The Austerity Kitchen

The Sage of Brooklyn

2012-09-21T13:02:00.000-04:00

I have an essay on The New Inquiry's main site on mushrooming in Providence, Rhode Island, wilding in Brooklyn and the work of now largely forgotten (but once beloved) illustrator William Hamilton Gibson.

Slow Food

2012-07-25T18:26:00.001-04:00

Of the various impressions made on the English man of letters Joseph Addison during a 1702 visit to a Freiburg monastery, one that lingered longest was the delight its inmates took in eating snails. A thick ragout they would prepare into which they would toss these creatures by the dozen. A great wooden box called an escargotiere ensured a reliable supply, its interior lined with greens in which nestled snails often as large as a child’s fist. “I do not remember to have met with any thing of the same in other countries,” Addison wrote in reference to this ingenious contrivance. In these boxes the snails reposed and ate, ate and reposed, until such time as the cook came and shook out a hundred or two of them for supper.

On the supposed uniqueness of the Freiburg monks’escargotieres Addison proves an unreliable source; one could find versions in Brunswick, Silesia, Copenhagen and other locales. Their design varied by region. The people of Barrois used staved in casks covered with netting. The snails of Lorraine endured a somewhat more picturesque imprisonment: a quiet garden corner stuffed with leafy matter and encased in fine trellis-work. The earthier escargotieres of Dijon consisted of trenches dug by vine growers. Into these they dumped leaves, then snails, and then more leaves before topping everything off with few spadefuls of earth. Voralbergers, who combined gastronomy with good husbandry, preferred their snails free-range. Children made a game of searching farmers’ fields for the tasty pests, which they plucked from lettuce leaves and cornstalks in a bid to see how many they could contribute to the town escargotiere, usually a large plot of land encircled by a moat. These summer games yielded a great harvest: The enclosures contained often some 30,000 snails fattened on cabbage leaves and kept damp by twigs of mountain pine and small clumps of moss.

How snail aficionados, or heliciculturists, cooked their snails varied as much as how they kept them. Some stuffed them with forcemeat, while others steamed them with rice or boiled them in the shell before slathering them with drawn butter and sprinkling them with parsley. Whatever the method, simplicity ruled; snails were typically eaten during Lent. Indeed, a dish of these shelled savories traditionally marked the end of Carnival in Canderan, a town near Bordeaux. What the snail growers didn’t sell they shipped off to convents and monasteries. What the monasteries didn’t eat, they gave to the poor. The “hero who carries his house on his back,” as Hesiod called the snail, could expect life to describe an odyssey that, no matter the length, arrived at the same destination — the plate of some hungry soul.

Should you like to dish up some mollusks of your own then try this recipe from The Edible Mollusks of Great Britain and Ireland (1867).

Ragoût of Snails — Guisado de Caracoles.–Soak the snails in salt water, then wash them in two or three waters; take thyme, marjoram, bay-leaves, and salt, and fry them with chopped onions in butter or oil; boil the snails, and take them out of their shells, or, if you prefer it, put them, shells and all, into the butter, and fry them. Let them be served as follows: — Soak a piece of bread in vinegar and water, and pound it in a mortar with a clove of garlic, a little pepper, salt, parsley, and mint, chopped very find; add oil drop by drop, turning the pestle all the time till it is quite a smooth paste, and place it round the dish, putting the snails in the centre.

Bundle Theory

2012-06-20T15:53:00.001-04:00

Love rooted in frustration bears the sweetest fruit: This the old wives of New England knew. When on long winter nights a suitor called on an eligible daughter, her parents served him pie, bound both his legs in a large woolen sock, and bundled him into bed with his sweetheart.

Under eiderdown the lovebirds canoodled until sunrise, when limbs again swung free to carry the swain on his way. If the night passed well, marriage banns would appear soon after. If it did not, the whole ritual repeated with another young man, should one happen by.

Many thought bundling strange. One prominent New York physician called it a “ridiculous and pernicious custom.” Others blamed it for the precipitous decline in Yankee morals. But its defenders deemed it an economical and humane prelude to marriage. A couple bundled burnt no candles, they insisted, and other household members could rest easy knowing they had spared their visitor a tramp home in the winter night.

A visitor didn’t need to have romance in mind to gain a berth. Lovers and strangers alike could count on the same reception. Passing peddlers, wandering huntsmen, itinerant poets, and even enemy soldiers all found a place to lay their head. During the Revolutionary War, one British officer faced the prospect of bundling one night in autumn. Lieutenant Anbury had marched all day. The sun had long since set, the moon yet to rise. He trudged along a road outside Williamstown, Massachusetts. Great ruts scored the roadbed, which had softened with rain, and his servant and the mare carrying his bedding had fallen behind.

Though Anbury yearned for sleep, he stopped to wait for his small retinue. They did not come. The cold and the dark urged him on. Soon he came to a modest cabin. He knocked at the door. A knobby old man, his wife and their young daughter answered. They bade him stay the night. Anbury had a quick eye, and saw only two beds in the one-room cabin. “Where am I to sleep?,” he asked the mother. “Mr. Ensign, our Jonathan and I will sleep in this, and our Jemima and you shall sleep in that,” she answered, pointing to the smaller of the two beds. “Our Jemima” was a buxom brunette of sixteen. The lieutenant blushed. “Oh la! Mr. Ensign," the father laughed, “you won’t be the first man our Jemima has bundled with, will it Jemima?” The girl smiled, and winked at the reddening man. “No, father, not by many, but it will be with the first Britainer.”

Memory of the event lingered with Anbury. “In this dilemma what could I do?,” he later wrote. “The smiling invitation of pretty Jemima — the eye, the lip, the — Lord ha’ mercy, where am I going to!” But the spirit proved stronger than the flesh; Anbury declined the invitation. How a man native to those parts could sleep chastely near such a toothsome creature as young Jemima this red-blooded Englishman could not fathom. He chalked it off to the “cold ... American constitution”; it alone, he surmised, could sustain this “unaccountable custom ... in hospitable repute, and perpetual practice.”

Yet cold constitutions ensured the availability of warm beds. Suspicious of bundling to the end, the good doctor from New York insisted that the improbable chastity of the practice remained more perceived than real. Something managed to wriggle free of those straitjacketing body-socks, something from which sprang a “long-sided, raw-boned, hardy race of whoreson whalers, wood-cutters, fishermen, and peddlers” who in a great and hearty multitude populated windswept Nantucket, Piscataway and Cape Cod.

Those who have lovers sewn up and who look forward to impending nuptials can use this recipe for wedding cake taken from The Young Housekeeper's Friend (1846).

Wedding Cake

Five pounds of flour, five of sugar, five of butter, six of raisins, twelve of currants, two of citron, fifty eggs, half a pint of wine, three ounces of nutmegs, three of cinnamon, one and a half of mace. Mix it like pound cake, only rub the fruit into the flour.

Not Content with Crumbs

2012-05-21T09:01:00.000-04:00

In nineteenth-century New York, nothing went better with radical politics than coffee cake. Manhattan's Lower East Side boasted some three hundred “coffee and cake saloons,” where anarchists and socialists tucked into crullers as they debated everything from the theories of Marx and Bakunin to the literary merits of Tolstoy and Ibsen, and the success of the latest performance at the Metropolitan Opera House. Late into the night they talked and between outbursts of indignation or sympathy sipped strong cups of tea à la russe adorned with thin slices of lemon.

Most saloons hosted regular customers, but almost anyone would find himself welcome. Quiet, frowning “chess cranks”; gaunt, earnest critics; doleful actors; sloe-eyed cocottes -- all crowded round the saloons’ tables from ten o’clock at night until one in the morning. But they did not crowd indiscriminately; each had their favorite haunt. The city’s letter carriers, for instance, favored Dolan’s Coffee and Cake Saloon, which operated under the management of the cheerful, mustachioed John Meehan.

Meehan considered himself a friend of the postal workers, an affection he cultivated in childhood. At thirteen his uncle had hired him to help around the saloon, and he did so with enthusiasm. While about his tasks he often overheard the postal workers muttering into their coffee cups. Their interminable shifts vexed them, and they saw no relief short of quitting altogether. “No limit to a day’s work,” they complained.

The letter carriers plight moved young Meehan, who resolved one day to help them. So vital to the saloon’s success did he prove that after a few years his uncle promoted him to manager. Meehan soon garnered a fifty-percent stake in the business (an interest which belied the fact that almost one hundred percent of the responsibility fell to him alone). Finding himself comfortably situated, Meehan deemed it high time he made good his vow. Suggesting that the postmen organize, he offered his advice, his financial backing, and his establishment for their union headquarters. Thus the New York Letter Carrier’s Association leapt into existence. “Well, boys, you have started, and now don't let this thing fail,” Meehan proclaimed to those whose cause he championed. “While I have a tongue or a dollar I will help you get what you want.”

Meehan did indeed keep his promise. When reporters stopped by the saloon for a bite, he buttonholed them and, plying them with strudel and steaming java, extracted promises of articles and notices favorable to the letter carriers’ cause. One such convert, William Dougherty of The Evening Telegram, published many pieces in support of the eight-hour work day. Soon hundreds of influential New Yorkers rallied to support the letter carriers. They circulated petitions, which thousands signed. Placards and posters they pasted all over the city. Before the letter carriers knew it, they had triumphed, winning equitable working conditions.

The postal workers continued for years to frequent Dolan's Coffee and Cake Saloon. Indeed, all New York saw it as a haven for working stiffs -- and rightly so. An enlightened employer, Meehan heaped on his employees benefits for which other laborers would agitate for decades to come. To work at Dolan’s meant a job for life; only death and illness altered the payroll. Those too old or sick to work received pensions at their full salaries. Such largess did nothing to dampen the eatery’s profits. The smashing success of the first location made necessary opening a second, which likewise flourished, and put paid to the notion that you cannot have your cake and eat it, too.

Those looking for a sweet way to shake up the status quo can try serving New York Butter Cake, the recipe for which appears in Paul Richard’s Baker’s Bread (1918).

New York Butter Cake

Take one quart of milk; one pound of flour; eight ounces of butter, and eight ounces of sugar. Put the milk, sugar and butter in a vessel on the fire and let it come to a boil; when it is boiling add the sifted flour, stirring it in well with an egg beater; take it off the fire and put in a wooden bowl; let cool till you can hold your hand in it, then mix into it by degrees five whole eggs and five yolks. Add to this mixture two and one-half pounds of white bread sponge, or milk sponge, and sufficient flour to make it like a tea biscuit dough. Let this dough rest, and prove on for half an hour; roll into a sheet and cut into large biscuits; eggwash and lay in granulated sugar; set on pans single; let it prove, and bake to a nice color.

In the End There Was No End

2012-02-03T15:30:00.000-05:00

Beginning Monday, February 6, The Austerity Kitchen will appear as a column at The New Inquiry. This site will serve as an archive and will continue to present recipes and historical vignettes from time to time. The new Kitchen will feature essays on various topics culinary and cultural, anecdotes, recipes, book reviews, vintage illustrations and photographs.

New York City’s Lunch Counter Dance Halls

2012-01-16T21:10:00.000-05:00

Lunch among the tombstones would seem a melancholy repast. But not so for the well-dressed girls of Manhattan. In The Personality of American Cities (1913), Edward Hungerford writes that “part of the lunch hour is always a stroll – unless there be a downpour.” With “little packages” of food in tow, the gay ladies head for the churchyards, where they plop down amid the graves to gossip and eat lunch. “No one molests them,” Hungerford reports, “and the church authorities, although a little flustered when this first began, have seen that there is no harm in it.” They let the girls rest in peace.

The less affluent office girls are loth to share the lunch hour with the dearly departed. Eschewing the humous charms of St. Paul’s or Trinity, they head for the more lively atmopshere of a most unique eating establishment: the lunch counter cum dance hall. He was a clever lunch-man indeed, Hungerford writes, who “placed a row of chairs along one edge of his dancing-hall” and over them a sign that read “Smoking Permitted at This End of the Room.” Office girls cramped from hours at a desk could drink malts and revive their limbs with twenty minutes or so of rug-cutting.

These lunch counter dance halls thrived despite moral censure directed at them from certain quarters. Some folks felt they compromised the morality of their patrons. The author of The Social Evil in New York (1910) opines that, though dance halls offer “the most popular form of recreation to young people,” they will no doubt prove “the open door to an immoral life.”

Whether those office girls stood on the precipice of something dark and sinful have gone unrecorded, as have the kind of victuals that fueled these lunch-time balls. The refreshment was likely something innocuous, such as vanilla egg creams prepared much along the lines of the recipe below, which appears in The Laurel Health Cookery (1911).

Vanilla Egg Cream

Beat the white of an egg with 1-2 teaspns. of sugar, reserving a little for the top; chop in the yolk with 1 tablespn. of cream and a delicate flavoring of vanilla; serve in a glass, with white on top of yolk mixture.

Or, for a change, beat the white and yolk separately, add half the sugar and cream to each, flavor yolk with vanilla, pile white in a dainty glass dish and pour yolk mixture over it. A little of the white may be chopped with the yolk.

Birch Bark for Bowel Remedies and Other Boons

2012-01-10T20:54:00.000-05:00

At eighty feet high and close to two feet thick, the black birch dwarfs its fellow trees. It’s solitary, preferring to make its home on craggy, mountain precipices, where its branches can reach over deep chasms and it roots can burrow between rocks into moist, rich soil. But it's also handsome, having large oval leaves laced with fine veins that turn yellow in autumn and bark that in youth is a seamless near-black and in maturity becomes cracked and furrowed.

The astute observer of nature knows that this cracking is a most auspicious development. At such a stage the bark, grown redolent of wintergreen and imbued with a spicy flavor, separates easily from the trunk, and can be harvested for a number of products, such as tea, chaw, a nostrum to ease bowel complaints or a salve to cure cankers.

The birch tree’s youngest twigs make the best – and most ecologically sensitive – tea; the thick inner bark, though tasty, leaves the trunk scarred and disfigured when removed. Drying the bark does nothing to diminish the tea’s flavor, which is best enjoyed with sugar, cream and cookies of the sort featured in this recipe from the San Rafael Cook Book (1906).

Economical Cookies

1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup sour milk, 1 egg, 1/2 teaspoon soda. Flour to make soft dough and flavor to taste.

Holidays at the Antarctic Hotel

2011-12-19T20:36:00.003-05:00

The mariners stranded in the icy wastes of Antarctica, where, as an 1850 edition of Household Words reports, “crashing mountains of ice, heaped up together, have made a chaos round their ships”; the mariners icily bearded, enjoying no company besides animals and birds white as though “they too were born of the desolate snow and frost” – how did they observe the year-end holidays? With merriment and good cheer, as it turns out.

The 1841 South Pole expedition was the very picture of high spirits on the high seas. The crew celebrated Christmas in grand English style, unfriendly environs notwithstanding. Such animal life as existed there paid no heed to them. Seals basked sleepily on floating chunks of ice. The black curve of a whale’s back peeked through a fissure and disappeared again. Two ships, the “Terror” and the “Erebus,” occupied a small opening in ice pack seven hundred miles wide. Ice covered the decks; a dense, gray fog, the ships. Except for flocks of shrieking terns that sometimes passed by, all was still and silent.

A giant formation brooded over the ships, and this the sailors christened the “Christmas Berg.” In its shadow they feasted on roast beef, roast goose and the “homely never-to-be-forgotten plum pudding.” And though the beasts had drawn “their first breath on the fern-clad plateau of the Waimate, near the Bay Islands of New Zealand,” and not in the dales of England, they were nevertheless tasty. The sailors followed their sumptuous dinner with a Divine service.

New Year occasioned more elaborate amusement. By then the ships had dipped south of the Antarctic circle and had become frozen fast, more so than they were at Christmas. Such imprisonment did little to dampen the sailors’ mirth, however. With “ice anchors and hawsers” they lashed their ships to a large floe. On it they fashioned “a quadrangle space ... for a dance.” This fantastic dance floor at the foot of a descending staircase of ice was christened “Antarctic Hotel” and “bore on a sign-board, fixed to a pale, the words ‘Pilgrims of the Ocean’ and on the reverse ‘Pioneers of Science.’” “An elevated chair ... of the same substance” stood in its center. Adjacent to the ballroom the sailors carved a refreshment room, in which bottles of grog and wine covered a table chiseled from the surrounding ice. More substantial refreshments were available as well. Two young seamen acting as waiters handed out “genuine Antarctic ices” on a tray.

These festivities lacked neither music nor female companionship. Cheerful song was provided by a group of sailors blowing horns and singing. A few innovative souls brought up pigs from the ships' hold and, seizing them by the ears, “pinched them until the hapless grunts united their cries in concert with the horns.” Though she could not heed these dulcet tones, “Haidee,” a snow-woman and the belle of the ball with her head full of ice ringlets, presided over the goings-on from the gangway of the “Terror,” looking on in mute approval. As on Christmas Day, the sailors feasted lavishly on “roast goose and roast beef,”
but mince pies took the place of Yuletide plum pudding.

If winter's chill should have you stuck in place for the holidays, a tasty plum pudding ought to cheer you at least as much as it did any ice-bound English sailor. The recipe below, which appears in Practical Recipes (1909), will have the “Haidee” in your life melting with anticipation. And if you’d like to serve something restorative to your snowy friend, you can throw in a frozen pudding for good measure.

Very Rich Plum Pudding

(Virginia recipe) 10 eggs, 1 pound each of chopped suet, chopped to a powder, raisins (stoned), currants (washed and dried). Candied orange and lemon peel and citron mixed one-half pound. 1 nutmeg, a little salt, a teaspoon of mixed spices, cloves, cinnamon and mace. 1 common glass of sherry wine (best). 1 common glass of brandy (best). 1 pound of stale bread crumbs, 2 or 3 tablespoons of flour. Boil 4 hours and burn brandy over it. Light the brandy just as it goes on the table. Eat with cold sauce.

Frozen Pudding

1 pint of rich milk; 2 cups of sugar (powdered); 1 cup of boiled rice; 2 tablespoons of gelatine; 1 quart of rich cream; 1 pound of candied cherries; 4 tablespoons of best sherry wine.

Boil the milk and thicken with the rice, stirring constantly for 15 minutes. Add gelatine while hot and permit it to get cool before adding cream and sherry. Freeze 10 minutes before adding wine, then add wine and stir in thoroughly and freeze altogether, and turn out the same as ice cream. If not frozen carefully, it will not be so delicate, as you do not want it stiff and hard.

Fish Pudding for Fearless Flyers

2011-12-11T18:06:00.001-05:00

Some time before 1879 the peasants of the remote and mountainous district of Telemarken, Norway, grew tired of using their skies solely for traveling along snow-clogged highways. They set out to transform this dull wintertime routine into a competitive and pleasurable sport by devising wild races and stunts that tested participants’ powers of vaulting. News of these hyperboreal capers reached nearby towns and districts, creating such a stir that soon annual competitions came to be held outside Christiania (present-day Oslo). In his 1905 book, Ski-running, D.M.M. Crichton Somerville describes these meets as “very ludicrious, the hill being neither steep nor long, the competitors riding astride their poles down the track, and only jumping, if jumping it could be called, a few yards.” The decidedly unspectacular nature of these feats spelled the competition’s early demise.

Yet the competition did not die in vain. Norwegians felt themselves bitten by the ski bug. A few years later they once again took to the slopes, this time carrying “long, stout” staffs that imbued these new jumping contests with a comedic element. “Starting from the summit,” Somerville writes, “riding their poles ... like witches on broomsticks, checking the speed with frantic efforts, they slid downwards to the dreaded platform or ‛hop.’” At that point they were supposed to leap, but, as Somerville observes, they instead “trickled” to a soft landing. These flaccid performances did little to diminish the competition’s appeal, however. Curious spectators who flocked to Christiania from far and wide were left with the impression that these displays represented veritable wonders of the world.

The trend sparked by this world wonder swept Christiania and environs. Somerville reports that the city’s youth abandoned their favorite haunts – “billiard rooms” and “ill-ventilated cafes” – for the slopes. Even women suffering “terribly from anemia” braved icy forests and their slick, precipitous terrain. Indeed, nary a brumal day passed without the sight of a hillside dotted with leaping and sliding Norwegians, “a race of robust men and healthy women” rescued from the wasting influences of urban life thanks to this salubrious newfangled sport.

Wholesome exertions require wholesome food. Exhausted from a day’s snowy recreation, Norwegians no doubt repaired to their homes for a hearty helping of fish pudding. Should you wish to make this signature Nordic dish part of your après-ski, this recipe, which appears in The Ann Arbor Cookbook
(1899), should leave you feeling stuffed to the gills.

Norwegian Fish Pudding

Scrape raw white fish to a pulp, add salt, pepper and a little grated onion; rub and beat most thoroughly, add milk little by little, mashing (with a potato masher) and finally beating to a froth with a spoon. Add now 1 or 2 eggs well beaten and a little butter, (when completed it should be about as thick as cream). Bake brown in bread tin or steam it thoroughly. Serve it sliced, hot or cold.

Bread to Make a Hungarian Rhapsodic

2011-12-04T20:27:00.001-05:00

Today’s weight-obsessed gastronomes, ever mindful of carbohydrates and calories, generally demur when dinner rolls are passed their way. Yet history reveals that such reticence is unusual. Centuries ago, the attitude prevailed that a meal without bread was no meal at all. Even kings made a show of their baked goods. When in 1663 Transylvanian Prince Mihály Apafi invited the entire Ottoman army to dine with him after a battle, he rolled out, among other tidbits, two-score enormous boules. So impressed with this display was the Turkish world traveler, Evliya Celebi, that he recorded it in his journal. “The meadows were covered with Hungarian carpets,” he writes, “onto which forty giant loaves were placed.” The king’s means of conveying the loaves to the hungry soldiers Calebi found equally impressive. “Each one had to be drawn on an oxcart,” he continues, for “each ... was twenty paces long, and five paces wide, and as high as a full-grown man.”

The bread of Eastern Europe impressed travelers with more than its size. Writing a hundred years later, another adventurer, Robert Towson, praised the bread of Hungary for its toothsomeness. “Nowhere else did I eat bread that was lighter, whiter, and tastier than this,” he declared. Baking such heavenly bread was no easy feat; this chore peasants performed but once a week, on Saturday, so a fresh loaf would be available for the Sabbath. It was an all-day event. Kneading alone took a good two hours and required considerable strength. The dough had to rise overnight, which meant that it wasn’t until the wee hours the next day that it entered the oven.

As difficult as this chore of baking was, Hungarian families considered it anything but. No peasant woman dared neglect her bubbling pot of sourdough, her bread’s leaven. In fact, each new bride was given a small lump of sourdough by her mother, which she used to bake the first loaf for her husband. So dear were these loaves that only the man of the house could slice them. In Catholic households, he would mark them with the sign of the cross before brandishing his bread knife. If any pieces fell to the floor, they were promptly picked up and kissed in apology.

Baking day wasn’t without its charms. A portion of dough was usually kept in reserve to be baked at the front of the oven, close to the flame. This imparted a smoky, tangy flavor to the resulting bread, which Hungarians call lángos. Some Hungarians still prepare this morsel, though they nowadays typically fry it and serve it with anything from chopped fresh dill to ewe’s milk cheese. The traditional recipe for lángos that appears below is taken from Culinaria: Hungary.

Lángos

5 oz mealy potatoes
1 3/4 cakes compressed yeast
3 tbsp confectioner's sugar
1 2/3 cups milk
3 1/3 cups flour
3 1/2 tbsp oil
Salt

Oil for deep frying

Cooks the potatoes in their skins. Dissolve the yeast and the sugar in a scant 1/2 cup of lukewarm milk, and stand in a warm place for 10 minutes. Peel the potatoes and mash while still warm. Sift the flour into a bowl. Make a well in the center, and pour in the milk and yeast mixture. Adds the potatoes and the oil, and knead to a smooth dough with the remaining likewarm milk, adding a little salt. Sprinkle over a little flour, and cover with a dish towel. Leave in a warm place for about 1 hour until the dough has doubled in size.

Pour some oil in a skillet of about 2 1/2 inches height. Tear off a piece of the risen dough, and shape it into a round flat cake about 3/4 inch thick. Fry in the hot oil (do not cover the skillet) until golden, then turn over carefully and fry the cake on the other side.

Season with salt, and eat while still hot. Delicious spread with sour cream or garlic juice.

Of Balloons, Bugles and Apple Butter

2011-11-29T21:36:00.001-05:00

Washington Harrison Donaldson performed his greatest feats of derring-do while borne aloft by a large gas balloon. Or so discovered a crowd of curious onlookers one August morning in 1871 when the gymnast and self-styled aeronaut dressed in tights decided to take his big-top routine to the heavens. From the small town of Reading, Pennsylvania he set off at a quarter to ten in the morning. As dozens watched, his balloon, heavy with ballast, rose uncertainly at first, climbing thirty or so feet before its basket lurched against a house roof. Rope, grappling iron, coat, boots, hat and provisions Donaldson jettisoned, and the balloon resumed its ascent. A quarter of a mile above ground, he “skinned the cat” upon the hoop just above the wicker basket to the entertainment of any eyes cast skyward. On that maiden flight he drifted “some eighteen miles,” as M.L. Amick recounts in his 1875 History of Donaldson’s Balloon Ascensions, passing through clouds and over farms before coming to rest in a plow field.

This first journey Donaldson considered such a smashing success that he “resolved to abandon the tight rope forever” for greater heights. But his subsequent stunts, though amusing, were not always benign. He delighted in “trailing the drag rope,” a goof that lashed bushes, scourged sheep, thrashed fences, flailed chickens, and generally visited mayhem on the countryside. On one of these more sportive trips he observed a farmer and his wife stirring a large kettle of apple butter. An impish whim seized him. He resolved to “thicken the apple-butter for them” and did so by emptying a sand bag into the kettle as he passed over it. This promptly caused the farmer’s wife to have a fit. Her panic Donaldson answered with “a few terrible blasts on his bugle,” and some shouts about “Gabriel and the judgement.” The wife, her apoplexy now leavened with divine dread, fell down, rolled over two or three times, and then ran to fetch a broom and a butcher’s knife as her husband shook his ladle and hurled threats at “the man and the balloon.” Donaldson simply laughed as he floated out of hearing “of that man’s ‘chin music.’”

A kettle of ruined apple butter was perhaps a fair price to pay for such an aeronautic display as Donaldson was wont to make. Should you like to prepare a batch yourself, this recipe, which appears in an 1919 issue of the Farmer’s Bulletin, is sure to send your taste buds soaring. Just take care to prepare it indoors, in the event that any puckish balloonist should happen your way.

Apple Butter with Cider

Apple butter with cider.—Either fresh cider or commercial sterilized cider may be used. The usual proportion of peeled and sliced apples and cider is gallon for gallon, but from one-half to three quarters of a gallon of cider to a gallon of peeled and sliced apples will give a rich product if the apples are good cookers. Less than half as much cider as prepared apples is likely to make an apple sauce rather than a butter, unless it is cooked very slowly for four to six hours.

Continue the cooking until the cider and apples do not separate and the butter, when cold, is as thick as good apple sauce. Determine the thickness at frequent intervals by cooling small portions.

If sugar is used, add it after the cooking of cider and apples is about two-thirds done. About a pound of either white or brown sugar is the usual proportion per gallon of apple butter, but more or less (or not any) may be used, to suit the taste.

Apple butter is spiced according to taste, about half a teaspoonful each of ground cinnamon, cloves, and allspice being used for each gallon. These are stirred into it when the cooking is finished.

Vanilla extract added after the spices are stirred in improves the quality and adds to the snappiness of the butter. Use from 2 to 4 teaspoonfuls per gallon of butter, according to taste.

Thanksgiving Games to Cure Turkey-Induced Torpor

2011-11-23T18:32:00.001-05:00

Guests lounge in armchairs and on the sofa, refusing to stir, perhaps even refusing to speak. If they do speak, their conversations are punctuated by hiccups, burps and farts so frequent as to constitute a fugue of digestive functions. They are all equally afflicted in this manner, regardless of age or species: children bulge with ill-advised fourth helpings of pie; the family spaniel, heavy with table scraps, wobbles to her favorite corner.

Such is the typical after-dinner scene on Thanksgiving day, a holiday during which syrupy yams, buttery beans, starchy russets, toothsome peas, and, of course, tender turkey and stuffing conspire to sap the vigor of the heartiest diner.

After prodigious eating, the suggestion of further exertion seems unwise and risks adding grumblings to those already issuing from swollen stomachs – unwise to any other hostess but Mrs. Florence Kingsland, that is, who combated the queasy lassitude of her visitors by devising games for them to play. Her 1904 book, In and Out Door Games, is a compendium of postprandial diversions sure to cheer the soul, aid digestion and dispel “the lethargy that is apt to follow the feast.” Her games are simple but do require some preparation. One involves hollowing a pumpkin, wreathing it with leaves, counting its seeds, which have been first “preserved, washed, and dried,” before returning them to their original vessel. Guests are then invited to guess their number in a bid to win an altogether fitting prize, “[a]n Indian made of dried figs and raisins, threaded on wire.”

Should the pumpkinseed game prove too labor-intensive (or culturally insensitive) for you to handle, you can always resort to another guessing game that is decidedly less so. It involves giving each guest a card on which to compile a “list of objects suggestive of a feast.” Once this is completed, these cards are collected, shuffled and distributed among the group, who “write their guesses of what dishes are described.” Below is an example of Kingsland’s own:

1. Soup—Imitation reptile.
2. Fish—‟Collect on delivery.”
3. Roasts—The country of the Crescent, and Adam’s wife—served with a sauce of what undid her.
4. Vegetables—Two kinds of toes ne’er found on man or beast; a mild term for stealing; what your heart does.
5. Puddings—What we say to a nuisance, and exactly perpendicular.
6. Pies—An affected gait, and related to a well.
7. Fruit—A kind of shot.

If Mrs. Kingsland happens to have stumped you, you can find the answers below. They appear in order and have attached to them recipes gleaned from various period cookbooks.

Florence Kingsland's Feast-Game Dishes

1) Mock Turtle Soup

Take half a calf's head, with the skin on; remove the brains. Wash the head in several waters, and let it soak in cold water for an hour. Put it in a saucepan with five quarts of beef stock; let it simmer gently for an hour; remove the scum carefully. Take up the head and let it get cold ; cut the meat from the bones into pieces an inch square, and set them in the ice-box.

Dissolve two ounces of butter in a frying pan; mince a large onion, and fry it in the butter until nicely browned, and add to the stock in which the head was cooked. Return the bones to the stock; simmer the soup, removing the scum until no more rises. Put in a carrot, a turnip, a bunch of parsley, a bouquet of herbs, a dozen outer stalks of celery, two blades of mace and the rind of one lemon, grated; salt and pepper to taste. Boil gently for two hours, and strain the soup through a cloth. Mix three ounces of browned flour with a pint pf the soup; let simmer until it thick.

2) Baked Cod

One and one-half pounds cod, one teacupful bread crumbs, one dessertspoonful chopped parsley, one teaspoonful dripping or butter, one-half teaspoonful salt, a little pepper, one teacupful milk, a little flour, one egg. Wash the cod, take off the fins, or skin it, which is better. A middle cut is preferable, where the opening of the stomach is. Dry the fish well outside and inside. Rub together the bread and dripping; add the parsley, salt and pepper; moisten the whole with the egg beaten up, and fill the opening in the stomach with the mixture. Dust the fish over with a little flour, and put it in a pudding dish; put in one teacupful of milk, and put the butter all over the top in little bits. Put it in the oven to bake about half an hour, basting it with the milk now and again. Fish contains gelatine, fibrine, albumen, and phosphorus. Take out the fish on a hot dish, and pour the sauce round it. This is a most nutritious dish of fish, seeing that all the substance is retained, making it both light and nourishing.

3) Roast Turkey

Dress, clean, stuff, and truss a ten-pound turkey.... Place on its side on rack in a drippingpan, rub entire surface with salt, and spread breast, legs, and wings with one-third cup butter, rubbed until creamy and mixed with one-fourth cup flour. Dredge bottom of pan with flour. Place in a hot oven, and when flour on turkey begins to brown, reduce heat, baste with fat in pan. and add two cups boiling water. Continue basting even fifteen minutes until turkey is cooked, which will require about three hours. For basting, use one-half cup butter melted in one-half cup boiling water, and after this is used baste with fat in pan. During cooking turn turkey frequently, that it may brown evenly. If turkey is browning too fast, cover with buttered paper to prevent burning. Remove string and skewers before serving. Garnish with parsley or celery tips.

Spareribs and Applesauce

Dredge the spare ribs lightly with salt and pepper, after having washed well and wiped dry with a coarse towel. Place them in the baking pan and dredge with butter; place them in the oven and cover with a piece of buttered paper. Allow twenty minutes to every pound in cooking. About twenty minutes before serving take off the buttered paper, dredge again, with melted butter, and let them brown nicely. Serve with a garnish of parsley and radishes.

lf it is desired to stuff the spare ribs, have the ribs cracked, crosswise, the entire length, in two places. Put a stuffing, as for roast pig, in the center, or a stuffing made of mashed potatoes and three hard-boiled eggs, mixed thoroughly. Close the ends of the ribs over this, tie well and roast as for a roast pig. Serve with an Apple Sauce or a Sauce Piquante.

4) Boiled Potatoes, Baked Tomatoes, Stewed Cabbage and Roasted Beets

5) Sa-go Pudding

Boil a pint and a half of new milk, with four spoonfuls of sago, nicely washed and picked, lemon-peel, cinnamon, and nutmeg; sweeten to taste; then mix four eggs, put a paste round the dish, and bake slowly.

Plum Pudding

Ingredients.—2 lbs. of flour, 1 lb. of currants, 1 lb. of raisins, 1 lb. of suet, 2 eggs, 1 pint of milk, a few slices of candied peel. Mode.—Chop the suet finely; mix it with the flour, currants, stoned raisins, and candied peel; moisten with the well-beaten eggs, and add sufficient milk to make the pudding of the consistency of very thick batter. Put it into a buttered dish, and bake in a good oven from 2 to 2 1/2 hours; turn it out, strew sifted sugar over, and serve. For a very plain pudding, use only half the quantity of fruit, omit the eggs, and substitute milk or water for them. The above ingredients make a large family pudding; for a small one, half the quantity will be found ample; but it must be baked quite lh hour. Time.—Large pudding, 2 to 2 1/2 hours; half the size, 1 hour. Average cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for 9 or 10 persons. Seasonable in winter.

4) Mince Pie

Bake 3 large apples, and press them through a sieve to remove skins and cores; grate the rinds from 3 lemons, and add this and the juice of the lemons to the apple pulp; wash, pick over, and bruise in a mortar 1 cup of currants; stone 2 cups of raisins, and cut them in slices. Mix these all well together, chop into them 1 cup of butter (or cocoanut butter), a little salt, 4 cups of brown sugar, 1 tablespoon of candied lemon peel, 1 tablespoon of candied citron, and 1 tablespoon of candied orange peel, all well minced, and after stirring well, add 2 tablespoons of orange peel, cover with wax or brandied paper before the jar is closed, and use for pies in two weeks.

Pumpkin Pie

Mix one cup of milk, one cup and a half of dry, steamed and sifted pumpkin, half a cup of sugar, two tablespoons of molasses, one tablespoonful of ginger, one egg slightly beaten, one teaspoonful of cinnamon, and half a teaspoonful of salt. Bake in a pie tin lined with pastry.

5) A bowl of fresh grapes

Buttery Muffins in Wet, Wintry London

2011-11-19T19:13:00.001-05:00

Did the muffin boy trudging through London's dark, dank streets ever curse the hot, buttery wares that forced him outdoors? Perhaps, though the thought of going penniless no doubt bedeviled him more. And perhaps as means of consolation his mind would settle on a remark made by Charles Dickens, who found that a cold night did wonders for the streets of London. Such wonder-working happened, he wrote, when "just enough damp" fell from the sky to "make the pavement greasy without cleansing it of any of its impurities." If that falling damp also made the gaslights glow brighter and the small shops that lined the street "more splendid," then so much the better.

It's likely that the muffin boy did not notice this trick of light and vapor, but he was not insensible of the evening's other, decidedly less oneiric effects. He did his best business on wet, chilly nights. Ensconced in the warm comfort of their homes, customers listened for his bell's gentle report. Their muffins they preferred warm and slathered with butter. "I only wish good butter was a site cheaper," one muffin seller complained. "That would make the muffins go. Butter's half the battle."

That battle went better in the suburbs, good butter or bad. There frowzy housewives hovered expectantly near doorsteps. Once the muffin boy's approach was certain, they lit the kitchen fire for tea. His muffins they bought by the dozen to cheer their husbands bone-weary after a "dirty walk" home from the docks. Only for the "nine-o-clock beer man" would they open their door again.

If a cold damp winter's evening has you hankering for a warm, buttery snack, and there's no muffin boy in sight, try one of these recipes for the item in question, which appear in Mrs. Clarke's Cook Book (1899).

Muffins

Muffins.—Two eggs lightly beaten, one quart of flour, one teaspoonful of salt, three teaspoonfuls of Durkee's baking-powder, one tablespoonful of melted butter, one pint of milk and two teaspoonfuls of vanilla extract, if liked. Beat up quickly to the consistency of a cake batter; bake in buttered gem-pans in a hot oven.

Muffins, No. 2.—One cup of home-made yeast or half of a compressed yeast cake, one pint of sweet milk, two eggs, two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, two tablespoonfuls of sugar. Beat the butter, sugar and eggs well together; then stir in the milk, slightly warmed, and thicken with flour to the consistency of griddle-cakes. When light, bake in muffin-rings or on a griddle. If wanted for tea, the batter should be mixed immediately after breakfast. Muffins should never be cut with a knife, but be pulled open with the fingers.

Rice Muffins.—Take one quart of sour milk, three well-beaten eggs, a little salt, a teaspoonful of soda, and enough of rice flour to thicken to a stiff batter. Bake in rings.

Hominy Muffins.—Substitute hominy, well cooked and mashed, for the rice, and proceed as above.

Bread Muffins.—Cut the crust off four thick slices of bread; put them in a pan and pour on them just enough boiling water to soak them thoroughly. Let them stand an hour, covered; then drain off the water and stir the bread to a smooth paste. Stir in two tablespoonfuls of flour, a half pint of milk, and three well-beaten eggs. Bake to a delicate brown in well-buttered muffin-rings.

Graham Muffins.—One quart of Graham flour, two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder, a piece of butter the size of a walnut, one egg, one tablespoonful of sugar, one-half teaspoonful of salt, milk enough to make a batter as thick as for griddle-cakes. Bake in gem-pans or muffin-rings in a hot oven.

Corn Muffins.—Mix two cupfuls of corn-meal, two cupfuls of flour, one cupful of sugar, half a cupful of melted butter, two eggs, and one teaspoonful of salt. Dissolve one teaspoonful of soda and two of cream tartar in a little milk, and beat it through. Add milk enough to make a moderately stiff batter, and bake in rings or gem-pans.

Parrot Pie for Paranormal Picnics

2011-11-14T20:04:00.001-05:00

Only the pause of a train in their sleepy station lured the inhabitants of Woodend, Australia from their homes to consider the faces of passengers en route to larger cities. Not that Woodend lacked attractions; quite the contrary. Standing some 1,850 feet above sea level, the town enjoyed a climate moderate enough to recommend it as an attractive summer destination. Its eucalyptus forests hid within them health resorts and mineral springs. Its rich volcanic soil, the color of chocolate, made it a thriving agricultural district that trafficked in root vegetables, raspberries and currants. Its winds, which blew wholesome and tranquil, cooled those travelers disembarking at Woodend to eat, rest and recover their nerves.

Many also came to see an unusual prehistoric landmark, Hanging Rock. It sits five miles outside of town and rises 400 feet above the surrounding countryside. Narrow paths winding along slanted sides bring intrepid climbers to a flat summit strewn with huge boulders bearing such names as Whale's Mouth and Alligator's Jaw. The summit affords an excellent view of the rich farmsteads stretching toward distant towns, which no doubt explains why picnicking among the megaliths remains a favorite way of beguiling a lazy summer Sunday.

One such outing serves as the subject of Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel, The Picnic at Hanging Rock. A group of girls from exclusive Appleyard College take a trip to this famous formation on the afternoon of Valentine's Day, 1900. There they nibble sandwiches and sunbathe. After lunch, four of the girls ask to go exploring. Granted permission, they wander off. A few hours later, only one of them returns. Hysterical and dumbstruck, she cannot recall what befell her friends, who have seemingly vanished without a trace. And so the mystery begins....

To discover what happened to those inquisitive young ladies that bright February afternoon, you'll have to read Lindsay's book – which you can enjoy with a slice of parrot pie prepared according to a recipe in The Book of Household Management (1888). This Australian picnic dish does equally well without its main ingredient.

Australian Parrot Pie

Ingredients.—1 dozen paraqueets, a few slices of beef (underdone, cold
beef is best for this purpose), 4 rashers of bacon, 3 hard-boiled eggs, minced parsley and lemon-peel, pepper and salt, stock, puff-paste.

Mode.—Line a pie-dish with the beef cut into slices, over them place 6 of the paraqueets, dredge with flour, fill up the spaces with the egg cut in slices and scatter over the seasoning. Next put the bacon, cut in small strips, then the beef, seasoning all well. Pour in 6 paraqueets and fill up with stock or water to nearly fill the dish, cover with puff-paste, and bake for 1 hour.

Time.—1 hour.
Sufficient for 5 or 6 persons.
Seasonable at any time.

Forest Trump: Hansel and Gretel's Sweet Trick

2011-11-09T22:55:00.000-05:00

South of Stuttgart and north of Basel spreads the Black Forest, so named by ancient Romans for the conifers populating it, which grow thickly enough to block the sun. Copses of white pine jut from rolling hills, and ancient oaks crowd deep valleys, sheltering strange fauna not found elsewhere. The Lumbricus badensis, an earthworm of record-setting girth and length, dwells there, as do rare Hinterwälderberg cattle and the tawny Sperlingskauz, an owl that nightly takes to the sky in search of mice and voles to eat.

The Black Forest also offers a gentler repast than the sort sought by owls. Autumn summons pert armies of golden chanterelles from carpets of emerald moss, and winter conjures a downpour of black chestnuts. Spring and summer are not without their peculiar bounty; earth dark with loamy vegetal decay incubates berries, ramps, and wild onions eager to burst from their seeds and papery bulbs. Indeed, anyone wandering this forest primeval would not want for sustenance.

Unless that wanderer should suffer an insatiable sweet tooth, that is. Two such wanderers are Hansel and Gretel, subjects of one of the Brothers Grimm's most famous tales. It tells of a pair of children abandoned by their wicked stepmother in the Black Forest. There they tramp aimlessly, growing cold and hungry, until they happen upon a small house made of gingerbread. Tarts and delicate cakes festoon its lintel and roof. A warm light glows through barley-sugar windows. Famished, the children nibble the roof until its owner, a witch, coaxes them inside with promises of even more scrumptious treats. Once inside, the children are plied with fresh milk and pancakes (with sugar), nuts and large rosy apples. The witch observes that the boy and girl are too stuffed to stir, so she imprisons them for a gustatorial purpose of her own: She plans to eat them.

The witch's plan is thwarted by her would-be victims' cleverness, however. Hansel and Gretel escape and find their way home, their pockets stuffed with sweet treasures plundered from their former prison. They learn that the stepmother has died and rejoice, the news sweeter to their ears than the richest of the witch's pastries ever was to their palates.

Should you wish to trap any wayfaring children (or sweet-toothed adults), the recipes below for barley sugar, which appear in Cookery and Confectionery (1824), lend themselves to the construction of the very sort of windows adorning the witch's cottage.

Barley Sugar Treats

676. Caromel Sugar, for sticking baskets or pastry tip, and for making covers. Rub the sides of a caromel-pan round with butter; put a quart of clarified sugar, (No. 675.) boil it ten minutes; add a table spoonful of white distilled vinegar, boil it down to caromel, as directed No. 674; when done, stand the pan within another, with cold water to keep it from colouring. The mould must be oiled well over; when the sugar is a little cool, and runs off the spoon as a thread, draw it over the mould what pattern you please; take care to have a good rim round the bottom of the mould to stand on; when done, warm the mould a little, and the cover will slip off; it may be done inside the mould, and ornamented with any dry sweetmeats, comfits, or gum paste flowers.
Note.—This sugar may be kept in a pan, when done with, and is ready on all occasions, as it will heat again repeatedly, and will serve to stick all kinds of pastry up.

677. Lemon Barley Sugar. Boil one pint of syrup (No. 675.) to a caromel;when done add twenty drops of essence of lemon, and pour it out in lengths on a marble slab, oiled; when nearly cold twist it.
Note.—Barley-sugar drops are made by dropping it on the slab, and wrapped up in papers with a little sifted sugar. If made in large quantities, it is poured on a slab made to hold the quantity, and when cold cut in lengths with scissors, and twisted.
Ginger barley-sugar is made the same as this, omitting the lemon, and adding a spoonful of the concentrated essence of ginger, when nearly boiled.

678. Lavender Barley Sugar. Boil a pint of syrup to caromel, (No. 676.) when nearly done add a tea-spoonful of prepared cochineal, to colour, and twenty drops of oil of lavender; let it boil half a minute in it, pour it in lengths on a marble slab, oiled, and twist it.

Bilberries: A Late-Autumn Treat

2011-11-05T18:14:00.001-04:00

Variously monikered "the blood month" for the many animals slaughtered during it, the "wind month" for the icy gusts that swept the land, and "the month of blue devils and suicides" for reasons unstated, November was to those who lived before T.S. Eliot the cruelest page of the calendar. Occult influences of the sun's moving into the house of the constellation Sagittarius were blamed for the merciless turn taken by the weather, which beset London with endless days of leaden skies, torrential rain, and stifling fog. So sharp, in fact, were November's winds that farmers believed them to suspend "the vegetable powers of nature," which would resume only with the arrival of spring.

Yet this suspension proved less than total. In 1864 Scottish publisher and geologist Robert Chambers advanced the idea that, rather than arresting the vegetable powers of the year's final crop of berries, sleet and frost ripened it to perfection. Brambleberries, blueberries, dewberries, cloudberries – all reached maturity in November's chill embrace.

The fact of this late development proved a real boon for the rural poor, who could brighten the otherwise blear approach of winter with a selection of pies. A particular favorite among them was the bilberry; its smallness and perishability ill-suited it for market, and it grew only in the wild, which meant that anyone who wished could pick them. Austria, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland had (and still have) on their law books provisions for the free gathering of this fruit irrespective of land title, private gardens and nature reserves excepted. The bilberry was, then, truly a common fruit. This democratic character perhaps inspired Abraham Holroyd's long forgotten poem, "The Bilberry Moors" (1873).

As we march to the bilberry moors.
The wealthy man's wall bounded not what we call
The common, and bilberry ground;
His broad-acred lot—nay, we covet it not—

Ye wealthy keep all that ye bound!
But the bilberry blue oweth nothing to you—

It groweth for the rich and poor;
Oh! mean were the might that would question the right
To roam on the bilberry moors.

If mean might should happen to question your right to gather bilberries close to home, you can always range the wild, arid places where they like to grow. Your efforts will be amply rewarded; the fruit's light, tart flavor makes for delicious puddings, jams, and syrups of the sort presented in the recipes below.

Bilberry Pudding, Jam, and Syrup

70. Bilberry Pudding.—Make a suet crust, grease and line basin, half fill it with fresh bilberries, strew 2 tablespoonsful of sugar over them, and continue to fill the basin till it is heaped up. Put the top crust on and flour a cloth, tie it over, and boil for 2 hours. Bilberries in any form, either uncooked, made into pies, puddings, jam, or syrup, are particularly good for people suffering from scrofula, whether of the lungs or however it may be developed.

71. Bilberry Jam.—Gather the berries on a fine dry day, and after the sun has had time to dry the dew or moisture off the berries; weigh the fruit, put into a preserving pan with 1 pint of water, let it boil half an hour, and then add 6 pounds of sugar to every 7 pounds of fruit. Boil for three quarters of an hour; test it at the end of that time by putting a little in a saucer; put it out of doors to cool, and if it sets, it will be found to be sufficiently cooked. If not boiled enough it will not set firmly. Fill dry jam pots in the usual way, and cover down when cold with brown paper.

72. Bilberry Syrup.—Put 2 lbs. of loaf sugar into a saucepan with 1 pint of water; let it boil for a quarter of an hour, stirring all the time. Put on the fire, in a saucepan, 3 lbs. of bilberries; let them boil for half an hour, pass them through a jelly bag, and add the juice to the syrup. Clear with the white and shell of one egg, lightly whipped, and put into the syrup. Put it on the fire again, let it boil well up for three minutes; lift it carefully to one side, skim all the froth off as gently as possible, then pour into bottles and cork for future use. 1 tablespoonful in a tumbler of water before breakfast is considered quite a heal-all by some of the people in the midland counties. It certainly contains some valuable acids, and is a refreshing beverage on a hot summer's day.

The Napoleon of Preserved Food

2011-10-25T22:25:00.003-04:00

Rarely does ingenuity find just reward. The enterprising Nicolas Appert learned this unhappy fact when, in 1795, he hit upon the means by which to preserve meat, fish and vegetables in glass bottles. This découverte came only after a serious of professional failures. Appert began his career as a champagne salesman, and then tried his hand at confections before ending up in a grubby little atelier in the rue de la Folie-Méricourt, immersing in a piping hot bain-marie wide-mouthed glass bottles stuffed with everything from peas to pot roast. Finding that the bath rendered the jars airtight, Appert hit upon an idea that, for a few years at least, would bring him fame and welcome fortune.

Appert's discovery came at a most opportune moment. Traditional methods of preserving – drying, smoking, salting – yielded unpredictable, often unsatisfactory results. Appert's method, on the other hand, proved so effective that the Frenchman soon found himself crowned "the Napoleon of preserved food." It wasn't long, however, before the Napoleon of world conquest learned of his culinary counterpart. Looking for a way to feed vast numbers of soldiers, the emperor summarily appointed Appert "official purveyor of the Grand Armée" whose theater of operations was a food bottling factory at Massey. Supervising more than fifty employees, the official purveyor discharged his duty to the Empire with élan, seeing to it that troops marched off well supplied with bottled rations.

Appert's luck changed in 1814. A pair of English technicians infiltrated the factory and stole his trade secret. Shortly thereafter, the first English canned foods (the clever Britons improved upon Appert's design by substituting metal for glass) came rolling out of the factories of Donkins-Hall.

Unlike their American cousins, who also learned food preserving, the English failed to credit Appert with his discovery, and this oversight proved fatal. He never recovered from this bit of industrial espionage; his fortunes declined as the popularity of his invention increased. Not even a gift of 12,000 livres and the title of Benefactor of Humanity managed to stave off the mortification of poverty. In 1841 Appert was found dead, half-starved and penniless.

Should you wish to rectify a historical wrong, this recipe for canned apples from the 1906 Book of Choice Recipes will help you to preserve the memory of Appert and his signature innovation.

Canned Apples

Choose ripe, finely flavored apples, only slightly tart. Pare, core, cut into eighths, throw into cold water and after draining, weigh, and put into the preserving kettle with boiling water enough to cover. As soon as the water begins to boil up, place over a slow fire to simmer until tender, but not soft. Into another kettle put one pound of sugar, one quart of boiling water, the juice of one lemon and half its rind, grated, for every five pounds of apples. Stir, and simmer five minutes. Drain the water from the apples carefully, let them slip slowly into the syrup, and simmer until the fruit looks clear and may be pierced with a straw. Lift with a perforated spoon, one or two pieces at a time, slip into jars and cover to overflowing with the boiling syrup. If you have sweet apples canned with pineapples, they are very nice.

Marmalade and Eggs for Cycling Legs

2011-10-19T23:43:00.001-04:00

A "girdle around the earth" Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Sachtleben set out to describe the day after they graduated from Washington University. For three years they peddled their bicycles from "Normandy to Paris," across "the lowlands of western France to Bordeaux," straining over the Lesser Alps to Marseilles and "along the Riviera into Italy." Even the seductive climes of the Mediterranean could not waylay them on their journey; after wintering in Athens, they stowed their bikes aboard a sailboat headed for Constantinople.

Some 2,500 photographs bear witness to Allen and Sachtleben's odyssey. Yet boys weren't the only ones peddling for glory. In 1896 Elizabeth Robins Pennell became the first woman to bike the Alps, a feat which she subsequently downplayed. "I did not think I was very original, when I set out deliberately to make a record," she writes in Over the Alps on a Bicycle, her account of her efforts. Indeed, men and women had been riding to strange places for at least a decade before Pennell. In 1887 the 10,000 miles Lyman Hotchkiss Bagg logged on his bicycle he distilled into an 800-page memoir entitled, appropriately enough, Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle, which he dedicated to Curl, his beloved bulldog. Like Pennell, Bagg did not have record breaking in mind when he commenced his trek. His chronicle in published form exists "avowedly for no other reason than that [the reader's] coin may help fill the yawning chasm" of his bank account.

The bicycle owes its existence to an inquisitive German baron, who invented a vehicle he dubbed a Laufmaschine ("running machine"), a contraption by no means easy to operate. Astride a wooden frame supported by two large in-line wheels, the rider pushed his Laufmaschine with his feet and steered it with his hands. Subsequent improvements on the German baron's design were made by a Scottish blacksmith, who himself made bicycle history by committing the first bicycle-related traffic offense when he knocked over a little girl while riding his "velocipede ... of ingenious design" around Glasgow. A fine of five shillings set things to rights.

It wasn't until 1888, however, that the bicycle came into its own. Another Scotsman added to the design the pneumatic tire. And that same year also added was the rear freewheel, which allowed the rider to coast. These innovations vaulted bicycling into the first rank of weekend pastimes. Clubs devoted to the sport sprang up on both sides of the Atlantic.

These intrepid cyclists' tales of treks from the Alps to Asia Minor, from Cannes to Constantinople, contain few details as to provisions. Perhaps their sustenance came in the form of marmalade sandwiches and stuffed eggs, a recipe for which appears in a 1911 edition of Suburban Life.

Stuffed Eggs for a Picnic

Stuffed eggs should be wrapped separately in paraffin paper, and then packed in a box. A delicious manner of fixing the stuffed eggs is to mash the yolks of hardboiled eggs, add mustard, salt and pepper to taste, with enough vinegar to make the mixture moist and, lastly, a little chopped meat. Roll this into balls, and return to the cavity in the whites of the eggs. To vary this, add grated cheese instead of meat, and mayonnaise instead of vinegar.

Lobster à la Robinson

2011-10-12T22:45:00.001-04:00

Kinsmen shipwrecked in the East Indies become means by which to impart the virtues of proper husbandry, self-reliance and thorough knowledge of the natural world – such is the conceit of the pastor Johann David Wyss's 1812 novel The Swiss Family Robinson. As much a child of the Enlightenment as a man of the cloth, Wyss presents his subjects' exploits as a series of lessons in morality, natural history and the physical sciences. An ostrich tamed is transformed into transport, soil into earthen vessels. The heteroclite character of the island – elephants cavort with kangaroos, tapirs with giraffes; coconut palms grow side-by-side with fir trees – perplexes not the resourceful Swiss family; they draw from it nourishment, entertainment and comfort, as well as valuable insight.

Even a contretemps with a cantankerous crustacean proves instructive. While wading in a pool, the third eldest Robinson son Jack, a spirited boy, steps on a lobster, who retaliates in the only way available to it. Caught in its "terrible powerful claws," Jack suffers a "terrible fright." The ensuing commotion draws to the scene Jack's father, who frees his son from the lobster's grip and brings the offending creature to shore. Jack angrily grips the creature, who, by now exasperated, again retaliates with a sharp blow with its tail. Its reward is to be flung down and crushed with a stone.

Robinson père looks on with anything but approval. "You are acting in a very childish way," he tells Jack, adding that to "strike an enemy in a revengeful spirit" is unwise policy. His reproof falls on deaf ears, however. Too caught up with his triumph, Jack rushes his shattered adversary home to his mother, who in a spirit of strict domestic economy tosses it into a soup kettle simmering nearby.

The absence of an enemy to vanquish need not mean an empty stock pot. In her delightful volume, The Storybook Cookbook (1967), Carol MacGregor assures her readers that you "don't need to catch your own lobster, but you can make this delicious seaside soup" using the eminently sensible canned kind.

Lobster Soup

1 1/2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
A dash of pepper
1 1/2 cups light cream
1/2 cup milk
10 oz. of canned lobster
Red coloring (optional)

1. Put a medium-sized saucepan on the stove and turn the heat on low. Melt the butter in the pan, but do not let it burn.

2. Add the flour, salt, and pepper to the butter. Stir over low heat until you have a paste.

3. Gradually add the cream and milk, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens. You may have to turn up the heat a little to thicken the sauce.

4. Open the can of lobster meat and drain off all the liquid. Break the lobster into pieces, and be sure there are no little scales in it. Add it to the cream sauce and cook for 10 minutes.

5. Place a sieve over a medium-sized bowl and pour the lobster bisque into the sieve. With a spoon, press as much of the sauce and lobster meat as you can through the sieve. Discard the remaining lobster meat or feed it to your cat.

6. If you want to, add 2 drops of red coloring to give the soup a nice pink color.

7. Pour the bisque back into the saucepan and reheat it, as it will have cooled off. Serve it hot. Makes 4 servings.

Reader's Digest

2011-10-10T17:46:00.000-04:00

Today's post, a review of the recently published Balzac's Omelette, appears at The New Inquiry.

Automats: Giving Lunch the Impersonal Touch

2011-10-02T23:11:00.001-04:00

A machine that could serve milk steaming hot or ice-cold, that never spilled a drop and never needed cleaning – such was the dream of German school administrators who were after an innovative way of meeting their pupils' nutritional needs. In 1903 that dream became reality with the introduction into schools throughout Berlin of the Milch-Automat, a technological wonder that, as revealed in an issue of The Modern Review, subtracted the human element from the dairy-delivery equation. A coin dropped into the machine sent "a waterproof paper cup ... down in an opening" to catch a jet of the "very finest quality milk" with ease and exactness. And, true to its promise, the Milch-Automat proved an exceedingly clean machine, flushing itself every so often by "a mechanical process" that kept it "scientifically sanitary."

These ingenious machines belonged to three classes – hot-food, cold-food, liquid – each indicating certain differences in operation. Customers worked a hot-food machine, for instance, by dropping a coin into it, in exchange for which they received a metal token. Meanwhile, the coin journeyed down a tube that denoted a particular dish. In some subterranean kitchen, a cook took notice of this coin and prepared the appropriate entree, which he then sent up a dumb waiter and down a conveyor to a glass receptacle. This dish the customer freed by inserting his token into a nearby slot.

Cold-food automats, on the other hand, were decidedly simpler affairs. Prepared in advance and adequately refrigerated, a cold dish could spend all day attracting the attention of some peckish passer-by. Similarly self-sufficient were the liquid machines, which featured the addition of a self-measuring contrivance that ensured each thirsty customer's cup was filled exactly with the advertised quantity.

Automat fever soon spread beyond central Europe. A passion for these machines came to infect New York and, in fact, touched off a vogue for so-called "Automat parties."A typical fête of this sort involved the late-night rental of an automatic restaurant. Theater-goers, club-hoppers and other assorted night owls would make merry in these hired hot-spots, enjoying their mechanized bounty by pumping cocktails and winching up salads with the drop of a coin.

Automats are a rarity nowadays. But you can still recreate an automat meal. An American visitor to one such establishment in Berlin reported enjoying a lunch of "mutton, potatoes, string beans, Swiss cheese sandwich, sardine sandwich and vanilla ice" – all for 20 cents! These inflationary times make it hard to replicate such a meal at such a price. But a few bucks still allows you to enjoy a Swiss cheese sandwich like those featured in The Up-To-Date Sandwich Book (1909).

Swiss Cheese Sandwich

Cut rye bread very thin. Spread lightly with butter. Between the pieces place thin slices of Swiss cheese. Spread with mustard. Garnish with a dill pickle sliced thin.

Swiss Cheese Sandwich No. 2

Butter thin slices of pumpernickel bread. Between slices put a thin layer of Swiss cheese and leaves of watercress. Cut in long narrow strips. Garnish with an olive.

New York Luncheonettes: No-Frills Dining in the Gilded Age

2011-09-26T23:33:00.001-04:00

One problem confronting early twentieth-century New Yorkers was where to find a flea dip to go with a proper dish of ground beef. The Canine Luncheonette, one of the Gilded Age's more charming innovations, supplied the remedy. To those four-legged companions of women who would disappear into the shops on Fifth Avenue the establishment offered comfort and refection. There pooches could dine in grand style and could even steal a nap. (Longer reposes, however, had to take place down the street at the doggie hotel, whose appurtenances naturally included a savory bone for gnawing.)

Of course, the dog-eat-dog spirit of the times meant that opulence often existed side-by-side with the most extreme privation. The Walther League Messenger reminds its readers that even as the Canine Luncheonette cossetted its clients, "human beings in Hungarian 'Siberia' are eating dog flesh in their despair." In such a condition "the meat and biscuits which are fed to those pampered pets of New York society" these poor unfortunates would no doubt regard as "a rare delicacy."

For luncheonette customers of the two-legged variety, delicacy took a back seat to expedience. Quick, simple fare was the order of business, and it proved popular among students, shoppers, transients, and others on the go. Initially adjuncts to soda fountains, luncheonettes featured vanilla milkshakes, toasted English muffins and hamburgers – all items that could sate pangs that surfaced between ordinary meal times. As an 1915 issue of The Dispenser's Formulary reports, many a Manhattanite was delivered comfortably to the dinner hour thanks to the timely intervention of "a well-made bowl of soup, an individual service of chicken pie, a sandwich, and a strawberry dessert."

The hustle and bustle of luncheonettes attested to their convenience. Customers perched above Formica counters gave their orders directly to the line cooks. Those seated in booths dealt with waitresses who translated their meal requests into an exotic idiom. "Doughnuts and coffee" became "sinks and suds." "Make it high and dry" meant "Hold the mayonnaise and mustard."

Indeed, bread, meat and cheese never admitted of as much combinatorial variety as they did at luncheonettes, where sandwiches dominated the menu. Bread "spread thinly with butter" The Dispenser's Formulary considers best for sandwiches, provided the accompanying meat isn't "dragged from its covers as the consumer bites through it." To avoid such a mishap it's better to swap cold cuts for fruit. The Dispenser's Formulary thus presents this recipe for a tutti frutti sandwich, which you can be sure makes for quick, easy, orderly eating.

Tutti Frutti Sandwich

One pound stoned and chopped dates, two ounces of shredded ginger, one pound ground roasted and salted peanuts, one pound of seeded and chopped raisins, one half pound strained honey and the juice of two lemons. Pack in a jar and keep in refrigerator. Use as needed.

The Mighty and the Offal: Humble Pie

2011-09-20T00:07:00.000-04:00

Some carried long bows and forked arrows; others harquebusses, muskets and Lochaber axes. They wore thin-soled shoes, tartan hose, knotted handkerchiefs, sky-blue caps, and garters fashioned from wreathes of straw. Thus equipped and adorned, they, the Irish nobility of Braemar, ventured into the Highland countries to hunt deer.

Numbering fourteen or fifteen hundred, these noble hunters would rise with the sun to consult on the particulars of the day's enterprise. After deciding the best place to herd their quarry, they dispersed in all directions. Sixteenth-century Londoner John Taylor, ferryman by trade and chronicler by avocation, relates the details of one such hunting party. The participants were intrepid. No obstacle proves too formidable to overcome. They waded "up to their middles through bournes and rivers" in search of cover. Upon a signal from scouts charged with spotting game, the "tinchel," or circle of sportsmen, would close in, driving the startled ruminants toward other hunters lying in wait, who greeted them with hundreds of snapping Irish greyhounds and scores of "arrows, dirks and daggers." In less than two hours' time "fourscore fat deer were slain" for the noble hunters "to make merry withal."

The choice cuts of venison went to high-born hunters and were baked into a pastry served on the manor lord's dais. Seated lower because a few rungs down on the social ladder, the master of the hunt and his fellows received their due in the form of a pie containing the heart, liver and other inward parts of the deer. Known colloquially as "humbles," "umbels" or "numbles," these ingredients have since come to be associated with acts of mortification and obeisance. An old saying goes, "Whence, as the haunch and neck were for 'Lordings' and the umbles ... for the yeoman."

Victorian writer George Augustus Sala insists, however, that humble pie's reputation is wholly unearned. "He who first decried Humble Pie, and libelled it as a mean and shabby kind of victuals," he observes in his 1862 tome The Seven Sons of Mammon, "was very probably some envious one who came late to the feast, and of the succulent pasty found only the pie-dish and some brown flakes of crust remaining."

If you wish to secure yourself a piece of savory humble pie, the recipe below, which also appears in Sala's work, should, despite its fragmentary character, spare you any unwarranted culinary humiliation.

Humble Pie

"Take the humbles of a deer," says the recipe, – you see, there is venison for you to begin with, – and then it goes on to enumerate slices of bacon, condiments, buttered crust, and so forth.

Full Fathom Five Thy Father Dines

2011-09-13T23:38:00.000-04:00

A New York newspaper (the exact one is unkown) reported that one evening in the summer of 1907 a dinner was given thirty-five feet under the sea by the inventor of a submarine christened The Argonaut. He along with thirteen guests boarded his vessel, which was was anchored at Bridgeport, Connecticut, and sank below the waves to travel several miles along the ocean floor. Postprandial entertainment consisted of two divers exiting via a special compartment in order to display the virtues of "the patent diving suits" they had donned.

This extravehicular exhibition was followed by some sight-seeing. The Argonaut passed near a sunken coal barge before floating back to port, its passengers delighted and astonished, and no worse for the "slight headaches" of which they complained. All in all, the captain of The Argonaut and his guests suffered "no inconvenience ... from the submarine voyage."

For all the novelty that it no doubt presented for its inventor's dinner guests, The Argonaut was not without long historical precedent. The first such underwater craft appeared in 1620 and underwent multiple tests in the fetid waters of the Thames. The first military application came in 1776, when a small, acorn-shaped machine named "Turtle" tried, and failed, to sink the HMS Eagle, a British warship. During the American Civil War the French-designed Alligator was the first submersible to feature compressed air. It moved by means of a screw propeller powered by a hand crank. Yet like its predecessor "Turtle" it proved fortune's fool, disappearing on April 1, 1863 in a storm off Cape Hatteras while en route to its first combat deployment at Charleston. Indeed, it wasn't until the First World War that submarines acquitted themselves.

But throughout the centuries-long wriggling toward seaworthiness, submarines remained consistent in one respect: their cramped, stuffy quarters, which were hardly a fit setting for a spendid repast. The Argonaut apparently proved the exception. What dishes that ship's passengers enjoyed on their voyage is left a matter of speculation, but it is safe to assume they were more sumptuous than the austere fare characteristic of the life aquatic. This was no more true than while aboard a Soviet submarine during the Second World War. Herring was a staple, red wine a rare treat. And that elixir vitae of Russian folk, vodka, was strictly rationed, each crewman receiving a mere three-and-a-half ounces a day. To combat cuisine-induced ennui, Soviet submarine cooks exercised tremendous creativity, and in so doing managed to turn the usual rations of groats and canned beef into menu items that, if not delicious, were at least palatable; for with no condiments, dressings or spices available, food on Soviet submarines was dull – even by British standards.

Should you find yourself several leagues under the sea when your hunger surfaces, try tucking into a bowl of buckwheat groats prepared according to the recipe below, which appears in the 1914 cookbook Scientific Feeding. And if you're feeling particularly creative, try garnishing your groats with sugar and cream.

Buckwheat Groats

Wash one cup of buckwheat groats several times with cold water, add about six cups of boiling water and two teaspoonsful of salt. Boil rapidly for 20 minutes or until it thickens, then allow it to cook 50 or 60 minutes longer on the stove or in the oven. Serve with hot cream. Cooked or stewed dried prunes may be eaten with it, or added to the mush just before serving. Buckwheat is a winter food. People who suffer from eruptions on the skin after eating buckwheat should let it alone.

Neither Fish Nor Flesh: Creatures That Swim the Air

2011-09-11T18:43:00.000-04:00

Only when they leap in the air do flying fish, with their small, box-like heads and gunmetal-gray bodies, betray their avian affinities. Aloft on broad pectoral fins, they sail just above the ocean waves. Should an impediment in the form of a ship cross their path, they in a body take flight in order to avoid it, rising as a glittering, undulating cloud to glide diagonally to the ship's course, against the wind and seemingly also against gravity. Rough seas prod flying fish to greater feats: They glide without ever touching water, thus behaving more like gulls than like any gilled creature.

The singular ability of flying fish has occasioned rather fanciful speculation by some of history's most formidable philosophical and literary minds. Aristotle conjectured that flying fish spent their days in their watery environs but decamped at night for dry land. And Victor Hugo likely drew from them inspiration for the seaside reflections of Gilliatt, the meditative Guernseyman of his 1866 novel, The Toilers of the Sea. Gilliatt refused to believe the air a "mere desert." He thought it must be teeming, rather, with "creatures colorless and transparent." Indeed, this "man of dreams" sees no evidence to suggest why this should not be the case. "Since the water is is filled with life," he wonders, "why not the atmosphere?" After all, the sea harbors creatures which, out of the water, resemble "soft crystal," and when returned to their natural habitat disappear in "that medium by reason of their identity in transparency and color." Why then cannot other transparencies inhabit the air? If men were to "fish the air as we fish the depths of the sea," Gilliatt argues, "we should discover a multitude of strange animals." Upon such discovery, he concludes, "many things would be made clear."

When not engaged in metaphysical speculation on the nature of etheric beings Gilliatt earns a living by harvesting the sea's bounty. His skill in that trade is such that he often brings home "heavy takes of fish," which he shares with the poor of the island -- who, it should be noted, "were little grateful" to receive these donations.

The ingratitude of the needy proceeds from their distrust of Gilliatt, whom they consider strange, as well as possessed of unnaturally good luck. Whatever their attitude toward him, the Guernsey poor would no doubt find their condition remedied upon the discovery that the odd fisherman's daydreams are correct: Creatures do exist that swim the air as fish do the sea. The air would become, then, a second hunting ground from which humankind could draw sustenance. Having the air to "fish" as well as the sea, even the most unfortunate would never again know want. Growning under their sumptuous burdens, the poors' tables and cupboards would be mere deserts no longer.

An 1875 issue of The Guernsey Magazine reports that most of the creatures caught in the familiar medium of the sea were mackerel, which "abounds round the island." Perhaps the beneficiaries of Gilliatt's largess fixed dishes similar to this recipe for baked mackerel from the 1865 tome, Mrs. Beeton's Dictionary of Every-Day Cookery.

Baked Mackerel

279. Ingredients. 4 middling-sized mackerel, a nice delicate forcemeat ... 3 oz. of butter; pepper and salt to taste.

Mode.—Clean the fish, take out the roes, and fill up with forcemeat, and sew up the slit. Flour, and put them in a dish, heads and tails alternately, with the roes; and, between each layer, put some little pieces of butter, and pepper and salt. Bake for an hour, and either serve with plain melted butter or a maitre d'hotel sauce.

Time.—1/2 hour. Average cost for this quantity, 1s. 10d.

Seasonable from April to July.
Sufficient for 6 persons.

Note.—Baked mackerel may be dressed in the same way as baked herrings ... and may also be stewed in wine.

Weight Of The Mackerel.—The greatest weight of this fish seldom exceeds 2 lbs., whilst their ordinary length runs between 14 and 20 inches. They die almost immediately after they are taken from their element, and, for a short time, exhibit a phosphoric light.