Food History

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.

Yesterday was so busy and last night so fatigued that I completely forgot to blog. Sorry about that! I blame first week of term, but the real problem lay with me coming back in the afternoon to teach a new course that evening. Naturally this means that today and tomorrow all I want to do is sleep.

Tomorrow has all kinds of paperwork lying in work, some messages, and a meeting.

I think I might take the easy way out. Today and tomorrow I’m going to give you other people’s recipes. Not Sharyn’s, though I’m certain more of them will come. More for the biscuit and scone collection tomorrow and something else the day after. I’ll decide tomorrow and the day after when they come. Today I want to talk about what I have in store for the blog over the next little while.

I also have five new cookbooks. They were birthday presents from sensible souls. I shall blog about them soon. In fact, I won’t put them away until they’re blogged, so that’s something to look forward to. They’re all community cookbooks of one kind or another, so the recipes will be interesting and the stories behind them good.

Soon we’re going to start testing cocktail recipes for the Prohibition Banquet and the next night’s Speakeasy. I feel as if I should start a chart for my hangovers.

While I was away I scored some cool cooking equipment. Most of it is modern and only of interesting to people who eel like eating at my place. My mother let me have a set of antique scales. They’re not very antique, I don’t think, but beautifully balanced and use pre-decimal weights. Now I have a 1940s scale for my big weigh-ins (for those rare occasions when I make cakes) and this other balance for the smaller things. I’m going to try to take a picture, but if you see the moustache cup at the top of the post you’ll know that I failed. The failure is probably due to a missing cord (things are a bit topsy-turvy at my place when term begins). When the cord appears I’ll try again.

And that’s the sum of my apologies. Historical scone and biscuit recipes tomorrow!

1. Food History is still in Australia’s top 100 blogs (March 2008) - thank you everyone who linked to me!

2. I need addresses to send those fridge magnets to. Even if I know you, I might still need the address, because I often have several friends with the same first name. If you can’t find the ‘contact me’ button, then send your address to philologa(at)gmail)dot)com These are a brand new design, so if you want to make a collection, please send me your address again.

3. For anyone in or near Canberra (or anyone who has friends in or near Canberra) the new food history course starts 1 May and still has spaces. This is the last time I will be teaching it until at least 2009 (possibly longer - I don’t know next year’s program yet). You, too, can be introduced to the moustache cup (in fact, my students were supposed to be introduced last night - now it will have to be enxt week).

The details:

Our edible past: food in history

The best and worst of historical food, from Ancient Rome to the twentieth century. Discover the joy that was Medieval pastries and things you really didn’t want to know about early margarine. Learn about famous chefs and their recipes. Sample some historical cooking.

The course will follow students’ interests – it may be thematic or chronological. The topics that we will look at will include the following, but these are just starting points:

• Overeating in Ancient Rome - Apicius and his cookbook
• When Gluttony was a Deadly Sin - Medieval and Renaissance gourmet delights
• The British Empire’s Belly - home cooking in England in the eighteenth century
• Royal Recipes (not suitable for slimmers)
• The Rise of the Modern Cookbook - Mrs Beeton and friends
• The Age(s) of Exploration - new food, new tastebuds and new national cuisine

DATES/TIMES: 5.30-7.30pm on 8 Thursdays from 1 May

FEE: $274
The Australian National University
Telephone bookings: 02-61252892
Email: enrolments.cce@anu.edu.au
http://www.anu.edu.au/cce

Every now and again on my other blog I open the floor to questions. I’ve just done that today and it suddenly struck me that maybe readers here had their own questions about food and food history.

Food history is long and complex, and there’s a fair chance that some questions will be beyond me. There’s also a fair chance that I can answer others, or at least report back later with an answer. We won’t know which is true about any given question until that question is asked.

From now, then, until Friday morning in anyone’s time zone (your time zone, my time zone, Antarctica Common Time Zone) you can ask any questions you want about food history. You can ask them as comments or you can use the email contact button near my bio. If I can answer them easily I shall and if I can’t, I’ll do my best to explain why an answer is difficult or impossible. This may be when we discover just how ignorant I really am!!

If this works, I’ll do it again. If it ends up with me in a puddle of hopeless humiliation, then I suspect I shan’t.

The thing is, that historians train using very narrow fields. It’s always a challenge translating what I know as an historian into approaches to history and to food that will be of interest to a wider public. The nuances of meaning of a particular word (one of my actual research areas) is really not frightfully interesting to most people. Cultural history does translate, as this blog shows, but there’s a difference between translating things I know and answering questions about what other people want to know.

This could be fun. Maybe. When I come out from my secret hiding place, I’ll let you know if it was fun.

Yesterday was setting a mood. Let me explain, before you get the wrong idea, that the mood was for me, not for you. It wasn’t setting a mood to lure you into some sort of dark corner of history, though, now I mention it, that sort of mood-setting seems like a good idea. What I was trying to do was remind myself that colds don’t stop work. Which they don’t. They just want to.

I’ve talked myself into enjoying work so much that I started blogging (on my other blog)about character introduction in a seventeenth century recipe book, using the opening recipe. It was possibly not the most sensible post I’ve ever written, but it was terribly educational. Almost frighteningly educational.

I’ll balance things (now that the worst of the cold is over) by giving you some more of Grandma’s recipes. After all, I mentioned them yesterday, so it’s almost as if I meant it.

Before I get to the recipes, I just thought I’d warn you that my Edible Past course starts next week. This means my thoughts will be ranging over different historical periods again. This is the time when – if you yearn for a Medieval recipe or a Jane Austen syllabub recipe – you really should say so. Otherwise I’ll go back to looking at the food descriptions in my favourite novels. I always threaten this and life always catches up with me before I can follow through. Maybe this time it will actually happen.

Now for a recipe!! 1950s Melbourne, of course.

Eggless Date Cake

Place in a mixing bowl ½ cup sugar, 1 cup dates ( chopped) & 1 tablespoon butter. Sprinkle with 1 teaspoon soda. Pour 1 cup boiling water over & beat a few minutes. Sift in 1 ½ cups flour & mix well. Bake in bar shaped tin in fairly hot oven for ½ to ¾ hours. 1 tablespoon chopped ginger.

You know the posts you’ve been reading for the last two weeks? I haven’t been round to post them. I wrote most of them (and the ones I didn’t write are pretty obvious), but I wrote them round Christmas and then I disappeared to work on a novel. I forward-posted them to appear while I was hiding and typing madly.

I went with a group of writer-friends to Yackandandah in north-east Victoria. It’s a very lovely part of the world and I got two car trips to see bits of it. I know that area pretty well as an historian and a foodie (and even as a food historian). My greatest food history sadness was that I didn’t get to visit the sole vine (in Chiltern) that survived the Great Phylloxera Disaster, but the other members of my group made it to Chiltern and even did some shopping there. At least this means I know it still exists. Serves me right for not driving. I last saw it about a quarter of a century ago and I first saw it even earlier than that.

I can tell you about the vine, at least. All Victorian grapevines had to be replanted and the whole industry started again from scratch using resistant American rootstock. The region now produces some of the best fortifieds in the world, but it was devastated just about a century ago. I grew up thinking of it as a kind of phoenix. Maybe one day I will get to see that vine again: it’s an important part of our food history.

I finished my novel. It may take forever to find a publisher, but it’s done and over. Right now I think it is pathetic and awful and am very depressed about it. I always get like this when I read through a novel I’ve just finished, so don’t take it too seriously. I pity my fellow writers, who weren’t depressed and miserable and thinking their work was a waste of time. They were all dynamic and cheerful and incredibly hard-working while I was moping those last few days.

Sharyn (who posted here twice while I was away) saved me from myself on Monday and gave me some regional food and a bunch of local history. I’ll tell you about some of what I saw as the mood takes me. Or maybe as the cheese and mustard make me happy again.

While I was away, my friend Kate (who does those lovely photos) went to New Caledonia. She took some food pictures there, and maybe I’ll direct you to them once I’ve seen her and can tell a bit about her experiences.

Also, I have some much-delayed pictures from Trudi, who was writing away with me recently. I’ve delayed them because there’s a bit more work putting together the posts that explain them than for other posts and life has been impossibly hectic, but they’re too good to stay hidden.

In less than a month I have a course starting in Canberra. You can find details here, if you’re interested. It’s a fun course and I’m looking forward to it. I’ve taught it a few times now, but this year I plan to add a few twists. We have an excursion to a farm to meet historical cows and pigs (including, I hope, one called Beyonce) this time, for instance, plus a heap of new recipes, reflecting my recent research.

The next few days I’m still in the world of speculative fiction, though, as I have reviews to write. Isn’t it just as well that I created a menu for my just-finished novel. If any of you speak up and say “I want to see the menu” I’ll post it for you. It’s based on some rather sumptuous eighteenth century dinners, but modified for a future world that apes the eighteenth century but has certain problems re-creating it accurately.

And now you know where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing and why. Does it rejoice your heart?

The Conflux4 Regency Gothic Banquet is tonight. ‘Tonight’ is the date on this post, if I get the advance posting right. I’ll be enjoying the banquet, wearing pink and black and a spangled headdress, and I thought it was rather unfair that all the readers of this blog should entirely miss out. I know you’ll get all the recipes, starting next week, but you need to see a bit more than that, and a bit earlier, too. (more…)

The Regency Gothic banquet is tomorrow.

The menus are printed and the costumes are ready. Three different costumes, in fact, are spread around my lounge room, waiting for occupants to inhabit them. There is my dusky pink and embroidered black net. There is my houseguest’s silk and lace and there is a spare dress for an unknown woman.

Food, dress, what else can there be? There’s jewellery. I have one quite authentic-looking necklace that my houseguest is borrowing, because it matches her dress just perfectly. Blue lakh - lovely.

I’ll be wearing quite modern makeup, but in case you want to make your own rouge for an equivalent occasion, try safflower and talc.

I can’t think of anything else you need, unless it’s a ton of links to somehow see you safely through to tomorrow, when I give you the complete Regency Gothic banquet menu. Once the banquet is over and the recipes blogged, I’ll return to normal programming, promise. In fact, on Monday I’ll give you an introduction to a book that has not much to do with anything Regency. In the meantime, though, I’m excited.

I’m not the only one bubbling over. More and more people are reporting in and telling me about their costumes. About half the testing team have bought tickets (even several of the testing team from places well interstate) and will be seeing the product of all their labour. 4000 pages of recipes and tomorrow we find out what it tastes like when a professional chef takes over. Yes, I’m nervous.

What I really, really hope is that several of the people present have cameras and will let me blog pictures of the event and all its costumed glory.

While you wait, here are a few links to remind you of how this has all unfolded.

Today, I have something rather special.

Martha Carlin (who you ought to remember from my earlier posts on her work) has kindly agreed to answer a few questions. I asked her at a totally bad time of year, with university just beginning, so she had to fit it in amongst everything, which makes it a double hapiness to have this interview.

Professor Carlin teaches history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is one of the world’s leading food historians. Her particular focus is the Midde Ages. I was going to point out how much of a superior and civilised human being this makes her, but it’s pretty obvious how crucial understanding the Middle Ages is to understanding the present, so I won’t.

Thank you, Professor Carlin!

Question 1: How is food history different from the sort of history most people learn at school?
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Let me admit up front, I don’t know a thing about what food is eaten at the time of an eclipse, in any country, at any period in history. I needed help, because there’s a total lunar eclipse this Tuesday. It looks as if I might be having a picnic dinner specifically to watch the Moon being eaten and it seemed quite wrong that I didn’t know a thing. I asked Lara, the astronomer friend who alerted me to the total lunar eclipse:

“Are there any food history links with eclipses that you know of? And if there aren’t, what does your group of astronomers eat during a total eclipse of the moon?”

This is Lara’s answer:

(more…)

I want to write “Stop Press” but it doesn’t quite fit in the instant-publishing that is the net. Besides, the reason I want to write “Stop Press!” is because I have 10 copies of David Kamp’s The United States of Arugula to give away, thanks to the generosity of the publishers. The copies came in the mail five minutes ago (I signed for them almost as soon as I replied to a worried publicist about them not having arrived yet) and this book looks perfect for all foodies. It’s a New York Times notable book. In fact, it’s a paperback package of foodie joy.

So, ten free copies of a book you will all want to read. How to avoid being mobbed?

I shall do a random draw from the entries in my competition, I think. How about I extend the competition by a few days, to give you a better chance. This means, as well as the prizes (and the possibility of an ebook), you have the chance to win a book with chapter titles like “America’s Dysfunctional Relationship with Good Food” and “Towards a McSustainable Future.” I want to skip most of today and sit down to it at once - it’s that tempting. I’ll do a draw from the entries I receive before (and on) August 4. You have eight days to send me a slice of your family food history pie, alongside a recipe or two.

PS I was looking for a photo of the cover, but the ones online aren’t the same as the cover I have. Think of a Last Supper table of US foodies.

PPS Do you think this book will explain grits? I’ve never entirely understood grits.

ETA: You can find an excerpt from the book here and the nice publisher sent me the missing cover piccie
.

food history, giveaway, book, The United States of Arugula, David Kamp

Todays’ website describes the cookbooks we are about to lose (as opposed to the innumerable ones that are already lost) and a particular program that intends to save them.

Most of the work of culinary history is done very quietly - take a moment and admire this particular labour. Without this program some cookbooks would be gone and all their lore and foodways would be lost to the future.

Every now and again I participate in an Absolute Writers Blogchain because they’re tremendous fun. I get to meet new writers and their blogs and to travel the world without leaving my desk. For the first time, I’m participating using this blog (in the past I’ve used my other blog, because it includes my thoughts on fiction and writing it).

How does it affect you, as readers? Firstly, you get a nice list of blogs you can visit. From here until the chain is finished, every blogger will be doing special posts when their turn comes, one after the other after the other. When it’s my turn, I’ll link to the previous post and everyone else involved will visist here. Please make them welcome :).

This is who they are:

Virginia Lee: I Ain’t Dead Yet!
writing@cathsmith.com
hunt & peck
Life, Writing, and Other Things
periodically.org
Food History
A View From the Waterfront
Organized Chaos
Willibee
The Road Less Traveled
awchain

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

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.