Picnics for Motorists

While the picnic is an immemorial custom all over the world, convened to celebrate a beautiful day outdoors, the most exciting advancement in picnicking may have been the introduction of the motor car in the early 20th century. For those who could afford one, a car increased the element of spontaneity and luxury in picnic travel, allowing picnickers to travel easily and comfortably to picturesque countryside spots with a good meal in tow. Picnic culture thrived in England in the 1930s, with British manufacturers such as Brexton producing affordable, stylish wicker hampers featuring porcelain or lightweight plastic plates and cups, metal thermoses, plastic food storage containers, and stainless steel utensils.  

The new convenience of picnic travel expanded the possibilities of the types of dishes that could be brought to a picnic and paved the way for cookbooks such as Hilda Leyel's Picnics for Motorists, a delightful collection of simple yet imaginative recipes, published in 1936 by Routledge as part of The Lure of Cookery series.

In Picnics for Motorists Leyel picks up on the theme of cooking for modern, busy households which she addressed 10 years earlier in Cold Savory Meals. Cold dishes, she felt, were ideally suited to modern life, but required significant planning to come out right. As Leyel says, "The art of arranging cold meals is to choose dishes that are better cold than they would be hot." Since few cookbooks of the period included recipes for cold meals, these books were intended to aid the home cook in choosing the best dishes. Leyel provides 60 picnic menus in Picnics for Motorists. Most of the recipes are included in the book but Leyel cleverly ties into her other publications by featuring dishes that could be found in her other books in the The Lure of Cookery series, such as Cakes of England. 

{Click to enlarge}

To eat en plein air leads to the inevitable packing up and discarding of wrappings, soiled utensils, and leftover bits of food. Before the advent of trash bins, this could be a tricky maneuver. After describing the sort of disposable paper plates to use, Leyel ends her preface with a curious method of waste management: "The soiled papers are easily disposed of in some ditch, buried in the ground, and the knives are cleaned by being dug into the grass. In this way nothing is left to annoy the next comer or the generous owners of the property."

I later found a similar description in the novel Starlight (1967) by British author Stella Gibbons. Gibbons opens the picnic scene after the characters have already eaten the food, instead choosing to focus on the idyllic countryside setting: "Peggy and Arnold Corbett were sitting after lunch in a birch coppice, surrounded by primroses."

When the characters decide to leave, Gibbons uses the moment to reveal another shade of Peggy's character:

"Peggy made him wait while she gathered up the smallest fragments of eggshell and paper and, amid his jeers, buried them under leaf-mould and moss. He watched her with the mocking smile that the slightest sign of gentleness in her always brought to his face. 'What's the point? Who the hell's going to see a bit of litter in here?'
'Nobody. If I can help it.' She wiped the moist earth off her hands and they went to the car."

For Hilda Leyel and Stella Gibbons' character, Peggy, enjoying the landscape implied a duty to preserving it. As Leyel says, "It is very distressing to see the countryside disfigured sometimes by paper bags and empty bottles and it spoils the enjoyment of all those to whom a picnic in the open air is a very real pleasure."

One of these days I plan to make an entire picnic menu from Picnics for Motorists. (Perhaps it will include the shrimp pie; asparagus in French roles; tomato, coconut and olive salad; and banana ice cream.) But what I love most about a picnic is putting together a few lovely dishes on a whim and then rushing out to enjoy the day. In that spirit, here are some dishes from a recent picnic dinner (arrived at by motor car) featuring lentil salad with toasted hazelnuts, squash blossoms filled with mozzarella, an arugula salad, baguette, pickles, and prosecco.

Squash Blossoms

Stuff freshly picked squash blossoms with chunks of 

mozzarella. Sprinkle with chopped basil and black pepper. Drizzle with olive oil and serve.

The Best Lentil Salad Ever from My New Roots

For more on Hilda Leyel's cookbooks, read this post on Cold Savory Meals, the recipes of which are perfectly picnic worthy, and my post on cooking with snow, which discusses Leyel's book, Puddings.

More on picnics: Picquant Cucumbers and an Early Autumn Picnic

Kitchen Economy in the United States, Part I, or How To Cook a Wolf

The economy cookbook genre provides tips for cooking and living on a budget, and therefore is a unique historical artifact, detailing aspects of daily life such as income, living conditions, and personal and family care. As Sarah Leavitt points out in From Catharine Beecher to Martha Stewart: a Cultural History of Domestic Advice (2002), advice manuals were often literary works, stylistically bearing a close resemblance to early novels by women.  Classics such as The American Frugal Housewife (1829) by Lydia Maria Child began a tradition of guides for Anglo-American women on how a run a thrifty household. Such early examples discussed both food and other housekeeping concerns such as cleaning and furnishing the home, as well as etiquette.  The content in advice manuals and cookbooks often overlapped but by the late 19th century had diverged into separate genres.  The economy cookbook grew from a meeting of these traditions.

Depending on the particular flavor of straitened social circumstances for which the cookbook was written (frontier life, war, inflation, unemployment), one will find a particular worldview that shapes the cooking process. These books are written for a swathe of the population who experience poverty through a shared outside influence. The author is a comrade, one who has managed to live comparatively well in the same situation. Why then, when food prices are just as high as ever, with worrisome unemployment figures, and "food deserts" threatening the nutrition and well-being of much of the U.S. population, has the genre all but disappeared? Many of these older books are still talked of on blogs and in news pieces; people still find their information relevant. In terms of their philosophy toward food, their closest counterparts are Alice Waters-like cookbooks on cooking with fresh, seasonal ingredients. But such examples are not typically written with budgets and scarcity in mind.

To see how the genre has changed, I'll take a look at some distinctive examples from the second half of the 20th century into the 21st century. What are your favorite money-saving cookbooks?

How To Cook a Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher

Published in 1942, How To Cook a Wolf speaks to a people struggling during war time.  The people were Americans and although their domestic sovereignty was not ultimately violated, ration books and blackouts brought an unsettling change to everyday life. When Wolf was published, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher (1908-1992) was already known for her fluid, conversational writing in which recipes would materialize without warning, intelligently wrapped up in the middle of anecdotes, like the surprise cream center of a truffle.

If you think eggs boiled in their shells are fit for the nursery, and refuse to admit any potential blessing in one delicately prepared, neatly spooned from its shell into a cup, sagely seasoned with salt and fresh-ground black pepper and a sizable dollop of butter, all to be eaten with hot toast, then it is definitely not your dish. 

M.F.K. Fisher by Ginny Stanford, 1991. Acrylic and silver leaf on canvas. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

The text is also interspersed with more structured recipes that bloom from Fisher's prose as an inevitable coda.  Wolf reads less like a cookbook and more like a letter from a friend giving you her best advice, rich with experience and humor.  As in the best stream of consciousness writing, her prose and content are in fact very structured. Her prolific use of the second person invites us in, easily courting our attention so that when the context abruptly shifts squarely to the first person, the effect is breathtaking. Each essay is a work of art. As with the book's title––which suggests an outsmarting of the proverbial wolf at the door––Wolf is organized into chapters with mysterious and evocative titles from "How to Keep Alive" (the very basics of eating to survive) and "How to Rise Up Like New Bread" (bread baking) to "How To Have a Sleek Pelt" (cooking for pets) and "How Not to Be an Earthworm" (living through blackouts).

Like Elizabeth David and Julia Child, Fisher's approach to food was shaped by travel in France and other European countries. Her message is simple: down with food snobbery and ignorance; embrace fresh ingredients and the wisdom of the soil. In her revised text for the 1951 edition of Wolf Fisher offers the most eloquent statement on food sovereignty I have ever read.  In a moment of prolepsis, she captures the post-war shifts in agricultural production and anticipates the struggles of what would become the organic, sustainable, non-GMO, and slow food movements :

I believe more firmly than ever in fresh raw milk, freshly ground whole grains of cereal, and vegetables grown in organically cultured soil. If I must eat meats I want them carved from beasts nurtured on the plants from that same kind of soil. As for fish...they can choose their own way of life in my gastronomy, unless we interrupt it with split atoms.

_________________________

Food waste makes up one of the richest potentials for saving money.  In "How to Be Sage Without Hemlock" Fisher shares ways to make the most of the food and fuel you have.  My favorite––in fact the best kitchen tip I have ever found––is to store herbs in glass jars in the refrigerator. After two weeks even fine herbs, such as cilantro and parsley, were still fresh, green, and crisp. The method also works well for small heads of lettuce. To fashion your own store of vitamins Fisher recommends pouring all juice from cooked vegetables into a jar in the refrigerator. Add to it regularly and give it a good shake every now and then and it will keep fresh indefinitely.

Fisher believes in a common sense approach to eating. She has no patience for three-meals-a-day nutrition plans or food pyramids. Soup and buttered toast make a very fine meal, the addition of a baked apple with or without cinnamon milk, sublime. Leftovers are another treasure trove as fuel- conscious cooks could make large batches that would maximize the energy needed to run the stove, oven, or refrigerator. Leftover spaghetti is dressed up with honey and almonds for a comforting dish.     

M.F.K Fisher's Baked Apple, adapted from How to Cook a Wolf

I'm not a big fan of raisins but they are excellent in this dish.  Really stuff the apples with as many raisins as you can, and don't be stingy with the butter. The recipe is easily doubled, tripled, etc.
Serves 2

2 apples, cored
4 Tbs brown sugar
1/4 to 1/3 cup raisins
Butter
Cinnamon
Nutmeg

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Put raisins in a bowl and dust with cinnamon and a sprinkle of nutmeg. Place apples in a baking dish. Stuff center with spiced raisins and a couple of spoonfuls of butter. Drop spoonfuls of the brown sugar in the baking dish and pour in water until it reaches about 3/4 up the sides of the baking dish. Bake until the apples are meltingly soft, at least an hour.  Serve with cinnamon milk.

Cinnamon Milk, adapted from How to Cook a Wolf

1 pint milk

1 tsp cinnamon or mixed spices

1 Tbs butter

Heat milk in a double boiler. Add spices and butter. Pour into heated jug and serve like cream.

Spaghetti with Honey and Almonds, adapted from How to Cook a Wolf

Leftover spaghetti

Slivered almonds, toasted

Honey

To plain, leftover spaghetti add toasted almonds and a generous stream of honey.  Either heat together in a pot on the stove or broil in the oven until toasty.  

As a note on cooking pasta, Fisher recommends adding a little butter to the salted boiling water.  It helps the spaghetti strands remain autonomous and slippery and adds a pleasant flavor. Less fat is then needed when dressing the pasta after draining.  I used to do this with oil, but the butter is far superior. 

_________________________

With Fisher's characteristic flair, the final chapter offers not a parting token of thriftiness but rather the opposite. Sometimes in order to survive hunger, one has to remember what good food was like. And so "How to Practice True Economy" includes recipes of luxury, rife with ingredients that were unobtainable to most during WWII: Shrimp Pate, Eggs with Anchovies, Boeuf Moreno, Poulet à la Mode de Beaune, and Fruits aux Sept Liqueurs.

Close your eyes to the headlines and your ears to sirens and the threatenings of high explosives, and read instead the sweet nostalgic measures of these recipes, impossible yet fond. 

Quotation Menus, Part III: Four and Twenty Blackbirds

A person's eating habits can be a revealing reflection of character and lifestyle. Consider the rigidity of a man who orders the same meal at the same restaurant, on the same day of the week, every week for 10 years. For 10 years he does not engage in conversation while in the restaurant, except to place his order, and sits alone for the duration of the meal.  We understand him to be a man who does not like to deviate from what is planned and comfortable. Now imagine that this man suddenly comes to the restaurant on a different day of the week and orders a completely different meal from the menu, consisting of tomato soup, beefsteak and kidney pudding, and blackberry tart.  Given the man's idiosyncrasy, this would be very odd behavior. But he then resumes his regular habit of dining on a particular day and food.

If you were mystery writer Agatha Christie's great Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, observing your fellow diner's departure from routine, you would find it more than curious. Indeed, you would be rather alarmed.   Add to this the discovery that a couple of weeks later, after visiting the restaurant on the expected day but again dining on an uncharacteristic meal featuring more blackberries, the man is found dead in his home.  Although the official verdict is accidental death, Poirot knows something wicked must be afoot.  Poirot's dining companion and fellow observer suggests that perhaps the man, now identified as Henry Gascoigne, was preoccupied with troubling news and thus ordered an unusual meal without thinking.  But as Poirot stresses, "a man who has got something on his mind will order automatically the dish he has ordered most often before." 

And so begins "Four and Twenty Blackbirds," which Christie calls "the sorbet" in a collation of short mysteries published under the title The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (1960).  In the introduction she writes, "This book of Christmas Fare may be described as 'The Chef's Selection.' I am the Chef!"  Like the royal chefs of Medieval England, who transformed banquet foods into unrecognizable, theatrics at table, Christie presents us with a scenario in which the mundaneness of food can be a murderer's dramatic undoing.  As in the nursery rhyme, "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie" was a dish--composed of live blackbirds--that graced elite tables.  Served as a between-courses sotelty, animals such as rabbits, frogs and birds were tucked between cooked pastry crust just before the pie was brought to the table.  Unsuspecting guests were then treated to a surprising kerfuffle when the crust was cut and the poor animals escaped and ran around the dining hall (Bober, P. 1999. Art, Culture, and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Perhaps it was with such artful deception in mind that Christie titled this blackberry-infused story.

While a proper quotation menu from this delicious story would feature thick tomato soup, steak and kidney pudding and blackberry tart, or Gascoigne's second strange meal of mulligatawny soup, beefsteak pudding, blackberry and apple pie, and cheese, I offer you a delicate and easy to prepare blackberry clafouti.      

Recipe

Blackberry Clafouti

Serves 6

Batter:

3 eggs

1 cup whole milk

6 Tbs butter, melted

1 tsp vanilla extract

2/3 cup all-purpose or pastry flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 tsp salt

Filling:

1 Tbs butter

1 1/2 cups blackberries, cut in halves if large

1/2 cup sugar + 1 Tbs sugar

Confectioners' sugar, for serving

1. Preheat oven to 400°F and butter an 8" square tart dish or 6 individual ramekins.  Whisk together ingredients for the batter.  Lumps are fine and in this case enhance the clafouti, so let them remain.  

2. To prepare the filling, melt butter in a skillet over medium-high heat.  Add blackberries, sugar, and cook until juices begin to extrude and blackberries appear glazed, about 5 minutes.

3. Pour half the batter in the tart dish or ramekins.  Arrange the blackberries over the batter, reserving the juices.  Cover with the remaining batter.  Sprinkle the remaining 1 Tbs sugar over the batter and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until golden and set in the middle.  To serve, drizzle with reserved juice and dust with confectioners' sugar. 

Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened
The birds began to sing—
Wasn't that a dainty dish
To set before the king?

The king was in the counting-house
Counting out his money,
The queen was in the parlor
Eating bread and honey,

The maid was in the garden
Hanging out the clothes.
Along came a blackbird
And snipped off her nose.

I recently learned of this lovely book, in which photographer Dinah Fried recreates and photographs meals from literature, resulting in tantalizing quotation menus. http://www.fictitiousdishes.com

Read Quotation Menus, Parts I & II, then peruse the evocative tableaux in Fried's book and begin dreaming up some of your favorite fictional feasts.

Quotation Menus, Part II: A Suspicion of Mushrooms

Des champignons comestibles, suspects et vénéneux [Edible, Suspicious, and Poisonous Mushrooms], Wellcome Library, London.  Various fungi - 20 species, including the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria), death cap (Amanita phalloides) and Boletus and Agaricus species. Coloured lithograph by A. Cornillon, c. 1827, after Prieur. 

Unlike the cuisines of Continental countries such as France and Italy, English cookery shied away from mushrooms before the 20th century. In many cultures these potent products of the forest, which seem to arise spontaneously from moist earth and rotting wood, are believed to have wild, mystical properties capable of miraculous healing as well as effecting hallucinations and death.   A scene from Shakespeare's The Tempest, in which Prospero recounts his use of magic before finally renouncing it, casts mushrooms in an otherworldy light:

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; (The Tempest, Act V, Scene I)

Despite the variety in form and color found in the fungal kingdom, a deadly species can look exactly like and grow in close proximity to a harmless, tasty one.  As Madge Lorwin notes in Dining with Shakespeare, Elizabethan cookbooks and dietary guides rarely mention mushrooms, unless the author was familiar with Continental cuisine.  In Castel of Helthe (1539) Thomas Elyot cautions, "Beware of musherons,..and al other thinges, whiche wyll sone putrifie."  In The Description of England (1577), clergyman William Harrison refers to them as "dangerous and hurtful."  Five hundred years later, a nice little chapter on fungi in Patience Gray and Primrose Boyd's European cookbook, Plats du Jour, attributes the rarity of mushrooms in the English diet to fear of poisoning as well as to the abundance of winter vegetables in England, making foraging unnecessary.  In countries where winter produce is scarce, they suggest, "everything provided by nature is put to some gastronomic use."  While this may not be an accurate conclusion (there are parts of England that see far fewer winter vegetables than parts of Italy where mushrooms are foraged), Gray and Boyd also note that fresh mushrooms were much more common in 19th century English markets than in the 1950s.  Mushroom gathering was not unheard of, however.  Elizabeth David writes about gathering mushrooms in England in the early morning with her sisters; their nanny would then cook the mushrooms over the nursery room fire (French Country Cooking, 1951).

Mushrooms and Murder in The Documents in the Case

Wellcome Library, London, The fly agaric fungus (Amanita muscaria): two fruiting bodies. Watercolour, 1892. 

With their potential for undetectable poison and their suspicious reputation in England, it is not surprising that the mushroom as weapon would make its way into a masterpiece of British mystery fiction. The Documents in the Case was written in 1930 by Dorothy Sayers, already well known for her mysteries featuring the aristocratic sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey. In this novel, a man named Harrison is found dead in his rural vacation cabin, evidently poisoned by a mushroom stew made from mushrooms that he foraged and cooked himself.  It appears to be an open and shut case of personal negligence, with Harrison mistaking the deadly amanita muscaria for the benign amanita rubescens. The coroner wraps up the evidence with a warning of "the danger of experimenting in unusual articles of diet. It was notorious, he said, that other nations, such as the French, were accustomed to eat many natural products, such as frogs, snails, dandelions and various kinds of fungi, which in this country were considered unfit for human food." 

Left: Wellcome Library, London. The blusher fungus (Amanita rubescens): two fruiting bodies. Watercolour, 1897. Right: Amanita muscaria by Anita Walsmit Sachs, 2004, The Society of Botanical Artists.

Harrison's son argues that his father was an expert in mycology, albeit an amateur, who had studied and wrote about mushrooms for years. Harrison produced detailed watercolors of his subjects and believed that England could be healthily fed by fungi and other wild edibles.  As the case documents reveal, it wasn't the un-English practice of mushroom hunting that was to blame; the human heart can indeed be much more sinister.

Mushrooms on Toast and The Lord Peter Wimsey Cookbook

One might recreate the mushroom stew in question from The Documents or try a quotation menu featuring mushrooms that has already been designed for another Sayers novel.  The Lord Peter Wimsey Cookbook (1981) by Elizabeth Bond Ryan and William Eakins, features menus and recipes gleaned from references to the diet and dining practices of Lord Peter in the Wimsey books.  For as the cookbook's authors argue, Sayers was an epicure who revealed her taste in fine food and wine through the Lord Peter character.  Wimsey devotees will recall Miss Climpson's 21-hour tea break in pursuit of a key witness in Strong Poison, depicted in Chapter 4, "An Orgy of Teas;" Lord Peter's unsatisfactory meal at The Soviet Club in Clouds of Witness (1926), appealingly renimagined here with Soviet Club Fish Soup, Red Army Borscht, and People's Black Bread; and my favorite, the meal of Poached Turbot and a Sweet Omelet cooked at table that plays a critical role in Strong Poison (1930).  Published in the same year as The Documents, Strong Poison takes equal delight in poring over a deadly supper.

Sayers makes a brief reference to mushroom foraging in Busman's Honeymoon (1937), in which Lord Peter and his wife Harriet solve a murder while on honeymoon in the countryside. When Lord Peter's efficient and faithful butler, Bunter, has to rustle up a dinner during the trip with few ingredients to choose from, he settles on mushrooms on toast for the final course.  When Lord Peter asks where he obtained the mushrooms Bunter replies,

"From the field behind the cottage, my lord."

"From the--? Good God. I hope they are mushrooms-- we don't want a poison-mystery as well."

"No poison, my lord, no. I consumed a quantity myself to make sure."

"Did you? Devoted Valet Risks Life for Master. Very well, Bunter."

With Sayers' signature wit, The Documents' death-by-mushrooms misadventure becomes an insignificant side note in Busman's Honeymoon.  If Harrison had had a Bunter, she seems to quip, he may never have died.

Recipe

Mushrooms on Toast

Serves six

1 pound fresh mushrooms, washed, well dried
4 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons oil
Salt and pepper
6 slices hot buttered toast

Trim the bases of the mushroom stems.  Leave the mushrooms whole if small and slice or quarter them if large.  Heat one-half the butter and oil in a 10-inch skillet until the butter foam begins to subside.  Then add one-half of the mushrooms.  Toss and shake the pan uncovered over high heat for 4 to 5 minutes.  The mushrooms are done when they have browned lightly.  Remove from the heat and season to taste with salt and pepper.  Turn the mushrooms into a warm dish and repeat the process with the remaining mushrooms, butter, and oil.  Serve the mushrooms on trimmed squares of buttered toast.  The mushrooms may be cooked ahead of time and reheated briefly before serving.

Read Quotation Menus, Parts I & III, then dream up some of your favorite fictional feasts.

Quotation Menus: Imagination of a Feast, Part I

When food appears in literature it can be as striking and full-bodied as the most memorable characters or as mundane as the ground beneath them. In either case, it can be interesting to explore the edible element further, as have many scholars in genres ranging from myth to mystery. Such readings of food typically analyze the relationship between the characters, the food they eat (or don't eat) and the way they eat it, looking for symbolic clues and metaphors that relate to the story's themes.

There is another approach altogether found in writing that is dedicated to recreating food in literature. From the fanciful musings in Mark Crick's Household Tips of the Great Writers to blogger Anna the Red's meticulously rendered Ghibli feast (reconstructed after the Miyazaki anime films) such works are part cookbook, part tribute and often feature significant historical research and analysis. For these writers the challenge is to fabricate the fictional meal, often with just a few words to go by.

Madge Lorwin's Dining with Shakespeare (1976) is a delightful, sumptuous exploration of what she terms quotation menus-- period dishes inspired by quotations from Shakespeare's plays.  Building on the success and enthusiasm of a collation she prepared after a performance of Twelfth Night, Lorwin began an annual feast, with each menu planned in accordance with a particular Shakespearean play.  As Lorwin argues, "Shakespeare makes frequent and effective use of cooks and cooking, eating and drinking.  In fact, there is not a play in which he has not woven some scene around food or drink, or based some simile or metaphor upon them.  He uses these to create an atmosphere, set a mood, bring out the lineaments of character.  The homely, everyday activities relating to food Shakespeare turns into scenes of poignance, tragedy, or comedy."

Lorwin provides insightful details about dining and entertainment (which often occurred simultaneously) in Elizabethan England, including the types of flatware and serving pieces used, and the role of servants.  Referencing period commentary, she also describes the general attitude towards food and diet in Shakespeare's England, both from the point of view of the English and Continental travelers.   But her contribution to this genre goes beyond discussing the role of food in Shakespeare's work. Often with the help of her husband, a beloved professor of European history at the University of Oregon, Lorwin sourced recipes from contemporary authors such as Sir Hugh Platt (1552-1608) for the dishes that would have appeared in Shakespeare's world.  She provides the originals as well as her modern adaptations.

Folger Shakespeare Library Digital Image Collection.  Woodcut illustration from A pleasant history of the life and death of Will Summers. 1637. http://www.folger.edu.

Lorwin obviously delighted in planning her quotation menus, which range from A Bill of Fare to Celebrate Shakespeare's Birthday ("At thy birth, dear boy,/ Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great.") to A Repast for Viola ("I will bespeak our diet,/ Whiles you beguile the time and feed your knowledge.")  My favorite is A Midsummer Night's Banquet.  With marzipan and muscadines, or kissing comfits (a perfumed sugar plum), shell bread, suckets of lemon peels, candied violets, quince paste, fresh strawberries and cream, and white gingerbread, it lives up to the enchanting mood of the play and the season.  As Titania instructs her fairies in service of Bottom, "Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,/ With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries."

Perhaps by making and eating the food of our favorite books we feel we may enter their world, experiencing it physically rather than just mentally. Like Alice's initiation to Wonderland, a piece of a special cake may be all that is necessary to to transport ourselves to another time and place.  I prepared a dish from the birthday menu-- A Sallet of Boyled Leeks--from A New Booke of Cookerie by John Murrell (1615).  Soft, parboiled leeks are dressed with butter and vinegar,-- a favorite medieval salad dressing--garnished with hardboiled eggs, and served atop crusty bread.

A Sallet of Boyled Leeks, from A New Booke of Cookerie by John Murrell (1615), in Dining with Shakespeare by Madge Lorwin (1976).

Recipe

A Sallet of Boyled Leeks

from the working version in Dining with Shakespeare

Ingredients
8 leeks, about 1 inch in diameter at the white end
1 quart water
4 Tbs butter
4 Tbs vinegar
1 Tbs currants, parboiled
1/2 tsp brown sugar
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp ginger
2 hard boiled eggs
2 slices buttered toast, quartered

Cut off the roots and green parts of the leeks and discard them.  Wash the white sections in several cool waters until they are free of sand.  Then drop them in boiling water for five minutes.  Drain and cool until the leeks are comfortable to handle, then mince or slice them very thin.
Melt the butter in a small saucepan and add the vinegar, minced leeks, currants, brown sugar, cinnamon, and ginger.  Cook over very low heat until the leeks are tender, stirring them occasionally. Peel and quarter the eggs.
Arrange the toast quarters in a heated serving dish.  Spoon the leeks over them and garnish with the quartered eggs.

Read Quotation Menus, Parts II & III, then dream up some of your favorite fictional feasts.

Le Bon Mot

Because recipes are written in the imperative, they can often sound unconsciously droll, particularly as food is often described using words that have a different, though similar, non-food meaning. And so as we peruse recipes, we sometimes see sentences like "Choose round lettuces with good hearts" (Hilda Leyel, Picnics for Motorists, 1936) and my favorite line from a recipe for the confection, Sonhos, or Dreams, in Brazilian Cookery (Margarette de Andrade, 1965), "Yields approximately 30 small-size Dreams."

Then there is the pithy assertiveness of promotional recipe booklets. Like the declarative,

and the gentle assurance and authority that persuades,

Because these recipe booklets were often produced to educate the consumer on a new or recent food innovation, they often describe food with words that seem odd.  "The Useful Marshmallow" was printed circa 1925 with this purpose in mind, although marshmallows had been available since the late 19th century.  "Useful" is not one of the first adjectives that comes to mind in connection with marshmallows.  But the Royal Marshmallow brand was of course trying to convey the idea that marshmallows could be used in a variety of food preparations.

The first page then proclaims, "Their Texture and Flavor Are Fascinating," and although marshmallows do have a unique consistency, I wouldn't say I'm fascinated by it.  Of all the adjectives used to describe the taste of food, "fascinating" is probably one of the least common.  Then again, if we consider the meaning as derivative from the Latin fascinare, to enchant, or fascinum, as in a spell or witchcraft, we might agree that food often does have the power—especially when it is novel or tied to memory—to bewitch.

The Elderflower and Its Berries

"The scent of an elder-blow...is event enough for him." So said Ralph Waldo Emerson of a poet's heightened sensibilities.  Indeed the lacy blooms of the common elder bush, Sambucus nigra, cast a fragrance with the pungent verdure of sweet, fresh cream -- a scent that only June flowers lay claim to.  From late May to June, the flowers are used in culinary preparations such as elderflower cordial and salads, and in July, the sweet-tart berries may be used in wines and baked goods such as tarts.

Elderflower heads make lovely fritters, developing cauliflower-like incrustations.  They are surprisingly sturdy, holding up well to the heavy batter, and are easily dipped into and removed from the batter and oil by the stem.

Recipe

Shallow Fried Elderflower Fritters

Ingredients

8 elderflower heads
1/2 cup flour
2 eggs, separated
1/2 to 1 cup milk
Grapeseed oil

1. Gently shake off any insects dwelling on the flowers.  Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.  In a separate bowl, beat egg yolks, milk, and flour until well-blended.  Gently fold the egg whites into the flour mixture.

2. Wash elderflower heads under cold water and set aside (do not dry). In a small saucepan (about 6 to 7") add about a half inch of oil.  Heat until small bubbles appear and then reduce heat slightly.  Holding the stalk, take 1 flower head and plunge into batter.  Swish around until completely coated, then drop into oil and cook until golden brown.  Gently remove from the oil and place on a plate lined with paper towels.  Repeat with remaining flower heads.  Alternately, the flowers can be deep fried in a larger saucepan using about 4" of oil.

Recipe: White Mulberry Peach Lattice Tart

In North America, the white mulberry, morus alba, (native to China) is one of very few trees that produces berries that are desirable for human consumption.   While white mulberry leaves are valued as a feed for animals and silkworms, the fruit is often passed over for the sweeter red or black mulberry varieties.  It is a prolific bearer of fruit and if the berries lack the rounded flavor of darker varieties, they offer up subtler floral notes that respond well in culinary uses.

Since their color will not bleed over other fruit, they are an excellent choice for a multi fruit tart.  I combined them with peach and because I needed a few more berries for the filling, added a few chopped strawberries.  Any fruit combination will work well with these modest summer gems.  Mulberry trees can grow up to 30 feet high and so the berries are often harvested when they fall to the ground.  When ripe, the berries appear glossy and juicy, and sometimes acquire a damask blush. Give them a good soak to remove any dirt before cooking.

Recipe

White Mulberry Peach Lattice Tart

Ingredients, for a 7" tart

1 1/2 - 2 cups white mulberries
1 large peach, peeled and chopped
1/8 cup sugar
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 egg, beaten with a little milk
1/2 Tbs butter
Chilled piecrust dough


1.  Preheat oven to 350°F. To clean mulberries, place in a large bowl and fill with water so that dirt falls to the bottom of the bowl.  Remove berries with a slotted spoon, discard dirty water and repeat 2 times or until water is clear.   Place berries on a towel to dry.

2. Combine whole berries with chopped peach.  Sprinkle with sugar and lemon juice and stir to coat evenly.  Set aside while you line the tart pan with the crust.  Pour in fruit, dot with butter and cover with strips of piecrust in a lattice weave.  Brush lattice crust with beaten egg mixture.  Bake for 45 minutes to an hour or until crust is golden.

A Thousand Damask Roses

In pre-industrial society, common herbs and flowers were frequently used for their medicinal and culinary properties.  The rose, with its intoxicating fragrance and edible petals, leaves, and fruit, was used in food and scent preparations as well as in decorative display.  In previous posts I've discussed rosewater and cooking with roses.  Rose Recipes, a 1939 English publication by Eleanour Sinclair Rohde collects early English and French instructions for using roses in a multitude of ways.  The recipes for rosewater, dating to the 16th and 17th centuries, are quite complex and detailed, and are distinguished by specific uses such as scenting laundry, perfume, and cooking.  

For instance, "To Make a Sweet Water of the Best Kind," a recipe included from Sir Hugh Plat's Delightes for Ladies (1594) calls for a thousand damask roses to be mixed with lavender, mace, cloves, and running water (i.e. fresh, not still water) in an earthen pot and kneaded every day for four days.  As one of Queen Elizabeth's courtier's, Plat would likely have sourced this impressive amount of fresh roses from a large, local estate.  As most of the other ingredients in this and other comparable recipes are given by weight, this recipe stands out for the sheer volume required.  Rohde's own recipe is much simpler, requiring that the petals (preferably red so as to achieve a pink hue and deep fragrance) be gently heated in soft water and then strained.

A recipe for "odoriferous candles" from The Charitable Physician by Philbert Guibert Phisytian Regent in Paris (1639) ambitiously claims to act "against venome and the plague."  One wonders about the success rate of this candle, made with red roses, cloves, storax (sweetgum resin), lebdanum (a resin), benjamin, frankinscence, staechados (French lavender), citron, yellow sanders (probably satinwood), juniper, musk, and ambergreese (amber gris, a wax-like substance produced by whales).

Some of the very sage advice on cooking with roses presented in this volume includes collecting roses a few hours after dawn when the dew has dried, and removing the yellow base of petals, which imparts a bitter flavor.  Sugar is copiously used in recipes to balance the rose's natural astringency. To achieve the most concentrated rose flavor, Rohde recommends drying the petals first.  This can be done over mesh screens or in sand, as was the preference in the Elizabethan era.

Like Plat's thousand-blooms rosewater recipe, the culinary recipes in this volume reflect an elite pantry.   A lovely recipe for Rose Drops uses liberal amounts of both sugar and lemon juice, both dear commodities in the 18th centuries.  If you make these candies, however, you'll see that they were well worth the expense.  

Rose Drops from a recipe from The Complete Housewife (1736).

Recipe

This recipe requires dried rose petals, ground to a powder.  A coffee grinder works well.  To a 1/2 oz. of rose powder, use 1/2 lb. granulated or superfine sugar, and the juice of 2 lemons.  This yield requires about 3 cups fresh rose petals.  Choose a dark crimson variety.  Dry completely in a single layer over a mesh screen (about 2 days).

To Make Rose-Drops 

From The Complete Housewife (1736), published in Rose Recipes (1936)

The roses and sugar must be beat separately into a very fine powder, and both sifted; To a pound of sugar an ounce of red roses, they must be mixed together, and then wet with as much juice of Lemon as will make it into a stiff paste; set it on a slow fire in a silver porringer, and stir it well; and when it is scalding hot quite through take it off and drop in small portions on a paper; set them near the fire, the next day they will come off.

See also:

Cooking with Roses

Rosewater: Essence of the Garden

Rose Sandwiches

Banana Economics, or How to Peel a Banana

As commercial printing became more affordable and widespread in the late 19th century, food companies in the United States increasingly published promotional material designed to educate the consumer about new foods, production and preparation methods, and brands.  With commodities such as milk and fruit, these booklets were often published by a central source that represented a number of smaller companies, thereby linking up regional distribution centers and presenting a uniform image of the product that could be disseminated across the country.  Such booklets assumed limited knowledge on the part of the consumer and provided basic information such as how to determine a fruit's ripeness, as well as scientific attestations to health benefits.

Booklets were typically authored by women affiliated with the company's home economics department.  In the vein of ladies' domestic manuals of the 19th century, these booklets transmitted ideas about the science of nutrition (presented as a male domain) to an assumed female consumer charged with preparing family meals.  A Study of the Banana: Its Everyday Use and Food Value (1942, 5th ed.) is one such example, produced by the Home Economics Department of the Fruit Dispatch Company, Distributors of United Fruit Company.  Although no single author's name is given, a first edition copy of the same title is credited to Ina S. Lindman, who was director of United Fruit Company's home economics department until the 1950s.

It can be interesting to contrast the information presented in such booklets with current renderings of the same food item.  For instance, if one compares the nutritional facts stated in the booklet with the current data listed on the USDA's and the Chiquita Banana website, it appears that today's vitamin and mineral levels are significantly lower.  Perhaps the data are computed differently today, but if the numbers published in 1942 are correct, then for every 100g of raw banana, there has been a decrease in iron (about half), magnesium (4 mg), phosphorous (4 mg), and potassium (15 mg).  Oddly the booklet lists 42.0 mg of sodium, which is grossly out of proportion with today's 1.0 mg, suggesting a misprint.  I wonder if the other editions show the same figure.

In branding a Latin American food crop under one North American corporate entity, United Fruit Company exerted an imperialist influence with political, environmental, and social repercussions.  Through material such as booklets, food corporations tacitly reinforced a distinction between those who produce and those who consume.  Here, it is clear that the booklet speaks to white American consumers of all ages, as illustrated in the photographs below.
  

This 1942 edition is illustrated with a jolly though rather generic anthropomorphic banana.  Two years later the United Fruit Company adopted the feminized Chiquita banana logo, based on the entertainer, Carmen Miranda, further commodifying indigenous culture and entrenching notions of exoticism.

Further Reading:

Enloe, Cynthia. 2000. Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. University of California Press.

Goldstein, Carolyn. 2012. Creating Consumers: Home Economists in Twentieth-Century America. University of North Carolina Press.

Kirchner Collection Blog