Food History

Today I am starting my drink testing. Given the comments other testers have made about the likelihood of loss of grammar and maybe even social skills, I thought you might appreciate a step-by-step account of my progress. I’m not testing everything in the one day (11 drinks! And besides, I’m still missing an ingredient for some of them) but I want to finish up quickly and move onto other things. Also, I’ve finished my teaching for the week, so from today and Friday is not a bad time to go quietly crazy.

Because I can’t guarantee my sobriety (being a cheap drunk), I’ve printed out all my recipes and I’m numbering them. The numbering means that I know which recipes I’m trying but you only get the tasting notes. I’ll post in normal blog-lengths, so you will get my notes in stages. This is very cruel of me, but necessary. The final drinks recipes will all enter this space in October, and that’s when you’ll find out specifics. I don’t know how detailed the notes will be from the rest of the team, but at least you can laugh at my attempts to not get drunk and also to details the strengths and weaknesses of each drink. One thing I know before I start: we probably need three of my eleven drinks on the long list, just because they have the same base alcohol.

My first drink is #3. I’ve already spilled some. This has nothing to do with drunkenness and everything to do with trying to find ingredients stashed in odd places while sipping. The brandy and sugar were in the library and are now not, and I am saved from early overdose of alcohol by losing 1/3 of the first drink. My flat is going to smell delightful by the time I’m finished.

#3 is good. Perfect for the Speakeasy. Not bad for drinking before the Banquet begins, but not flexible enough for the menu, really. Sophisticated and dead easy to make. So easy, in fact, that the bartender is likely to look at me in horror. They’ll just have to jazz it up themselves with fancy gestures and throwing things around.

This would have been an entirely salubrious start if some weren’t spilled. On the other hand, if anyone rings at least I’m still sober. I’m so sober, in fact that I remembered to change the spellcheck to Aussie English.

More will follow. I need a few minutes recovery.

I’m going to post about cookbooks tomorrow after all. Tonight I want to put in a plea for more help. Four months ago I had a queue of people who wanted the food testing for the Prohibition Banquet all sorted out so that they could move on to the more joyous task of drinks testing. I still have a core of happy testers (and one new one) but most of the queue seems to have disappeared.

I have thirty-something recipes that need homes and tasting. I would very much like results by the end of May so that the committee can do the tricky job of trying all the drinks in one evening before the evenings get so long and so cold that such a task becomes dangerous. Though an extended cocktail party in mid-winter does have its attractions, and I do have a camera…

Testing these recipes is really a matter of getting the ingredients, mixing them, sipping elegantly and telling me how much you like what you taste and what, exactly, it tastes like. If you say something curious or colourful (or even curiously colourful) I might blog it. If you are three sips in and think of a splendid new science fictional or fantasy name for the drink then I can take that to the committee for consideration. We’re not renaming the food for the occasion, but we are most certainly renaming the drinks.

I’ll blog the final recipes with their new names (and slightly modified ingredients – Australian brands in 2008 and New York brands in 1921 don’t always overlap) after Conflux, which isn’t until October. This is, in other words, your last chance to taste what’s going to happen at the Banquet and at the Speakeasy the night after.

All I need is an email address and the number of recipes you’re willing to try and I’ll email them to you forthwith. In advance, thank you, because I really, really didn’t want to have to make all thirty-nine of those recipes myself.

This is the moment that far too many people have been waiting for. My hardworking group of testers and myself are about to embark on an epic voyage across the alcohol of a generation. We need to test quite a few cocktail recipes.

I don’t know how many we’ll be testing. It really depends on how many volunteers I have. I know we need between six and eight really wonderful drinks for the science fiction convention.

Why so many? It’s because the committee has fallen in love with the whole Prohibition theme and the bar area is being turned into a speakeasy the night after the banquet. This means the more recipes we can test, the better, so I’m asking for a whole new team of volunteers. All regular testers are entirely welcome to return, and anyone who has a desire to try drinks from the 1920s, well, now’s your chance.

There will, of course, be other illicit alcohol at the convention, but these cocktails have to be special. To make sure they are, what I’m asking is that individuals test a range of them. I shall take everyone’s favourites and then they’ll be tested a second time across more tastebuds. After that, they might be renamed. It all depends on how enthusiastic the committee feels after tasting much foul liquor in a very short time.

On Monday I shall email the first set of cocktail recipes. Anyone possessed of a vast desire to report on the value of hard liquor mixed with various other things, let me know just how many recipes you wish to trial and give me an email address. I promise not to be judgemental if you test more than three in a night.

I think we’re going to have fun.

Today is Good Friday for Christians and Purim for Jews. This is an unusual juxtaposition. The Jewish leap year is partly to blame – it means that all Jewish festivals are a bit later than usual. The moon cycles are also the blame: Easter is early this year.

What it means in terms of food traditions is that some members of the community have a fast day and some have a feast day. It’s traditional for Ashkenazi Jews, for instance, to give two different types of food to friends (which is why I’ve invited friends over tonight to celebrate – much easier than making baskets and explaining them, especially given that my family tradition didn’t include the basket-giving), to eat particular types of pastries, to read the Book of Esther, to get drunk. Every year I announce to my non-Jewish friends that I have a religious obligation to get drunk, and every year I get appropriate reactions. There aren’t that many Jews in Australia, you see, and so there’s always someone who doesn’t have a clue about my festivals.

Tonight we’re drinking my medlar liqueur, of course, but also soft drinks and cordials and maybe wine. The foodways truth of my religious festivals is that I don’t really enjoy getting drunk and nor do any of my family. We always drank enough to ensure we were celebrating and happy, but we never became more than slightly tipsy. Foodways meet religious obligation and most of the time foodways wins. This is because, as hostess, I never have enough time to sit down and debate the issue, nor even enough time to drink more than a glass. I love the thought of being drunk on Purim, but it’s only happened twice in forty-six years.

One day I must ask a rabbi if letting my family custom and interest in enjoying drink intervene in the mitzvah of getting drunk is a problem. That last sentence was a problem, but I rather suspect that the medlar liqueur (four types thereof) will suffice, religiously, even if I only have three sips of each kind.

Foodways and religion are not always a combination made in heaven. I really need to think this out a bit.

Tourist brochures are useful sources of food history (used judiciously, like all sources) and even recipes. Here’s an example:

Lime is a totally classic and totally classy ingredient. Forget margaritas (or give your margaritas to me and I will drink them for you), lime is much more than an element in a popular mixed drink.

Lime is really citrus aurantifolia: - the leaf is brilliant in the food of many countries, especially South East Asian. I don’t think this is the same plant as the European linden (tilia spp) which produces limeflowers.

Lime juice is particularly important in Australian history. The “lime juice tub” was any ship bound for Australia during a certain period, named after the use of lime juice against scurvy in the British Navy.

Apart from being good against scurvy, and in mixed drinks, a squeeze of lime juice is a useful addition to a lot of dishes, both sweet and savoury.

[tags]food history, lime, ingredients[\tags]

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.

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

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.