I just had a clever thought. I can celebrate the Olympics and go back to a project I started ages ago and ran out of steam on. I hate running out of steam. I especially hate the little energy I have this week, but this project doesn’t take so much energy and it has recipes that are laden with deliciousness and memories.

What am I talking about?

When we study overseas, we choose what bits of our culture we can’t do without. It’s a special time and place in the lives of traveling foodies, where big decisions are made about what is important in personal food history.

In a particular notebook of mine, I have these choices made – not just by myself (which is what I started chronicling, a while back) but for students from all over the world. Some were studying in Australia, some in Canada, some in London and some in Paris. The recipes they chose to teach me were ones that helped from their foodways and cultural identity.

These decisions are so crucial to the creation of food history. Whenever we move or travel, whether it’s voluntarily or not, the foodstuffs and opportunities at the place we arrive, and the memories and cooking skills we bring with us, create, transform and can achieve amazing things.

I can’t give you the names and stories of my friends: those things are private. I can give you recipes from their countries and maybe some of the background surrounding why these recipes or notes were important.

It’s food history from a different direction – one which we all experience. Every time we make new friends or taste a good cake at a staff morning tea we are in danger of changing our foodways. This is one of the key ways it can happen from country to country.

Look for some delicious recipes ahead. When I’m well and when the Olympics are over, I’ll delve further into the past again.

I’m still sick as sick. I can’t leave you with nothing, though I don’t have any oomph in me to prepare you more posts on different countries. I hope biscuit recipes will do for tonight. Alice Bradley was a Fanny Farmer person, so these biscuits are probably really superior.

FOR LUNCHEON AND SUPPER GUESTS
TEN MENUS
MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED RECIPES
SUITABLE FOR COMPANY LUNCHEONS
SUNDAY NIGHT SUPPERS, AFTERNOON PARTIES
AUTOMOBILE PICNICS, EVENING SPREADS
AND FOR TEA ROOMS, LUNCH ROOMS
COFFEE SHOPS, AND MOTOR INNS
BY
ALICE BRADLEY
PRINCIPAL OF MISS FARMER’S SCHOOL OF COOKERY
AUTHOR OF “THE CANDY COOK BOOK” AND “COOKING FOR PROFIT”
WHITCOMB & BARROWS
BOSTON, 1923

EGG BISCUITS

Sift together
2 cups bread flour, measured after sifting once
5 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt and
1 tablespoon sugar. Work in with fingers
2 tablespoons shortening. Add
1 egg yolk, slightly beaten, mixed with 2/3 cup milk, cutting it in with a knife. Toss on floured cloth or board and knead 5 minutes. Shape in any way suggested below. Bake 15 minutes at 400 degrees F. Brush with milk or melted butter just before removing from the oven.

SOUR CREAM DROP COOKIES

Cream
1/4 cup butter or margarine. Add gradually
1/2 cup sugar and
1 egg, well beaten. Dissolve
1/4 teaspoon soda in
1/4 cup rich sour cream. Add to first mixture alternately with
1 1/4 cups pastry flour sifted with
1/4 teaspoon salt and
2 teaspoons baking powder. Add
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup raisins cut in pieces and
1/4 cup nut meats cut in pieces. Drop by spoonfuls on greased tin sheet, and bake in a moderate oven.

Double the amount of flour may be used, nuts and raisins omitted,
and mixture chilled and rolled out and cut in any desired shape,
before baking.

ORANGE BISCUITS

Sift together
2 cups bread flour
5 teaspoons baking powder and
1 teaspoon salt. With tips of fingers rub in
2 tablespoons shortening. Twenty minutes before the meal is to be served add 7/8 cup milk, mixing with a knife. Roll out 3/4 inch thick and cut with round cutter 1 inch in diameter. Place close together on a greased tin sheet. Break 16 lumps demi-tasse loaf sugar in halves and squeeze the Juice of 1/2 orange. Dip pieces of sugar one at a time in the orange juice and push a piece down in the center of each biscuit. Grate Orange rind over the biscuits and bake 15 minutes in a hot oven or at 450 degrees F.

MARMALADE BISCUITS

Sift together
2 cups bread flour
5 teaspoons baking powder and
1 teaspoon salt. With tips of fingers work in
2 tablespoons shortening. Add
7/8 cup milk, stirring with a knife. Toss on a floured cloth or board and roll out 1/4 inch thick. Cut in oval shapes 6 inches long and 3 inches wide with round ends. Lay on tin sheet. Make 1/2-inch cuts 1 inch from and parallel with the ends. Put 1 teaspoon of orange marmalade in the center.
Bring one end of dough through hole in other end. Press edges together and bake in hot oven or at 450 degrees F. for 15 minutes. Pastry may be used instead of baking powder biscuit dough for these turnovers.

QUICK ORANGE MARMALADE

Remove skins in quarters from
2 oranges and
1 lemon, close to the pulp. Break up pulp and remove seeds. Add 1/2 cup water and simmer in covered saucepan for 45 minutes. Boil rind from oranges and lemons with 4 cups water in covered saucepan for 20 minutes. Drain and discard water. With sharp-edged spoon scrape out and discard white part of skins, leaving only yellow rind. With sharp knife shred yellow rinds just as thin as possible in pieces about 1 inch long. Simmer shredded rinds again in 2 1/2 cups water in covered saucepan for 15 minutes. Drain and discard water. Mix cooked pulp with rinds. Measure 2 cups of mixed rind and pulp, adding water if necessary to make up this amount. Add 3 1/2 cups sugar and mix well. Stir constantly and bring to vigorous boil over hot fire. Boil hard for 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from fire, add 1/4 cup commercial pectin. Stir well. Let stand 5 minutes only, stirring occasionally. Pour into glasses.

These last few weeks I’ve been a bit erratic because of health problems. Alas, right now they’re particularly bad. I found myself in hospital last night, even. It’s nothing fatal, but it is very exhausting. I’ll post when I can, and I’ll see if I can find you a couple of guests so that you don’t miss out entirely, but for today and tomorrow and maybe Monday I shall be concentrating on resting. If I find my brain clears, then I’ll post and if it doesn’t, I promise to be back and soon as I can.

My great contribution to food history today is the hospital breakfast. In the emergency ward at a big Australian hospital, you get a tray with two slices of toast, some yellow spread (not butter), some raspberry jam, two weetbix, a small tub o milk, a small bowl of canned pears and a small glass of apple juice. Also, a cup of tea.

The challenge is eating it. On one arm a blood pressure monitor that would go off without warning (it was scheduled, but a whole night under observation and time goes very strange) and on the other hand an intravenous drip and a pulse monitor.

The company was curious too. In the next booth a man who was asked “When did you have that kidney transplant?” and answered “When I was 93.” was replaced with a very ill gentleman who was being asked very quiet questions by a pair of policemen. It was so much more polite and relaxed than on TV, though the male policeman was rather gorgeous, he held himself very diffidently – I bet asking questions in an emergency ward would make anyone diffident. The man, though, had been bashed up badly – I walked past him as he was on his way elsewhere (recumbent) and I was on my way out (wobbly, medicated, but going home).

I’ll keep things as normal as I can till I get better, but please forgive me if I slip up.

Today we visit Hungary in the nineteenth century. I’m beginning to notice that my history resources and my cookbooks are heavily European, Australian and from the USA. This isn’t by intent. It shows the weighting of food in our book culture, mainly, and what has been available to me.

Anyhow, Hungary is good. It’s in an interesting position geographically and historically and is closely linked to Austria in both respects.

The book I have in front of me is Andras Koerner’s A Taste of the past. The Daily Life and Cooking of a 19th-Century Hungarian Jewish Homemaker. This type of book is currently very popular in quite a few Jewish communities. So much of daily life and foodways was destroyed during the Holocaust.

Many people tend to think of Judaism as a simple whole, with everyone European and Jewish rather alike and closely related to the characters from Fiddler on the Roof. There were thousands of different Jewish foodways in Europe prior to World War II. Some of the differences were due to language, some due to the nature of the places where people lived. Other differences came according to political affiliation or the nature and level of Judaism that was practiced in the home and in the community.

Survival served as a kind of homogeniser, as diverse communities drew together or were pushed together. Differences still existed, but they had to be teased out from within Diaspora communities or much diminished European communities.

Koerner’s book documents some of what was nearly lost entirely and infuses it with a new life. It’s Hungarian Jewish food and foodways and shows the specifics of Hungary’s history as well as the nature of Jewish life in a particular Hungarian family. Koerner talks about a wide range of things that impact foodways: national identity, non-Jewish friends, intermarriage, love, dietary laws and how they were observed, how the kitchen and pantry operated, social occasions, religious occasions. Koerner puts all of this in the same perspective as I just did in his final (short) chapter. A world comes to an end.

At least, though, this world has been lovingly documented and some recipes and foodways have been saved. I’ve talked about this book before, I think and no doubt others like it will appear in my life. The Shoah makes it all so much more obvious. When massive numbers of people are killed or turned into refugees, foodways and food history is lost in mammoth amounts. Ties with the past and ties with ordinary life are dissolved. This sort of book helps us remember the destruction, but also helps limit that destruction, just a little. Our food past helps us know who we are.

When friends travel, I often ask them to watch out for things for me. A few weeks ago, K (who is responsible for quite a few of my site’s photographs) was in Finland. She sent me postcards with descriptions of a night out as a Medieval-style restaurant, posted lots of foodie pictures and kept an eye out for foodways. She also brought me back a cookbook written by Anna-Maija Tanttu called Northern Flavours. Food from Finland. It didn’t take much intelligence on my part to decide that Finland is tonight’s country.

Just inside the front cover of Northern Flavours is a lovely picture of a meadow full of cloudberries. Cloudberries are iconic, to me. They look like pale apricot versions of raspberries crossed with youngberries. They have a strong flavour with an almost medicinal quality to it, if I can go by the cloudberry jam and liqueur I’ve tasted. Even their name suggests a far northern cold climate, with the long sun in summer helping ripen them.

Finland has complex foodways. Yes, the climate is extreme, and only certain foods can be grown. Those foods include some amazing meats (elk and reindeer) and a range of delicious berries in summer.

Its history, however, means that locally –sourced food is only one part fo what’s available. There are large international influences from the east and from the south, because Finland has been key to Baltic trade for a long time. These influences go back quite a way. The Baltic States provided the rest of Europe with amber and also with furs in the Middle Ages. Luxury items, both, it meant that that wealthy traders could afford spices from far away. In Northern Flavours, there’s a recipe for roast lamb basted with chocolate that might possibly have developed from this combination of trading wealth and local produce.

One day I’ll have to trace the interplay of trade and war and country development with changes and developments of historical foodways in Finland. Until then, I have my brand new cookbook and I can start learning more about current foodways. That lamb recipe is high on my must-make list.

There is no order or logic in the postings for the next two weeks. I’ll post something about the food of a country or the food history of a country or a book that is relevant to either of these two things, or maybe my personal memories, or maybe…. Maybe anything, as long as I can link it to food history and the country of the day.

Today’s country is easy as pie. It’s Portugal. I had a book at the top of a pile and lo, that book concerned Portugal.

I don’t own the book because of the glories of Portuguese cuisine (though it definitely has those glories), but because it’s part of my slowly-growing collection of distinctive and interesting cookbooks. It’s called Cooking in Portugal and was published in 1963 by the American Women of Lisbon.

It’s bilingual and the editors point out that the Portuguese versions of the recipes have been tested for cooking in Portugal and the English versions are likewise suitable for the US. It also has an interesting history. This is the revised edition and there were 1350 copies of the first (from 1953), before 2000 copies of this edition were published.

Because of its bilingual target audience it has over thirty pages of useful vocabulary for cooking and buying ingredients and household supplies. I now know that waxed paper is papel vegetal and that pot holders are pegas para panelas. More importantly, if I need a corkscrew, it’s a saca-rolhas. (My sister is winemaking in Portugal right now, so it’s good I know what a corkscrew is.)

More importantly, the herb and spice vocabulary has annotations on how to use the spice (nutmeg must be grated, for instance) and some of the Portuguese use of them (horseradish is hard to find and garlic and onion salt cannot be found at all). These notes and the notations on the fruit and vegetable vocabularies about when each comes into season really make this a special book. It gives unintentional guidance on the difference of two sets of foodways and how the US side negotiated its way through the Portuguese side. Even the different meat cuts are documented (porterhouse steak is alcatra).

Apart from these things (and the fact that it’s a hardback) it is a very familiar book. The names of the donors are given and recipes are surprisingly varied, rather than being purely US or Portuguese.

If you want recipes, just ask. I’ve run out of steam tonight, but I’m happy to do another post on the book; this one containing recipes.

Today’s emergency post from a still-unwell-Gillian comes from a volume that’s really a correspondence course. It’s by Alice Bradley, was published in 1922 by the American School of Home Economics and is called Cooking For Profit. It’s a very handy resource on a large number of things and I might have to introduce it to you properly one day.

Cookies

Work until creamy
1 cup butter substitute, and add
2 cups sugar gradually. 4 eggs well beaten
3 cups flour, sifted with
4 teaspoons baking powder
I teaspoon salt and
1 teaspoon nutmeg if desired. Add
4 tablespoons milk and
3 cups flour and flavoring.

Put in ice box or in a cool place until thoroughly chilled, when mixture should be quite stiff. Take out a small portion at a time, on a floured cloth, roll until thin as paper, shape as desired. Place on greased tin and bake 8 minutes in a moderate oven.

Fancy Cookies

1. Sprinkle mixture generously with cocoanut when partially rolled out, finish rolling.
2. Sprinkle mixture with cinnamon and sugar before cutting out.
3. To the mixture add 1 cup chopped nut meats, roll thin, shape, sprinkle with chopped nuts and bake.
4. Put a few currants in the center of each cookie before baking.
5. Put 1 teaspoon caraway seed in the mixture before chilling.
6. To mixture add squares [sorry, number of squares is not clear on the electronic version of the book I'm consulting - also, some of those 1s mught be 1/2s - I need a hard copy of this book!!] melted chocolate before chilling.
7. Use maple sugar instead of plain sugar and sprinkle cookies with maple sugar and chopped pecan nut meats.
8. Flavor cookies with grated orange rind.
9. To mixture add 1 cup chopped candied ginger.
10. Shape cookie mixture with heart, diamond, club and spade cutters. When baked spread hearts and diamonds with frosting colored red, and clubs and spades with melted sweet chocolate.

Baking Powder Biscuits are quickly made if you keep on hand flour ready mixed with baking powder and salt. Each day the shortening may be mixed with the amount of flour you are likely to use. As orders come in milk may be added and biscuits should be ready to serve in 20 minutes. Serve with butter and
Honey or
Maple syrup or
Marmalade or
Jam, preserve or conserve

Baking Powder Biscuits may have one of the following mixtures spread on the dough and then be rolled up, cut off and baked:
Butter and brown sugar
Butter, sugar and cinnamon
Butter and marmalade
Butter, sugar, raisins and spice
Butter, maple sugar and nuts
Butter, sugar and orange juice and rind.

Tonight my post is so late it’s almost tomorrow and it has to be biscuits and scones. Sorry about this, but I’ve had a tempestuous week and it has caught up with me. My body keeps telling me that so much drama in a week is just not permitted. It’s biscuits and scones, therefore, for the whole weekend.

Anyhow, you needed an extra day or so to ponder what countries need to be in our miniature Olympics of food. So far I have China, Finland and Portugal. Oh, and Columbia. Sort of. Just read below and make up your own mind about Columbia, I think.

Favorite dishes. A Columbian Autograph Souvenir Cookery Book. Over three hundred autograph recipes, and twenty-three portraits, contributed specially by the Board of Lady Managers of the World’s Columbian Exposition.
compiled by Carrie V. Shuman, Chicago, 1893

BAKING POWDER BISCUIT.
From MRS. ROLLIN A. EDGERTON, of Arkansas, Secretary of State Board, and Lady Manager.
To one quart of flour add two teaspoons of baking powder, one more of salt, and a tablespoon of lard; mix with sweet milk sufficient to roll out on board without sticking; cut with biscuit tin and bake quickly in hot oven.

HERMITS OR FRUIT COOKIES.
From MRS. SUSAN G. COOKE, of Tennessee, Secretary of the Board of Lady Managers.
I take pleasure in sending you the enclosed recipes. I thought if anyone should send you a recipe for Cookies it ought to be myself. I anticipate spending many pleasant hours in the hereafter trying the recipes of our well known Lady Managers. With best wishes, believe me always, Most cordially yours.
Three eggs, one and one-half cup sugar, one cup butter, one large cup of raisins stoned and chopped, one teaspoon soda; one teaspoon cloves, one teaspoon allspice, one teaspoon cinnamon, flour enough to roll.

COOKIES.
From MISS LILY IRENE JACKSON, of West Virginia, Lady Manager.
Three eggs, two cups of sugar, one cup of butter, one cup of sweet milk, two teaspoons baking powder mix soft, roll thin, bake in a quick oven.

“CORINITA” COOKIES.
From MISS LUCIA B. PEREA, of New Mexico, Alternate Lady Manager.
One cup sugar, one-fourth cup butter, three eggs well beaten together, one cup milk, two teaspoonfuls baking powder well sifted in two cups flour.

COOKIES.
From MRS. ROBT. B. MITCHELL, of Kansas, Lady Manager.
Beat to a cream one cup of butter, two and one-half cups of sugar and the yolks of two eggs. Add a cup of sour cream, into which has been dissolved a small teaspoonful of soda; beat the whites of four eggs to a stiff froth; add to the butter and sugar; flavor to taste; use as little flour as possible to make of consistency to roll thin; sprinkle with sugar; flour the cutter to keep dough from sticking; bake in a quick oven.

GINGER COOKIES.
From MRS. CLARA L. MCADOW, of Montana, Lady Manager.
Two tumblers molasses, one tumbler sweet milk, one tumbler butter, one tablespoon soda, one tablespoon ginger. Well beaten. Mix very soft. Roll thick. Bake in a quick oven.

While not all Aussies are addicted to sports, quite a few additional sports addicts magically appear during the days of the Olympic Games. We need a strategy to deal with this, us foodies. The only ones who are naturally equipped are foodies who are sports addicts as well, or can persuade themselves that they’ll be sufficiently interested in a thousand and one sports to survive the Olympics.

My strategy is to talk a bit about foods in various Olympic countries other than Australia and the US, which get very solid outings on this blog on a regular basis. I shall start tomorrow. I have a book about food in Chinese culture you need to meet.

I can’t do this alone. Well, I can, but if I do, then you may miss an opportunity to find out a few tidbits about a country of your choice. So, pick a country. Any country. As long as it’s not Australia or the US. If I blog your country and you send me an address, then I shall send you one of my postcards with a recipe from that country on the back (and the Prohibition period recipe on the front, of course).

If I don’t know much about the food history of the countries you choose, then I’ll give you something about their current cuisine, or maybe a recipe or two. If no-one names a country or if the countries named are simply too few, then I’ll provide information according to my mood of the day or according to what bits of Olympic news happen to hit my desk.

I’m willing to play this game right up till the closing ceremony.

This week has made me think. Not just about death, but about food traditions associated with death.

My particular branch of Judaism (Anglo-Australian, mostly) links food to almost everything. After the burial close family eats together (in a fairly informal way) and after each minyan (nightly memorial service for eh week of death) we eat too.

There’s no standard fare, though, because it all depends on what people bring who are not the next of kin. When my grandmother died, we found ourselves gifted with more casseroles than biscuits. When Dad died, I seem to remember devilled eggs and many cakes. Also never-ending cups of tea.

The night Dad died was all about biscuits and tea. For me, these are the foods of comfort in times forlorn. I was going to make some of Mum’s biscuits tomorrow, in Dad’s memory, but (since I’m still not well – I’m going for the Guinness Book of World Winter Bug Records) instead I made a gingernut log. A friend is bringing scones, and I’m making club sandwiches (of the Jewish sort, which means that everyone but me is going to have a bit of a shock – apparently the normal version has meat paste or some such thing), a cheese platter and putting out some nibbles. Maybe I’ll make some pikelets, too. Very low key. This also fits the food of mourning. There really isn’t much energy at times like this. Not even my whirlwind mother cooks when emotion drains everything solid from life.

I’m interested to know what foods you associate with mourning and remembrance. It’s not something I know much about, and it’s about time I learned. In return, I’m giving you my recipe for Gingernut Log.

Gingernut Log

1 packet gingernut biscuits
1 container very thick cream (can be thickened)
Between ½-1 glass green ginger wine

Put all the cream in a bowl and mix with 2 tbs of the green ginger wine.

Spread a generous amount of plastic film over a big plate – allow extra for wrapping.

Put the rest of the wine in a pasta bowl (or anything that’s deep enough and has a flat enough base).

The method is really straightforward. You dip the bottom of a biscuit in the wine then turn and dip the other side. Put the first biscuit flat on the plate. Soon a teaspoon (or more, but more will make sensitive stomachs sick) of the cream on the biscuit. The next few biscuits you dip then stick them to the previous biscuit. When the stack gets high enough, place it horizontal across the plate. When you run out of biscuits or plate, spoon the rest of the cream around the roll and smooth it down.

Wrap the roll firmly in the plastic wrap. Wrap the whole lot in aluminium foil, pressing to make sure it’s all enchantingly even. Refrigerate for at least 24 hours.

We used to make this with chocolate ripple biscuits, cream and Madeira, but Dad liked ginger, so I’m getting two memories of my father in the one – somewhat rich – dish.