to eat, which just goes to show how very handy domestication is.

cashew (anacardium occidentale) - cashews are dangerously poisonous in their native state, which makes them a nut definitely to be avoided in the wild. Oddly enough, cashews are cousins to poison ivy. I begin to think that the way to be a confident cook is never to go into a garden. They taste great in almost every type of cooking, which maybe makes up for them being failures as bush tucker.

I have a couple of unanswered questions for Chanukah, so you are not going to get another list of ingredients today. I think this is a great shame, because I have lots and lots of ingredients I still want to mention. Some people get summers of discontent: I get summers of interesting ingredients.

Anyhow, back to Chanukah.

There were two main questions. The first is what food Sephardic Jews eat (since latkes are of Ashkenaz). Any fried food does the trick, but the iconic food is doughnuts for both Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews (to the best of my knowledge). Israel’s soofganiyot come from the doughnut-eating side of the world and I have some lovely historical doughnut recipes in my collection. (The sorrow of being Australian is that deep-fried food loses its interest so very quickly – it’s just too hot here during Chanukah.)

Someone has also asked me what food people cooked before potato latkes were around.

I’ve seen lots of answers given with confidence. The most common one is a kind of parsnip latke. It’s perfectly possible, but I haven’t seen hard proof of it. I have seen good proof of doughnuts and deep-fried pancake things with jam, though. There’s no reason that there weren’t vegetable dishes fried, but evidence is such a sneaky thing.

If we were talking Western Europe, I would be able to read sources myself. We’re not, and I can’t. If there’s more information out there, I have to wait for it to reach English. In the meantime, the best reference to the oldest Chanukah foodways for Europe can be found in John Cooper’s Eat and Be Satisfied.

I’ve run out of questions to answer! And Chanukah itself will be over in just 2 more days. All good things end.

PS Some strange typos crept into today’s post. I had proofread it and so they are a mystery. I think they’re fixed now. I hope they’re fixed now. If they aren’t, then the problem is clearly gremlins and someone has been feeding them after midnight.

Today some more ingredients. I can keep this up for ages!

When the summer heat is less enervating, maybe I’ll give you other posts. Right now, ingredients are the perfect thing for an overheated brain. In fact, cucumber is perfect for overheating all round – it’s cold and wet and thus falls under the planet Venus. (Food history and Ptolemaic astronomy mix very nicely on days like today.)

cucumber (cucumis sativa) - One of the best cucumber dishes of all time seems to have reached many shores by many names: I know it as ex-Ottoman Empire cacik (the c is a hard ‘ch’ sound, as in ‘church’), as an iced Israeli soup, as a grated Indian salad, and as a beautiful Greek dip (tsatziki). I mostly forget the names, but the ingredients are simple: lots of cucumber, yoghurt, garlic, salt and maybe mint or dill (depending what country you’re in), with onions and tomatoes appearing at will. A refreshing side dish with curry, it works even better as iced soup.

cumin (yet another spice for which I keep on encountering different botanical names. Both of them start with cuminum, but is one is odorum and the other is cyminum)- A Mediterranean native, Indonesian ketumbar, Hindi jeera, cumin is divine with chicken, great with snack food, cumin is ubiquitous. There is also a “black cumin” which is often nigella in North Indian cooking, and an actual black cumin elsewhere. Cumin crackles well in a frypan to let you know it’s cooked, without jumping up at you the way mustard seeds do. I always think of that lovely English song “Sumer is I-cumin in”: obviously written by a happy cook.

cumquat (fortunella margarita) - cumquats make a good marmalade and one of the best home-made liqueurs around. The sweetish oval ones are wonderful eaten fresh and whole, with the skin being the tastiest portion. Not all cumquats are edible without cooking, but those that cook, have skin that cooks divinely (try making a cumquat skin syrup, with sugar and lemon juice and maybe a touch of rosewater, very suitable to pour gently over a good vanilla ice cream).

Today I found you some ingredients beginning with the letter ‘k.’ There’s no real reason for it. Today is not a day for logic, at least in my life.

kaffir lime (itrus hystrix) - Thai bai makrut, Indonesian: daun jeruk purut. These are leaves of a tree which grows in Southeast Asia. The leave is useful in curries, and the fruit is also handy to cook with, although it looks like a lime with a bad wart problem.

kecap asin - see soy sauce - this is the ordinary salty stuff that we sadly take for granted.

kecap manis (dark, sticky, viscous sweet soy sauce) very Indonesian - add it with a bit of nutmeg to your stir-fried leafy greens.

kiwifruit (actinidia chinensis or actinidia deliciosa) - aka Chinese gooseberries, aka those funny-looking green-ish* hairy things that quite a few people are sensitive to (’by the prickling of their tongues, something allergic their way comes’ – look, poetry! Shakespeare said it better, but then, he was writing about evil, not kiwifruit). Warning: they do not cook well, and need to be eaten quite ripe.
*There are also golden ones – sweeter and more tropical.

kneidlach – dumplings.

konbu (dried kelp) - a basic flavour in Japanese broths, a strip of konbu isn’t bad in a European-style consommé, either. Just don’t be too generous, unless you are using it to make a seafood dish, as you will end up with a consommé that takes you right to the seaside.

Korean mint (agastache rugosa) - I am told that some varieties of Korean or Vietnamese mint are possibly a coriander, rather than a mint, but it makes a terrific herbal tea and an even better condiment chopped and put in Vietnamese or Korean soups just before eating.

I just had a useful thought: the Christmas spirit is brandy. That’s why the letter today is B.

banana (musa spp)-Indonesian pisang, a fruit untouched by Queensland (bananabender) jokes - try roasting it over a campfire with some squares of very dark chocolate inside, or cutting it before you peel it (using a needle - handy trick). Plantains are also bananas, but can be cooked in a variety of savoury ways where “eating” bananas are abject failures. For instance, a Sri Lankan friend of mine makes a delicious white curry using a small red plantain, and I bake red banana as an accompaniment to a roast. Plantains bake well, boil well and fry well, but are rarely good raw.

basil (ocimum basilicum, I think, but I’ve also seen it called ocimum minimum, which is a dwarf variety). Pesto is one of the world’s great sauces, and it is basil and pine-nut based. Gossip has it that it is one of those herbs to avoid when pregnant, but I’ve not seen any reasons given for the gossip, so I am just a retailer of defamatory information here. It is the perfect accompaniment to tomatoes in a garden, I’m told (and I personally think they go rather nicely together in the kitchen, too). If you want basil flavour in a salad but the overwhelming greenness of the stuff offends your artistic sensibilities, there is a dark purple basil which is very spectacular.

black gram -a variety of lentil, used mainly in Indian cooking.

blackberries (rubus fructiosus) aka bramble, aka aargh it bit me!! Blackberries make terrific liqueur, classic jam, wonderful pies, great cakes, but tend to go off very quickly. They are best picked fresh from the wild, but Australians have to be careful that clumps have not been sprayed - after all, despite their cooking potential, blackberries are a noxious weed in Australia.

One can never have too many books or ingredients. One can read too many books at once, of course, or try to put the ingredients all in the same dish. That’s a different story.

Today’s ingredients were brought to you by the letter A and the number 3.5.

almond essence - this is the essence I am most careful about using. Too much gives a very strange, almost cyanide flavour to a dish. For those who love almonds to excess, the strong flavour is fine, but for a lot of people the intense flavour reminds one of Agatha Christie. I’m told by a reliable family member that is usually made from bitter or sweet almonds by crushing and soaking in water. An enzyme promotes a reaction between the water and the constituents of the almond which produces both benzaldehyde or oil of bitter almonds and hydrocyanic or prussic acid, a deadly poison. Fortunately this is removed by heating. I am not a technical expert in this, I have to add.

avocado - (persea americana) aguacate, alligator pear Sinhalese - aligata pera (does this refer to the crocodile hide?), Indonesia alpukat. The avocado came from tropical America originally. The classic avocado dip is the Mexican guacamole and the classic avocado dessert is Indonesian, where avocado pulp is mixed with sugar and milk, although I understand that Sri Lanka also has some great sweet ways of eating avocado.

arrowroot (maranta arundinacae or taeca leontopelaloides if you’re lucky, but sadly, arrowroot the powder can come from any of several plants. The “real” arrowroot is extracted from West Indian arrowroot (Maranta ) bulbs.) - not very exciting, but a handy acquisition in a pantry. Arrowroot is one of the outstanding thickeners, and is also supposed to make good invalid food. I have never tried the latter - I find it very hard to make food for myself when I’m sick, and when I’m well I’m busy using it as a thickener. It is almost utterly tasteless, which is why it is so handy.

artichoke ( helianthus tuberosus) Jerusalem artichoke. In France they are named Topinambour, which sounds like a character from a 17th century French farce. Try it in a soup with potato (60% potato, 40% artichoke, salt, pepper and maybe a squeeze of lemon). But be careful, too much artichoke all at once can give you stomach cramps.

artichoke (cynara scolymus) Globe artichoke, True or French artichoke). A member of the thistle family. Green and purple buds grown originally in southern Europe and Northern Africa. Often pickled but is great boiled in water and eaten with a sauce made with tarragon. The most important thing to remember is that the older parts of these oversize buds are very, very tough - and that you only eat the tender bits.

More random ingredients, out of my random generosity.

amchoor - This is a powder made from dried mango. It adds a glorious depth to a vegetarian curry and, carefully used, can make an otherwise mundane stew blossom. You can also put chrysanthemum flowers in stew, which literally makes it blossom.
bay leaf (laurus nobilis) - Indonesia daun salam, French laurier, German lorbeer, Italian: alloro, lauro, Spanish laural, Japanese gekkei -ju- ha, Sinhalese rampe, which is, interestingly enough, a herb mentioned in that fairy story where the Queen is so desperate for some that she promises her unborn child to a witch. This is another of those herbs you don’t leave home without. I was taught as a girl you carefully put a leaf in a stew and remove it before serving. Now I know you can also crush it up and put it in a curry. It is actually bay laurel and it was probably used to crown victors at ancient Olympic Games - my memory is unreliable in this, and my library contradictory - so when in doubt take the poetic angle. A bit of a worry - does that mean that the person who sits on his laurels was hiding a curry from view in an unsavoury place?
caraway seed (carum carvi) - German kuemmel (which makes one really wonder about some liqueurs - if you called it “caraway” would it sell?) the classic combination is caraway and rye, but caraway cheeses are equally potent. Sometimes confused with cumin. In some South East Asian recipe, when caraway is mentioned, cumin may be the spice to use.
champagne - useful for making bush bread, this is otherwise a little-known drink. Sorry, it was irresistible…

Chanukah starts tonight. There are a bunch of spellings of the festival’s name and each and every one of them reflects the same Hebrew origin. Transliterations vary, is all. My choice of spellings is entirely irrational, in case you were wondering. I liked the “Ch” when I was a child, and so I have retained it.

Australia doesn’t quite ‘get’ Chanukah as a festival. Most people know it through US TV and film and think that it’s some sort of Christmas equivalent. It isn’t. It’s a minor Jewish festival for children, which some silly behaviour and an awful lot of fried food. And candles. Lots and lots of candles. The candles are linked to the fried food – both commemorate an historical event from a bit more than 2,000 years ago.

I have Chanukah postcards this year, and the first 8 readers to send me an address can get one. They contain my kid sister’s latke recipe. This is basically my mother’s recipe but without the onions. My recipe is my mother’s recipe but with a pinch of chilli and a nice squeeze of lemon replacing the salt. Tonight, for the record, if my friends want latkes I’ll be teaching them Mum’s recipe: potato, flour, egg, onion, salt and pepper.

Some years I make doughnuts. I had planned to do that tonight, and I have all the ingredients, but it’s one of those days and I’ve decided to cut my losses and simplify my cooking. It’s a pity, because the doughnut recipe in question was seventeenth century (no hole in the middle, but very yeasty and yummy) and entirely delectable.

I don’t know what people know about Chanukah, to be honest. I’ve got an ‘8 days of Chanukah’ presents thing going on my other blog, but I’ve refrained from public historical comments this year, on the whole.

If any of you have questions about Chanukah foods or food history (or even the history of the dreidel game – I have my own theories, you see, about that) then just ask and I’ll do another Chanukah post, answering as many of your questions as I can.

I did warn you that I enjoyed making up a random list of ingredients. Here’s another one:

allspice (pimento officinalis or pimenta dioica) also called pimento and “that round spice that doesn’t taste nearly as much like black pepper as it looks”; terrific in mulled wine. It tastes very much like a mixture of cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg but looks very much like a dark brown version of black pepper. Allspice is used in cakes, pickles, in curries and pilau and is marvellous in mulled wine. Originally from Central America, it is called “pimienta” in Spanish because the Spanish thought it was like pepper (one wonders about the tastebuds of those who named it), which gives us one of the English names “pimento”. Jamaica pepper is another name (this is a fairer one - it grows in Jamaica and the Caribbean in general), and ‘allspice” is the name that fits the flavour.
apricot (prunus armeniaca) - the more botanical names I see, the fewer plants I feel are domesticated. This variety of plum originated in China, but was first cultivated in Armenia. Technically I guess it is pretty obvious that apricots are varieties of plums - but it limits the imagination a bit, I find. Especially since almonds, peaches and nectarines all fit in the same basket. Apricot brandy is worth the effort, if you have a summer crop that would otherwise be sadly wasted. Just put the weight of sugar with the fruit and add lots of brandy and leave it in a dark cupboard (shaking occasionally) for at least six months. If you get really daring, you can add a bit of spice to it. Apricot is excellent with lamb chops which gets rid of that distinctive aroma that some cultures (Thai for one) can’t stand.
barley (hordeum distichon or vulgare) - barley water is, like arrowroot, good solid 19th century fare for the sick. Maybe I did not quite mean “solid”. Anyway, plain barley is handy to add to soups and stews to give them texture and just a bit of carbohydrate.
beefsteak plant -Japanese plant also known as perilla, it has lovely green leaves that do very nicely around a piece of sushi, then dry to a reddish-purple colour. Dried and crushed with salt it makes a wonderful seasoning for onigiri (rice balls).
dried jellyfish - eaten in Hong Kong and by people I know, but one of those ingredients I’m afraid I just can’t come at. It needs lots of soaking and preparation before it can be cooked and even cooked it still tends to resemble rubber a bit. Very nice looking rubber, of course.

Tomorrow I promised potato latkes, but after that, who know? If random ingredients are my silly season fare then there may be more posts with them in!

I’m in the mood for ingredients tonight. Just a random list. This is because I’m generating shopping lists and Chanukah lists and lists of authors for anthologies and all sorts of other lists. My ingredient list reads like this:

parsley (petroselinum crispum) -Turkish maydanoz, German petersilie, I love the umbelliferousness of parsley, and I adore the piece of folklore which says that it used to be called the herb for the dead because it is so rich in nutrients that it will revive someone who is near death. Mind you, I have never seen that quoted from a reputable source, so I do not know if it truly can revive the dead, but it sounds good.
pig’s lights - liver, heart, lungs, kidneys and kel which is, I am told a transparent skin crisscrossed by veins of fat.
poppyseed (papaver somniferum) - Telugu khus khus Malaysian kas kas otherwise known as maw seed. Yes, the innocent-looking seed we put in cakes and on breads is actually the seed of the opium poppy. Makes a great party conversation piece.
safflower (carthamus tinctorius) bastard saffron. The seeds of this plant make great oil, but don’t use safflower instead of saffron in a delicate dish.
Szechuan pepper also known as Japanese pepper, anise pepper, Chinese pepper and flower pepper. It is a bit spicier than the peppercorn and can replace it in most recipes. I believe it’s a kind of prickly ash, but I’m not quite certain.
terasi or trasi - a paste mostly made of shrimps, used as a condiment in most South East Asian cooking.
turmeric (curcuma domestica or curcuma longa) Indonesia kunyit, German gelbwurz, Thai kamin, Hindi haldi.- that yellow stuff that some people use instead of saffron
watercress (nasturtium offinale - this is a great botanical bewilderment, because the name for what we call nasturtium seems to be troaedum majus) – very good with hard boiled egg in a sandwich

That was fun. Maybe I’ll give you another list of random ingredients tomorrow. I haven’t eaten terasi (because of the shrimps) or pig’s lights, but all the others I enjoy, just in case you were wondering.

I came across these recipes while doing work for something quite different. I won’t explain the book again, because you have met it before. There’s just time to make a plum pudding for the silly season – and now you have lots of choices!

1. One and one-half pounds of stoned raisins, torn in half; one pound of currants; one and one-half pounds of citron, cut fine; one and one- quarter pounds of butter; one pound of sugar; eight eggs, well beaten; one pound of stale bread crumbs; one and one-half pints of sweet milk, boiled and poured on bread crumbs; two grated nutmegs; two tablespoons of cinnamon; one tablespoon of mace, one of cloves and two of allspice; eight tablespoons of sifted flour, rubbed in with fruit; one-half pint of French brandy and one-half pint of Madeira or sherry. Have a bag two thicknesses of white unbleached cloth; grease and flour the inside well; pour in mixture, tie tightly to exclude water, and leave room for pudding to swell. Put in a pot of boiling water, which must be kept boiling for five hours. Put plate in bottom of pot to prevent sticking. The bag must be turned repeatedly and kept under water.

Sauce for Plum Pudding–Butter and powdered sugar, thoroughly stirred, and seasoned with wine and nutmeg. When pudding is ready to serve, pour alcohol over it and set on fire.

This recipe makes a large pudding, but it can be packed away with brandy poured over it, and can be used by steaming over as long as it lasts.

2. ENGLISH PLUM PUDDING.

One cup molasses; one cup sour milk; one cup suet, chopped fine; one cup raisins; one-half cup currants; two and one-half cups flour; one teaspoonful soda. Mix well, salt and spice to taste, and steam two hours.

Dressing–Mix one heaping tablespoonful flour and two of sugar; add to these grated nutmeg. Stir and add one-half pint of boiling water; add to this a small tablespoonful of butter, a little lemon and vanilla, one teaspoonful vinegar. Let it come to a boil, and if too thick, add more water.

3. ENGLISH PLUM PUDDING.

A pound of suet, chopped fine; a pint of sugar; one pound of grated stale bread; one pound of raisins, two of currants; a glass of unfermented wine or jelly; two teaspoonfuls of ginger, one of soda; two nutmegs; half a pint of milk; a little salt. Beat well and steam five hours. Serve with rich sauce.

4. VEGETABLE PLUM PUDDING.

One-half pound flour; one-half pound chopped suet; one-half pound currants; one-half pound prunes; one-quarter pound grated raw carrots; three-quarters pound grated raw potatoes; one-half pound brown sugar; one large teaspoonful of baking powder; pinch of salt. Flavor with a teaspoonful each of nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. The moisture from the raw vegetables makes sufficient wetting.

5. PLUM PUDDING

One pound seedless raisins; one pound dried currants; one pound stale bread crumbs; one-half pound finely chopped beef suet; one-fourth pound shredded citron; eight eggs; one quart milk; one-half cup sugar; mace or nutmeg; one gill of brandy; one teaspoon salt; eggs well beaten and put in last; raisins floured before stirring in. Boil gently five hours without stopping. Water must be boiling when pudding is put in and kept boiling till done. Eat with liquid wine sauce. Pour alcohol around pudding and set it on fire. A sprig of holly in centre for Christmas.

CHRISTMAS PLUM PUDDING.

One pint and a half of grated bread crumbs (soft, not dried), one pint of chopped suet, one pint of currants, one pint and a half of stoned raisins, half a cup of citron shaved thin, one scant cup of sugar, half a teaspoonful of salt, half a teaspoonful of grated nutmeg, one teaspoonful of mace, five eggs, yolks and whites beaten separately, two even teaspoonfuls of flour made into a thin batter with milk, and half a glass of brandy; mix in the order given and steam four hours.

Sauce for Pudding–Cream one-fourth pound butter, add one-fourth pound of brown sugar and stir over hot water until liquid, then add the yolks of two eggs, well beaten; stir until it thickens. Just before serving add a cup of brandy and hot water equal parts.

Today I met a foodie’s dream garden. Every plant was edible or helped other edible plants by encouraging bees or keeping of evil insects. It reflected the food of several continents and it gave me quite a different view of something quite important.

Charlemagne made up lists (or had lists made up) of all the plants one should have in one’s garden. Some were for food, some for medication etc. My friend’s garden reminded me of this list. It was the plants she felt were necessary for life. And they didn’t just come from mainstream nurseries. She knows all the stock the specialist suppliers get in and she’s willing to risk plants that are supposed to grow in subtropical warmth or in deep rich soils.

This was the third time today that something reminded me that we like our history simple and that life tends to be much richer, in reality, than the page can show. I can talk about the standard fruit and vegetables that are grown in Canberra: apples and oranges and plums and apricots and peaches and cherries, for instance, are common enough trees. She also grows hazelnuts and medlars and pistachios. They are a part of Canberra food history because of her garden, even if they only occasionally appear in gardens and are less likely to be recorded.

We depend so heavily on assuming that the evidence we have is for what is typical and that the records show us this. But what if the norm of food history has far more quirks and interesting sidelines than other history? What if ‘normal’ is so hard to define that we might as well not try?

Where I’m going with this is that we don’t know where the outlines of food history will take us. It’s a rapidly changing disciple with some really exciting theoretical changes likely to take place. Right now we’re busy learning how to find evidence and bring ideas together in new and exciting ways. It’s like exploring that garden and saying “Look, people do grow their own pistachios in Canberra.” What we do with all these discoveries and new insights into human food behaviour is going to be fascinating to watch. What it will mean for interpreting lists of plants and how they were used across the Frankish Empire is something I can’t wait to discover.

Today I’ve something a bit different. It’s a conference I wish I could get to, but patently I live on the wrong side of the world and lack the money. It’s also a branch of food history I’ve not ventured much into: military foodways. By ‘not much’ I mean that I have no specialist knowledge whatsoever. Not nothing, but not enough to write home about.

It’s a fascinating branch of food history. How do you keep armed services supplied with food? How do you not impoverish the land you get the food from (if indeed it does come locally, which is not always the case) or do you intentionally take locally so that other armies and local populations don’t have resources? There’s politics as well as war in them thar food.

There’s also very interesting other history. Godefroi de Bouillon (or as I like to call him: “Mr Soup”) planted sugar cane in the lands he conquered. Money was the aim: his estates exported sugar to western Europe. The plantings were a product of military foodways.

And what about army eating habits? Or navy? Are there special folkways for the different services of different countries? The French claimed there were, in the 19th century. My memory says they did, anyway. My memory is notoriously unreliable. You’re fifty times better off hieing yourself to Kansas in April, rather than trusting me.

Here’s the notice for it. If you get there, please let us know about it – it’s a fascinating subject and I suspect most of the readers of Food History would love to know more.

Kansas State University Libraries
Center for the Cookbook

From Hardtack to MREs: A Military Foodways Symposium

April 15-16, 2009

Call for Presentations

Kansas State University Libraries’ Center for the Cookbook–housed in the Richard L. D. & Marjorie J. Morse Department of Special Collections–is seeking presentations by academics, food industry professionals, students (graduate and undergraduate), independent scholars, and foodies. Proposals should be no more than one page in length and contain the following information:

1. Name of the presenter, academic or other professional affiliation (if any), and contact information.

2. Title of the presentation or theme of the panel.

3. Abstract of the presentation.

Individual presentations or panels may be on any aspect of military foodways; all subjects, nations, time periods, and military branches are open for this symposium. Presentations will be 20 minutes with 10 minutes for questions. Panels will be a maximum of 60 minutes with 20 minutes for questions.

The conference room supports a wide variety of formats (state-of-the-art A/V equipment installed in 2008), has comfortable seating, a high-quality sound system, and a giant screen. Sign Language Interpreters are available; please indicate need on the application.

Please submit proposals electronically to: milfood@gmail.com

For more information about the symposium, K-State, and Manhattan, Kansas, please visit.

Deadline for submissions is 5:00 p.m. CST, March 16, 2009.

PS I have no military pictures, so I’ve given you cuteness from Mountain Creek Farm instead.

I have overworked today. Greatly overworked. This overwork has exercised a deleterious effect on my brain and the only solution is some doom and gloom from Accum. Accum turns historical, in fact and goes back to Ancient Greece. Nearly two hundred years before I invented my Zombie Ancestor Theory of History, he demonstrates it rather nicely. So, while I get some much-needed rest, enjoy Frederick Accum informing you about lead poisoning.

“The deleterious effect of lead, when taken into the stomach, is at present so universally known, that it is quite unnecessary to adduce any argument in proof of its dangerous tendency.

The ancients were, upwards of 2000 years ago, as well aware of the pernicious quality of this metal as we are at the present day; and indeed they appeared to have been much more apprehensive of its effects, and scrupulous in the application of it to purposes of domestic economy.

Their precautions may have been occasionally carried to an unnecessary length. This was the natural consequence of the imperfect state of experimental knowledge at that period. When men were unable to detect the poisonous matters–to be over scrupulous in the use of such water, was an error on the right side.

The moderns, on the other hand, in part, perhaps, from an ill-founded confidence, and inattention to a careful and continued examination of its effects, have fallen into an opposite error.

There can be no doubt that the mode of preserving water intended for food or drink in leaden reservoirs, is exceedingly improper; and although pure water exercises no sensible action upon metallic lead, provided air be excluded, the metal is certainly acted on by the water when air is admitted: this effect is so obvious, that it cannot escape the notice of the least attentive observer.

The white line which may be seen at the surface of the water preserved in leaden cisterns, where the metal touches the water and where the air is admitted, is a carbonate of lead, formed at the expense of the metal. This substance, when taken into the stomach, is highly deleterious to health. This was the reason which induced the ancients to condemn leaden pipes for the conveyance of water; it having been remarked that persons who swallowed the sediment of such water, became affected with disorders of the bowels.

Leaden water reservoirs were condemned in ancient times by Hyppocrates, Galen, and Vitruvius, as dangerous: in addition to which, we may depend on the observations of Van Swieten, Tronchin, and others, who have quoted numerous unhappy examples of whole families poisoned by water which had remained in reservoirs of lead. Dr. Johnston, Dr. Percival, Sir George Baker, and Dr. Lamb, have likewise recorded numerous instances where dangerous diseases ensued from the use of water impregnated with lead.

Different potable waters have unequal solvent powers on this metal. In some places the use of leaden pumps has been discontinued, from the expense entailed upon the proprietors by the constant want of repair.
Dr. Lamb states an instance where the proprietor of a well ordered his plumber to make the lead of a pump of double the thickness of the metal usually employed for pumps, to save the charge of repairs; because he had observed that the water was so hard, as he called it, that it corroded the lead very soon.

The following instance is related by Sir George Baker:

A gentleman was the father of a numerous offspring, having had one-and-twenty children, of whom eight died young, and thirteen survived their parents. During their infancy, and indeed until they had quitted the place of their usual residence, they were all remarkably unhealthy; being particularly subject to disorders of the stomach and bowels. The father, during many years, was paralytic; the mother, for a long time, was subject to colics and bilious obstructions.

After the death of the parents, the family sold the house which they had so long inhabited. The purchaser found it necessary to repair the pump. This was made of lead; which, upon examination was found to be so corroded, that several perforations were observed in the cylinder, in which the bucket plays; and the cistern in the upper part was reduced to the thinness of common brown paper, and was full of holes, like a sieve.”

It’s halfway between Thanksgiving and Christmas (close enough, anyway) so I thought a turkey recipe would come in handy. If you want to cook Thanksgiving turkey, you need a time machine (or imaginative equivalent), but it’s not too late for Christmas. As a bonus, I’m giving you the very interesting preface to the cookbook. It’s one of my favourite books of this year, Miss Leslie’s from 1840 (tenth edition). We’ve met it several times – I don’t need to redo the introduction.

“The success of her little book entitled “Seventy-five Receipts in Cakes, Pastry, and Sweetmeats.” has encouraged the author to attempt a larger and more miscellaneous work on the subject of cookery, comprising as far as practicable whatever is most useful in its various departments; and particularly adapted to the domestic economy of her own country. Designing it as a manual of American housewifery, she has avoided the insertion of any dishes whose ingredients cannot be procured on our side of the Atlantic, and which require for their preparation utensils that are rarely found except in Europe. Also, she has omitted every thing which may not, by the generality of tastes, be considered good of its kind, and well worth the trouble and cost of preparing. The author has spared no pains in collecting and arranging, perhaps the greatest number of practical and original receipts that have ever appeared in a similar work; flattering herself that she has rendered them so explicit as to be easily understood, and followed, even by inexperienced cooks. The directions are given as minutely as if each receipt was “to stand alone by itself,” all references to others being avoided; except in some few instances to the one immediately preceding; it being a just cause of complaint that in some of the late cookery books, the reader, before finishing the article, is desired to search out pages and numbers in remote parts of the volume. In the hope that her system of cookery may be consulted with equal advantage by families in town and in country, by those whose condition makes it expedient to practise economy, and by others whose circumstances authorize a liberal expenditure, the author sends it to take its chance among the multitude of similar publications, satisfied that it will meet with as much success as it may be found to deserve − more she has no right to expect.
Philadelphia, April 15th, 1837.

TO ROAST A TURKEY.
Make a force-eat of grated bread-crumbs, minced suet, sweet marjoram, grated lemon-eel, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and beaten yolk of egg. You may add some grated cold ham. Light some writing paper, and singe the hairs from the skin of the turkey. Reserve the neck, liver, and gizzard for the gravy. Stuff the craw of the turkey with the force-eat, of which there should be enough made to form into balls for frying, laying them round the turkey when it is dished. Dredge it with flour, and roast it before a clear brisk fire, basting it with cold lard. Towards the last, set the turkey nearer to the fire, dredge it again very lightly with flour, and baste it with butter. It will require, according to its size, from two to three hours roasting.

Make the gravy of the giblets cut in pieces, seasoned, and stewed for two hours in a very little water; thicken it with a spoonful of browned flour, and stir into it the gravy from the dripping-pan, having first skimmed off the fat. A turkey should be accompanied by ham or tongue. Serve up with it mushroom-sauce. Have stewed cranberries on the table to eat with it. Do not help any one to the legs, or drum-sticks as they are called. Turkeys are sometimes stuffed entirely with sausage-meat. Small cakes of this meat should then be fried, and laid round it.

To bone a turkey, you must begin with a very sharp knife at the top of the wings, and scrape the flesh loose from the bone without dividing or cutting it to pieces. If done carefully and dexterously, the whole mass of flesh may be separated from the bone, so that you can take hold of the head and draw out the entire skeleton at once. A large quantity of force-eat having been prepared, stuff it hard into the turkey, restoring it by doing so to its natural form, filling out the body, breast, wings and legs, so as to resemble their original shape when the bones were in. Roast or bake it; pouring a glass of port wine into the gravy. A boned turkey is frequently served up cold, covered with lumps of currant jelly; slices of which are laid round the dish.

Any sort of poultry or game may be boned and stuffed in the same manner, A cold turkey that has not been boned is sometimes sent to table larded all over the breast with slips of fat bacon, drawn through the flesh with a larding needle, and arranged in regular form.”