Food History

On Saturday I went to see an exhibition of Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts at the State Library of Victoria. There were some great books on show, and many I had met already, in other place, at other times. None of them were cookbooks. This reminded me of things I know, but that I don’t articulate nearly often enough.

Just because more of a certain book survives, doesn’t mean that this book is more important in people’s lives. It might have survived because no-one read it. Think of the book that you get given as a present and cant get rid of because it reminds you of someone. As your favourite cookbook gets dog-eared and torn and loses ages and eventually gets replaced, the gift endures, unchanged and in perfect condition.

In the manuscript exhibition, most of the displayed books were religious. Yet there was an example of a cheap medical guide (cheap t produce, relatively speaking) which represented a zillion lost everyday manuscripts.

We don’t have many books of recipes for the Middle Ages. In fact, they are incredibly rare and special. This doesn’t mean that people didn’t cook. It might mean that recipes weren’t written down, or it might mean that what they were written on didn’t survive the ravages of time. Think of the zillions of community cookbooks that exist in there here and now (I have wise friends who have added to their number for my birthday): these cookbooks don’t survive easily. When I was trying to find one last surviving volume of the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia Cookbook (the original one, from fifty plus years ago) none of the women who had owned it could find a copy, nor could any library. Yet it had been printed and loved and used and quoted.

I’m trying to say that we can’t judge the importance of a cookbook by how many of them there are. We have to look for more evidence. I’m not saying it very well because my mind is still pondering those amazing Medieval manuscripts.

Many moons ago I wrote a post (which is somewhere in the archives, hiding from me) about the relationship between food and health in the Middle Ages. I love the thought that – if you follow the right principles – a feast won’t make you nearly as sick as when you don’t. Should I admit that I was foolish enough to try both a well structured meal and a poorly constructed one? Probably not a good idea.

Let me instead give you some principles of food and diet from ML Holbrook’s 1888 work. Or should that be a book by one ML Holbrook MD, author of Hygiene of the Brain and How to Strength the Memory? Whenever I see the word ‘Holbrook’ I think of submarines, because for some reason the very inland Australian Holbrook has a stranded submarine. Maybe someone should do a food history reading, sitting on the sub and reading from Eating for Strength, which is the source of the preface below? And isn’t the perfect state of agriculture in the late nineteenth century reassuring to know?

Quite obviously, though, the burning question is whether we should all take the grape cure?

I’m in a sarcastic mood, and the study of diet has changed in 120 years, but there are some fine sentiments in the preface, and it’s worth reading, with or without submarine.

“Preface

In no period of the world’s history has there ever been so deep an interest in the subject of foods as at the present. At no time since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden has agriculture and horticulture been so perfect, and the human race supplied with so many choice and nourishing articles of diet. And, also, at no time have so many been engaged in laborious researches on the nature of that which we eat and its relations to health and work. It would almost seem as if the time had nearly arrived when mankind would eat to live would feed themselves so as to nourish their bodies most perfectly and render themselves capable of the most labor, and least liable to disease.

The object of this volume is to present the most recent facts of science in a way to make them valuable for actual use in daily life. There is no doubt but man may double his capacity for work and for enjoyment by improving his dietetic habits. Many have already done this, and multitudes more are only waiting for the knowledge which will help them to do it. A thorough understanding of the different divisions of food and their right relation to the needs of the body is necessary, and this has been fully stated. Several new features have been introduced. To meet the requirements of that constantly increasing class who have more and more desire to draw their nourishment from the vegetable kingdom, carefully prepared and elaborate tables have been arranged showing just how much of each particular food one needs to consume in order to provide the body with the required amount of proteids, carbo-hydrates and fats.

These tables have been especially prepared for this work and are full of interest as well as being of practical value. Another interesting feature of the work relates to the cost of the different articles usually consumed, as for instance the cost of proteids, fats and carbo-hydrates in oatmeal, beef, mutton, corn, eggs, butter, cheese, beer, etc., etc. These tables are so arranged as to show at once which are the most economical articles for the table and which the most expensive, and will be of great value to all who would choose their food wisely, and also for those who desire to reduce the cost of living to a minimum and yet nourish themselves perfectly.

The chapter on the use of the apple as a means of preserving health and the one on the grape cure will, the author believes, meet a need long felt, as will also what has been said concerning the importance of the thorough mastication of our food.

The subject of drinks has also been treated fully, and a very large number of recipes for wholesome ones given. What has been said on this subject cannot fail to prove helpful to those who are in doubt on many points.

The directions for feeding young and delicate children have in practice proved most satisfactory.

The time is near when a knowledge of the principles of diet will be considered as important a part of our education as a knowledge of the multiplication table. That this little work may help to hasten this time is the sincere desire of the author.

M. L. H.”

PS Holbrook not only has a stranded submarine, it has a nice bakery.

Tonight I’m part of the Absolute Writers’ Blogchain again. Last time everyone was talking about pets, as you’ll probably remember. I remember because we all ended up talking about eating strange animals, which was mostly my fault. (I need to put some work in and convince everyone that I’m a gentle and unassuming soul, don’t I? Which reminds me, you might want to take a look at the conflux guest list.)

This time the writer before me was Colby Marshall. I ought to be really grateful, because the newest post on Colby’s blog was about cockroaches and I do not really want to even think about cockroaches served on a plate for culinary delectation. If anyone has eaten a cockroach, I’d be very happy to hear all about it, though. I’m generous that way.

Colby wrote about dance and writing and how even a week without is an eternity. The most I’ve been without food is three days, and the first 36 hours are tough, and then it gets better. This got me to thinking about fasts. Ramadan is a civilised fast (unless it occurs in summer, when the no drinking during daylight hours is worse than the no eating, by a long shot). Judaism has one day fasts.

My favourite fasts though, are Christian Medieval. They’re the sort of fasts that one can get fat on. Fasts not counted by calorie, but by avoidance of certain foods. When I discovered this as an undergraduate and reported enthusiastically to my mother, she worried I was going to convert. Then I told her about the Papal Schism and she felt a bit more reassured. Then I had a Catholic boyfriend and she was de-reassured again. Then I told her that most Christian fasts involved fish and she stopped worrying about me for months. You see, the fast days were the big fish days in the Medieval calendar, and I’m fatally allergic to fish.

Give Fantastical Imagination a day or so, but make sure you visit. Otherwise you may never know where the chain takes allergies, fasts, perplexed parents and the Great Schism. Also, you might want to read the earlier posts, so here’s a list:

Auria Cortes

Polenth’s Quill

Unfocused Me

Spittin’ (out words) Like a Llama

Food History

Fantastical Imagination

Life In Scribbletown

For The First Time

Polyamory From the Inside Out

Livininsanity

Spynotes

A Wayward Journey

Virtual Wordsmith

Today was market day again and the change of seasons is already obvious. The colours of the fresh fruit and vegetables are at their brightest and most varied, but the peaches are getting fewer and the apples more numerous. Young leeks reminded me that winter means hot soups, and both my friend and I dreamed of sweating leek in butter. In my mind I added chestnut and cream. Fortunately I looked at my waistline before I bought the leeks: there will be plenty of time for wintry goodness.

It’s natural that the change of colours on the market stalls make me think of the calendar. More specifically, it makes me think of the Medieval calendar, where the march of the seasons was associated with specific cooking tasks.

From the beginning of autumn, farmers and estate manger would start their series of tasks to prepare for winter. I never remember the precise order of the tasks, because I don’t have to. All I have to do is haul out any copy of a late Medieval illuminated Book of Hours and it tells me what happened and when. There’s so much about food in these pictures: pigs fattening for later slaughter, harvest, preserving autumn crops, preserving meat, getting the fields ready for winter and getting the garden ready, too. That’s what my memory tells me.

Memory is hopelessly unreliable, however. One of the best Books of Hours of all is Les Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry. I teach with it and it comes with its own bookmark, Richard III’s signature embroidered onto gauze ribbon by my remarkable accountant. Let me see what its pictures tell me about food-related activity from September. (I know it’s February, but the weather is already telling me it’s March, and in Northern hemisphere terms, that’s September. If you think that’s bad, you should come and visit during January, when it’s stiflingly hot. )

Aha! September was grape harvest (remember, Books of Hours are as regional as their artists and owners) and we have a lovely picture of the vineyard at Saumur. In the background is the castle, but, more importantly, the kitchen.

I was wrong about harvest, at least as far as this book goes, because in October there is sowing on the Seine, right near the Louvre, in fact. The birds are eating the corn s quickly as the sower can spread it, too, despite the scarecrow’s daunting bow.

November fits my stray memories. The pigs are in the forest, fattening nicely on the acorns the peasants knock off the trees.

And that’s autumn in one particularly expensive book of hours. Not even the super rich and amazingly cosmopolitan were unaware of food production. This makes me wonder about our own rich and mighty. Would they know that the colour change on the market stalls is maybe a couple of weeks early? Would they even know that the colours change?

My world is suddenly crystal clear. This makes me think about the appearance of food.

The fact that my world is suddenly crystal clear because my eye person says I must wear reading glasses to use the computer rather than normal glasses is irrelevant. It’s a pain, because I can no longer just swivel to catch something on TV – I have to swivel and change glasses. This means it’s easier to dream about the look of food rather than to turn round and watch TV. Is this a good thing? Aren’t I already just a tad too obsessed with food?

What sort of things am I dreaming about instead of checking the news headlines? I’m thinking that upper class English food in the fourteenth century probably looked just a tad cooler than a lot of upper class French food. The recipes we have focus just that much more on the looks of the food in the English recipes, you see. Parsley was used to give a fresh green look, and saunders* to enrich the colour of meat stews.

I was thinking about the effect of the work of rabid gardeners like John Evelyn on the look of a dinner. He loved herbs and fresh vegetables. One day I’m going to investigate just how long it took before the looks of salad greens started to change the looks of the dinner table. By Jane Austen’s time it definitely did: the main course was just not complete in the south of England without a salad .

I’m curious about the change of generations. What did the older generation think of when ten dishes on a table was replaced by lots of little bits of things delivered to a diner’s place? Did they feel underfed? Did their eyes miss the laden board?

My idea of a good meal changed when I stayed with close friends in Japan, many years ago. They taught me that the eyes eat just as much as the stomach. I feel far more full with a small meal where my eyes are satisfied than with a big meal where they aren’t. I blame Kazuko and Yukiko for this. If any of them want the thousand and one meals owing to them for teaching me this important truth (and saving me from being obese, to boot) I would be immensely happy if they got in touch. That’s the other thing that clear vision does: it makes me miss the friends I saw last time I could see this clearly (or was that the time before? I grow old, I grow old – so old I quote TS Eliot in a food history blog!).

Tomorrow I may give you some more biscuit recipes. One can never have too many historical biscuit recipes.

* related to sandalwood, but a richer redder colour, and much easier on the digestion.

Today was market day. The local farmers’ markets have been going for a few months now and I have been every few weeks and everyone seems to know me. They can’t always sort out food history from food technology, but they know me and will explain who I am and why I ask strange questions to anyone who happens to be near.

The maker of pâtés and rillettes sent a message today that there were “pork-free products for your Jewish friend.” I rolled up to see what he was referring to and it turned out to be pure duck rillettes. They taste very northern French and the maker, I thought, was Vietnamese. Just shows you should always ask people their background, because he’s Belgian. I know about the similarities between Belgian and Normandy pâtés and rillettes, but not a thing about the differences. Next time I go to the market I need to ask him some questions. (He knows his stuff – that duck was very good and just as rich as it ought to be – we had it with lunch.)

On the vegetable front, there was some very bad news: the wonderful purveyor of heritage carrots had his whole crop wiped out by a hailstorm. There will be a new crop in a few weeks, but in the meantime he has to weather $100,000 worth of damage. It’s bad for him, and it’s also a salutary reminder of what we no longer have to put up with.

A famine in, say, the Middle Ages or the Renaissance was typically regional (like that hailstorm). A bigger event with wider destruction could wipe out crops in a wider area (the potato famine in Ireland in the nineteenth century is a terribly depressing example of this) but for every big famine, there were maybe dozens of little ones, chronicled locally but not reported elsewhere. I have a list of some of them for the Middle Ages (put together from work by French scholars) but it’s woefully inadequate. We just don’t have reports on every famine that happened until very recently.

These days we may be guilty of neglect (due to modern communications we tend to be aware of famines, but only a very few people move to do something about them) but we have completely different transport and distribution to one hundred and fifty years ago and earlier. If the major root crop disintegrates for one area, food can be brought in from elsewhere. Australia is emerging (probably may be emerging – I’m guilty of wishful thinking) from one of the worst droughts in recorded Australian history. Farmers have gone bankrupt, but no-one local has starved to death from it.

The patterns of not finding food are historically radically different now from what they once were. There was always politics involved in famines – who would help whom and why never quite fades from the picture. These days, though, politics is more important and regional production less. The underlying structure of food production has changed, and our lives with it.

Today you get a picture of my lunch. Kate and I shared a cheese from Milawa. It was a fine goat’s cheese, called Affine (does it count as a pun if you say similar things in two different languages?).

This is one of the cheeses I bought when Sharyn whisked me away from my retreat on Monday afternoon. We went to the Milawa Cheese Factory>, where I tasted over twenty cheeses. Not a bad one among them and the best were as good as anything I’ve tasted anywhere.

The factory isn’t that old (established 1988 according to the website) but they do use traditional methods, and it definitely shows. Please note that I said ‘traditional,’ not ‘old.’ (more…)

This is one of my special posts for January. Flick has written to tell us how foodways wove into her research for the first volume of the Janna Mysteries. She has also kindly donated a copy of the new edition, which has both the first and second volume. In February we might have a competition or a draw or something to find the new owner of this terrific volume.

I was her historical consultant and it is such a joy to work with a good writer who listens so carefully. I adore getting a new draft of her latest Janna book in the mail. I get to comment on Flick’s manuscripts and explain why this won’t work or that won’t work historically, then Flick goes back and sorts out how she can improve the history without talking away from the story or the characters. Often she finds a way of improving everything at once.

This post gives you an insight into how she works and how a bit of foodways can really make a difference to a novel.

“A difficulty arose while I was writing Rue for Repentance, Book 2 of my medieval crime series for teenagers titled The Janna Mysteries. In this novel, Janna is on the run and hides out in a forest. How is she to survive?

This is an example of how my writing angels ‘look after me’ when I most need information. One thing I used to do (until I discovered it was illegal!) was to pick wildflowers on my walks during my research trips in England. I’d been tramping the downs & forest all morning and, tired, hungry and thirsty, I lobbed into one of those delightful English pubs for lunch and a refreshing ale. While I was waiting, I pulled out my wilting flowers and whatnots, and my reference guide to wildflowers in the UK, and set about trying to find out what they were (and if anything was edible!)

The chef wandered out and gave me what for (that’s when I discovered that picking stuff is illegal.) When I explained it wasn’t just wanton destruction and that I had a good reason for it, he darted back to his kitchen and then presented me with a wonderful publication that was the answer to all my prayers and my problems. It’s a Collins gem called Food for Free, subtitled ‘a fantastic feast of plants and folklore’ and it’s written by Richard Mabey.

It’s divided into four sections (after an introduction): plants & trees; fungi; seaweeds and shellfish. A handy calendar at the beginning of the book lists what’s available in which months, while a list of recipes at the end promises such delights as dandelion leaf salad, elderflower fritters or cordial; fried puffball steaks, sloe gin, nettle haggis … and the list goes on.

I discovered that young hawthorn leaves are commonly referred to as ‘bread and cheese’, being such a staple in the country, while stinging nettles can be made into a soup or pureed as well as being mixed with bacon and oatmeal for a haggis. The elder is another bountiful plant with medicinal as well as culinary qualities. Elderflowers ‘taste as frothy as a glass of icecream soda’ eaten straight from the tree, and the berries are used in pies and jellies.

There are also little historical nuggets of info; apparently the seeds of ‘fat hen’ formed part of the last ritual gruel fed to the 2,4000 year old ‘Tolland Man’ whose perfectly preserved corpse was recovered from a bog in Jutland, Denmark in 1950. The leaves of fat hen can be eaten raw or cooked like spinach.

The section on fungi is very detailed, with clear instructions for picking and preparation, and also for telling the difference between the edible and poisonous. (DId you know that there are 3000 species of large-bodied fungi growing in the UK and only about 20 are seriously poisonous?)

As Janna was nowhere near the sea, I didn’t have to address seaweeds (YUK!) or shellfish (YUM!) but there was plenty in the first two sections to keep her alive in the forest for a very long time.
(What a great book to take on a camping trip in England!) ”

Felicity Pulman

PS from Gillian - the picture above ought to link to where you can buy it, since not all of you are near bookshops that sell Australian books.

PPS from Gillian. More about me and historical fiction here (but only sometimes). More about books here (all the time!). The New Year makes me feel just exceptionally helpful.

I asked Cindy Renfrow if I could interview her for my interview series and I emailed her some questions. Instead of normal interview answers, she sent me a letter for you, so I’m going to give you her thoughts without even a proper introduction. Explaining who she is would be gilding the lily, anyhow, since she explains things so beautifully clearly. Needless to say, I own one of her books.

“Hello!

My name is Cindy Renfrow and I’m the author of A Sip Through Time, A Collection of Old Brewing Recipes, and Take a Thousand Eggs or More, a Collection of 15th century recipes. I’ve always been interested in foods of other cultures, (more…)

The paths that food travel show where people get their fresh food from. You can draw circles on a map and find out just how cohesive a region is by where they get their food. That marketing is a major force in social cohesion for many people.

In the Middle Ages (more…)

This morning was market morning and all the new season’s produce is happening. Tomatoes with scent and flavour, cherries, tiny parsnips and new varieties of apples. Kate takes me marketwards once a fortnight or so, and I’m getting used to the apple guy telling me “Two weeks now and we’ll have those heritage carrots for you again. This year there’ll be multicoloured beets as well.”

I’ve blogged about the nature of farmers’ market shopping before, so you probably don’t want me bouncing up and down about how different it is to buy something direct from the grower as opposed to direct from the supermarket or local shop which gets it direct from the wholesale market or from its own suppliers which (in Canberra’s case) often means ‘fresh’ fruit and vegetables coming via Sydney. Except I’m going to anyway, because there are important historical points involved. And I’m breaking it into two posts, one of which will appear tomorrow. I have a lot to say, even keeping it not-too-technical.

The pattern of who buys what from where (more…)

Tonight I started teaching about food in London in the Middle Ages. It’s the first time in a while. Last time I taught Medieval food it was during my food history course, and I ranged a lot further than London.

Next week I finish teaching. Only two sessions on it. Not even two sessions, because a large chunk tonight was about how legal systems and landholding systems and people interacted.

I do love teaching food history, though. One of my students brought in Medieval gingerbread. Next week we’re getting something with apple in.

We talked about the usual things. I gave my “if your ancestors believed in eating rotten meat then maybe you’re descended from a zombie” rant* and discussed the basic seasonings used in English cooking in the later Middle Ages. We talked about what levels of society cookbooks represented and why some amazing new food history is going to reach print in the next few years (my standard methodology introduction). We looked at pretty pictures in manuscripts and discussed the size of chooks in the Middle Ages. My favourite bit, though, was where I manged to communicate to my class (an exceptionally intelligent bunch of people) that cooking with pre-modern equipment doesn’t mean bare or flavourless cooking.

Next week we’ll look at some of the ingredients and cooking methods and then we’ll move on to trade routes and what people bought where in London. I have a translation of a tariff document for my class and we’re going to consider the prices of various comestibles and how this affects who could eat them.

* my rant is much politer than its name sounds, unfortunately.

One of the reasons I like the Absolute Write Blogchain is because you never know what the person before you is going to talk about. This means that every single time I participate, it give some new insights for my own life. Today, the insights may very well be for my own research and teaching as well. (more…)

Today Kate (of the Mountain Creek Farm photos) took me to the EPIC Farmers’ market. I love it that they are at EPIC – it makes a simple farmers’ market sound like a three part trilogy, full of love and death and despair followed by hope and success and more love. Instead of love and death and despair followed by hope and success and more love, what the EPIC markets give on Saturday mornings are two big sheds full of stalls and a flutter of stalls trailing outside.

I collected leaflets assiduously while I was there, because I meant to do a follow-up to the slow food posts and to talk about other sorts of biodynamic meat production in the region. I still have those leaflets and one day I might do that post, but life diverted me with interesting thoughts and I can’t resist sharing them.

(more…)

Today is the calm before the storm. You know, one of those days when you have things to do and enough of them so you ought to be quietly rather busy for about ten hours, but you know that tomorrow is going to be positively frantic and the day after that improbably long and busy and you just don’t want to push things? Well, today is that day.

What do I do on days like this? I invent recipes, of course, using sound historical principles. I could argue (to make everything look relevant to food history) that this is another example of how recipes change over time and new classics become established, but me being lazy doesn’t create classic recipes.

The other thing I could do is give you an entirely irrelevant foodie link to someone else’s blog, to throw you and make you think that I know what I’m, doing. I suspect that’s a good idea and I’m making sure that the link is more historical than this post.

Mind you, the fact that today my mind is less-than-focussed doesn’t mean that my cooking wasn’t historically inspired. (more…)