The Art and Mystery of Food

"To Make A Snake" - An Early English Syringed Fritter

In a previous post, I discussed the origin of syringed fritters in English 18th century cookery books. These were almost certainly derived from French sources. However, in Robert May's 17th century "The Accomplisht Cook" the presence of a recipe titled "To fry Paste out of a Syringe or Butter-squirt" indicates that there may have been a tradition of making these fritters in England independently of fritters derived from the french sources. May's recipe is quite basic, but does include the important detail that these fritters, like the modern Churro, are not only squirted out of a syringe or butter squirt, but they use a hot water paste.

"To fry Paste out of a Syringe or Butter-squirt.

Take a quart of fine flower, & a litle leven, dissolve it in warm water, & put to it the flour, with some white wine, salt, saffron, a quarter of butter, and two ounces of sugar; boil the aforesaid things in a skillet as thick as a hasty pudding, and in the boiling stir it continually, being cold beat it in a mortar, fry it in clarified butter, and run it into the butter through a butter-squirt."

Recently I came across a much more detailed 17th century English recipe for a syringed fritter in the manuscript recipe collection of Elizabeth Jacob (MS.3009; Wellcome Trust Library).

"To Make A Snake

Take a pint of new milke, sett it on the fire till it boile, then put in fine wheaten flower, and stire it well together, till it be very stiffe, and it must boile soe long till it comes round like A ball, then take it out of the skillet, and put it into A mortar, then take 6 Egges, and break in one of them, and beate that Eggs with that round ball very well, then break another in, and beat that as before, thus break your 6 Egges; one After another, till they be all beaten in, then beat all well together you must beat Every Egge single soe long till you see it, and the Egge hanging on the pestle when you put him up, then season him with a little salt, Nutmegg, and rosewater and then beate it all together A little, then take your frying pan, and some Beasts lard that is fryed up with 2 or 3 cloves, and take neare about half A pound, and put in your Stuffe into your Spout, and when it is full, Spout it round About the frying pan, it must be done quick, and with great Strength, and it is in the frying pan; hold it on the fire and let it bake, then turn it with your knife, and let it bake on the Other side, Let it not be to browne, but look of a pale yellow, it will quickly be baked, and it will quickly burne, if you looke not to it, then take it up, and lay round, one another, in the dish you Intend to Serve it in then take A little Sweet butter and rosewater melted together, and with A feather, wash it all over, as it Lyes in the dish, then Scrape A pretty quantity of Sugar on it, and some round the dish sides, an soe serve it to the table, it must be done quick, or Else it will be cold before it comes to the table."

 

So it does seem that although it is not a common recipe, there is evidence of these fritters being made in english households from at least the 17th century.

Grandmother's Cookery

Rachel Laudan recently made the point that while there have been much dietry advise given along the lines that we 'should not eat food that our [great] grandmothers wouldn't recognise as food' (i.e. don't eat "processed" foods), the fact of the matter is that is is actually very difficult for us to know exactly what our ancestors recognised as food. While the way people interact with food has changed hugely in the last century, most commentary in the general media have only placed emphasis on the fact that the average Westerner should feel bloody guilty about their relationship with food. Everything was better in the old days (except in the UK where people have a somewhat disfunctional relationship with their food history - "Food is much better now then in the past" v "Food was much better and wholesome in past"). Well it maybe difficult to know what people thought about the food they were eating, but at least in the England we can look at some of their eating trends. Below is a graph of household consumption in England from the post war period until the mid-90's.

Well one thing is clear from this, if "grandma's chicken" tasted better, not many people knew about it as very little of it was being eaten before the 1960's. Cabbage is less popular also it seems....

As both of my grandmothers have recently died, all of this made me think that it is a worthwhile exercise writing down what I can remember about the food they cooked for me.  For some background, Grandmother Pickles was of British descent and lived on a relatively isolated Australian farm. The farm was mostly sheep and grain, but for family consumption there was a milk-cow, chickens, pigeons and geese as well as the endless mutton.  Baka Balic came from a very poor rural family in Croatia, but in Australia lived in a middle-class suburban home - no animals. She worked as a house-keeper for an even more middle-class family, converting the rose garden into a potato patch in her spare time

 

Grandma Pickles:

1. Roast leg of hogget/mutton - my uncles killed a weather once every 7-10 days
2. Chops - from the above
3. Shepard's Pie - made from left over roast - as it should be
4. Liver, eggs, bacon and kidneys -served for breakfast the day after the kill
5. Roast veg, mashed potatoes (sometimes mixed with swede/pumpkin)
6. Pressed tongue
7. Mushrooms on toast - when in season my grandmother would take me out to pick buckets of field mushrooms (Agaricus campestris), which were cooked in butter and milk.
8. Eggs - from free ranging hens of various breeds, poached fried or boiled
9. Hogget/mutton stew - carrots, onions, celery, barley
10. Chicken Stew - as above, made with excess cockerels, which were far too tough roast
11. Mince - as above , made with mince
12. Chicken with Apricots - chicken cooked in apricot nectar with a packet of dried French onion soup mix, pasta added towards the end.
13. Toad in the Hole - sausages poached in a curry flavoured white sauce, not the usual dish of the same name of sausages baked in a Yorkshire Pudding batter.
14. Sausages, rissoles (sausage meat balls)
15. Roast Goose, Orange Jelly, Ham (canned). All served for Christmas, geese raised on the farm. The jelly was made with orange juice and mint and served with the goose
16. Roast Ducks - during shooting season
17. Green salad - very rare
18. Rice Pudding - yes cooked in an wood fired stove
19. Jelly/Flummery - commercial jelly mix, Flummery was this made with milk, rather then water
20. Junket
21. Ice cream
22. Stewed fruit -in season
23. Tinned fruit - huge amounts of tinned peaches
24. Scones - made regularly, especially during the shearing season
25. Jam (tinned, normally plum) and Bread (sliced white), Salted Butter
26. Sandwiches of all sorts
27. Cups of milky tea
28. As a special treat I would be taken into the local town (1.5 hours drive) to go to a Chinese restuarant and I would have "Special Fried Rice" and a bottle of Coke bought for me, followed by "Deep fried icecream".

Baka Balic:

1. Chicken Noodle Soup (all main meals started with this soup)
2. Home made Bread, un-salted, cultured Butter
3. Roast Pork
4. Roast Chicken
5. Veal schnitzel
6. Cevapcici
7. Roast Turkey with Mlinci - an Easter meal
8. Green bean salad  - beans dressed with garlic, olive oil and vinegar while hot, searved cold
9. Green Salads - very common
10. Bean Soup
11. Sauerkraut Soup
12. Stuffed Cabbage Leaves
13. Stuffed Peppers
14. Baked Fish
15. Strudel (walnuts or poppy seeds or apple)
16. Polenta
17. Gnocchi
18. Seafood Risotto (rare)
19. Papricka stew
20. Spit roasted pig or lamb - for large family gatherings
21. Cured meats
22. Cakes and biscuits

 

This is what I can recall of meals mostly made in the 1970-80's. I'm not sure that either of my grandmothers actually enjoyed cooking. Certainly it wasn't a hobby or passion for either of them, it was a duty. Which isn't to say that the food was made grudgingly or was bad, actually it was very good. Baka in particular was a stellar cook. But, ultimately cooking was something that they had to do, at least twice a day, every day. However, I think cookery was easier for them then for me, after all I have to produce family meals day after day and work full time which means being out of the house. The daily grind of providing a family with meals can be very wearisome, not matter how passionate you are about food.

So I don't think that either of them would have objected too much to processed foods. Grandma Pickles could have preserved fruit until the cows came home (literally), but she didn't. She bought in tinned fruit in thick sugar syrup. In terms of what I eat now, well I think that this would have been quite shocking for them. I eat a much wider range of foodstuffs then either of them, from a much broader range of ethnic backgrounds. I'm pretty sure that they would have considered much of the ethnic foods to be beyond the Pale. So I'm not going to feel too guilty about my relationship with food, I was very lucky to have had the influences of my grandmothers cookery, but I am just as lucky to be in the position of being passionate about cookery having been exposed to a whole range of foods that are completely outwith my grandmothers experiences. 

Still more Haggis

In previous posts (Ode to a haggis part I and II) I have discussed the history of the haggis in great detail. The main point was that these puddings were originally found in both Scotland and England, before becoming known as the national dish Scotland. A secondary point was that even during the period that the haggis was becoming known as a purely Scottish dish, not all Scots were over-joyed with the prospect of eating it.

In part, this is  likely to account  for the lack of a recipe for haggis in early Scottish printed cookbooks. A recipe for a haggis only appeared at the end of the 18th century in Mrs Maciver's cookery book. The recipe in is essentially identical to the modern recipe. However, I recently came across a haggis recipe in a Scottish recipe collection manuscript. This collection of over three hundred recipes is in a leather-bound volume originally belonging to Martha Lockhart, Lady Castlehill and was written 1712-13. It is now kept in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. A selection of these recipes was published in 1976 by Hamish White.

The obvious recipe of interest is titled: To make a Haggas Pudding

The ingredients for this haggis are:

Lights (lungs), heart and kidney (no liver) of a sheep or lamb, beef suet, currants, nutmeg, salt, grated bread, sweet herbs, egg yolks and cream.

These items are stuffed into a sheep paunch as per normal, and boiled for 4 hours, with the final instruction to "gash it carelesly, then it will rune out green". Hopefully due to the sweet herbs.

This is a very different recipe then given by Mrs Maciver in 1773:

A Good Scotch Haggies

Make the haggis-bag perfectly clean, parboil the draught ; boil the liver very well, so as it will grate ; dry the meal before the fire ; mince the draught and a pretty large piece of beef very small ; grate about half of the liver ; mince plenty of the suet and some onions small ; mix all these materials very well together, with a handful or two of the dried meal ; spread them on the table, and season them properly with salt and mixed spices ; take any of the scraps of beef that are left from mincing, and some of the water that boiled the draught, and make about a choppin of good stock of it ; then put all the haggis meat into the bag, and that broth in it ; then sew up the bag : but be sure to put out all the wind before you sew it quite close. If you think the bag is thin, you may put it in a cloth. If it is a large haggis, it will take at least two hours' boiling.

However is near identical to a whole bunch of recipes published in the 16th and 17th century. For instance:

The Second Part of a good Huswifes Jewel by Thomas Dawson 1597

To make a Haggas pudding

Take a peece of a Calves Chaldron and parboile it, shred it so small as you can, then take as much Beefe Sewet as your meat, ten shred likewise, and a good deale more of grated bread, put this together, and to then seven or eight yolkes of egs and two or three whites, a little creame, three or four spoonfuls of rosewater, a little Pepper, Mace and nutmegs, and a good deale of sugar, fill them and let them be sodden with a very soft fire, and shred also with a little Winter savoury, parsely and Time, and a little Pennyroyal with your meat.

The Compleat Cook or, The Whole Art of Cookery, 1694

Take a Calves Chaldron, boil it, and when it is cold mince it very small, then take the yolks of four eggs, and the whites of two, some cream, grated bread, sugar, salt, currans, rosewater, some beef-suet or marrow, sweet herbs, marjoram, thyme, parsley, and mingle together; then having a sheep-maw ready dressed, put it in the aforesaid materials and boil it. .

Others take a good store of Parsely, savoury, tyme, onions and oatmeal groats chopped together; and mingled with some minced beef suet, with cloves, mace, pepper and salt, fill the paunch, so it up and boil it: when boiled, cut a hole in it and put in some beaten butter, with yolks of three eggs.

Another very good way.

Take a Calves chaldron or muggets, boil it tender and mince small, put to it grated bread, the yolks of six eggs, with as many whites, some cream, sweet herbs, spinage, succory, sorrel, strawberry-leaves minced small, a little butter, pepper, cloves, mace, cinamon, ginger, currans, sugar, salt dates, and boil it in a napkin or calves-panch; being boiled, dish it and trim with scraped sugar, stick it with sliced almonds, and run over with beaten butter

In fact it is quite likely that the Castlehill recipe has been copied from one of the many such examples as given above. Interestingly these recipes are from English cookbooks, so does this mean that the Scottish haggis is English? Not possible to say I'm afraid. It is a possible that the origin is English and the "modern" haggis of Mrs Maciver represents a local adaption, but it is equally possible that Lady Castlehill simply copied a recipe from an English cookbook because it was an upmarket version of a familiar, pre-existing dish.

Certainly we know that haggis type puddings existed in Scotland before Lady Castlehill's time, what we don't know is what these haggis were like. It would be interesting to know of other haggis recipes contained in early recipe collections and if so, what these recipes were like.

Butter, lard and breakfast

Butter, lard and breakfast

Rachel's comment about confusing the spanish for "butter" (mantequilla) with "lard" (manteca) reminded me of a similar issue for me. I have no ear for languages, hundreds of dollars have been spent of various language courses, with not result. Considering how much I travel (or did) this can be a problem.

In Sanlúcar de Barrameda they served a fantastic breakfast down near the market, crusty toasted rolls with  a toppping of your choice. One fantastic choice was the fat from cured hams, rendered down then whipped until light and fluffy and studded with chunks of ham. Lovely spread on toast and dressed with freshly crushed tomatoes. Try as I might to say "manteca", I nearly always ended up being served "mantequilla".

Another very popular rendered fat in Andalusia is "manteca colorá" (coloured lard). Also a common choice as a spread for breakfast toast, it is sold in huge tubs in the local markets. From the flavour profile I would guess it is flavoured with bay leaves and marjoram. The colour I would like to think come from pimenton (paprika), maybe made from the excellent sweet nora peppers, but maybe not.

Interestingly, at a more up market hotel in Jerez the breakfast toast was served with a selection of spreads which played with the local "manteca" choices. While it may look like butter, manteca colorá and whipped manteca as described above, it is actually butter, carrot conserve and whipped honey.

One last thing that you may not see mentioned in any Spanish cookbook for English readers. A lot of that bright orange-yellow colour typically of Spanish cooking comes not from saffron or pimenton, but comes from an artificial dye. You can judge how popular it is by the volume it (bright orange powder) takes up at this stall in the Jerez market. There is no stigma attached to using this product locally.