tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20323653606112424332024-03-13T00:44:12.581-04:00The Cold TableA smörgåsbord of thoughts and tidbits of facts about the history of food.Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.comBlogger267125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-90346005394340802992024-01-06T16:13:00.011-05:002024-01-15T12:50:35.456-05:00Goulash--Two Kinds?<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibieU024NghDcxGj1vbBTORXeucHgHSEtp4duY3RzGBpZbF3-tAbaRrroPwxdmXx62lE7Zq2egUY4J7waqhnFU8huFa4dvUHxMSNgkRC66sBGNjM-txSny72hukkKLU32ENJsq5W6jrgCNVa-ZXUiPdqN8RFaPMlXJq9_RREgPCn5S9JrDzhMYt6fAKtWS/s250/Goulash_from_usa.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="250" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibieU024NghDcxGj1vbBTORXeucHgHSEtp4duY3RzGBpZbF3-tAbaRrroPwxdmXx62lE7Zq2egUY4J7waqhnFU8huFa4dvUHxMSNgkRC66sBGNjM-txSny72hukkKLU32ENJsq5W6jrgCNVa-ZXUiPdqN8RFaPMlXJq9_RREgPCn5S9JrDzhMYt6fAKtWS/w200-h200/Goulash_from_usa.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">American "goulash"</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQkB0O6b80Mv001cDpC6wl9yx_jorKzi6jl4j0M2F_EctJB-p92iiaohVeMM3vz5W220lBvbiZOJh-TDFdtUh62qut9wIBzKETLtrcOCI9pvXZNfgVunsKJpXBmQHsBMBcHuNdIYSIkmPv-Sis7oWRByjFxAJ5WatUOQyUlltwA99plfxVDI-W62MEUmkp/s220/Gulyas080.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="165" data-original-width="220" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQkB0O6b80Mv001cDpC6wl9yx_jorKzi6jl4j0M2F_EctJB-p92iiaohVeMM3vz5W220lBvbiZOJh-TDFdtUh62qut9wIBzKETLtrcOCI9pvXZNfgVunsKJpXBmQHsBMBcHuNdIYSIkmPv-Sis7oWRByjFxAJ5WatUOQyUlltwA99plfxVDI-W62MEUmkp/w227-h160/Gulyas080.jpg" width="227" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Gulyás,</span></i><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> in a traditional cauldron.</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></td></tr></tbody></table>What is goulash? <br /><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Goulash, or <i lang="hu">gulyás, </i><span lang="hu">is a stew or soup that may </span>contain vegetables and is spiced generally with paprika (introduced by the Ottoman Turks around the 15th century CE). The original <i lang="hu">gulyás </i><span lang="hu">was made by herders in the 9th and 10th centuries and can be thought of as a Hungarian counterpart to the stews of American cowboys. </span>Nowadays such goulashes are often eaten poured over egg noodles. I posted an article about the original goulash in 2014; you can read it <a href="https://cathyshistoricfood.blogspot.com/2014/04/goulash.html">here</a>. <br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">But there is an "American" goulash that started appearing in cookbooks around 1914. Wikipedia claims that "Originally a dish of seasoned beef, core ingredients of American goulash now usually include elbow macaroni, cubed steak, ground beef or 'hamburger,' and tomatoes in some form, whether canned whole, as tomato sauce, and/or tomato paste." It may even contain cheese. I suspect that this kind of 'goulash' was heavily influenced by Italian-American cooking and owes very little to any traditional Hungarian recipes. Significantly, "American" goulash typically contains paprika in small amounts (<i>i.e., </i>less than a tablespoon) compared to Hungarian recipes, modern or otherwise. <br /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The following websites contain a bit more information about both types of goulash.<br /></p><p></p><p>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goulash</p><p>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guly%C3%A1sleves</p><p></p>https://www.foodtimeline.org/foodsoups.html#goulash<p>https://www.besthungarianrecipes.com/hungarian-goulash</p><p>http://www.kitchenproject.com/history/Goulash/</p><p>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_goulash</p><p>https://www.tastingtable.com/972143/hungarian-vs-american-goulash-whats-the-difference/</p>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-24131937465028195652023-06-16T16:35:00.003-04:002023-06-16T17:02:14.517-04:00Imperium Romanum on Roman Food<p style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="317" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0PaORdCEFqI" width="677" youtube-src-id="0PaORdCEFqI"></iframe></div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Those of my readers here who also follow my historic costume blog, <a href="https://cathyscostumeblog.blogspot.com/">Loose Threads: Yet Another Costuming Blog</a>, will be aware that I have found a new YouTube channel, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@ImperiumRomanumYT/videos">Imperium Romanum</a>, which has ambitious plans for a series of videos on Roman material culture and history. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">The embedded video below is a short, but very good, summary of the underpinning of Roman food. (Hint: It starts with wheat and barley, originally eaten as porridge). Better still, the Imperium Romanum videos are gorgeously produced, full of historically clad reenactors and images of historical food. I commend it to your attention, and am looking forward to seeing more of their work on YouTube in the future.<br /></p>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-12908951538211034372023-04-15T01:40:00.001-04:002023-04-15T01:42:51.190-04:00The History of Snack Food<p style="text-align: justify;">Recently, I found what looks to be a fairly new blog (though the owner calls it a "newsletter"). It's called "Snack Stack," and can be found <a href="https://www.snackstack.net/">here</a>.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Snack Stack is about the history of snack food, particularly the kind of snacks some of us now call "junk food." Beer cheese, Pop Rocks (bonus points to readers who have been around enough to recall what those are!), Chick-o-Sticks appear on the list of recent articles. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">Right now, the articles I've read on the site are all about fads of the last 200 years or so. But perhaps the author will branch out into different eras over time.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">NOTE: This site has articles that may be read for free, provided the would-be reader signs up for a free subscription. However, other articles require a paid subscription to access. So this isn't quite like the blogs of old.<br /></p>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-67672636558199426802023-03-09T16:47:00.003-05:002023-04-25T13:53:51.125-04:00Just How Long Have Things Gone Better with Bacon?<p style="text-align: justify;">A common saying that turns up on the Internet these days is that "things go better with bacon." </p><p style="text-align: justify;">A few days ago, I found an article on an interesting blog suggesting that, in Europe at least, bacon has been making things better for a long time. The post appears on <a href="https://www.bakerspeel.com/">https://www.bakerspeel.com</a>, and the article can be read <a href="https://www.bakerspeel.com/medieval-bacon/">here</a>. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">The author notes that in medieval Europe, bacon was the meat usually eaten by the lower and middle classes and was primarily preserved by curing, i.e., packing the cut meat with salt to draw as much moisture out of the meat as possible. In early modern times (<i>i.e., </i>after 1600 CE) bacon was also smoked--exposed in a warm place to woodsmoke), but the smoking process is not, and was understood not to be, sufficient to preserve the meat alone so it was combined with curing to produce a better-flavored product. Small amounts of sugar were added to the curing material for the same reason. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">I commend the article to my readers' attention as an interesting discussion of how bacon preparation methods--and of necessity the flavor profile that must have resulted--changed over time. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">NOTE: Edited to change a clause in the third paragraph to read "but the smoking process is not, and was understood not to be, sufficient
to preserve the meat alone so it was combined with curing to produce a
better-flavored product." The original said, incorrectly, that "smoking" was combined with "smoking" in the manufacture of early modern bacon. <br /></p>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-79120110136007817152023-02-01T19:31:00.002-05:002023-03-09T19:12:40.290-05:00Casserole<div><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPXe6lm5OVlY4NJOctR8d2TR7WZzh2UMOQ3IkTJs_9kdhwZT1Qr67zvCA1NZePwe-cja8bvikx_pmSTNhqZeU7zhihyUSSQxlxzvBexg61hHRnzEN0bE7OOGDb5prfruTr9L9l_TSMS0IiiP4BHn-mY97yYB7pwIp61MmLw_d4ZPpVE53JRrb_T6jZQQ/s320/320px-Bowl_of_cassoulet.JPG" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="204" data-original-width="320" height="127" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPXe6lm5OVlY4NJOctR8d2TR7WZzh2UMOQ3IkTJs_9kdhwZT1Qr67zvCA1NZePwe-cja8bvikx_pmSTNhqZeU7zhihyUSSQxlxzvBexg61hHRnzEN0bE7OOGDb5prfruTr9L9l_TSMS0IiiP4BHn-mY97yYB7pwIp61MmLw_d4ZPpVE53JRrb_T6jZQQ/w200-h127/320px-Bowl_of_cassoulet.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Cassoulet in a traditional pan. Wikimedia Commons.<br /></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr align="left"><td></td></tr><tr></tr></tbody></table>A friend of mine sent me a link to an article called "The Eternal Comfort of the Casserole." In the article, the author expresses the opinion that casseroles are around because they serve a purpose; they are emotionally sustaining when that is what people require. The article may be read <a href="https://lyz.substack.com/p/the-eternal-comfort-of-the-casserole?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2">here</a>. It contains images of several casserole recipes ranging in dates from the 1930s to the 1970s, complete with dates and original sources, that may be of interest to those interested in mid-twentieth century American food. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">I have never liked casseroles. Don't get me wrong; I'm not fanatical about counting fats, carbs, and calories, and I'm as fond of starchy, fatty comfort
foods as the next person: pizza, meatloaf, shepherd's pie, beef stews. What I
don't enjoy are the layered starches stuck together with cheese and/or
meat that to me spell "casserole". Foods such as lasagnas, beef-and-macaroni dishes, and things like green bean casserole. The type of green bean
casserole (with or without the traditional crunchy onions) described in the article I find
especially unappetizing. </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Wikipedia pretty much agrees with the author's definition of casserole. Wikipedia defines "casserole," <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casserole">at least as the term is understood in the United States</a>, as "a baked food with three main components: pieces of meat (such as chicken or ground meat) or fish (such as tuna) or other protein (such as beans or tofu), various chopped or canned vegetables (such as green beans or peas), and a starchy binder (such as flour, potato, or pasta); sometimes, there is also a crunchy or cheesy topping." </p><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Other countries use the term "casserole" to describe dishes that are more like the stews I prefer. Wikipedia says: "In English-speaking <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Nations" title="Commonwealth of Nations">Commonwealth</a> countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, the term <i>casserole </i>is most commonly used to refer to a dish of meat or chicken with vegetables and a gravy-style sauce; dishes containing a large proportion of starchy ingredients, <i>e.g. </i>pasta or potatoes, or those cooked in creamy sauces are not generally referred to as casseroles, and might be called 'bakes' or 'gratins.' The French term "cassoulet," which describes a bean stew with meat, may be the source of our term "casserole." It is traditionally made in a ceramic pot of an unusual shape, unlike the slow cooker I use or the
deep squarish pan used to make casseroles in the oven. (A picture of the French-style cassoulet pan appears above.)</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The article's author expresses the belief that the American-style casserole arose from the conjunction of two different elements: the Scandinavian customs that arrived with the people who settled the American Midwest; and the economic scarcity that troubled mid-twentieth century America. </p><blockquote></blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">"This is how the casserole worked its way onto our tables. A dish born of poverty and convenience. A dish both overly processed and perfectly delicious. Casserole is ubiquitous and to the haters, bland. (To which I say, add spice! Casseroles are what you make them.) But the point is a fair one. A casserole in its essence is a dish of comfort and a dish of
hot, ready, cheap proteins and carbs." </p><p style="text-align: justify;">Though the types of recipe featured in the article are not tempting to me, the article is a good read about the conditions under which the modern "casserole" sprang. I commend it to my readers' attention. <br /></p></div><p style="text-align: justify;"></p>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-21777985411855467302022-12-27T14:47:00.006-05:002023-02-09T21:50:05.260-05:00More on Moretum, or "Pesto, the Hard Way"<p style="text-align: justify;">A few years ago, I blogged about making my own <i>moretum, </i>a spreadable cheese food enjoyed by the Romans.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Today, I found a video on YouTube on the "How To Make Everything" channel that was about how to make pesto, the cousin of <i>moretum,</i> from scratch--including the making of a Roman-style mortar (called <i>mortarium</i>) and pestle. It cost the presenter $263 USD but resulted in a wonderful educational experience. The video is embedded below. Enjoy! Have a wonderful New Year, and I hope I'll be posting more often in 2023.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><i><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GOWPLfpEcYE" width="511" youtube-src-id="GOWPLfpEcYE"></iframe></i></p><p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><i><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></i><br /><p></p>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-40513775571041542132022-09-04T16:47:00.004-04:002022-09-04T17:21:45.413-04:00Hard Times Food<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;">It turns out that there are a number of articles and blogs discussing, and giving recipes for, historical dishes that can be cheaply made with stock pantry staples. Given the number of people who spent the COVID lockdowns trying to distract/entertain themselves by cooking, and the larger number of people who are out of work and trying to make do on an increasingly limited budget, I shouldn't have been surprised. What surprised me more was finding several lists of the "X dishes from tough times that you can make at home!" variety. Some of these look interesting, at least from an intellectual perspective. An awful lot of them focus on 1930s/Depression era cooking, and I'm cutting the number of references I make to those foods to a minimum to avoid retreading too much old ground.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">So here's a list my readers can amuse themselves with. I may look for additional sites to add to this post as time goes on.<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">From <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/">Atlas Obscura</a>: </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/unusual-dishes-to-make-with-pantry-staples">7 Dishes Born From Tough Times That You Can Make At Home</a>. Most of these recipes aren't that old, or even that unusual, but they do qualify as foods one wouldn't try without a financial or boredom-related need to do so. The simplest of these is the <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/peanut-butter-mayonnaise-sandwich">Peanut Butter and Mayo Sandwich</a> which is exactly what it sounds like; a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with mayonnaise taking the place of the jelly. An item with potential if you like mayo; an abomination to be avoided if you don't.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/easy-historical-recipes-to-make-at-home" style="text-align: left;">Even More Historic Dishes Born From Tough Times to Make at Home</a> Most of these dishes are North American and date from about the Great Depression of the 1930s, such as Mock Apple Pie and Vinegar Cake. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">From msn.com and Food and Drink: </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><a a="" href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/recipes/these-foods-were-invented-in-tough-times/ss-AAS1Sux" style="text-align: left;">These Recipes Were Invented in Tough Times</a>. This one is set up as a slideshow. It includes foods I think of as modern classics that I don't associate with hard times, such as carrot cake and meatloaf. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">From <a href="https://12tomatoes.com/">12 Tomatoes.com</a>:</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://12tomatoes.com/surprised-poverty-food/">9 Foods We Grew Up With That Were Actually Poverty Meals</a>. I grew up in the 1960s, and most of these foods I think of as working class meals, for example: boxed mac-and-cheese, fried egg sandwiches, beans and rice.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">From <a href="https://prepperswill.com">Prepper's Will</a>:</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://prepperswill.com/great-depression-foods-helped-americans-survive-famine/">Great Depression Foods That Helped Americans Survive Famine</a>. The blog's title indicates that this site comes from the "prepper" culture (people who spend a lot of time making sure their household can survive famine, natural disasters, or other events that could disrupt modern living). This blog post purports to list the top 10 foods of the Great Depression. Two items I had not previously encountered were Milkorno and peanut butter stuffed onions.<br /></p>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-15068110150250081032022-08-27T15:03:00.012-04:002023-03-09T19:14:24.069-05:00Mustard Eggs!<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw-rvT4ThQ61N3I6bnCMXRQEAlOm-k8rUD8j4JCbqSpHphQ2owNuMkIaMTvnB3KB_QLjM1WRUg6we_o1iVCuGPvIsaecL8rnMzoRS0mRRaU0-vP961S6MzR38mePYlTiafDIYfC8X3iXGwCS3-n3P-nHHn4NRNJJPqyyVrgqdouwHmozdibdILzzN6ww/s2909/IMG_20220827_141508200~2.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2713" data-original-width="2909" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw-rvT4ThQ61N3I6bnCMXRQEAlOm-k8rUD8j4JCbqSpHphQ2owNuMkIaMTvnB3KB_QLjM1WRUg6we_o1iVCuGPvIsaecL8rnMzoRS0mRRaU0-vP961S6MzR38mePYlTiafDIYfC8X3iXGwCS3-n3P-nHHn4NRNJJPqyyVrgqdouwHmozdibdILzzN6ww/w200-h186/IMG_20220827_141508200~2.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Mustard eggs<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">Having purchased a bottle of Dijon honey mustard at the supermarket, I decided to try Rumpoldt's fried hard-boiled eggs with mustard recipe again. My thought was that using a sweeter, less harsh mustard would eliminate the unpleasantness of mustard bite and create a tasty dish while still giving the eggs an interesting flavor. A photograph of the cooked eggs appears beside this post; as usual, click on it for a larger version.</div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The end result was successful! The honey in the mustard almost, but not quite, drowned out the mustard bite to produce an interesting dish. I sliced up two very lightly salted hard-boiled eggs before frying them, and added about a teaspoon and one-half honey mustard (compare the 5 eggs and 3-4 tablespoons of mustard in Volker Bach's redaction of the Rumpoldt recipe in <i>Plain Fare</i>), and those seemed to be appropriate amounts, at least to my taste.<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Perhaps my final experiment along these lines should be to make the eggs using homemade honey mustard based on a (roughly) period recipe. <i>Plain Fare </i>gives a recipe from the <i>Liber de Coquina, </i>which dates to the fourteenth century CE. (Rumpoldt's book, in contrast, was published toward the very end of the sixteenth century CE.) A translation of the recipe from <i>Liber de Coquina</i>, and Bach's comments, follow:</p><p style="text-align: justify;">
</p><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote> <b>Mustard can be made from mustardseed alone, or from rocket. And it can be seasoned with honey or with sapa (reduced grape must). It is bound either with cooked egg yolk or with sugar. If it is to go with fish, distemper it with vinegar, if with meat, use verjuice. This is better. </b><br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>4 tbsp mustardseed flour</li><li>1/3 cup honey</li><li>1 cooked egg yolk or 1 tbsp sugar</li><li>vinegar or verjuice to taste</li><li>cinnamon or cassia buds (optional)</li></ul></blockquote></div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>(Says Mr. Bach:) This is not so much a recipe as a set of general guidelines. Since mustard has good keeping qualities, you can easily make a batch of whatever combination appeals to you and bring it to the event, though this sauce is also easily put together on the spot. The basic principle is to mix mustardseed flour with honey (or reduced grape must, if you can get it) and thicken this sauce base with cooked egg yolk or sugar. Once you need the sauce, you add vinegar or verjuice to taste.<br /></blockquote></div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> Bach redacts the <i>Liber</i> recipe as combining "mustardseed flour" (<i>i.e., </i>dry mustard) with 1/3 cup honey, binding it with cooked egg yolk or a bit of sugar, and adding a bit of cinnamon or cassia buds to season it. It would be interesting to try the egg recipe with this type of mustard instead of a modern pre-made mustard, and I may yet do so. Watch this space!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">NOTE: (9/5/2022) Amazon sells several brands of reduced or cooked grape must, including one made by a family-owned Italian company; it runs about $15 USD for an 8-ounce bottle. Bach recommends using cooked grape must (unprocessed grape juice left over from the wine making process that is boiled down until it becomes thick) in this honey mustard recipe. I may decide to purchase some and use it to make my own mustard for a third try at the recipe. <br /></div>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-30775238423718256362022-08-18T17:30:00.004-04:002023-06-16T16:58:08.238-04:00Mustard Eggs?<p style="text-align: justify;">A long while ago, I downloaded a short book by Volker Bach called "<i>Plain Fare</i>." It is meant to provide a resource for SCA folk who want to add documentable, relatively easy recipes to their repertoire for outdoor events where kitchen space is limited and many conveniences (such as refrigerators) are not available. A copy of the book may be downloaded for free <a href="https://www.culina-vetus.de">here</a>.
<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Recently, I've been re-reading <i>Plain Fare </i>and noticed a recipe that is not only easy to make, but that I thought I'd like: "Eggs in Mustard Sauce." It appears in a late sixteenth-century cookbook called "Ein new Kochbuch / Marx Rumpolt; mit einem Nachwort von Manfred Lemmer" ["A New Cookbook / Marx Rumpolt; with an Epilogue by Manfred Lemmer"]. The recipe itself consists of taking hard-boiled eggs, slicing them up, frying them in butter, and stirring some mustard into the pan before serving. It's meant to be eaten immediately after cooking, while still hot. <br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">So I tried it. The part about frying the eggs in butter was great, but unfortunately I used Dijon mustard and the result was too sharp to be pleasant, at least for me. Bach's redaction suggested using a "mild" mustard; next time, I'll use a honey mustard instead and see how that comes out.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">--------------------------------------------------- <br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">P.S. Sorry to have fallen behind on updating this blog, but I had a good reason: my husband was diagnosed in June with stomach cancer. Fortunately, it was a type of tumor that is very slow growing, and had not spread. So he had surgery in July to remove it, and is now recovering. <br /></p>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-24048577474785437122022-06-30T16:31:00.008-04:002022-07-13T20:20:21.811-04:00Beyond Meat Jerky<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht78ulBgMF1kTBEfj_b1lx-pkFK5H_Wa5E9N46ZGYWKpalTlz-pcix-_0e_pWwEUAuyhGRtX_oVJjc0JI6kem7hN22fBgFqwcEJu2VN_Mo5OA6cnSkqK_AAzRUGfQD5KCqLVQmJC6gS8PonZvfV4RIAoULQZW6mh3d-EHsiPF5yCOjKim-pUEw0zEX5Q/s1607/IMG_20220630_151200245~2.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1607" data-original-width="1139" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht78ulBgMF1kTBEfj_b1lx-pkFK5H_Wa5E9N46ZGYWKpalTlz-pcix-_0e_pWwEUAuyhGRtX_oVJjc0JI6kem7hN22fBgFqwcEJu2VN_Mo5OA6cnSkqK_AAzRUGfQD5KCqLVQmJC6gS8PonZvfV4RIAoULQZW6mh3d-EHsiPF5yCOjKim-pUEw0zEX5Q/w142-h200/IMG_20220630_151200245~2.jpg" width="142" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Piece of "Beyond Meat" jerky<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFKDtx1ZoxzV1zaLNUksyoOxde-9xg2Bzh0XM7wdZnTRlZ0umWRFoAF-vCryXpK8SVzx-sgm6Fostisc2ZFl_wFSdBK79ymKq0I3RwioTU9yg0CVvZ0RmgB5MIQ_P1qqH8ihlIkKC73rL2f5_fajNdXUkIl7QcSD6Uv7xO1zn2RyI_vidzkTUUj9Q74A/s3643/IMG_20220630_151134769~2.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3643" data-original-width="3120" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFKDtx1ZoxzV1zaLNUksyoOxde-9xg2Bzh0XM7wdZnTRlZ0umWRFoAF-vCryXpK8SVzx-sgm6Fostisc2ZFl_wFSdBK79ymKq0I3RwioTU9yg0CVvZ0RmgB5MIQ_P1qqH8ihlIkKC73rL2f5_fajNdXUkIl7QcSD6Uv7xO1zn2RyI_vidzkTUUj9Q74A/w171-h200/IMG_20220630_151134769~2.jpg" width="171" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Front of package</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhicEhFTmJm9XjM_ksq4nS8M6vtmxKRGs2OdjYS23JqC8F1ULo8l7QFVdjAWcC3AHCDBIzfCZSzdI2vP3DMPy6r5RAROwu2r93BKAqEbQbnwhUL39v9Ub7B_Kr_mgLDNcF_7fwg7FDA09COmLR-VD7xYOjdfoUi1qTZU_ykv7JTdIywkObfZemDILywew/s3095/IMG_20220630_151140400~2.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3095" data-original-width="2633" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhicEhFTmJm9XjM_ksq4nS8M6vtmxKRGs2OdjYS23JqC8F1ULo8l7QFVdjAWcC3AHCDBIzfCZSzdI2vP3DMPy6r5RAROwu2r93BKAqEbQbnwhUL39v9Ub7B_Kr_mgLDNcF_7fwg7FDA09COmLR-VD7xYOjdfoUi1qTZU_ykv7JTdIywkObfZemDILywew/w170-h200/IMG_20220630_151140400~2.jpg" width="170" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Back of package</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">Normally, I don't write about modern food developments here, but when I saw that "Beyond Meat", a vegan meat brand, has made a "meat" jerky, I couldn't resist. </div><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div style="text-align: justify;">I saw this "jerky" product in a local chain drugstore and bought a bag: $2.00 USD for a one ounce (30 gram) serving. Pictures of the bag and of the product inside, accompany this post, all taken by me. The photograph of the back of the bag gives nutritional information for the product. As always, click on the photograph to see the image in a larger size with more detail.<br /></div><div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div style="text-align: justify;">Beyond Meat's offering is made from mung bean and pea protein. After tasting it, I concluded that no meat eater is going to mistake this product for a jerky made from actual meat. For one thing, there's no muscle fiber grain in this "jerky"--it's just a compressed mass, and most pieces are irregular in shape (unlike the specimen in the photograph above). That being said, the product imitates the salty and umami flavors of true jerky passably well. However, it doesn't have the subtle flavors of true jerk meat, and it seems a bit saltier than meat jerky to me. It is chewy like meat jerky--but again, the texture is homogeneous, and does not have the long fibers that meat does.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Overall, this product might satisfy a vegan, or a meat-eater desperate to find something to satisfy a late-night craving for salt and umami. But I don't think most people will seek out this product, even though it's roughly price-competitive (Jack Link Beef Jerky sells at $5.99 per 3.25 ounce bag, according to <a href="https://www.jacklinks.com/shop/original-beef-jerky">this website</a>). Trying this product gave me a better understanding of the hype, as well as the slow sales, of Beyond Meat's products.<br /></div></div>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-65180123729825137712021-12-31T00:38:00.003-05:002022-01-14T23:20:33.045-05:00A Fatal Feast?<p style="text-align: justify;">Some very odd foodstuffs can be found in Russia, particularly when you head as far north as the northern reaches of Siberia. Perhaps the oddest one is called <i>kopalkhen. </i>A fascinating article about this dish can be found on the Russia Beyond website, and may be read <a href="https://www.rbth.com/russian-kitchen/334150-dish-kill-kopalkhen-north">here</a>. Here's a summary of the article.<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><i>Kopalkhen </i>is nothing more than pickled meat, but it's pickled by an unusual process. Essentially, one takes a large animal--a deer, perhaps. Inuit tribes use a similar process. The animal is captured, starved for several days, then slaughtered by strangulation, so as not to break the animal's skin. Then the carcass is submerged in a swamp and covered with sod, and the place is marked so that it can be found. These buried meat caches are left for anyone to find, the custom being that one may permissibly dig up and eat a <i>kopalkhen </i>if one has no other food available, provided that they make and bury another <i>kopalkhen </i>to pass the favor on. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">The pickling, you see, is caused by decomposition. And the decomposition process, when undertaken in this manner, enriches the carcass with all kinds of nutrients that enable someone traveling in the hostile Siberian climate to make it back home or another safe place. But the process also loads the meat with toxins and microorganisms associated with rot that will kill or seriously endanger the life of the unwary foreigner who partakes of it. <br /><br />Yet the indigenous peoples of the area are not harmed by eating <i>kopalkhen, </i>not even the children. To them, <i>kopalkhen </i>is a delicacy. It's sliced into thin strips, rolled up and dipped into salt, and eaten. Sometimes other items findable in the harsh Siberian landscape are eaten with <i>kopalkhen </i>to enhance the experience, such as "the raw lungs of a freshly slaughtered deer and a small amount of yunev,
which is a sort of relish derived from the leaves of the
locally-growing rhodiola plant." </p><p style="text-align: justify;">If there's a lesson here, it's this. Studying old foodways is worthwhile because it reminds us of food preservation techniques that may still be viable, or at least helpful under certain conditions. There are more of them than many modern Westerners realize--smoking; drying; fermenting; salting, pickling, dehydrating, and the list goes on. Most work best on a limited variety of foods prepared in particular parts of the globe, but they work without the chemicals used in industrial preservation of food for transport. These techniques are very much part of the history of food, and most of them are still in use today. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">EDIT: (1/1/2022) Shortly after posting this article, I found another web article that talked about a similar process--but one that does not pose a potentially fatal hazard to non-indigenous folk. That article can be found <a href="https://www.ur.umich.edu/9495/May08_95/storage.htm">here</a>. It purports to be from the University of Michigan and dates to 1995. It describes a process of sealing a carcass under the ice in a fresh water body in winter. Supposedly, the cold leaves alive in the meat only lactobacilli, which deter toxic microorganisms from breeding in the meat. The article reports on an informal experiment where a researcher got his own fresh meat specimens. He put one into an icy pond and buried others in a bog, using stone implements for the butchering (the point of the experiment was to determine whether the technique could have been used by PaleoIndians during the era when mammoths still roamed the land). He reported checking on the meat every two weeks, and said that the meat was fine so long as the pond remained frozen over. "By June, the meat had developed a strong smell and
sour taste, but still retained considerable nutritive value." </p><p style="text-align: justify;">Who's right? Was the Russian article sensationalizing for publicity's sake? Does the difference in continent matter? Hard to say. The article from UMich doesn't clearly indicate whether Professor Fisher tried eating any of the meat. If I find out anything further about such practices, I'll report about it on this blog. <br /></p>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-15194447239882578262021-10-04T13:38:00.007-04:002021-12-30T15:23:04.046-05:00Did the Ancient Egyptians drink coffee?<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Dnd8mOJAcNn6TDZiLe0zyiCBJJKZmArQW3v0QnQBzJRaThGrr4OEwxcoAv71P_NFv5A7EnPyc2Aok7je_bjONAlIqTBSH0MiCYarIEzgjyPPplZ0DM6dyTLWUXAhyphenhyphenYwwLipkPuceoEn6/" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="234" data-original-width="170" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Dnd8mOJAcNn6TDZiLe0zyiCBJJKZmArQW3v0QnQBzJRaThGrr4OEwxcoAv71P_NFv5A7EnPyc2Aok7je_bjONAlIqTBSH0MiCYarIEzgjyPPplZ0DM6dyTLWUXAhyphenhyphenYwwLipkPuceoEn6/w145-h200/170px-Coffea_arabica_-_K%25C3%25B6hler%25E2%2580%2593s_Medizinal-Pflanzen-189.jpg" width="145" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; text-align: left;">Illustration of </span><i style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; text-align: left;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffea_arabica" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0b0080; outline-color: rgb(51, 102, 204);" title="">Coffea arabica</a></i></span><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> plant <br />and seeds; possibly this plant was <br />the first of several coffee plants <br />cultivated. (Public domain image<br />found on Wikipedia).</span><br /><br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table>The question in the title was asked by a friend of mine in an on-line communication. The answer led me to some interesting information.<p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">The answer to the question in the title, by the way, is "no." The ancient Egyptians didn't drink coffee. Tomb paintings and other information confirm that the ancient Egyptians drank wine and, more commonly beer. The latter was consumed with a straw, to minimize drinking the unfiltered sediment that settled to the bottom. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">But confirming that answer made me curious about the original home of the coffee plant. To my surprise, the coffee plant originated in the Old World, specifically in southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa (the easternmost peninsula on the African continent). So it would not be impossible for the Egyptians to have discovered its use. Why didn't they?</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Maybe the ancient Egyptians missed out on discovering coffee because a lot of processing is needed to turn coffee beans into the black beverage we crave today. The same is true of chocolate. However, the cacao pod from which chocolate ultimately comes, even in its raw state, yields pulp that the area monkeys relish. Observing such monkeys might have led humans to try to figure out how to make the plant useful to themselves. Coffee does not have any obvious uses in its raw state. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">Despite stories of coffee use dating to the 9th century, the earliest solid evidence pinpoints coffee use to 15th century Yemen, where its stimulant properties made it useful to scholars. However, the Yemeni scholars purportedly imported the stuff from Ethiopia, where the plant's secrets likely were discovered and mastered. Wikipedia has a surprisingly long and well-footnoted account of the history of coffee and its use, which can be read <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coffee">here</a>. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">If I find more information about the origins of coffee, I will write about them in another post. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">EDIT: (10/5/2021) The History Guy recently published a YouTube video on the history of coffee that contains much of the types of material in the Wikipedia article. Find it <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxdTpNOeeyE">here</a>. Note: Ads included, unless you are a YouTube Premium subscriber.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">
</p>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-62806277586918161352021-08-21T23:04:00.011-04:002022-01-14T23:22:44.250-05:00Mug Cake--First Experiment<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULSbXc1vBBe8FpDyRlz_putsFC1SLoeT_137ZOyoYpdMsG_lIu-9pK6f4MuT6Q6soW1jlZnDOgJumerv3h3PkpglecJlPF25YGZ6LfLb6kmOX0PbtbliqeyHzVFoHIVTIBsATe1WVZfKa/s900/mug-cake-chocolate-chips-fresh-berries-cream-gray-concrete-background-copy-space-224808593.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="596" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULSbXc1vBBe8FpDyRlz_putsFC1SLoeT_137ZOyoYpdMsG_lIu-9pK6f4MuT6Q6soW1jlZnDOgJumerv3h3PkpglecJlPF25YGZ6LfLb6kmOX0PbtbliqeyHzVFoHIVTIBsATe1WVZfKa/s320/mug-cake-chocolate-chips-fresh-berries-cream-gray-concrete-background-copy-space-224808593.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Mug cake with chocolate chips, with</span></div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><div style="text-align: center;">fresh berries. (source: dreamstime.com)</div></span></td></tr></tbody></table>Recently, upon discovering that I'd acquired a great fascination with cakes, I began exploring the wonderful world of mug cakes. <p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Mug cakes are one-person-sized cakes where the batter is poured into an oversized coffee mug and baked in a microwave oven. These two factors limit their caloric impact (and the potential waste of pantry resources if things go wrong) as well as being pleasantly quick to make (most are fully baked in one or two minutes and none take over 10 minutes to make from start to finish). They may, but need not, contain an egg or part of an egg, and usually incorporate a small amount of baking powder to help them rise. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">Early 21st century life certainly explains the rising popularity of mug cakes, though <a href=" https://www.foodtimeline.org/foodcakes.html#cupcakes">The Food Timeline</a> notes that cakes have been baked in teacups and similar small containers before now. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupcake#Variants">Wikipedia</a> lumps mug cakes together with cupcakes, and it's certainly true that both are in the same size range. The main difference is that cupcakes are usually baked in a conventional oven, often in quantities of a dozen at a time, while the beauty of mug cakes is that usually only one, or at most two to four, are made at a time so that the temptation to overindulge does not linger. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">My husband, who really likes certain kinds of cake but doesn't want to be taunted by a huge cake oversupply either, encouraged my exploration. When my search turned up a peanut butter mug cake recipe on <a href="https://kirbiecravings.com/">Kirbie's Cravings</a>, I knew I had to give it a try. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">I followed the recipe with only two changes: I used dark brown sugar instead of white, and I used only 3 1/4 tablespoons of it instead of the 4 tablespoons called for by the recipe. I also used natural peanut butter instead of the Skippy peanut butter that Kirbie admitted she had used. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">The end result of my labors was, to me, a bit like magically transforming the peanut butter into a slightly dry cake that tasted exactly the same as the peanut butter. I didn't care for it at first (it wasn't even slightly sweet), but the taste began to grow on me as I nibbled it. Sadly, my husband didn't like the cake at all. He said that he disliked its texture. The texture reminded him of oatmeal, a food he hates precisely because he finds its texture revolting. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">However, there are legions of mug cake recipes on the Internet, and I have collected six or seven more recipes that I'm eager to try. Because my husband and I both love carrot cake, a carrot cake in a mug will likely be next. Watch this space!</p>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-90571672950100025772021-07-28T14:16:00.006-04:002021-10-09T16:56:18.718-04:00Book Review With An Offer: A Medieval Cookery Primer<p></p><div style="text-align: right;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvx6Wl5JnEGJKmJu3qBsrOM9vT99ZLosAvhP_UMKIYFVyg3DeVlATnDh0xTn7J4UiGy4YIYd0KBcYq39xE0q_tLJRxiPGKdKmqBazxrn3KgIQYkyGX9a_FgWFgkiIwtnyrddUCQHiv2xUz/s2048/IMG_20210321_200348952_BURST000_COVER.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1438" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvx6Wl5JnEGJKmJu3qBsrOM9vT99ZLosAvhP_UMKIYFVyg3DeVlATnDh0xTn7J4UiGy4YIYd0KBcYq39xE0q_tLJRxiPGKdKmqBazxrn3KgIQYkyGX9a_FgWFgkiIwtnyrddUCQHiv2xUz/s320/IMG_20210321_200348952_BURST000_COVER.png" /></a></div></div>I recently acquired a copy of the following booklet, a photograph of which is shown to the right of this post:<p></p> <blockquote>Berry, Jeff. <i>A Medieval Cookery Primer: A Programmed Approach. </i><u>Compleat Anachronist</u>, Issue No. 188, Second Quarter 2020. ISSN: 2375-5482. [55 pages]</blockquote><p style="text-align: justify;">This little book isn't a primer. Nor does it contain facts about medieval cuisine, except incidentally. Instead, it's a suggested course of readings and activities intended to enable the reader to teach himself or herself the art of medieval cookery. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">Mr. Berry begins with the assumption that to understand historical cookery, one must first understand the cookery of one's own time, the better to appreciate differences between one's own cookery and that of earlier periods. As a consequence, his first chapters begin with information on typical cooking techniques of the period and the equipment used to achieve them. The chapters are: Modern Cookery (primarily 20th century); Early Modern Cookery (<i>e.g., </i>17th and 18th centuries) and Medieval Cookery (the 14th and 15th centuries) In each chapter, he selects at least one popular period cookbook and discusses several recipes therein, noting features in each that differ from modern recipes. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">In the final chapter, "Perils and Pitfalls", Mr. Berry deals with problems the reader likely will encounter in attempting to recreate a historical recipe in a 21st century kitchen. For example, the simple act of substituting one food item for another in a recipe can be problematic, if the item is an extinct plant or an herb no longer deemed safe for human consumption. Use of old texts that have been replicated using modern optical character recognition (OCR) devices can introduce their own types of errors. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">Finally, (as the title of my post indicates), if any of my readers is interested in obtaining a copy of this little book, I have a copy I would like to sell. For reasons that are not interesting to describe, I ended up with two copies of Berry's little tome. I am willing to sell my extra copy for what I paid for it ($7.50 USD), plus the cost of shipping. If you are in the United States, I can send the book at "media mail" or book rate, which is extremely cheap. If you're outside the United States, e-mail me at cathy at thyrsus dot com and we can discuss who will bear shipping costs and what type of shipping method is appropriate. </p>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-5184290973614840792021-07-25T13:19:00.001-04:002021-07-28T13:51:37.228-04:00Historical Food sites<p style="text-align: justify;">Lately I have been spending more time keeping my cat, Empire, from gnawing the keycaps off of my computer keyboard, and making modern recipes for me and my spouse, than thinking about historical food.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">But I do not want to neglect this blog! So I started looking for new historical food sites, and found some interesting ones! For purposes of this entry I've stuck to blogs that have been recently updated, and are not currently in "abandoned" status.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="https://www.historicalfoodways.com/">Historical Foodways.</a> </b>This seems to be an old site (the earliest posts I found date from 2011) that has recently seen some new and interesting posts. It is a fascinating and eclectic mix of articles adapting genuine historical recipes from very various periods. The latest post is a history of the daiquiri. Fascinating reading.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b>Realm of History. </b> This is a general history blog, but in its culture section I found a fascinating article about food: <a href="https://www.realmofhistory.com/2018/04/04/9-oldest-food-recipes-history/">9 of the oldest food recipes from history still in use today.</a> The article uses the term "recipe" loosely--it might be better titled, "9 of the oldest types of dishes still in use". For example, the two oldest they list are stew (meat and vegetables in broth) and tamales, but cheesecake, curry, pilaf and <i>isicia omentata </i>(a fried meat patty made in late Roman times that the author compares to burgers) also appear in the list.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="https://kitchenhistoric.blogspot.com/">Kitchen Historic.</a> </b>This is another old blog that has been recently revived and redesigned. Recipes featured go back to the medieval period, but most seem to be 20th century, and the more recent ones paint a telling picture of the quirky experiments of our times. Consider, for example, <a href="http://kitchenhistoric.blogspot.com/2014/03/applesauce-with-red-hots-1963.html">Applesauce with Red Hots (1959)</a>, <a href="http://kitchenhistoric.blogspot.com/2013/08/jell-o-and-chiquita-bananas.html">Jello and Chiquita Bananas (1970s)</a>, and <a href="https://kitchenhistoric.blogspot.com/2012/12/poinsettia-saladfruit-salad-dressing.html">Poinsettia Salad/Fruit-Salad Dressing (1928).</a> If you loved reading cookbooks as a kid, as I did, you'll enjoy this site.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="https://www.silverscreensuppers.com/">Silver Screen Stars.</a> </b>This blog has an interesting premise; recipes of movie stars, past and present. These are snapshots of popular food culture of their day, made more interesting by movie-star associations. Some are good, some are terrible, or elsewhere in between. Some of these came from cookbooks originally published by the stars themselves.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.historicalcookingproject.com/"><b>The Historical Cooking Project.</b></a> <span style="text-align: left;">Too eclectic to describe. So large and oddly organized that I cannot figure out when the most recent post was made. Worth reading at least once. </span></p>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-49292892802332648112021-06-22T17:21:00.006-04:002022-06-30T22:34:15.816-04:00Moretum = Pesto?<p style="text-align: justify;"></p>On a whim, I recently decided to look up "pesto" in Wikipedia. That Wikipedia entry may be read <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesto">here</a>. <p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdMPllTyMaSew7CSr6O5efSlVHu70ot4NLeNwVMI50yn3ysrJO1HWQ5kaJ6odDXJCgvSeFekZPMScj5sLW5UV4ThWQMkRame3OIJR8Khzv8thwH8tytycIt3IS1q12GoadBL48uFxNaUYj/s640/640px-BasilkumPesto.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdMPllTyMaSew7CSr6O5efSlVHu70ot4NLeNwVMI50yn3ysrJO1HWQ5kaJ6odDXJCgvSeFekZPMScj5sLW5UV4ThWQMkRame3OIJR8Khzv8thwH8tytycIt3IS1q12GoadBL48uFxNaUYj/s320/640px-BasilkumPesto.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><h4><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Homemade pesto. Source: Wikimedia Commons</span></span></h4></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">To my surprise, the Wikipedia article states that pesto has two forerunners, one of which is <i>moretum</i>, the Roman cheese spread I have <a href="https://cathyshistoricfood.blogspot.com/2015/05/my-moretum-experiment.html">previously written about</a> on several occasions:</div><p></p><blockquote style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">"Pesto is thought to have two predecessors in ancient times, going back as far as the </span><a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_age" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Olive oil">Roman age</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">. The </span><a class="mw-redirect" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_age" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="">ancient Romans</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"> used to eat a similar paste called </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moretum" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Moretum">moretum</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">, which was made by crushing garlic, salt, cheese, herbs, olive oil, and vinegar (and sometimes pine nuts) together.<span style="font-size: 13.3333px; white-space: nowrap;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"> The use of this paste in the Roman cuisine is mentioned in the </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appendix_Vergiliana#Moretum_(%22The_Pesto%22)" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="">Appendix Vergiliana</a></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">, an ancient collection of poems in which the author details the preparation of </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">moretum</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">.<span style="font-size: 13.3333px; white-space: nowrap;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">During the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="">Middle Ages</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">, a popular sauce in the Genoan cuisine was </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">agliata</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">, which was basically a mash of garlic and walnuts, as garlic was a staple in the nutrition of Ligurians, especially for the seafarers."</span></span></blockquote><p style="text-align: justify;">The Roman era cheese spread contains the ingredients of modern pesto, if, as Wikipedia states, pine nuts were added (though pine nuts did not appear in Symilius's <i>moretum</i>). On the other hand, there have been modern takes on pesto that forsake garlic, olive oil and vinegar altogether in favor of Asian and African ingredients with similar properties. The Food Network has a page of 50 different "pesto" recipes <a href="https://www.foodnetwork.com/magazine/articles/50-pesto-recipes">here</a>. Various recipes in this list feature ingredients such as grapeseed oil, coconut oil, sesame oil, peanuts, pistachios, almonds, lime juice and fish sauce.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">What this information shows us is that food-related practices are very conservative, in that they change, if at all, very slowly over time. Very old recipes may come in and out of fashion, but do not die out, as the story of <a href="https://cathyshistoricfood.blogspot.com/2020/12/gingerbread.html">gingerbread</a> demonstrates. What seems to matter more than the exact ingredients of a dish is the function the food plays in people's eating habits. Whether you eat "pesto" or "moretum," you probably eat it smeared on bread, the way Symilius, the Roman farmer whose use of <i>moretum </i>was preserved in Virgil's poem, did. That's as much continuity as a food historian can typically promise. </p>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-2792259765954405422021-04-01T11:30:00.002-04:002021-06-15T15:00:49.477-04:00Prank Food<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: justify;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Yes, once again it's that time of year when I try to come up with a post that is in theme for this blog while still being in keeping with the hoax nature of April Fool's Day. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In trawling the Internet, I found a number of posts on different, popular recipe sites that give recipes for making "April Fool's" recipes. Most of these are items that either: 1) look like an iconic savory dish but are actually sweet; 2) look like an iconic dessert but are actually savory, or, more rarely; 3) look like an iconic dessert but are actually a different type of sweet altogether. Buzzfeed, unsurprisingly, adds a few prank "recipes" that truly are unpleasant pranks, such as removing the cream filling from Oreo cookies and replacing it with white toothpaste.</div></span><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.food.com/ideas/april-fools-day-6200#c-15099" style="text-align: justify;">https://www.food.com/ideas/april-fools-day-6200#c-15099</a></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/creative-recipes-for-april-fools-day/">https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/creative-recipes-for-april-fools-day/</a></p><p><a href="https://www.allrecipes.com/recipes/1513/holidays-and-events/events-and-gatherings/april-fools-day/">https://www.allrecipes.com/recipes/1513/holidays-and-events/events-and-gatherings/april-fools-day/</a></p><p><a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/arielknutson/21-totally-sneaky-food-pranks-for-april-fools-day">https://www.buzzfeed.com/arielknutson/21-totally-sneaky-food-pranks-for-april-fools-day</a></p><p><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="314" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XG7OaadP5LU" width="399" youtube-src-id="XG7OaadP5LU"></iframe></p><div style="text-align: justify;">Emmy, of the popular YouTube channel emmymadeinjapan, features a lot of foods that are "April Fool's" foods under these definitions, so I couldn't resist embedding one of her YouTube videos showing the making of such a dish; ice cream "drumsticks" that look like fried chicken.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Bon appétit!</i><br /></div>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-12637817395032637512021-03-28T18:31:00.000-04:002021-03-28T18:31:00.653-04:00More Prehistoric Porridge<p style="text-align: justify;">From <a href="https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/pottery-reveals-culinary-habits-of-ancient-maltese.852962">Malta</a> comes a new archaeological find suggestive of the making of porridge. The find belongs to the Bronze Age, between 2500 BCE and 700 BCE. A news article about the find appears via the link at the beginning of the previous sentence of this post. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">Archaeologists examined residue found inside pottery remains at a site called Il-Qlejgħa tal-Baħrija. Analysis found that the pottery bore remnants of a mixture of bovine milk and cereals--a combination suggesting that they had been used to make and/or eat porridge. Storage jars found on the site bore traces of proteins indicative of wheat while others had traces of proteins associated with barley. The fact that so many large jars and food bowls were located at the site suggests that the community stored and distributed their food from a central location, a phenomenon also noted at some prehistoric sites on the island of Sicily. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">Interestingly, broad shallow bowls on the site were found to contain fragments of cow's milk, as well. These containers were decorated with angular motifs resembling basket weaving. The research team believes that these bowls were used to make cheese, but I wonder; could the bowls indicate that the Bronze Age Maltese originally made their porridge in baskets, as the <a href="https://cathyshistoricfood.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-universality-of-porridge.html">indigenous Americans</a> did? Stay tuned! We are learning more about prehistoric life all the time from archaeology and chemical analyses.</p>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-72055181591214310822021-02-07T17:04:00.011-05:002021-08-21T23:08:03.183-04:00Gingerbread Experiment No. 2, Final Results<div style="text-align: justify;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtqI7x42RrVzv4R94L5HuVmHM9ckhV-Pu_l0xYHZolYGUdUeaAvyrn1K9tNzNWw3rcOxeK0ZZL_FDtuzVcshdOEgDdVzSVP6_tebYIOzCOZB2OjrNanQvn9uiXo1zS01JxNKziNPkRj99l/s1320/IMG_20210207_163340271_BURST000_COVER.png" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1102" data-original-width="1320" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtqI7x42RrVzv4R94L5HuVmHM9ckhV-Pu_l0xYHZolYGUdUeaAvyrn1K9tNzNWw3rcOxeK0ZZL_FDtuzVcshdOEgDdVzSVP6_tebYIOzCOZB2OjrNanQvn9uiXo1zS01JxNKziNPkRj99l/w200-h167/IMG_20210207_163340271_BURST000_COVER.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The test cake, after my spouse and I tried it--<br />bear in mind it's only 7" in diameter</span>.</td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjGadMTnGRyl66e28sQSabFP9BrWV9cH4WpUyjbeh_SGXfb1yz8KJx4QmMsayiEbiDGyH-zbPI0eRgY6klVgdwRYEVt9fifkrzf537DnpUZiuAi-nnKLn9jy5kadx6RpMOKDDuvk09uENS/s4160/IMG_20210208_133756795.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjGadMTnGRyl66e28sQSabFP9BrWV9cH4WpUyjbeh_SGXfb1yz8KJx4QmMsayiEbiDGyH-zbPI0eRgY6klVgdwRYEVt9fifkrzf537DnpUZiuAi-nnKLn9jy5kadx6RpMOKDDuvk09uENS/w200-h150/IMG_20210208_133756795.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The final product for my MIL.</span></td></tr></tbody></table>Last night, I made my gingerbread cake again, using the pressure cooker function of my Instant Pot, and the original gingerbread recipe from my Crock Pot cookbook. It came out well, though it was a little too soft in the center--perhaps I should have set the pressure time for 65 minutes instead of 60? I will do that with the cake I make for my mother-in-law. I will also use my new Instant Pot bundt pan for that cake. This one, my husband and I will eat. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I made some cream cheese glaze again, as I did at Christmas, to use as frosting. The final result can be seen beside this post. (As always, clicking on the image should show the picture larger and with greater detail.) </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's obvious that I'd starve if I tried to make it as a food photographer, but the pictures do give a reasonable idea of the appearance of the finished product. The cake is not quite symmetrical, but it is tasty, and not overly sweet. My spouse considers it a qualified success.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">NOTE: (2/14/2021) The bundt pan cake for my mother-in-law was an unqualified success! I pressure cooked it for one hour and 5 minutes and the combination of the longer cooking time and the bundt pan (with its heat-conducting cone through the center) cooked the cake to perfection. My mother-in-law, not being the type of person to rave about things, couldn't say enough nice things about it. I've attached a photograph above. We still have about an 1/8th or less of the test cake left. <br /></div> Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-66903653835339153962021-01-23T12:35:00.005-05:002021-02-07T17:06:39.056-05:00Gingerbread Experiment, No. 2<div style="text-align: justify;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD0nGEA0OMAoyIbDKYpgzt0woKdGQ-AhocuoUDWElICwEMGNsf6OBJs9pdoBx9TpCj_JNyEgBopGQeRBmWaKU151XLZ8WCEN84oMvO-Bf0RdFxAVKBZzfpbtk4fQnJ1kl4bFQTdvdh6L-l/s1500/71uH2eSjZ%252BL._AC_SL1500_.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="984" data-original-width="1500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD0nGEA0OMAoyIbDKYpgzt0woKdGQ-AhocuoUDWElICwEMGNsf6OBJs9pdoBx9TpCj_JNyEgBopGQeRBmWaKU151XLZ8WCEN84oMvO-Bf0RdFxAVKBZzfpbtk4fQnJ1kl4bFQTdvdh6L-l/s320/71uH2eSjZ%252BL._AC_SL1500_.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><small>Nordic Ware bundt pan sold on Amazon, 8.4" x 2.9"<br />(picture found on Amazon.com)</small> </td></tr></tbody></table>With Christmas 11 months away, the universe decided to tempt me into making my gingerbread cake again, much sooner.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">My mother-in-law's birthday is in early February, and the family was looking for ways to celebrate it without having a big meet-up that might spread COVID. So as we started talking about gifts we could bring her, and I mentioned the gingerbread cake I made for Christmas (some of which I had actually given to my mother-in-law). Everyone urged me to make one for her birthday. Naturally, I agreed. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Having received a 6-quart Instant Pot for Christmas, I can use that to make the cake. Though my Instant Pot has a "bake" function, I have no idea what temperature to set to bake the cake. So I probably will simply use the Pot's slow cooker function and double the recipe again. Because an Instant Pot lets you set your pot to slow cook for a prescribed time, I can set the pot for a maximum cooking time so that the cake doesn't scorch as it did the last time.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I also have to decide whether to replace some of the molasses with honey, as I did last time, and whether to find a different cream cheese frosting recipe. The last batch of cream cheese frosting (which I made with a little more than one-quarter of the recommended sugar) was tasty, and does wonderful things to Greek yogurt if you stir a few teaspoons into it, but it wasn't very frosting-like. It tended to want to spread out and drip off of the cake. But I'm still reluctant to use butter in the frosting. I will have to consider recipes very carefully before I start baking. Wish me luck!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />EDIT: (1/23/2021) I started looking for Instant Pot Gingerbread recipes on the Internet and found several where the flour and liquid ingredient content of the cake came very close to my recipe. So I think I'm going to make the cake using the pressure cooking feature instead. I also found two sizes of cake pan (one for a bundt cake) that should fit in my Instant Pot. If the frosting comes out runny, that won't really matter with a bundt cake; it would be an advantage. Onward!</div>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-4827517922053877902020-12-27T22:25:00.007-05:002021-01-27T16:33:09.501-05:00The Gingerbread Experiment<div style="text-align: justify;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifp0nPAvYo9TczJM15Dd0EEC_ACvUTPtMPE93-0ItjTCj76RCT2R0xBFpdrnPb5waylU1npdPf8GsPwJiFHjYUvwDnpojmgyf6nE8z9PDW45wCk0RryOXqVKeO5_cz8UR-uanPddXLgBrw/s1655/IMG_20201227_215024744_BURST000_COVER.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: right;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1241" data-original-width="1655" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifp0nPAvYo9TczJM15Dd0EEC_ACvUTPtMPE93-0ItjTCj76RCT2R0xBFpdrnPb5waylU1npdPf8GsPwJiFHjYUvwDnpojmgyf6nE8z9PDW45wCk0RryOXqVKeO5_cz8UR-uanPddXLgBrw/s320/IMG_20201227_215024744_BURST000_COVER.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The last few pieces of cake, with frosting.</span></td></tr></tbody></table>At the beginning of the month, in my post about the history of gingerbread, I mentioned that I was going to be making my own gingerbread for Christmas. A picture of the fruit of my effort accompanies this post. <br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As the earlier post said, nowadays "gingerbread" can take one of several forms. It can be a cookie (thin and crisp, thicker and crunchy, or thicker still and chewy), or a cake. I chose to try out a gingerbread cake recipe found in a cookbook designed for use with the brand of slow cooker that I have. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It happened that the recipe was designed for a 4 1/2 quart round slow cooker. I have a 6 quart oval slow cooker. After a brief search for a cake pan that would fit inside my slow cooker, I decided to double the recipe instead and use the crock itself as the cake pan, greasing it thoroughly with butter first. Up to this point, all went according to plan, except that I discovered that I didn't have enough molasses for the doubled recipe. So I used honey for the last 4 ounces required. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the end, the cake took twice as long to cook as the recipe called for. Possibly, given that I had doubled the volume of batter involved, I should have expected that. Then I got interrupted, so I set the pot on "keep warm" and left it for another half hour.
The extra half-hour was too much--the entire outside surface of the cake (<i>i.e., </i>the part that touched the wall of my crock) was scorched to varying degrees. But the rest of the cake was <b>wonderful</b>--rich, chewy, and dense, and full of flavor. By this time, it was nearly 3:00 a.m. on Christmas Eve, so we left matters until later that morning. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Getting the cake out took some effort; I had to run a thin metal spatula around the inside of the crock, and then my husband had to remove the crock from the rest of the pot and tip it upside down. But it came out, almost completely intact.
I hadn't been planning to make icing, but given the obviously scorched sides, that now seemed like a good idea. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I opened a web browser and looked for a plausible cream cheese frosting recipe. The recipe I found uses no butter--just confectioners' sugar, an 8-ounce block of regular cream cheese, and a pinch of salt. The recipe called for vanilla extract, which I ignored (I had plenty, but I didn't want to use it) and for 3 cups of sugar, which I cut to about a cup and a half. Moreover, I don't have an electric mixer, so I had to combine the ingredients using a whisk, helping the effort along with a few tablespoons of heavy cream. The resulting frosting was creamy enough, but never formed peaks. Though it eventually set, I originally feared that it would be too runny to stay put, so I only put it on the top surface of the cake. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So the frosting ended up not acting as a cosmetic disguise. I'm still glad I made it--its cream cheese flavor was the perfect compliment to the cake. I'm also glad we chose to give away about half of the cake as Christmas presents and that a fair amount of the rest was too scorched to eat--otherwise my husband and I might have gorged our selves impermissibly. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;">But I already miss the cake. Already I want to taste it again, and for that reason <span style="text-align: justify;">I expect I will make it again next year.</span></div></div>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-4325581604192624632020-12-14T23:02:00.006-05:002020-12-15T19:11:30.923-05:00Cosmology for Christmas<div style="text-align: justify;">I found this YouTube video via a link by a friend on a private mailing list. The channel owner, Christine Simpson, has not monetized her channel, has a tiny audience, and clearly made this video for fun. If you have the slightest interest in, or knowledge of, modern cosmology and physics, this video is very funny. If you are interested in having a Christmas party with a cosmological bent, watch it for the food ideas. Either way, I thought it worth sharing with my readers.</div><p style="text-align: justify;">
Christine, by the way, is interested in baking, sewing, dancing, and physics. She obtained a MSci in Physics at the Imperial College London in 2013, and she is presently working on her PhD in Gravitational Wave Data Analysis at the University of Edinburgh as part of the CDT in Data Science in the school of Maths and Informatics. She is way out of my league, but any of my readers interested in finding out more about her activities can check out her website, <a href="https://www.christinensimpson.com/">https://www.christinensimpson.com/</a>. </p><p>
</p><div style="text-align: justify;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="421" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yJ9A2uCVPnk" width="1000" youtube-src-id="yJ9A2uCVPnk"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span></div></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div><br /></div><span style="font-size: x-large;"></span></div>
Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-23092543779982039522020-12-13T17:56:00.024-05:002021-08-21T23:17:49.307-04:00Portuguese Honey Bread, Revisited<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwjLEEMbzaf81dcnlV-NdqyLyxBo183uBgy7H-PuKk90oTvqQGQrcwcP5MvnJQHHwQBEHM4MNTIlNmdIxCWgoWrJaOhnB8svwDrWWMW9ejr6QTT2kAg-xcAU4sWkO0a2prw3DWw-wXhdfK/s2048/Bolo_de_Mel+%25281%2529.jpeg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1570" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwjLEEMbzaf81dcnlV-NdqyLyxBo183uBgy7H-PuKk90oTvqQGQrcwcP5MvnJQHHwQBEHM4MNTIlNmdIxCWgoWrJaOhnB8svwDrWWMW9ejr6QTT2kAg-xcAU4sWkO0a2prw3DWw-wXhdfK/s320/Bolo_de_Mel+%25281%2529.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Bolo de mel. </i><br />Photo by TeWeBs, found on Wikimedia Commons</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">Back in 2010, I <a href="https://cathyshistoricfood.blogspot.com/2010/01/featured-recipe-portuguese-honey-bread.html#comment-form">posted</a> a recipe that my mother found in an issue of <i>Good Housekeeping </i>magazine back in the 1970s called "Portuguese Honey Bread." The recipe, as a look at my post will show, had some unusual ingredients, as well as more normal ingredients in unusual quantities. 11 cups of flour! A 1/4 cup of cinnamon (and the recipe said "yes, 1/4 cup")! A third of a cup of cold mashed potatoes! And a half a cup of sherry. Most of the ingredients are dry ingredients; there are less than 3 cups of wet ingredients in the whole thing, not counting the butter (in a generous amount) and the mashed potatoes. The bread was nearly uncuttable <u>fresh out of the oven</u>, but after being wrapped up and aged for about a week, it became a wonderful, dense, spice bread.</div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">This week I decided to see whether I could get any more information about the recipe. Is this a traditional Portuguese recipe, or was the adjective "Portuguese" just put in the name to catch readers' eyes?</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I have still not found more information as to whether the recipe is traditional--but I did find other "Portuguese Honey Bread" recipes. Other than the fact that they are all spice breads or cakes, those recipes are different from the one my mother and I made--some dramatically so. Some of them I had stumbled upon back in 2010 when I was first exploring the recipe.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/portuguese-honey-bread-236705">One</a> can be read on <a href="https://www.epicurious.com/">Epicurious</a>. It has no mashed potatoes, only a tame quarter teaspoon of cinnamon, and only 4 1/2 cups of flour. It does have alcohol--a quarter-cup of port, instead of the half cup of sherry in the recipe we made. And it has three large eggs--which the GH recipe we tried did not. The Epicurious recipe recommends double wrapping the bread as we did, but for the sake of preserving it, not for aging purposes.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I found <a href="https://teawithfriends.blogspot.com/2020/06/portuguese-honey-bread.html">another recipe</a> on a blog called <a href="https://teawithfriends.blogspot.com/">Tea With Friends</a>. The blogger claimed that she found the recipe in a 1969 issue of <i>Good Housekeeping </i>which she found at a yard sale. Since that date was close enough to the date I recalled of my experiment with my mother, I was very interested. Further, the blog post containing the recipe she used showed a page from the magazine, with a photograph of a completed bread that had been baked in a pan made so that a sculpted rose would appear on the finished cake, and that photograph looked familiar to me. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">But the recipe she gives is quite different from the one Mom and I made! It had most of the same ingredients--including the sherry and mashed potatoes--but in much more modest proportions. Four and one-half cups of flour. A bare <u>two tablespoons</u> of sherry. <u>Two tablespoons</u> of mashed potatoes. Significantly less sugar than in the recipe my mother and I made. And so on. Speaking of potatoes, here's <a href="http://www.ukrainianclassickitchen.ca/index.php?topic=1686.0">one</a> that substitutes instant potatoes for the mashed potatoes, over at <a href="http://www.ukrainianclassickitchen.ca/index.php?PHPSESSID=4kffda247j0kcagfepu25fknf0&">Ukrainian Classic Kitchen and International Cuisine</a>.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">A fourth <a href="http://eliotseats.com/2018/11/23/ihcc-bread/">recipe</a>, found on the blog <a href="http://eliotseats.com/">Eliot's Eats</a>, is attributed to <i>Gourmet Today. </i>It's different from the those previously discussed. It requires three eggs, for one thing (the others have no eggs). It contains port, like the Epicurious recipe, and about one and one-half cups of dried fruit (cranberries, mixed candied fruits), and modest amounts of spices. Unlike the others, it also contains yeast (the blogger calls it a "quick bread/yeast bread hybrid").</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Finally, from <a href="https://www.food.com/">Food.com</a> comes a recipe titled <a href="https://www.food.com/recipe/pao-de-mel-portuguese-honey-bread-95100#activity-feed">"Pao de Mel (Portuguese Honey Bread)</a>." This recipe uses only three cups of flour, a bit of cloves (or nutmeg, your choice), and chocolate, in addition to other ingredients. There are no other spices and no mashed potatoes, fruit, or alcohol among those other ingredients.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I could probably go on, but I'm sure my readers get the idea. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><bsp nbsp="" p=""></bsp></p><p style="text-align: justify;">A quick web search for "Portuguese bread" turned up a number of pages, including several pages of the list of "Portuguese breads of note" variety. Apparently, the Portuguese love breads, both sweet and savory. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">It's certainly possible that the recipe my mother and I used was an erroneous redaction of the 1969 GH recipe that got printed in a slightly later issue of the magazine. But what of the other recipes? Which comes closest to the original--if indeed there can be said to <u>be</u> an "original" recipe? And do any of these recipes have any connection with Portugal, or the Portuguese? All of the recipes include honey, and Portugal produces some very fine honey. Perhaps in Portugal any "quick" bread that contains honey is a "Portuguese honey bread"? </p><p style="text-align: justify;">I did find mention of a cake called "<i>bolo de mel,</i>" which means "honey cake." <i>Bolo de mel </i>includes molasses, which the "honey bread" recipes (including the one we made) do, but the photographs I've found (except maybe the one which appears with this post) look softer than the honey bread Mom and I made, even though they're all the right shade of brown. Besides, if <i>bolo de mel</i> is the forerunner or inspiration for the "Portuguese honey bread" recipes I've found, why don't any of those recipes contain <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeira_wine">Madiera wine</a>, since the recipes contain alcohol, and<i> bolo de mel</i> is a Madeiran recipe? On the other hand, <i>bolo de mel </i>includes star anise, and the recipe my mother and I used contains anise--providing a similar taste.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.eater.com/">Eater.com</a> has <a href="https://www.eater.com/2017/6/28/15876268/portuguese-pastries-sweets-convents-monasteries">some interesting things to say</a> about <i>bolo de mel </i>(scroll down for the quoted language). Unfortunately, I do not know the source/s for the facts it asserts. But as described on the Eater.com site, it certainly resembles what my mother and I made, and it's associated strongly with Madeira Island, source of the wine of the same name. The Eater.com article claims that <i>bolo de mel </i>is really called <i>bolo de mel da Madeira:</i></p><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">"With its many sugarcane plantations, Madeira Island became an important depot for sugar production for all of Portugal’s colonies. This dark, spicy cake is made with honey from sugarcane, nuts, cloves, star anise, and cinnamon, and has a strong flavor of molasses. The cake is considered to be Madeira’s oldest dessert, dating back 600 years. Madeira Islanders usually prepare it on December 8, the day of the Immaculate Conception, but it can be found year-round on the island as well as in Lisbon. Note: In accordance with local tradition, the cake should be cut with your hand, not with a knife."</div></blockquote><p style="text-align: justify;">Perhaps the "Portuguese Honey Bread" we made is <i>bolo de mel</i> . Currently I have no confirmed solution to the mystery. If any of my readers do, or if they at least have any interesting ideas or similar recipes, hopefully they will comment on this post.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">EDIT: (3/14/2021) I just remembered, or think I remembered, something that strengthens the case for our "Portuguese Honey Bread" being <i>bolo de mel. </i>I believe the issue of <i>Good Housekeeping</i> where Mom found the recipe we made was in a Christmas issue. That harmonizes with Eater.com's statement that <i>bolo de mel</i> is usually made in December for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. If I find any further information that relates to this topic, I'll probably write another post.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">2D EDIT: (3/14/2021) I re-read my original post on "Portuguese Honey Bread" from 2010, and in it I said that Mom and I found the recipe "late one fall in the special Christmas edition of one of the "women's" magazines--I think it was <i>Good Housekeeping, </i>but I'm not sure." So it <u>did</u> appear in association with Christmas! I have also found some web references relating to <i>bolo de mel </i>that I will discuss in a future post.</p>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-40457747703858693872020-12-04T16:56:00.008-05:002020-12-27T21:46:35.887-05:00Gingerbread!<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioIc0WmHZiorLmWWzg6BnzOd1CpOB1WmSBwCZlz_iCS1h6rf-C-P-ULgyohxT6v_TU8lxXsliQlozomIlDt6_rxfRbVqcAwaFMydGpEYh5EWo-zusBiYgJyrlHBcL7K8z9q12MQYGTaZoh/s1600/ginger01.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="324" data-original-width="432" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioIc0WmHZiorLmWWzg6BnzOd1CpOB1WmSBwCZlz_iCS1h6rf-C-P-ULgyohxT6v_TU8lxXsliQlozomIlDt6_rxfRbVqcAwaFMydGpEYh5EWo-zusBiYgJyrlHBcL7K8z9q12MQYGTaZoh/s320/ginger01.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Molded, gilded, & colored medieval-style<br />
gingerbread in the form of a Tudor Rose.<br /></span><br />
Gingerbread by Tammy Crawford; Photo from GodeCookery.com</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_kUOYTnICqdZcCj8pCx6T2vGc7EBxXH4xy7ETajheZn4PilW07xqeBQSsKscKIXJpU8nvHJmmDdhk2MQPGr_x9XI2nUEkRFrcy99sB_cSEgV3ZsLPqA0kPwI9DEg4liDz1NbMSWqwfdUq/s1600/220px-CrispyGingerbreadCookies.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="146" data-original-width="220" height="130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_kUOYTnICqdZcCj8pCx6T2vGc7EBxXH4xy7ETajheZn4PilW07xqeBQSsKscKIXJpU8nvHJmmDdhk2MQPGr_x9XI2nUEkRFrcy99sB_cSEgV3ZsLPqA0kPwI9DEg4liDz1NbMSWqwfdUq/s200/220px-CrispyGingerbreadCookies.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gingerbread Men. Photo by<br />
alcinoe (originally from en.wikibooks,<br />
transferred to Wikimedia Commons)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigiHKVnjmDoTsZoQ-QDYgt8i8LDdfXJgg56WxYEXRIENls-wif7BwckdzviGz_y_JY_DstpXbAHSZVL4ociJgpujpqbyoVndHhALRJlSPJ9tEx7Z6ap9MJyy3fLZGCO8y29iK0oHEQyhrv/s1600/Cornish_fairings.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigiHKVnjmDoTsZoQ-QDYgt8i8LDdfXJgg56WxYEXRIENls-wif7BwckdzviGz_y_JY_DstpXbAHSZVL4ociJgpujpqbyoVndHhALRJlSPJ9tEx7Z6ap9MJyy3fLZGCO8y29iK0oHEQyhrv/s200/Cornish_fairings.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cornish fairings. Photo by foodista, <br />
originally posted on Flickr</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
There are a combination of spices that so-called "First World" countries associate with the winter holidays, such as Thanksgiving (in the U.S.) and Christmas. If you are American, Canadian or British, you likely know what they are. They include ginger, cinnamon, black pepper and cloves. Nutmeg, mace, and allspice later joined the list as Western explorers discovered them in Indonesia and the Caribbean. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Today, these combinations of spices are associated in our minds with the flavor of pumpkin pie, spice cakes, and ... gingerbread! Gingerbread turns out to be a very changeable concept, assuming different forms in different periods.<br />
<br />
During the high Middle Ages, gingerbread was not a bread, cake, or cookie. It was a kind of sticky candy made with honey and bread crumbs, and flavored with the "holiday" spices we still use today. The topmost photograph to the left above shows a molded shape made from this sort of "gingerbread". Yet ginger came to Europe through Asian trade with the Mediterranean; it was already known and used in Ancient Rome, and certainly <a href="https://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/history-gingerbread/">predates the Middle Ages</a>. Ginger was originally cultivated in Southeast Asia, and is believed to exist only as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultigen">cultigen</a>, and not in a wild form. So tracing the travels of ginger across the world doesn't really pin down how long "gingerbread" has existed, or even what forms it may have.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
Nowadays, "gingerbread" might be a cookie, a hard biscuit, or a cake, and the various nations of Europe, as well as the English-speaking world, have their own characteristic forms of gingerbread; Wikipedia names a few of them <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gingerbread">here</a>. American varieties often use <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molasses">molasses</a>, a common sweetener in the United States that is a byproduct of the sugar cane processing process. <br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: left; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijvAGXRd_Sdz7UMRzJV5LlVnz587aA12LtOMQhyphenhyphenPKDmPNjJcoZLqNGLnIz4vSCyLEMOnMMPiY9xTRSilWOc2Pl-SMUQijxuof91qO4ImXHWbOH-yBLCDvN5eLS12V1X-glLzfc-U47DUtL/s1600/Mjuk_pepparkaka_med_lingon.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="167" data-original-width="250" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijvAGXRd_Sdz7UMRzJV5LlVnz587aA12LtOMQhyphenhyphenPKDmPNjJcoZLqNGLnIz4vSCyLEMOnMMPiY9xTRSilWOc2Pl-SMUQijxuof91qO4ImXHWbOH-yBLCDvN5eLS12V1X-glLzfc-U47DUtL/s200/Mjuk_pepparkaka_med_lingon.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gingerbread cake with mountain cranberries<br />
Photo: Johan Bryggare<br />
(Wikimedia Commons)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
But there is a lot of overlap between the forms of gingerbread, as I discovered when searching the Internet for information about ginger snaps the other day. I think of "ginger snaps" as a hard crunchy cookie, that can range in form from wafer-thin to as much as a quarter-inch thick. When I think of ginger snaps I think of a cookie made and sold in the Philadelphia area under the brand called <a href="https://www.sweetzels.com/">Sweetzels</a>. Sweetzels actually sells similar cookies as <a href="https://www.sweetzels.com/our-products">"ginger snaps" and "spiced wafers"</a>; the spiced wafers are easier to find where I live.<br />
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To my surprise, I learned that a type of cookie identical in appearance to the Sweetzels cookies is known in the United Kingdom as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_fairing">"Cornish fairing"</a> (see the second picture to the right). A "fairing" is a <a href="https://bakingforbritain.blogspot.com/2006/02/cornish-fairing-biscuits.html">treat sold at a country "fair"</a>, and fairs existed (and may still exist?) all over the United Kingdom. The thick, ginger-flavored biscuit was characteristic of fairings sold in Cornwall in particular.<br />
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Much the same assortment of spices as have been used in gingerbreads have long been the key ingredients in pumpkin pie. Nowadays these "pumpkin pie spices" are added to all kinds of foods, ranging from cereals to lattes. That's done for one simple reason. People like them, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelinemaynard/2013/09/22/how-starbucks-turned-pumpkin-spice-into-a-marketing-bonanza/#1f495094718a">so they sell</a>, or at least they sell in the fall and winter. That likely means that gingerbread will never quite go away, because it has a similar flavor and invokes similar thoughts of celebration and holiday. Meanwhile, I am planning to make a "gingerbread" cake for Christmas, in my slow cooker. Sometimes, the more things change the more they remain the same.</div>
Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2032365360611242433.post-41031424854468848762020-11-08T14:24:00.004-05:002020-11-09T00:29:31.241-05:00The Universality of Porridge<p style="text-align: justify;">This blog has noted before that <a href="https://cathyshistoricfood.blogspot.com/2018/04/in-praise-of-porridge.html">porridge</a>, a hot dish consisting of boiled or stewed grains, with various flavorings added, shows up in many cultures. It was discovered early, and continues to be eaten today. The Romans and Carthaginians both had their own versions of it.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Last week, I discovered a <a href="https://researchingfoodhistory.blogspot.com/2020/10/acorn-mush-in-basket-stone-from-fire.html">web article</a> indicating that the indigenous Americans (<i>i.e., </i>the peoples that were once called "American Indian") also made porridge, even though they did not have metal pots to heat it in. Instead, they heated rocks, and put the heated rocks in thick baskets, along with water and acorn flour--<i>i.e., </i>pounded acorns. The resulting hot food was called <i>Wiiwish</i>, or "acorn mush." <br /><br />Many thanks to the <a href="https://researchingfoodhistory.blogspot.com/">Researching Food History--Cooking and Dining</a> blog, for its illustrated article about acorn mush. The page on which the article about acorn mush appears includes a listing of virtual talks about early American food, both indigenous and otherwise. </p>Cathy Raymondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04580681386443534011noreply@blogger.com0