Historical Food sites

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.

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.

Historical Foodways.  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.

Realm of History.  This is a general history blog, but in its culture section I found a fascinating article about food:  9 of the oldest food recipes from history still in use today.   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 isicia omentata (a fried meat patty made in late Roman times that the author compares to burgers) also appear in the list.

Kitchen Historic.  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, Applesauce with Red Hots (1959), Jello and Chiquita Bananas (1970s), and Poinsettia Salad/Fruit-Salad Dressing (1928).  If you loved reading cookbooks as a kid, as I did, you'll enjoy this site.

Silver Screen Stars.  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.

The Historical Cooking Project.  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.  

Mac and Cheese--A Bit of History

While surfing the Internet the other week, I found two different videos giving two different recipes from two different periods for a dish we consider an "old" favorite today.

We call that dish "macaroni and cheese."

But although the boxed mixes we often use to make it today date back no earlier than the 20th century, written recipes for very similar dishes go back at least 700 years. Moreover, The Food Timeline avers that the combination of pasta and cheese goes back to the Ancient Greeks and Romans, though they date elbow macaroni, the type of pasta most often used for macaroni and cheese today, to the beginning of the 20th century.

The videos I found on YouTube appear to the right of this post.  The top one is from the Townsends channel. That channel belongs to Jas. Townsend & Son, Inc., a company that sells reproduction clothing and artifacts (including historical cookbooks and kitchen tools) for reenactors engaged in portraying the 18th and early 19th centuries.  They have posted numerous videos showing them cooking period recipes using period techniques and equipment.  The Townsend video shows their best recreation of the dish using a recipe from an 1784 book by a man named John Farley called The Art of Cookery. It is made by adding cooked pasta to a skillet with heavy cream and a ball of butter rolled in flour, stirring until the butter and cream combine.  Then Parmesan cheese is sprinkled on top, and a hot piece of iron called a salamander is held over it until the top of the macaroni browns a bit.

The video below the Townsends video comes from English Heritage, a British charity that manages over 400 historic sites in the United Kingdom.  That video shows a reenactor, portraying a cook named Avis Crocombe, who worked as the chief cook at a great house called Audley's End during the middle of the 19th century, making what she calls "macaroni cheese" for the servants' supper.

Mrs. Crocombe's original handwritten notebook of recipes survives to this day, and it's from that book that the recipe shown in the video (translated into modern measures) is taken. Her recipe also uses Parmesan, and is similar to the Townsend recipe, except for two key details:  it is baked like a modern casserole instead of being made in a skillet, and bread crumbs are added to the cheese sprinkled on top to give the meal an extra-crunchy texture.

Intrigued, I did a quick search to see whether Wikipedia could point me toward additional information.  This Wikipedia page indicates that there are similar recipes going back to the 14th century.  A quick search found a copy of one, on the Gode Cookery website, which has been adapted from a 14th century English cookbook called The Forme of Cury.  The Forme of Cury's recipe is called "Makerouns" and it uses pasta made from very thin strips of dough, instead of the tubular pasta we see in the Townsends and English Heritage videos.  It isn't broiled on top, but the cheese and butter sauce shows it to be a cousin of those recipes, and of our mac and cheese today.

The Food Timeline gives a chronological list of various macaroni and cheese recipes, starting with the one in The Forme of Cury, as well as a short history of Kraft's macaroni and cheese, which was introduced in 1937.

Even a reasonably complete history of this dish would be too long to list here, but let's finish this quick look with a survey of cheese choices.  The 18th and 19th century recipes above favor Parmesan, which makes sense since the earliest English recipes appear to have come from Italy.  The Forme of Cury recipe doesn't specify a particular type of cheese, allowing the cook to choose a personal favorite, or whatever cheese was on hand.  Boxed mixes have favored "cheese foods" such as American cheese and Velveeta, and modern made-from-scratch recipes often use cheddar, possibly because both American cheese and Velveeta have a vaguely cheddar-like flavor.  Perhaps The Forme of Cury had the right idea. Use the cheese you prefer in macaroni and cheese, because it is, first and foremost, a comfort food.

Pass the Garum!

Yesterday, I found a fascinating blog, Pass the Garum. As you might guess from the title,  Pass the Garum is about the cuisine of ancient Rome.  The blog includes a recipes folder, and most of the recipes are from period sources (though some are conjectural).  If you're not interested in what the blogger has to say about Roman food but want to head straight for the recipes, go here. 

The biggest surprise for me in exploring the archives so far is that what we call "French toast" goes back to the Romans--Apicius had a recipe for toast soaked in egg and milk and fried.  If you have any interest in ancient Rome (or in Rome's food), enjoy!

EDIT:  (2/23/2015)  Pass the Garum is moving!  The new URL is here:  http://www.passthegarum.co.uk/

Oldest Written Recipe!

From imgur.com comes an excellent picture of the oldest written recipe.  It's a Sumerian clay tablet containing a recipe for beer.  It's an excellent photograph; it's so clear that, if you can read Sumerian pictographs, you could read the recipe yourself.   You can see the picture here.

Durham's 12th Century Feast

In my post on the 12th century recipes found in the Durham Cathedral Priory manuscript, I noted that a feast was planned for the end of April to permit scholars to attempt to prepare and serve some of the recipes featured therein. An article about the feast may be found here. 

The outcome? The recipes produced wonderful sauces, described in the article with the words "tangy" and "complex". Go and read it. For my part, I'm hoping the recipes will eventually be published, so I can try some of them!

"Leek Risotto"

Tonight, I made another recipe from A Culinary Journey Through Time; the "Leek Risotto." This recipe is categorized by the authors of that book as "medieval", probably because it is based on rice, which was not used in quantity in Europe until the Middle Ages, though the Food Timeline notes that historians are divided as to whether risotto originated in the 16th century (and is at least arguably late medieval) or the 20th (and is definitely modern).

It turns out that risotto is usually is made from a special rice called arborio rice, which is grown in Italy; it may also include bits of vegetable and meat, somewhat like modern "Chinese" fried rice. Unlike the kinds of rice that most people are familiar with in the United States, arborio rice absorbs water very slowly, and remains very dense and firm after it has done so. For that reason, arborio rice has to be simmered slowly in liquid, and stirred constantly during the simmering, so that it does not stick to the pan and burn. 

Before I selected the recipe and went to the supermarket in search of "risotto rice" (which is what the recipe told me to look for), I had not heard of arborio rice, and I had never made a risotto before.  My experience suggests that making a risotto--or at least the "leek risotto" I attempted--is not difficult, but it does require constant and close attention for the 20 minutes or so that the rice takes to cook. 

As always, I did not follow the recipe in A Culinary Journey Through Time exactly as written, and it may be interesting for me to explain my substitutions and choices.  The book's recipe starts by sautéing leeks and onions, adding the risotto rice and liquid to cook it, and then adding chopped up bits of ham and  grated cheese to the mixture after the rice is cooked. For liquid, the recipe recommends meat stock and either white wine or "apple wine".  Because of my husband's distaste for alcoholic beverages (even when used for cooking) and his dislike of ham and cheese, I substituted apple juice for the wine and bits of roast pork loin for the ham. For the meat stock, I used the liquid remaining from when I roasted the pork, and some purchased beef stock.  

The recipe was a bit unclear about how to combine the ingredients. It states: "Fry the onion and the leeks in 1 tbsp butter/lard.  Add the rice and continue frying until it goes clear." Until *what* goes clear?  The rice, or the leeks and onions?  I couldn't imagine that rice grains would ever go "clear" under heat, especially if they were cooked *before* adding liquid to the pan.

I resolved the conflict by consulting the directions on the package my arborio rice came in, and proceeded thus. First, I sautéed the leeks and onions in my biggest skillet until they were getting translucent. Then I heated the stock in a separate cup, added the rice to the skillet, and then immediately followed by pouring enough stock into the pan to create a simmering mass.  I kept stirring the leek/onion/rice mixture while it simmered and continued adding the various liquids (stock and apple juice) to the skillet a bit at a time.   I ran out of the amount of liquid called for by the recipe before the rice was done, so I added more stock, bit by bit, until the rice seemed plump, and soft enough to be easily chewed. Then I turned off the heat and added in the meat.

People talk about risotto being "creamy" after being cooked.  I'm not sure exactly what that means, and my final result wasn't exactly creamy, but my rice was easily chewable and adhered to itself in a moist but dense mass, so I think I got the cooking part approximately correct.

How did it taste? Pleasant enough, though a bit unexciting. That wasn't because of a lack of spices.  It didn't need salt, because the butter I used to saute the leeks and onions was salted and the pork was more than adequately salted. I did not use black pepper either, since the recipe did not call for it, though pepper might have given the dish a bit of useful zing.  I suspect that my taste for foods with plenty of different herbs just led me to categorize the risotto as dull. Chances are, most people would have liked it. My husband did.

Overall, I'd consider my risotto a success, though because of all the stirring it requires I probably won't make it very often.  On the other hand, I will probably try making it a few more times, because I have plenty of arborio rice left.  My husband suggested that I try using orange juice instead of apple juice the next time I make this recipe, and that sounds like a good idea to me.  It probably would not even make the recipe less historical, since our modern "sweet" oranges had made it to Italy and Iberia by the late Middle Ages.

I'd like to conclude with a word of caution for anyone interested in reading and experimenting with the recipes in A Culinary Journey Through Time. The book has to be used with care, particularly by people who do not have a lot of cooking experience, because the book is not always explicit (or, as I noted above, correct) in its cooking directions. I don't know the reasons for this, though I have some guesses.

First, the book is a translation of an original Danish German text [see comment from Regula below], and the translators may not always have been sure how best to convey the intended directions into English.  Second, the authors are most interested in recipes that describe early cooking techniques that are no longer used, or are rarely used (such as burying wrapped food in the glowing embers of a fire pit), and are less concerned with describing more common tasks such as the cooking of risotto rice.   Either way, I recommend using A Culinary Journey Through Time as more of a guide to food experiments than as a Bible for what was or wasn't eaten in early Europe--and that's really all I think the authors intended.

The next "experiment" I have planned is to revisit my old friend, the barley and leek pot--but with rabbit instead of duck.  Watch this blog for more details!

"Stone Age" Eggs

This evening for dinner, I tried one of the recipes from A Culinary Journey Through Time--what the book calls "mushroom omelette."  

The book indicates that the ingredients and techniques for this one would have been available in Europe in the Stone Age. Since the book also says that "poultry" (presumably meaning domesticated birds) first came to Northern Europe early in its Iron Age, I assume that the eggs referenced in the recipe would, in the Stone Age, have been eggs stolen from the nests of wild birds.  Not having any of those, I used chicken eggs.

The other two ingredients specified in the recipe are "a handful of mushrooms" and fresh thyme.  I figure both would have been found growing wild, in the Stone Age, and I suspect that the white morels they farm in the county where I live are not much like the wild mushrooms of northern Europe, but they are what I have available.  The thyme I used came from Colombia, by way of my local supermarket.  

The recipe calls for chopping the mushrooms and frying them first, on a "greased, heated stone slab."  The only stone slab I have is a pizza stone, and I suspect it would not survive being placed directly on the burner of my gas range.  So I substituted a no-stick skillet.  At least the range emits a flame, which is how a Stone Age cook would have heated a stone slab.

The recipe does not specify what type of fat to use to grease the slab.  I suspect animal fat would have been used in the Stone Age.   But butter is what I have on hand, so that's what I used.

Next, the thyme was to be whisked into the eggs, and the eggs poured over the mushrooms on the hot stone.  Thyme has little tiny leaves on somewhat woody stalks, so chopping it really wasn't necessary.  I simply pulled leaves off and threw them in the eggs until I felt there were enough thyme leaves in there, and whisked the eggs into a yellow mass.  When the mushrooms in my pan smelled as though they were done, I poured the eggs over them.  

Then I turned the stove off, and left the eggs alone until they were no longer runny or translucent.  At that point, I slid the cooked eggy mass onto a plate.  

The result was very, very tasty.  It was very good even though I added no flavorings other than thyme--no salt, no black pepper (except whatever salt was in the butter itself).   Next time, I'll use animal fat, or at least unsalted butter, to try to get a taste closer to what my ancestors might have enjoyed in the Stone Age. 

Another variation I'd like to try is wild onion.  I do have wild onions growing on my property, and it would be interesting to find out how mincing one--leaves, bulb, and all--and adding it to the eggs would taste. 

But my next experiment will likely involve leeks, since the book has two recipes featuring leeks that I'd like to try, and my husband really likes them.

My Next Experiment

I've been inspired by the following recipe from the Eulalia of Eulalia Hath a Blogge, another blogger with an interest in historic cuisine (Thanks, Eulalia, for permission to repost this):

3 oz beef stew meat (pasture-raised), in chunks
1/2 slice Trader Joe's uncured applewood smoked bacon, cut into bits
1 pippen apple, well past its prime, cored and chopped
1/4 cup pearled barley
1 cup homemade hard apple cider (very dry!)

Cook in a crock pot on high heat for 3 hours (or thereabouts) until everything is tender and all of the liquid is absorbed. Careful not to let it burn!

Now, I think Eulalia's recipe sounds very tasty. However, I seldom make any recipe exactly as it was written, and I'm not likely to do so with Eulalia's glop for several reasona. For example, I probably won't hunt down pasture-raised beef, but I likely will use more beef than in Eulalia's recipe (my husband and I are ardent carnivores). Nor am I going to Trader Joe's for bacon while a quarter cup of bacon chunks from our best local barbecue place is occupying space in my fridge. And if I use hard cider in this stew, my husband, a semi-militant teetotaler, probably will refuse to eat it. (Fortunately, good non-alcoholic apple cider is easy to get around here.) Nonetheless, I like the tenor of Eulalia's experiment, and expect to use it as a jumping-off place for experimentation of my own. Naturally, I'll report on how it comes out.

My Twist on a Putative Anglo-Saxon Recipe

I found this recipe on the Internet years ago.

******

Hare, Rabbit, Veal or Chicken Stew with Herbs & Barley
[serves 6]

In 7th century England, herbs were one of the few flavourings available to cooks and were
used heavily...

50g (2 oz.) butter;
1 -1.5kg (2-3 lbs.) (depending on the amount of bone) of hare or rabbit
joints, stewing veal or chicken joints;
450g (1 lb.) washed and trimmed leeks, thickly sliced;
4 cloves garlic, chopped finely;
175 g (6 oz.) pot barley;
900 mL (30 fl oz., 3 3/4 cups) water;
3 generous tablespoons red or white wine vinegar;
2 bay leaves, salt, pepper;
15 fresh, roughly chopped sage leaves, or 1 tablespoon dried sage.

Melt the butter in a heavy pan and fry the meat with the leeks and garlic till the vegetables are slightly softened and the meat lightly browned. Add the barley, water, vinegar, bay leaves and seasoning. Bring the pot to the boil, cover it and simmer gently for 1 - 1 1/2 hours or till the meat is really tender and ready to fall from the bone. Add the sage and continue to cook for several minutes. Adjust the seasoning to taste and serve in bowls-- the barley will serve as a vegetable.

******

You can find this recipe here; the page is somebody's e-mail post, attributing this and other recipes to The British Museum Cookbook by Michelle Berriedale-Johnson, British Museum Publications (1987). Probably it's just someone's suggestion of a recipe that could be made with period ingredients (barley instead of potatoes), available herbs (dill, sage, salt, onions and garlic), and period cooking techniques (frying, then simmering in a pot). Since we don't have any Anglo-Saxon cookery books (assuming any were written), this is as plausible a period recipe as we're likely to find.

I have made this recipe before, browning the meat and then transferring all the ingredients to my faithful crockpot for long gentle simmering. But I'd always made it with chicken. This weekend, I decided that I wanted to try it with game--either rabbit, as the recipe suggests, or duck, either of which I can obtain from my local butcher. So I bought a quantity of boneless duck breasts (boneless, so that I wouldn't have to fish bones out of the stew, later) and leeks.

Then, I decided to experiment.

I sauteed some white mushrooms (possibly not native to Britain but certainly native to Chester County, Pennsylvania where I live) in butter, and added them to the duck and barley for more bulk and flavor. Then I fried a little bacon, chopped it into bits, and added it as well. (The 13th century cookery book I reviewed a few weeks ago supports the use of bacon with chicken in early medieval cooking.) I didn't have any dill, so I used a dill and salt mixture I had handy, in addition to the garlic, sage, and bay leaves. I substituted cider vinegar for the wine vinegar because I like it better. I also added mustard powder (which I believe is period also).

I can't attest to the authenticity of my substitutions any more than I can attest to the authenticity of the original recipe, but the aroma wafting up from my crockpot is wonderful.

If my experiment comes out well, I may try rabbit eventually (but not next time--I still have more frozen duck in my freezer for another round).

EDIT: The stew was good, except the vinegar made it too sour! Next time, I will leave the vinegar out, and let the butter, sage and bacon do more flavoring. Maybe the mustard powder should go, too.

Featured Recipe--Portuguese Honey Bread

One of the things I've decided to do with this blog is share unusual recipes, or at least my favorite recipes, from time to time. This recipe is not original, but it is both a personal favorite and unusual. It is a recipe for Portuguese Honey Bread. My mother and I discovered it late one fall in the special Christmas edition of one of the "women's" magazines--I think it was Good Housekeeping, but I'm not sure. I no longer have the magazine, but Mom and I transcribed it later to contribute to a small, amateur booklet of recipes for our church, and that collection I still have, and would like to share.

Despite the fact that the bread is wonderful, we only made this recipe once. You'll understand why after you read it. Here is my paraphrase of it.

* * * *

2 1/3 cups butter
1 1/2 cups light molasses
2/3 cup honey
2 3/4 cups granulated sugar
1/3 cup cold mashed potatoes
1/2 cup sherry
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
1 tablespoon anise seed
1/4 cup cinnamon (yes, 1/4 cup)*
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon Royal baking powder
11 cups sifted all-purpose flour

Preheat your oven to 325 F.

In a large bowl, beat together at medium speed (with an electric mixer) the butter, molasses, honey, and sugar until fluffy. Add the mashed potatoes, sherry, cloves, anise seed, cinnamon, pepper, baking soda, and baking powder. Mix well. At low speed, beat in about half of the flour. At that point, the mixture will be too heavy to use an electric mixer; beat in the rest of the flour with a wooden spoon until all of the flour is just mixed in.

Transfer the batter to three (3) greased, decorated 2-quart cake molds or three (3) nine-inch cake pans. Place the pans in the oven so that none of the pans is directly above another pan. Bake 1 1/2 hours or until the bread comes away from the sides of the pan.

Cool the bread in the molds or pans on racks for 10 minutes before removing it from the pans. Let the bread cool completely to room temperature, then wrap it tightly in foil and let it "season," wrapped, for several days before serving.

* * * *

Take very seriously the advice about using a wooden spoon to beat in the second half of the flour if you do not want to damage the mixer. Mom and I were having trouble keeping the mixer in motion before the first four cups of flour were mixed in; by the time all 11 cups were in the bowl, the mixture was so stiff and heavy we could barely budge the wooden spoon. Despite that fact, the bread smelled so good while baking that, after we took it out of the oven, we attempted to pry a sliver loose from one of the loaves to taste it. At length, after nearly breaking a knife on the *extremely* hard loaf, we got a few slivers (and a lot of wisecracks from my father); it tasted of honey and cinnamon, but was dry and hard. So we wrapped it back up and let it sit for a week.

After about a week, the bread was not only cuttable and chewable, but it was moister, and wonderfully rich. It tasted a lot like gingerbread, if gingerbread were more like cake.

I have found two variants of this recipe on the Internet. This one uses only 4 1/2 cups of flour. It also contains ingredients that do not appear in the recipe I knew, such as candied fruit, port, and eggs. The other major variant, which you can see here, is more like the recipe I had, but it substitutes instant potato flakes for the mashed potatoes, includes candied fruit, and uses about 6 cups of flour. I would bet that neither of these recipes would be as hard to stir as the recipe my mom and I made, since all of them contain about as much liquid as the recipe above but much less flour.


* The parenthetical remark appeared in the original recipe.