#cookery

Best Served With Peacock

~ Paula Harmon ~ Leave a comment

Still in a sort of limbo between writing projects, my plan for my three ‘free days’ last week (e.g. not doing the office job) was to:

  1. Draft outlines for three potential books, one being the magical one mentioned last week.
  2. Proof-listen to the audio book version of Murder Durnovaria.
  3. Start work in earnest on a recipe book I’ve been planning for a while.

For one reason and another, I only managed number three, and my long suffering (his words not mine) husband has been playing guinea pig again.

My first proper job involved working in a bookshop/coffeeshop. My then manager/friend/housemate, properly trained in catering college, was mesmerised by the way I cooked while muttering to myself, ‘I’ll bung some of that in, then throw in a bit of this and taste and see what happens’. She suggested I ought to write my recipes down and call it  ‘The Bung and Throw Cookbook’.

I never did of course, partly because I never measured anything, and it seemed like too much work to figure things out. Besides, after twelve months, I left to work in an office and never had the urge to return to a job in catering, Nevertheless at home, I continued making up and collecting recipes. For a good length of time, cooking was my main creative outlet, whether making something complex or simply trying to produce something quick and tasty from what happened to be in the cupboard or fridge. I still think it’s a wonderful way to relieve stress – as my mind has to leave troublesome things aside while it concentrates and creates.

Then I started writing historical fiction and wondered ‘what would my characters eat?’ as I explained here. From that point, I wondered if I could create a cookbook re-imagining what Lucretia (2nd Century), Katherine Demeray (1890s) and Margaret Demeray (1910s) might have eaten (that I might like to eat too).

The books I’m working with are The Roman Cookery Book which includes recipes from nearly two thousand years ago under the name of Apicius (translated and compiled by Katherine Rosenbaum and Barbara Flower), The Best Way published in 1909 and The Women’s Suffrage Cookery Book published in 1912.

It’s harder to re-imagine the food than you might think if you don’t know old recipe books, which are all written for people who fundamentally just needed ideas, not techniques. E.g. all three books are pretty much a forerunner of the ‘Bung and Throw Cookbook’ my friend suggested I wrote all those years go.

Would I eat any of the recipes? Yes (though not all).

Can I cook them easily from the information provided?  Well…

Working out recipes from The Roman Cookery Book is the hardest. Are all the herbs safe? (Or easily available?) What can I substitute for the ubiquitous garum (fermented anchovy paste)? How do I decipher some of the recipes? They mostly simply list ingredients and vague instructions without quantities or timings.

Some things are hard or undesirable to do: ‘cool in snow’, ‘remove the spines from your sea-urchin …’, ‘take your jellyfish …’, ‘best served with peacock’.

There are a lot of chicken recipes in the Roman book, but since until relatively recently a young (e.g. potentially tender) chicken was most valuable as an egg layer and hard to mass-produce, do they mean chicken or some other fowl?

The simplest way I’ve found to decipher some of them is following the wonderful Tavola Mediterranea website, but otherwise, I’m on my own.

The Suffrage Cookbook and The Best Way are more comprehensible to a modern cook. The ingredients can be easily bought (with the possible exception of brains which I don’t want to eat anyway). But some of the instructions are just as much ‘bung and throw’ as the Apicius book. ‘Enough of…’ ‘Some…’ ‘A bit…’ ‘The usual amount…’ There aren’t many chicken recipes but a fair amount for meat which is nowadays comparatively more expensive. There are more vegetarian and spicy recipes than people might think. Timings, when given, would turn most vegetables, pasta and rice into mush.

My idea is to take a selection of these recipes, work out the instructions and cook them as if Lucretia (or more likely her cook) or Katherine or Margaret would do with access to modern equipment (and less inclination to boil things for hours).

I’ve shared some deciphered recipes before here, and I’m ploughing ahead. It’ll be a long process, involving working the recipes out when necessary and then trying them on willing volunteers (mainly family).

On Saturday evening I cooked Chicken stuffed with Saccotosh (sic) for my husband and mother. Until recently, not being American, I’d honestly thought that ‘Succotash’ (along with sassafras) was a mock swearword made up by Looney Tunes, so it was interesting to find out what a British woman in 1912 – who obviously knew otherwise – had come up with.

The ingredient quantities are vague, the cooking instructions even more so. The main warning was ‘chicken should be sewn up to prevent the corn bursting out’. Anyway, I worked out what the missing details probably were, and without sewing anything or having the chicken explode, it proved delicious and was eaten to great appreciation.

On Sunday night, I made a Curry Pie. In terms of instructions, there’s sufficient filling information, but no explanation as to why it’s called pie when no pastry is referred to. But it does say to cook it in a pie-dish. So I sort of assumed the pastry and went for it. It was tasty too, but needs a bit more tweaking before I’m happy with it.

In the meantime, my husband remains the main recipient of all this experimentation. Do you think he’s insisting on cooking tonight to give me a rest, or because he’s worried that one day he’ll end up like the guy in the drawings below? Well, he’s going to make jambalaya using the leftover chicken from Saturday’s Succotash/Saccotosh recipe, so he can’t be too worried about my recipes.

Can he?

Words and pictures (c) Paula Harmon 2023, not to be used without the author’s express permission.

A Hint of Spices Past

~ Paula Harmon ~ 2 Comments

Ingredients: a good book, time, tasty food.

Method: Combine as desired. Try to keep grease spots and crumbs off the book.

VariatIon:

Ingredients: A historical recipe, unfamiliar ingredients, time, and a mixing bowl. 

Method: Follow recipes wondering if they’ll work. Eat the result whatever it turns out like. Don’t worry too much about crumbs and grease spots because they’re a badge of honour on a cookbook.

My interest in what people in ‘olden days’ might have eaten started when I was about nine and read a book called ‘The Gauntlet’ by Ronald Welch. In it, a modern boy is transported back to the Middle Ages and lives as a nobleman’s son in Carreg Cennen castle. At one point, someone brings in a dish of meatballs and there on the page was the recipe for how they were made. It somehow brought the scene alive, not simply to imagine them ‘doing a Henry VIII’ (as my aunt used to say, meaning to eat with ones fingers and chucking bones onto the rush-covered floor for the dogs to munch) but visualising the cook, sweating in the kitchen, preparing something I could actually cook myself one day.

Roll on a few years and as a writer of historical fiction, one of the things I like to research is what people might have eaten and how they might have managed their lives. Below, you can see a selection of my historical cookbooks (original, facsimile, translated).

You might think it’s hard to work out for Lucretia and her fellows in the Murder Britannica books but fortunately, not only are there translations of Apicius’s Cookbook but Farrell Monaco works out a modern version of those recipes and shares them on https://tavolamediterranea.com/ under Edible Archaeology. I’ve cooked a few of them myself for Sunday dinners and very nice they are too. 

It’s easier for the Caster and Fleet and Margaret Demeray books, because if all else fails, there’s Mrs Beeton. I bought my copy a very long time ago from a shop in the Forest of Dean which specialised in secondhand/antique cooking utensils and books. This edition is from the early 1930s though, so wanting to be sure that I had a better idea of what women who had to do their own cooking or at least help with it might have cooked, I sought other books. 

‘The Women’s Suffrage Cookery Book’ (facsimile) is interesting, as the recipes were sent in by ordinary women to be compiled into a book which not only would raise money but would suggest things a busy campaigning woman could cook and eat in a short time. They are all very simple, easy, and mostly cheap, nutritious and generally appealing even to modern tastes (maybe eating brains isn’t). There’s a vegetarian section and a sick room section and also practical hints and tips. ‘The Best Way’ book (original) gives pages of simple, flavoursome recipes and explains how to deal with anything from cleaning brass to baby care. I can imagine Margaret and Katherine referring to both of these, although only Margaret can cook well. 

Even though ‘Indian Cookery’ (original and pristine, so not a real cook’s book) dates from 1861. It would have been thirty plus years old by the time the Caster and Fleet and Liz Hedgecock’s Maisie Frobisher mysteries take place, but it’s perhaps possible that in a wealthy household like Connie’s or Maisie’s cook the cook would have had one as Indian cuisine was already very popular in Britain and Maisie has been to India. It was written by Richard Terry, chef de cuisine at the Oriental Club, what is referred to as the first Indian restaurant in London. I’m sure there were already others, run by Indian people with authentic recipes, but were perhaps not appreciated by well-off white British people at that time. The recipes in the book are all called ‘curry’ of course and doubtless are/were unrecognisable to anyone from India. There’s reference to a curry powder blend, the recipe for which is provided and a curry paste which isn’t, perhaps because the author sold it and wanted to keep the ingredients secret. Due to the British Raj, Indian food caught on (and was Anglicised) very quickly and has never looked back, though hopefully nowadays, there’s more authenticity and respect. For a fascinating if sobering article about the early British fascination with Indian cuisine, check out https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/curry-in-colonial-india

Although ‘Indian Cookery’ itself might not have been on the kitchen bookshelf of the average middle class woman like Margaret in the 1910s, don’t let anyone tell you that ‘foreign food’ like pasta, rice and all this spice is a modern thing. 

There are plenty of all of them in the Suffrage Cookbook, Mrs Beeton and ‘The Best Way’ which might have been. Cayenne, curry powder, chillies, curry paste, rice and pasta are all mentioned throughout. The Suffrage Cookbook includes a vegetarian version of babotie (spelled boboté) using a meat substitute called protose. Babotie is a spiced South African dish we often eat at home (meat version) and the recipe I follow is fairly similar. Apart from a slightly worrying recipe for ‘the kind of macaroni called spaghetti’ which boils it for half an hour otherwise, everything is very edible even if the recipes are sometimes a little vague as to method.

I also have a copy of ‘A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes’ first published in 1852, which aimed to help people on a limited budget cook nutritiously. This is a suggestion of what should be in a basic kitchen:

  • A cooking stove (with oven and with or without boiler)
  • A three gallon boiling pot
  • A one gallon saucepan with lid
  • A two quart ditto
  • A potato steamer
  • A frying pan
  • A twelve gallon copper for washing or brewing (or presumably both though not at the same time)
  • A gridiron (griddle/girdle/bakestone)
  • A mash tub
  • Two cooling tubs (or an old wine or beer cask cut into two would be cheaper and do the same)

The total cost for all this was apparently £6/12/4 – six pounds, twelve shillings and fourpence. To put this in context, even a clerk might be lucky to earn one pound a week and someone further down the social scale a lot less. The author (chief cook to Queen Victoria) suggests that if the reader doesn’t have enough savings to buy these, then they should save up. How long would that have taken given that your £1 per week also had to pay for rent and food? Having doubtless depressed the average working class wife and told her she must keep everything clean, the author next suggests a Sunday dinner for a family of ten with leftovers for the next day of boiled beef with cabbage and potatoes with suet pudding or dumplings. He says it will cost perhaps three shillings (and to note that small children only really need the dumplings). On a wage of £1 a six day working week, three shillings would have been one day’s wages. I imagine the leftovers may have lasted more than one day. You only need to read ‘A Christmas Carol’ or ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ to get an idea of how hard things could be . (Sadly they still are, and it’s good to know there are resources for cooking on a very limited budget, https://cookingonabootstrap.com/category/recipes-food/ being one.)

Going back to my research, of course, just reading the recipes is no good, I like to try them too. Yesterday, I had a historical baking afternoon. 

I made some Richmond Maids of Honour Tarts (bottom right on the plate), which have a history going back to Henry VIII’s time. The original recipe (which allegedly once involved a maid being locked up) is a closely guarded secret (though I assume she’s been let out by now). So I used this one by Delia Smith.

As April 25th was Anzac Day, (which commemorates the Australian and New Zealand soldiers who lost their lives in the Gallipoli campaign on 25th April 1915) I also made some Anzac biscuits (top). The recipe I followed to avoid having to choose between NZ or Aussie recipes was my gran’s and you can see it below (and a photograph of the original in her writing).

Finally I thought I’d go back to Roman times and make some barley biscuits with cheese and figs (left) from the Tavola Mediterrea site. 

How did it go? The tarts, while looking nothing like Delia’s are delicious. I used ready rolled puff pastry which I put in a patty pan and ended up with 12 tarts and a small amount of leftover filling. The Anzac biscuits, are delicious too, even though I had to use granulated instead of brown sugar (I’d run out and went to the shop to get some and of course forgot and came out with something else entirely as you do). The barley biscuits dough possibly needed more water as the dough was quite dry, but the end result is very good, a little like an oatcake biscuit. I drizzled them with maple syrup and the cheeses are Mantego, Cheddar and Philadelphia.

What’s on the menu today? Well, I have some cod and a Roman recipe book. What about Patella Lucretianam? It’s a cod recipe with herbs and spring onions. I have all of those. And according to the book, ‘Lucretius has yet to be identified.’ What if it wasn’t a Lucretius? What if a certain Lucretia inspired the recipe and Apicius wrote it down wrong? Mmm.  It seems a bit bland for Lucretia. Now what’s in the fridge that’ll go with cod and onions really well? Aha! Chorizo. I can pretend it’s spicy Lucanian sausage. That’ll be right up Lucretia’s street. 

Now where’s my pinny?

Granny D’s Anzac biscuits

1 cup flour

1 cup rolled oats

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup desiccated coconut

1 tablespoon hot water

125g margarine

2 tablespoons golden syrup (black treacle may be used)

Method

  • Preheat oven to Gas mark 4; 180°C; 350°F
  • Heat the margarine and syrup gently together.
  • Mix all dry ingredients together, except bicarbonate.
  • Pour well stirred margarine and syrup into the dried ingredients.
  • Add the bicarbonate mixed with water.
  • Mix all together.
  • Make into walnut sized balls, put onto biscuit tray well spaced.
  • Bake for about 15 minutes.
  • Reverse trays on shelves after 5 mins, turning trays for even cook.
  • These are more gooey if slightly undercooked.

Words and photograph copyright 2022 by Paula Harmon. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission.

Hot Cuisine

~ Paula Harmon ~ 6 Comments

“So,” my Scottish great aunt asked my husband, “is she a good cook?”

Sensibly, he affirmed.

“Ah that’ll be the English in her” said my aunt, probably one of the few times when ideas of Englishness and good cooking have been put together.

I was somewhat surprised at my great aunt who was usually quite modern. But maybe she thought it was still the sort of thing you asked a relatively newly married couple.

“The Scots can’t cook” she informed my Welsh husband.

“Granny Mac was a good cook” I argued (Granny Mac being her older sister).

“Uh-huh but that’s unusual, perhaps it was all that time living in England.”

Fast forward a few years, and my Welsh mother-in-law tells me that what I’ve just cooked couldn’t possibly have been welshcakes because I didn’t use a bakestone but a frying pan. In the end, I told her they were English and therefore King Alfred cakes, if partly because in the absence of a bakestone and as we were all hungry, they had got a little scorched in my hurry. Using the same sort of logic, my mother might possibly argue that I can’t cook scotch pancakes because I don’t have a girdle. Linguistically speaking this all boils down (if you’ll pardon the pun) to localised words for the same thing. A girdle is the same thing as a bakestone is the same thing as a smooth cast iron griddle. Call it what you will, all I have is a heavy bottomed frying pan. And if I eat too many of my mother-in-law’s delicious welshcakes I will need one of the other sorts of girdle.

My mother is a good plain cook. When I was about six she taught me to make scones. This was a great idea. Come home from school and hungry? Make some scones. I mention this to my daughter now when she rings me at work to complain that she’s just come in and there is NOTHING IN THE HOUSE TO EAT (having ignored the fruit bowl and vegetable basket). I tell her that when I was in the same predicament, faced with either fruit or having to do some baking, I made scones but she says “yeah but that was then, I want a packet of crisps.”

My father had a great love of food and a fascination with cooking, the more exotic the cuisine the better. Unfortunately, he also had no patience. Crispy fried eggs, undercooked potato in Spanish omelette, burnt apple pancakes anyone? Fortunately I had left home a long time before he started experimenting with making kim-chi. The only thing I ever remember him refusing to eat (apart from a Guinness cake made by my sister, which was still liquid after three hours in the oven but too revolting to drink) were “eggs cooked in vinegar” which he had found in a Middle Eastern cookbook and should have left there.

He and I had a fairly longstanding battle over food if it involved my not wanting to eat what was in front of me, particularly soft boiled eggs, but we did agree on the delights of good cuisine and his interest and curiosity led me to being willing to try most things at least once, even if we’re abroad and I’m not entirely sure what it’s going to be. A plate of gizzards wasn’t one of the best of these choices.

My husband is a great cook, although defaults to putting extra-hot chillies in everything. Both my children can cook if they can be bothered. The least said about my sister’s cooking the better.

Although Granny Mac was indeed a good plain cook, her real creativity flowed into painting in oils. Granny D however, expressed her love through sewing, knitting and cooking. I suspect that if she hadn’t married a frugal man with plain tastes, her table would have groaned under mad experiments with rich flavours. I imagine she would have loved the cornucopia of ingredients available nowadays and would have lapped up all the cookery programmes on TV. As it was, my happiest childhood memories are being in her sunny kitchen as she gave my sister and me delight after delight. We were given segments of orange and powdered glycerine for dipping so that we got that little bit of extra sweetness just for a little snack. In the days before anyone thought about sugar or salt as bad things (especially by Granny’s generation which had put up with wartime and post-war rationing), we were spoiled with blackcurrant squash and yeast extract spreads on the grounds they must be good for children, and fed up with biscuits, melt in the mouth macaroons and when the home made bottled plums finally run out or it was a special time, we had Yum-Yum cake for Sunday pudding.

Many years later, when my parents were moving from the family home to a bungalow, I found the notebook where Granny D had written down recipes from the radio or TV or magazines. In it, I found the recipe for Yum-Yum Cake, which according to her note was taken from Jimmy Young’s radio programme in 1968. She can’t have been the only person who noted it and passed it down because I am sure I saw a very similar recipe on “The Hairy Bikers: Mums Know Best” TV series once.

Granny D taught me dressmaking and an instinctive method of cooking. I learnt how to make a roux for a bechamel sauce by eye rather than measuring and I can do the same when making pancakes if, on Pancake Day, it all seems too much of a faff to measure out. At a push, I can just about do this with scones too. On those mornings when I remember we’ve run out of anything suitable for breakfast, I get up to make some Bad Mummy Cheese Scones (which don’t need rolling out) and put them to bake while I’m showering. I have no idea how long these would keep for as they barely have time to get cold before they’ve all been eaten.

Looking at Granny D’s terrible handwriting in her notebook fills me with nostalgia and longing for her. More years than I care to remember have passed since she died, yet I still remember the smell of her perfume and make-up, the softness of her face and her hugs. I don’t recall one negative word from her. She sat patiently and watched as I learnt to cook and sew. And as each attempt, however wonky was encouraged and supported by her, I learnt to be brave enough to try and try again when things went wrong. Perhaps that’s the greatest thing she taught me in her gentle way.
Here are some recipes for anyone who’s interested (NB Granny D’s measurements were in imperial so the conversion is the closest possible. I learnt to make scones using imperial and my electric scales can be changed from metric to imperial so I tend to use imperial. I’m not even going to try to convert to cups!):

JIMMY YOUNG’S YUM YUM CAKE

2oz (50g) brown sugar
3oz (75g) butter
2 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla essence (and a little less of almond essence)
6oz (150g) flour

Mix butter, sugar, essences, yolks well and add flour. When rather crumbly, put into oven dish and press down slightly and level top.

Topping
1oz (25g) chopped walnuts
1oz (25g) chopped cherries
4oz (125g) caster sugar

Whisk whites stiff, add 2oz sugar, whisk again, fold in other 2oz sugar and lastly the cherries and nuts.
Spread over mixture in dish and bake for about 30 minutes on second shelf at No 4 [180°C (350°F Gas 4)] Perhaps the oven could be at 6 [200°C (400°F Gas 6)] for quarter of an hour then turned down. This depends on oven. Delicious hot or cold.

*****

BAD MUMMY CHEESE SCONES

8oz (250g) self-raising flour
2oz (50g) soft spread or butter
4oz (125g) grated strong cheddar
1oz (25g) mustard (dry or made)
3-4ish tablespoons of milk (you may need more or less depending on the flour)

Put oven on to 200°C (400°F Gas 6) and line a baking tray with greaseproof or oven paper.
While oven is heating up, mix the flour and rub in the spread or butter. If using dry mustard put it in before spread and mix with flour, if using made mustard add it after you rubbed in the spread (if you get it wrong the world will not end but someone might end up with a bit more mustard in their bite)
Mix in almost all the grated cheese.
Mix in the milk, bit by bit until you have a soft ball. If it’s a bit wet add some flour, if it’s too dry, add some milk.
Divide the dough into six or eight and roll each section into a ball and put onto baking sheet.
Flatten each scone slightly and sprinkle on the remaining grated cheese.
Pop in oven for ten minutes. They are done when the bottom is slightly brown and you can “knock” on them.
Best eaten hot from the oven with butter.
Copyright 2016 by Paula Harmon. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission

yum-yum

 

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Here’s a block of butter, marked in 25g sections

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Here’s the butter measured as 1 oz on my digital scales which can be adjusted to ounces or grammes. It’s impossible to get it to read exactly 1.  It comes out as 0.99 of an ounce or 1.02 of an ounce, but I don’t think that’s going to make a huge difference somehow!

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And this is non-digital scale which also measures in ounces (along the outside of the circle) and grammes.