Food History

The medlar (Mespilus germanica) is a fruit like no other. It has to be almost rotten (bletted) before it’s edible, but when it reaches that stage it’s entirely delicious. I’m going to test this over the next few weeks (as I do whenever I can obtain this fruit, which is a bit hard to find in Australia) as I just purchased a vast quantity from Pialligo Apples.

I was arranging an excursion to the orchard with my food history class, you see. Jonathan Banks has many rare trees and we thought it would be a good way to end the course. As it will be. Somehow, along the way, he mentioned that his medlars were ready and I ended up buying them. Simple cause and effect.

Medlars are deciduous. They’re brown and look like something that ought to be fed to pigs. Let them blett and they taste like the best dessert apples served with cinnamon, cloves and a touch of molasses. Jonathan says they have been known since Roman times, but in my frantic search last night (I spent all of fifteen minutes searching - it was not a very thorough search) I only traced them back as far as Charlemagne. Charlemagne wanted people to grow them, along with a host of other plants. Charlemagne was lousy at recipes, alas, and the oldest recipe I have so far is from the late sixteenth century. Unless it’s in my Apicius - I haven’t checked there yet.

I need to do more research. The question is, do I need more medlars to encourage the research? I have more medlars in my loungeroom than I’ve ever seen in my life before (and this is after my students took pity on quite a few of them) and I’m contemplating getting more? Yes, there is indeed something special about medlars. They have a terrible reputation, though, and I’ll refer you offsite to read about that aspect: I like them too much to write evil things about them. Now I must hide them under my bed so they can rot … blett (sorry, medlars) in peace.

To keep you out of my medlar stash, here’s a recipe. It’s from Thomas Dawson’s The Good Huswifes Jewell, London 1596.

To make a Tarte of Medlers

Take medlers that be rotten, and stamp them, then let them sit on a chafing dish and coales, and beate in two yolkes of egges, boyling it till it be somewhat thick, then season them with suger, sinamon, and ginger and lay it in paste.

food history, fruit, ingredients, medlars, recipe, Medlar Tart

I should have given you a recipe for Anzac Biscuits on ANZAC Day. I feel a bit bad about that, because it’s Australia’s holiday to remember the war dead from the disastrous Gallipoli landing. Why do I feel guilty today? Today Mexico is remembering an entirely different battle, the Battle of Puebla in 1862.

The big difference is that Australia gambles, drinks and has memorial services on ANZAC Day (New Zealand does the same thing, but without the gambling) whereas Mexico and countries linked to Mexico tend to focus on food and family and general merriment. Here are links to a bit more information about the holiday.

I’m not going to give you any recipes today, because another 451 blogger has developed a complete meal for the occasion. Start with Elementary Chef’s menu. Work your way back through the linked posts and over the next few posts Stephanie will talk you through the food prep and leave you to enjoy your party.

I do wonder what the French do on Cinco de Mayo, given that they lost that particular battle. Maybe they make bad puns. I’m carefully restraining myself from making puns about mayonnaise sinks, for instance (sinks de mayo).

Next year I might give you a biscuit recipe and talk about ANZAC Day - the Cinco de Mayo looks like a great deal more fun, though.

PS I know I linked to Texan chilli, but the truth is that chili is regional. The reason I linked to Texan - since people have asked - is because it gave us the chili that much of the rest of the world knows. There are quite specific and authentic chilis for the whole region, including Mexico. I have a really interesting recipe for an Arkansas chili, which I intend to make as soon as the overnight temperature hits zero.

food history, Cinco de Mayo, chhilli, chili, ANZAC Day

There are lots of chili recipes in the world, but perhaps the most important region in terms of how the rest of the world views chili is Texas. Here’s a page about Texan chili with an extraordinary number of links to recipes. For everyone in the Southern Hemisphere, may they help you get through these cold nights. For everyone else, maybe the spice will help ameliorate summer heat? Well, maybe not.

I can’t offer you fries with that, so maybe a picture will do?

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.

I’m being very self-indulgent tonight. I refuse to bake myself a birthday cake for tomorrow and I refuse to do without one, so I’m giving everyone a birthday cake entry here. Call it a virtual birthday cake.

Let’s start with the history of the word cake. The Food Museum suggests it comes from an Old Norse word kaka, which sounds quite possible. I won’t go into modern meanings of kaka - just accept that cake came from an good Old Norse root and has nothing in common.

This word-origin is important because it places the original concept of a cake (as oposed to a bread) with the pre-Norman inhabitants of England. In other words, it’s a little sunbeam of hope that people made cakes before they made recipe books. The fact that they probably made those cakes without leaving us much evidence is irrelevant - we need proof, and the history of the word cake gives us that hope.

The online Oxford English Dictionary traces the word cake to c 1230, which is good. It means I can accept cake existed from at least the thirteenth century and probably significantly earlier. There might even be a direct link with Roman cookery and cakes might be continuing and ancient. I rather suspect they might, but ‘rather suspect’ does not equal proof and I’ve never looked at cake history before.

Alas, the OED isn’t nearly as useful for the early entry of the phrase birthday cake. In fact, it’s not useful for birthday cake at all. There are a lot of theories about the origin of birthday cakes online. Some sites suggest they come straight from Ancient Greece, others from Medieval Germany. Actual evidence is rare. The most convincing site suggests that birthday cakes as we know them come from the nineteenth century. Why does this convince me more than the others? Mainly because this site points to major changes in transport and trade and tools, which would really have made birthday cakes a lot easier to achieve. It also doesn’t rely on assumptions about Medieval birthday cakes, for which no-one gives evidence. I need to investigate where these mysterious cakes were made that had prizes hidden in them and were served on birthdays. It’s not impossible they existed, but I like my evidence strong.

I don’t have a picture of a birthday cake to give you. How is this?

None of the pictures I could find had the right number of candles on them. Picture in your mind a chocolate mud cake or a nice sachertorte. Decorate it (not too much) and place 46 candles on it. Carry this in your head through 25 April and sing happy birthday to me from time to time. I won’t ask for proof you’ve done any of this - some things just have to be taken on trust.

Look what a kindly person sent me - a link to a recipe for ship biscuits with a nice reference to a Medieval version. One thing my very slow foray into biscuits and scones is that the hard cracker type of biscuit that was used on board ship has a continuing history. This we could have deduced, but it’s nice to know, and not to rely on deduction. So far it’s the oldest type of attested biscuit and the type that continues regardless of other developments. I still don’t know how the twice-cooked element fits.

It’s suddenly turned cold in Canberra. All around me people are asking for chocolate recipes and alcohol recipes. One person asked for a dalek recipe, but I had already found them one. Here.

The cold and the need for things that warm make me think of fondue. It was so popular in the sixties and seventies in Australia and the trend has come back. I might have to fish out my rather old fondue forks. These days it’s not the cheese fondue of my childhood, or the pizza-flavoured cheese fondue of my life in the eighties, but rich, dark chocolate fondue.

About.com has found what they think might possibly be the recipe that started the chocolate fondue craze. Their recipe comes from The Swiss Cookbook, by Nika Standen Hazelton. It’s here. Suitable for any weather, but especially suited for an icy Saturday night. The alcohol keeps out the cold.

You really don’t want to hear about the doings of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild, do you? Pity. I have lots to say. We had a meeting tonight and wonderful stuff is happening. The only food-related parts of the wonderful stuff all relate to the Regency Gothic Banquet and you already know about that. There’ll be an update here just as soon as we do the next bit of testing. And no, I am not giving out the apricot icecream recipe until after the Convention in five months time. (everyone wants the apricot icecream recipe now, instantly, and their lives will be ruined without it - never go to meetings if you are the holder of crucial historical recipes, even if the meetings are all about fiction)

From Regency to Edwardian is barely a hop, step and jump to the mind of a Medievalist. A century, what’s that?

There is a new BBC program all about trying Edwardian food and seeing how big one’s belt has to get to encompass it. It may take a while to come here, but when it does I promise I will trot out some suitable recipes. For all those who get to watch it now, you get a link to an article by the subject of the exercise. He was so happy to become Edwardian for a week and then he had his cholesterol measured. He suddenly realised that for real time travelling you need a bit more physical awareness than HG Wells described.

May one of the free-to-air Australian TV stations buy this series, soon!

My mild practical joke was yesterday and I am a sober and serious historian today, working on a paper on Australian Jewish foodways for a July conference so I thought you’d like a small collection of interesting links. They’re each and every one of them chosen for different reasons. All of them relate to food history, of course.

The first link perhaps needs some explaining. It’s a reference table for historians (and possibly historical novelists) and shows grain prices over time. What’s really cool about this sort of thing is that you can look at grain prices and find out about food and society and whether society gets the food it needs. Riots and misery result when basic foodstuffs can’t be had and changes of government can be forced when the society puts the blame squarely on government. Think of the English Corn Law or the earlier Assizes. One day I might do a post on the Assizes and another day I might do one on the Corn Law and its history, but in the interim, take a look at Richard Unger’s grain price pages.

I realised this morning that I haven’t put nearly enough chocolate on these pages, so here’s a web entry that has some gorgeous eighteenth century chocolate pots. I want me one of these. I’m curious to taste the effect of the frother/molenillo (the wooden device that slots into the lid) - right now I use a hand capuccino frother or my blender, but I can’t know how near or far I am from the correct texture until I taste it made properly.

The next link is an example of a type of site I want to see more of. It’s the food specific to St Louis (excuse me while I break into song - in fact ignore me while I break into song, because my voice sounds nothing like Judy Garland’s. On a good day I sing on key, and that’s the most you can hope for.). What’s cool about this site is that it lists some of the foodstuff that the people of St Luis treasure as part of their culinary history. You can argue all you like about what food came from where and when things were introduced, but until a great deal more local histories are done we don’t even know a small percentage of what foods people claim as their own. The French do local pride in food particularly well, but St Louis has a rather impressive list of foods that have historical resonance for them:

Toasted Ravioli
Gooey butter cake
Prosperity sandwich
Pork Steaks
The Concrete
Peanut Butter
The Slinger
Provel â„¢ cheese
St. Louis style Pizza
St. Paul Sandwich
Brain Sandwich
Soft drinks - Whistleâ„¢, Howdy, 7-UPâ„¢ (its first name was “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Sodas” - very catchy)
Ice Cream in a Cone
Hot Dog on precisely the right bun
Iced Tea
Hamburg Steak as a Sandwich (Hamburger)
Cotton candy (what us other countries call fairy floss)
Crab Rangoon
Bar-B-Que
Ham Steak
Bissinger’sâ„¢ chocolates

The great thing about lists like these is the minute we read them we think “But I know of such and such that was earlier” and “I know where they got that from.” And that’s the point. We need local claims so they can be substantiated and then we can look for patterns in what was eaten and when. We can find out who ate fairy floss and who ate cotton candy. We can look at different varieties of barbecue and work out what regions shared the same tastes.

If your town has a website that delves into the food it likes, invented or is proud of, I would love to see it. Same with local cookbooks. History is all about evidence, and there’s a lot of gorgeous material that never gets past the local school fete. This website is why St Louis is my favourite city this Monday.

The last website for now is one that balances the recipes for a Medieval dinner I gave a little while back. It’s a menu for < a href="http://www.kateryndedevelyn.org/eng1intr.htm"> fourteenth century meal.

Which reminds me, the next test for the Regency Gothic Banquet happens to be at my place and on my birthday. I think that after the meal everyone might enjoy my favourite fourteenth century hypocras recipe. It will mix periods in a shocking and delightful way.

I have been quietly pursuing a little mystery recently. The probable answer was staring me in the face, as it so often does with little mysteries.

Chorizo is the classic Spanish pork sausage. It ought to have nothing in common with Jewish cooking. Except that old Jewish recipes from the right sort of background (a branch of Sephardi that retained its Spanish cooking heritage with particular vigour) contain something called chorissa and it serves close enough to the same function as chorizo in that cuisine. They have to be the same thing. And they can’t. Pork is not commonly part of Jewish foodways. This was driving me quietly crazy.

I found half an answer in Chaim Raphael’s edition of The Jewish Manual. Chorissa was a specifically Jewish sausage, sold at a specialist Jewish butcher in nineteenth century London. It was used in recipes that were decidedly Sephardi.

But what was in the sausages? Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been pork. They were probably smoked beef sausages. The only evidence I have is here, however, and this may be a local variant.

From a general standpoint, my mystery is solved, but from the point of view of an historian, it has only really just started. Knowing that an ingredient existed and was used in a certain way in 1846 in London isn’t the same as tracing it from 1492 Spain to 1846 London. America in the late eighteenth century is the first step of my link and probably close enough to London so that I can assume that chorissa were smoked beef sausages. I need more evidence, though.

I don’t have time for a proper search, but I’ll keep my eyes open and report in as I find more links. To celebrate having come this far though, tomorrow I’m going to tell my Jewish butcher story. If I don’t, remind me. You’ll be really sorry to miss it if I forget. Trust me on this.

Paul who blogs at Toybender suggested I look at YouTube as a source for blogmatter. My immediate reaction was “But what on YouTube would actually add to your joy of food history?” The answer is, lots of things.

Bear with me while I learn how to post from YouTube. Things might be a bit creaky and amateurish at first, as I learn a bit of new blogging technique. Thank you, Paul - I see much fun in this (which makes sense, given your blog is a great deal of fun).

This advertisement has so much information in it I don’t know where to start. I think just this once it can be its own commentary. I will return to my Passover preparations and leave you to the joy of new Jello Instant Pudding (”easy, nourishing and so delicious” but terribly, terribly unkosher, being full of gelatine).

I’ve talked in other posts of other places to buy herbs and spices online, but today I received a little parcel from Herbie’s. They only had a third of my dream list of hard-to-get stuff, but they got me my herbs and spices incredibly quickly and the quality is just gorgeous. I keep picking up my packets of chilli and admiring the gorgeousness of their content.

I have grains of paradise and file powder, long pepper and cinnamon leaf. I have Eucalyptus Olida, Mexican chocolate and three different types of chilli. And I have my favourite spice of all: cubebs. Expect posts on all these as I revisit them with my class and elsewhere later in the year.

I’m playing with your brain. [insert creepy music here] Well, maybe not everyone’s brain - just a few readers. I posted about my teaching on my normal blog and then realised it was also a culinary history post. I was going to send people in circles from one blog to another and think evil thoughts all the while, but instead I’ll just paste the body of my post and anyone who reads both blogs can have five minutes off.

“Because I’m in an exceptionally kind mood, I thought I would share with you what the apples looked like that endangered Isaac Newton’s brain. What I really want right now, though is to eat the Gloria Mundi variety, so I can exclaim “Sic transit Gloria Mundi” as I munch.

Why am I fixating on historical apples? Because I can’t make up my mind how long before my Food in History course begins is the right time to ring the local heritage apple orchard (which has Pearmains!) and to ask if we can please have a class excursion there.

The excursion isn’t on the course outline and would be entirely optional, but the apple guy knows his stuff (and has Pearmains!!) and it would be an exceptionally cool thing to do. It would be especially exceptional in May, if I have my when-apples-ripen correct and quite a few varieties are in season (my inner-apple-date is all based on Passover - we always had our first Grannies and Goldens for first night Passover when I was a child).

In an ideal world, we might be able to ask for a tour and then buy a heap and take them away for tasting or for historical cooking. Now wouldn’t *that* be an excursion and a half - an orchard and then cook historical varieties in recipes from their period of earliest note. I don’t know if we’d do that the same day or if we’d divvy the loot and bring recipes in the next Tuesday. I suspect I’m in dreaming mode until I ring the amazing apple guy and ask what he thinks.

Maybe it’s peak harvest for him and excursions aren’t possible. We shall see. It may not be possible at all. In which case I will browse on the Brogdale Horticultural site for many hours, exclaiming “Sic transit gloria mundi” for entirely different reasons.”

Today’s ingredient is sumac berries. There are various types of sumac. Some are more poisonous than others. The ones that are most readily available are the poisonous North American one (rhus vernix) and the fruit used in Middle Eastern cooking (rhus coriara). Some people call the latter “Lebanese thymusâ€?. It has a lovely tart and slightly sour flavour and is useful in a wide range of dishes. In languages ranging from English to Hebrew, it’s known as ’sumac’. If you want the technical specifications for poisonous sumac or more about the origins of the plant, check here.

Edible sumac has a nice long history. I suspect that nice long history takes it as far back as Ancient Egypt, but I still have to explore it a bit. There are some mentions of it imported into Europe during the Middle Ages, but evidence of how it was used is much harder to discover.

A very easy salad is tomatoes, lots of parsley, olive oil, lemon juice and lots of sumac. I also add a generous amount to meat patties.

Kaaron Warren and I are in the middle of wondering about how edible jellied substances are when used in conjunction with savoury food. This is largely a matter of fashion. Right now, in Australia, we haven’t seen aspic or its equivalents in many circumstances for a while. It looks passing strange and inedible. Not to all Australians, but in general.

Because of this conversation, I find it hugely essential to demonstrate that aspic and jellied savoury food is an important part of our past. It was more so in the US than in Australia, but Australia didn’t escape the craze either. It wasn’t so long ago, either. Recent enough that it entertains me that the thought of aspic makes a horror writer go ‘ick.’

You can find some pictures here. Given the title of the book they accompany, what I’ve said above, and the comments that go alongside the pictures, I believe my work here is done for tonight. Not all of these recipes should be tried at home, bu there is some most excellent use of jelly in there.