Food History

Technical whatevers mean I’m a day late with everything. Yesterday’s post was supposed to be a family recipe post and I promised Mod35sbabe that I would give her a 1940s recipe for her novel. There is an obvious recipe where these two promises coincide and that obvious recipe is raisin wine.

During World War II many imports to Australia were impeded. Happened all over the world. The Australian Jewish Community was particularly hard-hit, however, because it was *tiny*. Think of its size now - a bit more than 100,000 people - and then calculate how much smaller it was before the massive post-War influx. Jewish food changed after the War - no more Christmas pudding, no more roast potatoes that had been dipped in unkosher stuff.

During the War, things were different too. Even in the least kosher community in the world you need wine for Passover. And unleavened bread, but I don’t know what people did about that. I do know what the Melbourne Jewish community did about the wine, because my family was vaguely involved. I also know their source of dill pickles, because my maternal grandmother always maintained that Old Mr Pose used our family recipe. Since our family recipe for those pickles has been lost, it’s almost impossible to prove. We eat Pose’s pickles and enjoy them, every Passover, and recall the days when my grandfather and great-grandfather made their own and they tasted salty and garlicky and full of goodness. I will retell this to you next Passover in all likelihood.

The wine was a different matter. My grandmother had separated from her husband; they divorced after the war - Polack is my father’s maiden name. A friend of hers made the wartime wine for the Jewish community and she gave my grandmother the recipe.

We lost it, as families do, but my aunt found it again when I was doing culinary research and asked about family recipes. It was a secret recipe, but that was sixty years ago and all parties to the secret are dead.

Raisin wine

10 lbs* raisins chopped finely and put into stone jar with 11 bottles of water. Let it stand in a warm place for a week then strain off the raisins and put juice back in jar with 1/2 nutmeg 2 pieces of cinnamon. Mix through well and let it stand till a big skin forms. 5 tbs sugar 1 bottle of water and 1 botle of wine dissolved over fire. Pour into jar and mix well. brown sugar for colouring. 1 lb* white sugar and a little water. Boil over slow fire till dark brown. Add slowly 1 cup of water.

*could be tbs, but lbs is more probable

Note: I get the impression that both women knew what they were doing with this recipe and that only the key and forgettable bits were included. Think of it as features and notes, rather than the whole recipe. If anyone has a knowledge of winemaking (Yes, Farley, I am dropping hints in your direction - how did you guess? ) and could fill in the blanks, then it might be possible to actually make this recipe and recreate this little bit of Jewish history. I don’t feel safe making it according to these notes, myself - but I’ve never made wine so I don’t know what to look for and how to spot potential problems.