Johnny Appleseed.

Tomorrow (September 26) is the birth anniversary of ‘Johnny Appleseed’ (1774-1845) – the famous American nurseryman and enthusiastic apple-tree planter. The real name of this deeply religious, eccentric orchardist was John Chapman, and he truly became a legend in his own lifetime. He was by all accounts generous-spirited and big-hearted. He lived rough - often going about without shoes, even in the snow – as he travelled across large tracts of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois planting apple seeds in small patches of land, and returning later to check on his developing orchards.

From Hannah Glasse’s classic, The Art of Cookery, made plain and easy, published in 1774, the year of Johnny Appleseed’s birth, please enjoy the following wonderful apple recipe in his honour:


To make a Pupton of Apples.
Pare some apples, take out the cores, and put them into a skillet: to a quart-mugful heaped, put in a quarter of a pound of sugar, and two spoonfuls of water. Do them over a slow fire, keeping them stirring; add a little cinnamon; when it is quite thick, and like a marmalade, let it stand till cool. Beat up the yolks of four or five eggs, and stir in a handful of bread and a quarter of a pound of fresh butter; then form it into what shape you please, and bake it in a slow oven, and then turn it upside down on a plate, for a second course.

Rest assured, dear readers, we have not finished with the subject of puptons – a little more will follow next week.


Quotation for the Day.

There's plenty of boys that will come hankering and gruvvelling around when you've got an apple, and beg the core off you; but when they're got one, and you beg for the core, and remind them how you give them a core one time, they take a mouth at you, and say thank you 'most to death, but there ain't a-going to be no core.
Mark Twain, in Tom Sawyer Abroad.

Eating 'à la française'.

It is a bit difficult to avoid a French flavour to today’s post, it being Bastille Day (or La Fête Nationale, or simply Le Quatorze Juillet, if you prefer.) I am quite intrigued by what various authorities and cookbook writers consider makes a dish French-style (à la française). When I started looking, it quickly became apparent that the question is not answerable in a short blog post, it requires the work of at least a dozen PhD students working round the clock for a number of years. The range of ingredients and combinations of ingredients is so great that I can only say there is no possibility of consensus. It appears that a dish is à la française if the cook names it so.

My 1961 English edition of the Larousse Gastronomique seemed a good place to start. On garnitures à la française, it gives this description:

Small nests made from Duchesse potatoes, dipped in egg and breadcrumbs, fried and hollowed out, filled with diced mixed vegetables; bunches of asparagus tips; braised lettuces; flowerets of cauliflower, coated with Hollandaise sauce … [used] for large cuts of meat.

As for sauce à la française , the Larousse quotes Careme (1784-1833), in his Art de la Cuisine Française aud XIXe siècle, noting that this sauce is for fish.

Put into a saucepan some Béchamel sauce based on fish stock. When it is almost boiling, add a little garlic, a little grated nutmeg and mushroom essence. When it has boiled for a moment, and just before serving, add crayfish butter to give it a pinkish colour.

Note: Shelled crayfish tails and small peeled mushrooms may be added to this sauce. I served this sauce for the first time in the house of Prince Paul de Wurtemburg.

Richard Dolby’s The Cook’s Dictionary and Housekeeper’s Directory (1832) includes the following:

Croquignoles à la française:

Break up half a pound of bitter macaroons, so small as to be able to sift them; and having laid half a pound of sifted flour on your slab, and made a hole in the middle, put in the macaroons, with six ounces of powdered sugar, three yolks of eggs, three ounces of fresh butter, and a grain of salt; make these ingredients into a paste, and form the croquignoles of the shape and size of olives; dores them lightly, and bake them in a gentle oven. These must be of a lighter colour than other croquignoles.
Instead of macaroons you may use any other ingredients you please.

In Dainty Dishes from Foreign Lands (1909), the author starts her chapter on Some Delicious French Dishes with the caveat

I do not think that the French have so many distinctive dishes as other nations, but have, rather, a certain style of cooking all things. The recipes which I give, herewith, convey something of the French spirit.

She goes on to single out truffles and mushrooms as being “considered, quite rightly , to distinguish French cookery, but too often they are bedevilled out of all resemblance to their original succulent selves by people who imagine they must be cooked elaborately.” She then provides a few recipes which are simple, and ‘genuinely French.’

Mushrooms with Chicken Livers.

Mushrooms with chicken livers is a dish literally fit for a King; to make it take a dozen (or as many as you want) of chicken livers, and fry them with one or two strips of very thin, very sweet bacon; when the livers are just turning brown, add at least a dozen mushrooms, peeled, and wiped very dry. Simmer five minutes, or until the mushrooms are soft, and serve on hot toast. Into the grease left in the pan drop a tablespoon of flour, and let it brown, stirring constantly. Make this into a gravy by pouring into the pan, very quickly, a cup of cold milk; let it boil up once and pour over the toast, livers, bacon and mushrooms.

And finally, from 365 Foreign Dishes: a foreign dish for every day in the year (1908), a recipe for apple dumplings. I am at a loss to know what the author considered quintessentially French about this dish.

French Baked Apple Dumplings.

Peel and core apples; sprinkle well with sugar. Then mix some cold boiled rice with 1 egg, a pinch of salt, sugar and cinnamon, flour enough to make a dough. Cover the apples with this dough; put in a well-buttered baking dish with 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, and bake to a delicate brown. Serve with whipped cream.

Quotation for the Day.

“Even the coeur flottant merveilleux aux fraises, presented with a great flourish, made little impression, for it was no more than what may happen to the simple, honest dish of strawberries and cream once it falls into the hands of a Frenchman.”
Dr. Watson in 'Sherlock Holmes and the Hapsburg Tiara' by Alan Vanneman (2004)

Apple Bread.

In one of those beautiful serendipitous research finds, just as I finished my search for a non-cakey, genuinely bread-y banana bread for yesterday’s post, I came across the following article in a 1938 edition of Popular Mechanics magazine (which also happens to fit beautifully also into my recent ‘recipes from non-traditional sources’ theme too!):

"Bread baked from apple flour is a tasty innovation in Seattle. Each one and one-half pound loaf contains the equivalent of a large apple. The milling of apples into flour was made possible by a vacuum dehydration process which reduces the moisture content to about one percent; the flour is then added to other dry ingredients used in the bread mix, including a proportion of wheat flour. Due to the presence of apple pectin, apple bread does not dry out like ordinary wheat breads and so can be used to the last slice. A ton of apple flour calls for fifteen tons of apples."

Someone in Seattle please tell me that this bread is still being made there, so I can book my flight immediately. What a gorgeous idea, isn’t it?

Most of us don’t have access to apple flour, and the production sounds beyond the scope of even the most enthusiastic home baker, so we must be content with apple bread made from pulp. At least the recipe for today is yeast-leavened, and has no added sugar, so would not be cake-y. I am definitely going to try this very soon.

Apple Bread.
Weigh seven pounds of fresh juicy apples, peel, core, and boil them to a pulp, being careful to use an enamelled saucepan, or a stone jar placed inside an ordinary saucepan of boiling water, otherwise the fruit becomes discoloured; mix the pulp with fourteen pounds of the best flour, put in the same quantity of yeast you would use in common bread, and as much water as will make it into a fine smooth dough; put it into a pan, and stand it in a warm place to rise; let it remain for twelve hours at least; form it into rather long-shaped loaves, and bake it in a lively oven. This bread is very much eaten in the south of Europe.
How to Cook Apples: shown in a hundred different ways of dressing that fruit … Georgiana Hill, , (London, 1865)

Quotation for the Day

Why do we need so many kinds of apples? Because there are so many folks. A person has a right to gratify his legitimate taste. If he wants twenty or forty kinds of apples for his personal use…he should be accorded the privilege. There is merit in variety itself. It provides more contact with life, and leads away from uniformity and monotony.
Liberty Hyde Bailey

Only Apples.

In yesterday’s post I mused on the history of ‘single ingredient’ cookbooks. They seem to have started to pop up in the second half of the nineteenth century, amidst the general great burgeoning of the genre. Today, I want to see if a cookbook published in 1865 (contemporary then with Mrs. Beeton’s famous tome) on the subject of the apple.

The apple, in one or other of its enormous number of varieties, is surely the most widely known fruit in the world – not to mention one of the most versatile? Has the sheer history and ubiquity of it bred disinterest, or even downright boredom with the apple, do you think? Will today’s source - How to Cook Apples: shown in a hundred different ways of dressing that fruit … by Georgiana Hill, (London, 1865) - yield any good ‘old’ ideas for us?

Amongst the expected variations on the themes of pies, puddings, dumplings, fritters, and fools, there are these rather more interesting ideas.

Apple Sausages.
Chop up some fat pork as for ordinary sausages, and, instead of bread crumbs, to each pound of meat put half a pound of sour apples finely minced; season with the finest whitepepper, and add a considerable quantity of Spanish pimiento to give it a richness of appearance. Fry to a fine brown, and serve with olives.

Irish Stew.
Take four large apples, two potatoes, and two onions, chop them all up together, add some herbs freshly shred, and any kind of meat, well seasoned with pepper and salt; put into a saucepan a layer of vegetables and a layer of meat alternately, until three parts full; then pour in a pint of gravy, cover it with a thick suet crust, put on the lid of the saucepan, and let it simmer for two hours.

Apple Bread.
Weigh seven pounds of fresh juicy apples, peel, core, and boil them to a pulp, being careful to use an enamelled saucepan, or a stone jar placed inside an ordinary saucepan of boiling water, otherwise the fruit becomes discoloured; mix the pulp with fourteen pounds of the best flour, put in the same quantity of yeast you would use in common bread, and as much water as will make it into a fine smooth dough; put it into a pan, and stand it in a warm place to rise; let it remain for twelve hours at least; form it into rather long-shaped loaves, and bake it in a lively oven. This bread is very much eaten in the south of Europe.

Quotation for the Day.

Surely the apple is the noblest of fruits.
Henry David Thoreau, Wild Apples.

Sydney Apples and Wilbah Whip.

My quest this week to find recipes named for Australian cities and towns has already proven that they are almost all sweet dishes – puddings and cakes especially. It seems that when folk move or migrate to far away places, and are forced to adapt grandma’s recipes to the available ingredients, it is the cakes and desserts that they re-name, not her stews or soups. Why is this? Is it baking that is the nostalgic branch of the cooking art?

Recipes for baked apples have been around for as long as there have been cooks, ovens, and apples – so what makes the following recipe Sydney-specific?

Sydney Stuffed Apples.
6 cooking appless
½ cupful dessicated coconut
6 halved walnuts
1 egg white
6 dessertspoonfuls castor sugar
6 stoned dates
6 dried figs
1 teaspoonful ground cinnamon.
Choose apples of even shape and size. Shred dates, figs, and walnuts. Mix with sugar and cinnamon. Core and peel apples. Beat egg white slightly. Brush over each apple. Roll in cocoanut. Place in a well-buttered fireproof dish, or in individual ones. Stuff each apple with mixture. Dab with a pat of butter. Bake until tender. Serve with thin cream.
From: New Standard Cookery Illustrated, by Elizabeth Craig, published in 1933.

Elizabeth Craig (1883-1980) was a famous and very prolific British cookbook writer. She collected recipes wherever she travelled, and although I have no evidence that she came to this country, there are a number of recipes apparently named for Australian places in her books.

There may be another intriguing example in the New Standard Cookery Illustrated. In the middle of West Australia, in the goldfields area, is a tiny pinpoint on the map called Wilbah. West Australia is a big place – it takes up a third of the continent (that is, it has an area of about 2.5 million square kilometres or about 965,210 square miles), but its mere couple of million citizens avoid the vast desert and cling to the south-western corner around the city of Perth. I don’t even know if Wilbah actually exists anymore, or if it is the location of an old homestead, but whatever is there, is a long way from the town of Kalgoorlie, which itself is 600km (over 370 miles) east of Perth. This seems like an elegant, cool dessert for a hot, dry desert location.

Wilbah Apple and Nut Whip.
1 cupful chilled stewed apples.
1 teaspoonful chopped nuts
1 dessertspoonful castor sugar
1 egg white
marshmallows and cream.
Beat apples and fold in stiffly frothed egg-white, sweetened with the sugar. Pile in sundae glasses. Decorate each with chopped nuts, marshmallow and whipped cream, flavoured with vanilla essence to taste.

Quotation for the Day …

A few years ago we colonised this place with some of our finest felons, thieves, muggers, alcoholics and prostitutes, a strain of depravity which I believe has contributed greatly to this country's amazing vigour and enterprise.
Ian Wooldridge (English sports journalist).

Blancmange and Black Caps.

Our old friend Parson James Woodforde had a fine dinner and supper with friends on this day in 1783. As was his habit, he recorded the meals in his journal:

“…..went by appointment to Mr. Priests and there dined, supped and spent the Evening…. We had for Dinner some fresh Salmon and Oyster Sauce, a boiled Turkey and Oyster Sauce, a fore Qr. of London Lamb, mince Pyes, &c … We did not sup till near 10 at night – and then we had a very handsome supper – A Couple of boiled Fowls and Oyster Sauce, a rosted Hare wch. I sent them – one Duck rosted, a hot Tongue, Tarts, Italian Flummery – Blamanche [blancmange], black Caps and Sweetmeats. I did not get to bed till after 12 tonight.”

That was certainly a substantial supper for 10 o’clock at night! The Black Caps were a favourite eighteenth century dish of baked apples – the caramelisation of the sugar on top giving it its name. A dish worthy of reviving, I believe – especially with Orange-Flower water included. A nice homely dish after some of the more outlandish that we have had this week.


To make Black Caps.
Take a dozen large Pippins, or Golden-runnets, cut them in halves, and lay them single, with the flat sides downward in a pretty large Mazareen, as close by each other as they can lie; then squeeze a Lemon into two spoonfuls of Orange Flower-water, and pour over them; shred some Lemon-peel very fine, and shake between them; then grate over them some double refin’d Sugar; put them into a quick Oven, and they will be done in half an Hour.
Cook’s and Confectioner’s Dictionary, John Nott (1724)

The story of blancmange is a long and fascinating one, and I have covered it piecemeal in previous posts. Two fourteenth century versions are HERE and HERE, and there is a wonderfully artistic nineteenth century Coffee Blancmange from the Baron Brisse HERE. Methinks I must find some inbetween versions to properly demonstrate its evolution from a medieval sweetened and spiced chicken/rice/almond milk “porridge” to a bland, wobbly gelatinised and coloured modern dessert.


Quotation for the Day …

Happy and successful cooking doesn't rely only on know-how; it comes from the heart, makes great demands on the palate and needs enthusiasm and a deep love of food to bring it to life.
Georges Blanc, Ma Cuisine des Saisons

The Lawless Kitchen.

It was the name of a book chapter, not the name of a dish, or even the name of a whole book, that led me to today’s topic. Once upon a time I came across a reference to ‘Law and Order in the Kitchen’, which intrigued me enormously, for a lawless kitchen is indeed a terrifying idea. The book turned out to be Housekeeping, Cookery, and Sewing for Little Girls, by Olive Hyde Foster, and published in New York 1925. Not the sort of title that would get many sales today, for all sorts of reasons – although the chapter titles are quite interesting. I particularly like ‘The Chemistry of Cleaning’, and ‘Why and How to Fight Dust and Flies’ as well as the one that drew me to the book. One can see how one would rush out and buy it for one’s little girl, cant one? I shouldn’t scoff, should I? Masses of historical precedent indicates that, without a shadow of doubt, our ideas will be scoffed at just as heartily in 80-odd years time. It does make you grateful for how much work our feminist grandmas have achieved, however, doesn’t it?

Anyhow, I digress. On further study, it turns out that the lawlessness that is a constant risk in one’s kitchen is not on behalf of family members who are fed-up of being guinea-pigs for one’s culinary experiments or jealous girl-friends who want to steal one’s secret bestest recipes. It is entirely on behalf of the undisciplined splashes of dishwashing water, the sneaky stove ashes and the positively criminal grease-spots. The only solution is – after the application of the scientific principles of Cleaning Chemistry (and a lot of elbow grease) - to police one’s kitchen with great vigilance.

“After it [the floor] has been freshly scrubbed, see that no grease is allowed to spatter from the stove, or dishwater be spilled around the sink. After a time it will come so natural to be careful about these little details that you will scarcely think of them.”

The author sticks strictly to the chapter heading in Principles of cookery. She notes that ‘Every girl wants to become a good cook … ’ and believes that ‘A good cookbook is necessary, (though often too much importance is given to recipes,) and every time a new dish is tried and found satisfactory, the directions should be written down and kept for future reference.’ She does not therefore actually give any recipes.

So, today’s choice comes from another book specifically for children (clearly also for girls) - When Mother Lets us Cook, from 1908. It is ‘A book of simple receipts for little folk with important cooking rules in rhyme’, and is actually quite good fun. I was sorely tempted by Curlylocks Pudding, but it turned out to be a not-very exciting strawberry-cornflour pudding. I chose this one instead, which I am sure will be be familiar to all of you in the USA. In Olde England and here Down Under it would probably have the molasses replaced with Golden Syrup, which would make it Blond Betty, I guess.

Brown Betty
6 cooking apples Apple corer
½ cup molasses Measuring cup
½ cup cold water Baking dish
4 tablespoonfuls brown sugar
Butter
Breadcrumbs

Take 6 large, tart apples, core them and peel them and cut them into small slices.
Take a baking dish, butter the inside and cover the bottom with one layer of apple slices. Sprinkle a layer of breadcrumbs over the apple, then lay more apple over the crumbs, and so on until you have used all the apple.
There must be a layer of crumbs on top
Measure ½ cupful of black molasses and ½ cupful of cold water.
Add to this 4 tablespoonfusl of brown sugar and stir till the sugar is dissolved.
Pour the mixture over the apple and crumbs and drop four little bits of butter on top of all.
Put the dish in a moderate oven for about ¾ of an hour, or until it is nicely browned on top, and the apples are soft. Try them with a fork.
Serve hot with cream or hard sauce.

Quotation for the Day …

Apple-pie is used through the whole year, and when fresh apples are no longer to be had, dried ones are used. It is the evening meal of children. house-pie, in country places, is made of apples neither peeled nor freed from their cores, and its crust is not broken if a wagon wheel goes over it."
Swedish parson, Rev. Israel Acrelius writing home from America (1758)

Vintage Apples.

May 29 ...

There is no doubt that Henry D. Thoreau was a marvellous observer of life in the woods. As for his observations on humankind, I am not qualified to answer, but his journal entry on this day in 1857 suggests that he was capable of being quite judgemental. And I don’t just mean about farmers’ boys.

“I think I have noticed that coarse-natured farmers' boys, etc., have not a sufficiently fine and delicate taste to appreciate a high-flavored apple. It is commonly too acid for them, and they prefer some tame, sweet thing, fit only for baking, as a pumpkin sweeting.”

The consummate snobbery aside, this statement begs a number of other questions.

Mr. Thoreau seems to imply:

- that a ‘high-flavored apple’ must be acidic, not sweet (Is a highly-flavoured very sweet apple impossible? surely the perfect apple is a perfect balance of both?)

- that a taste for the acidic rather than the sweet represents a more highly developed palate,

- and perhaps that coarse-natured boys would probably not like acidic pickles, on account of their unsophisticated and indelicate tastebuds.

I read into it also that he feels that a variety of apple which is particularly good for baking is intrinsically inferior to one that is good for eating out of hand. But perhaps I am being hard on Mr. Thoreau.

I am grateful to him however, for telling me of a never-before-heard-of food. What a charming name for an apple. Is it called a pumpkin sweeting because it is as sweet as pumpkin? As yellow as a pumpkin? Or because it is as good as pumpkin in a pie?(it cant be that, surely – it must be the other way around – the apple pie must be the benchmark?)

Apparently the apple goes by a number of names, most referring to either the pumpkin connection or the sweetness. Modern references mention it as having a firm yellow, crisp, juicy, and very sweet flesh - which makes it sound like the perfect eating apple, but I await some informed opinion from my American readers. The Pumpkin Sweeting is said to have a particular affinity with quinces, and to make good apple butter. It does both in this recipe. You could make the cider for the recipe with them too, if you have a good supply.

Apple Butter.
Boil down new sweet cider to one half the original quantity. Stew peeled and cored apples, with one quarter as many quinces, in this cider, till it is a very dark color. If well boiled, it will keep a year in jars, and is called Apple Butter.
[Miss Beecher's Domestic Receipt Book: Designed As A Supplement To Her Treatise On Domestic Economy. Catharine Esther Beecher, c1846.]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Seven things to do with salt beef.

Quotation for the Day …

Adam was but human-this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. Mark Twain.

Pi(e) No. 3

March 12 ...

It would hardly be acceptable for a week of pies to be without one example of an apple pie, now would it? You would probably all immediately cease reading these stories in protest.

Undoubtedly, one of the experts in the various forms of apple-in-pastry was the Herefordshire farmer, William Ellis, who wrote a wonderful and comprehensive book called The Country Housewife's Family Companion or Profitable Directions for whatever relates to the Management and good Economy, published in 1750. This is what he has to say on the topic:

Of Apple-Pyes, and Apple Pasties, for Harvest and other Times.
Apple Pyes and Pasties are a main Part of a prudent, frugal Farmer’s Family-Food, because the Meal and Apples that make them are commonly the Produce of his Land, and are ready at all Times to be made use of in Pyes or Pasties, for giving his Family and agreeable palatable Repast; a covered or turn-over Pasty for the Filed, and the round Pye for the House; the first being of a Make and Size that better suits the Hand and Pocket than the round Pye, and therefore are more commonly made in Farmers Families; for one, or a Piece of one, being carried in the Plowman’s and Plowboys Pocket, sustains their hunger till they come home to Dinner, and oftentimes pleases them beyond some sort of more costly Eatables; nor is it less wholesome than pleasant, for that the Ingredients of the Apple-pye are rather Antidotes against, than Promoters of the Scurvy. In short, it is the Apple Pye and Pasty, and Apples made use of in some other Shapes (particularly the famous Parsnip Apple) that I take to be some of the cheapest and most agreeable Food a Farmer’s Family can make use of.

I don’t know if such a thing as the ‘parsnip apple’ is still grown in England, but if it is not it should be, if it is as good as Farmer Ellis says:

A Character of the famous Parsnip Apple, and its Uses.
From whence this apple is so called, I cannot tell; but this I know, that it is the very best of apples for pyes, pasties, and puddings in harvest time, and for eating (baked or raw) single as they are; they are always the first apples that are ripe with us, for they commonly begin to drop from the tree about the middle of August, some of them weighing four ounces apiece; and I think I can affirm it for truth, that I have had above twenty bushels in one season off one tree only ……

Farmer Ellis gives a number of recipes for pastry and pies, but this one is my favourite.

Onion Pye made by labouring Mens Wives.
They mix chopt Apples and Onions in equal Quantities, and with some Sugar put them into Dough-crust and bake them: This by some is thought to make as good a Pie as Pumkins do. It is a Heredfordshire Contrivance.

I know that onions when cooked slowly become sweet, but that is a very brave combination. It was an idea, I guess, born out of necessity– onions being available to everyone with a small cottage garden, and having even better keeping qualities than apples. Just the thing when the labouring man comes home hungry and demanding apple pie when there are only a few apples left in the pantry.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Pi(e) No. 4

Quotation for the Day …

Apple-pie is used through the whole year, and when fresh apples are no longer to be had, dried ones are used. It is the evening meal of children. house-pie, in country places, is made of apples neither peeled nor freed from their cores, and its crust is not broken if a wagon wheel goes over it. Rev. Israel Acrelius, a Swedish parson, writing home from America (1758)

Taking Cider to Lisbon.

Today, July 26^th

Henry Fielding, the author of the novel Tom Jones, travelled to Portugal in 1754, on the advice of his physicians. The start of the voyage was delayed for weeks due to days of insufficient wind or too much wind, and when they finally did set sail the too much wind recurred and they were blown almost immediately back to the Devon coast. Fielding took advantage of the return to land to do some further provisioning, as he tells in his journal.

Sunday, July 26. Things now began to put on an aspect very different from what they had lately worn; the news that the ship had almost lost its mizzen, and that we had procured very fine clouted cream and fresh bread and butter from the shore, restored health and spirits to our women, and we all sat down to a very cheerful breakfast. But, however pleasant our stay promised to be here, we were all desirous it should be short: I resolved immediately to despatch my man into the country to purchase a present of cider, for my friends of that which is called Southam, as well as to take with me a hogshead of it to Lisbon; for it is, in my opinion, much more delicious than that which is the growth of Herefordshire. I purchased three hogsheads for five pounds ten shillings, all which I should have scarce thought worth mentioning, had I not believed it might be of equal service to the honest farmer who sold it me, and who is by the neighboring gentlemen reputed to deal in the very best; and to the reader, who, from ignorance of the means of providing better for himself, swallows at a dearer rate the juice of Middlesex turnip, instead of that Vinum Pomonae which Mr. Giles Leverance of Cheeshurst, near Dartmouth in Devon, will, at the price of forty shillings per hogshead, send in double casks to any part of the world.

Henry was in the right place for cider – the South West of England is famous for its apples and apple products, although ‘cider’ did not always mean alcohol from apples – it seems that the word has very ancient roots, and may originally have referred to any strong drink. Other fruits can be fermented of course. We are quite fond of fermented grape juice in this house - we call it wine - and indeed, most fermented plant material is referred to as ‘wine’ - as in cherry wine or plum wine or apricot wine or turnip wine. The only other fruit wine I can think of that has its own particular name is perry, from pears. Perhaps these specific old names indicate just how long these beverages have been made? Surely humans have been drinking cider almost as long as they have been eating apples? Maybe even longer, if you consider that the earliest apples were small and hard and sour and probably not very delicious to bite into.

If you have too much cider, you can do one of three things with it (a more inventive mind than mine may come up with more, but I have discovered three). You can invite a lot of friends over to help you drink it. You can distill it into apple brandy or applejack or whatever else you want to call the rather more seriously alcoholic preparations (you may be breaking the law by doing this however). Or you can cook with it.

Apple Butter (or ‘Black Butter’) can be made if you have too many apples as well as too much cider, and although this is said to be a speciality of the Jersey Islands, the recipe we enjoyed some time ago was called, by the eminently English Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery, ‘American Apple Butter’. The remembrance of this set me looking at other American ways of using cider, as it seems Devonians and Cornwallians never have much left for cooking, if their cookbooks are anything to go by. Americans and Canadians have, in the past, made something called Mock Mince Pies, which we have previously enjoyed on this blog, and which we cannot therefore repeat. I was beginning to think I was going to have to encourage you to take option two, when I came across these ideas.

Cider Cake.
Six cups flour, three of sugar, one of butter, one of sour cider, tea-spoon soda, four eggs; beat the eggs, butter and sugar to a cream, stir in the flour, and then add the cider in which the soda has been dissolved.--Miss Mary A. Dugan. [Buckeye Cookery; America; 1877]

Cider Vinegar.
Take six quarts of rye meal; stir and mix it well into a barrel of strong hard cider of the best kind; and then add a gallon of whiskey. Cover the cask, (leaving the bung loosely in it,) set it in the part of your yard that is most exposed to the sun and air; and in the course of four weeks (if the weather is warm and dry) you will have good vinegar fit for use. When you draw off a gallon or more, replenish the cask with the same quantity of cider, and add about a pint of whiskey. You may thus have vinegar constantly at hand for common purposes.
The cask should have iron hoops.
A very strong vinegar may be made by mixing cider and strained honey, (allowing a pound of honey to a gallon of cider,) and letting it stand five or six months. This vinegar is so powerful that for common purposes it should be diluted with a little water.
[Directions For Cookery, In Its Various Branches.; Miss Leslie; 1840]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Spanish Potatoes.

Quotation for the Day …

Cider was, next to water, the most abundant and the cheapest fluid to be had in New Hampshire, while I lived there, - often selling for a dollar per barrel. In many a family of six or eight persons, a barrel tapped on Saturday barely lasted a full week. … The transition from cider to warmer and more potent stimulants was easy and natural; so that whole families died drunkards and vagabond paupers from the impetus first given by cider-swilling in their rural homes. Horace Greeley (1811-1872)

King Charles’ Birthday Bash.

Today, May 29th …

In the year of 1660 the Parliament of England declared that this day “the 29 of May, the King's birthday, to be for ever kept as a day of thanksgiving for our redemption from tyranny and the King's return to his Government, he entering London that day.”

There are three historic events commemorated this day. It was the day that King Charles II re-entered London after the long exile which followed the English Civil War, the execution of his father, Charles I in 1649, and the short life of the The Commonweath of England under Oliver Cromwell. It also happened to be Charles’ 30th birthday, and surely his Restoration was the best present an exiled King could wish for.

The third event is commemorated in one of the common names for the holiday – “Oak Apple Day”. The name reminds of the day in September 1651 when Charles escaped the Roundheads by hiding in a hollow in an oak tree. It became a tradition that Royalists wore an oak sprig or an ‘oak apple’ on this day to demonstrate their allegiance to the crown, and those who did not were set to become the victims of various taunts and minor abuses – which gave rise to another common name for the holiday – Pinch-Bum Day. I should also point out here, in the interests of clarity, that oak trees do not bear apples. The ‘apple’ refers to a ‘gall’ or excresence produced on the tree due to the irritating presence of a type of wasp. A local name for these mini-apple shaped galls gives rise to another name for the 29th of May – Shick-Shack Day. It may well be that the roots of the day lie in very ancient ‘tree worship’ times, hence one more name – Arbour Day.

Now we’ve clarified that (?), lets get onto the food. The seventeenth century in England was a fine time, culinarily speaking. English food (for those who could afford the best) was superb, if we are to judge by contemporary cookbooks. Improved sea-power opened up trade with far away places, and the return of Charles II from exile had stimulated interest in food from Europe (particularly France). Seventeenth century English gourmets could pick the best from everywhere – you may remember Samuel Pepys enthusing over a ‘Spanish Olio’ in a previous story.

It became traditional for the Chelsea Pensioners to be treated with good old English Roast Beef and Plum Pudding on this day. There are plenty of plum pudding ideas in the Christmas Recipe Archive, and roast beef hardly seems regal enough for the day, so we need different inspiration. The most famous cookbook of the time was The Accomplish’t Cook, by Robert May, and he included a recipe for cooking beef to mimic red-deer – a common practice of the time, and perhaps something we would try if the King was coming for dinner unexpectedly and we were out of venison. It will do for our main course.

Charles was not for nothing referred to as the Merry Monarch. He made merry on occasions with Nell Gwynne who was a lowly (but very beautiful) orange-seller. Oranges were expensive imported delicacies in Charles’ time, and a popular way of using them was to preserve the peels in a sugar syrup – and call it orengado. In honour of the Merry Time had by Charles and Nell, I give you a recipe for apple pie flavoured with quinces and orengado from the other famous cookbook of the time, by William Rabisha. The title of the book deserves repeating in full: The whole body of cookery dissected, taught, and fully manifested, methodically, artificially, and according to the best tradition of the English, French, Italian, Dutch, &c., or, A sympathie of all varieties in naturall compounds in that mysterie wherein is contained certain bills of fare for the seasons of the year, for feasts and common diets : whereunto is annexed a second part of rare receipts of cookery, with certain useful traditions : with a book of preserving, conserving and candying, after the most exquisite and newest manner ...

To bake Beef red Deer fashion in Pies or Pasties, either Surloin, Brisket, Buttock, or Fillet, larded or not.
Take the surloin, bone it, and take off the great sinnew that lies on the back, lard the leanest parts of it with great lard, being seasoned with nutmegs, pepper, and lard three pound; then have for the seasoning four ounces of pepper, four ounces of nutmegs, two ounces of ginger, and a pound of salt, season it and put it into the pie: but first lay a bed of good sweet butter, and a bay leaf or two, half an ounce of whole cloves, lay on the venison, then put on all the rest of the seasoning, with a few more cloves, good store of butter, and a bay-leaf or two, close it up and bake it, it will ask eight hours soaking: being baked and cold, fill it up with clarified butter, serve it, and a very good judgement shall not know it from red deer. Make the paste either fine or course to bake’t hot or cold.
To this quantity of flesh you must have three gallons of fine flower heapt measure, and three pound of butter; but the best way to bake red deer, is to bake it in course paste, either in pie or pasty: make it in rie meal to keep long. Otherwayes you may make it of meal as it comes from the mill, and make it onlie of boiling water, and no stuff in it.
[Accomplish’t Cook, May, 1660]

To make a Pie with whole Pippins.
You must pare and core your Pippins, and when your Coffin is made, take a handful of sliced Quinces, and strow over the bottom therof; then place in your Pippins, and fill the core-holes with the sirrup of Quinces, and put into every one a piece of Orangado, so pour on the sirrup of Quinces over your Apples, with Sugar, and close it; these pies will ask good soaking, especially the Quince-pie.
[Whole Body of Cookery dissected, Rabisha, 1661]

For those of you who love words, you will note that these recipes both refer to the food ‘soaking’. It does not mean marinading. ‘To soak’ also used to mean to soak up heat, and specifically "To bake (bread, etc.) thoroughly". Words are Fun, aren’t they?

Tomorrow’s Story …

Heavenly Beer.

This Day, Last Year …

We ate at the summit of Mt Everest.

Quotation for the Day …

The art of cooking as practised by Englishmen does not extend much beyond roast beef and plum pudding". Pehr Kalm a Swedish visitor to England, in 1748

Hardy’s Ale.

Today, January 11th…

The novelist Thomas Hardy died on this day in 1928, and forty years later a commemorative ale was released in his honour in his home county of Dorset. This is a very special ale. It is matured in sherry casks for nine months, bottle fermented in individually numbered bottles, designed to be laid down for 5-25 years, and - at 12.5% ABV - decidedly not for wimps.

The ale was inspired by a passage in Hardy’s novel “The Trumpet Major”. The action of the novel occurs in the fictional county of Wessex (which is certainly Dorset), and Hardy describes the local beer as:

“……of the most beautiful colour that the eye of an artist in beer could desire; full in body, yet brisk as a volcano; piquant, yet without twang; luminous as an autumn sunset; free from streakiness of taste; but, finally, rather heady. The masses worshipped it, the minor gentry loved it more than wine, and by the most illustrious country families, it was not despised."

There were some anxious moments for beer aficionados around the world when the Eldridge-Pope brewery was sold in 1997 and it looked like the beer would not survive. There was no 2000 vintage, but happily common (and commercial, it seems) sense has returned, and the beer is once again available.

A recipe for the ale is clearly out of the question, and a recipe using it as an ingredient would clearly be sacrilege. Luckily, Dorset is also famous for its apples, and a recent competition was held to determine what would be the signature dish of the county. The local Dorset Apple Cake won, and fine recipes for it can be found on the sites belonging to my fellow-bloggers, Andrew at Spittoon Extra, and Anna at Baking for Britain.

My offering to you is a mid-Victorian apple cake from Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery (1845), and leave it to you to decide if it is actually cake, or tart, or pie.

Apple Cake, or German Tart.
Work together with the fingers ten ounces of butter and a pound of flour, until they resemble fine crumbs of bread; throw in a small pinch of salt, and make them into a firm smooth paste with the yolks of two eggs and a spoonful or two of water. Butter thickly a plain cake tin, or pie mould; roll out the paste thin, place the mould upon it, trim a bit to its exact size, cover the bottom of the mould with this, then cut a band the height of the sides, and press it smoothly round them, joining the edge, which must be moistened with egg or water, to the bottom crust, and fasten upon them to prevent their separation, a narrow and thin band of paste, also moistened. Next, fill the mould nearly from the brim with the following marmalade, which must be quite cold when it is put in. Boil together, over a gentle fire at first, but more quickly afterwards, three pounds of good apples with fourteen ounces of pounded sugar, or of the finest Lisbon, the strained juice of a large lemon, three ounces of fresh butter, and a teaspoonful of pounded cinnamon, or the lightly grated rind of a couple of lemons. When the whole is perfectly smooth and dry, turn it into a pan to cool, and let it be quite cold before it is put into the paste. In early autumn, a larger proportion of sugar may be required, but this can be regulated by the taste. When the mould is filled, roll out the cover, lay it carefully over the marmalade that it may not touch it, and when the cake is securely closed, trim off the superfluous paste, add a little pounded sugar to the parings, spread them out very thin, and cut them into leaves to ornament the top of the cake, round which they may be placed as a sort of wreath*. Bake it for an hour in a moderately brisk oven. Take it from the mould, and should the sides be not sufficiently coloured put it back for a few minutes into the oven upon a baking tin. Lay a paper over the top, when it is of a fine light brown, to prevent its being too deeply coloured. This cake should be served hot.
Paste: flour, 1 lb.; butter, 10 oz.; yolks of eggs, 2; little water. Marmalade: apples, 3 lbs.; sugar, 14 oz. (more if needed); juice of lemon, 1; rinds of lemons, 2; butter, 3 oz.: baked, 1 hour.
*Or, instead of these, fasten on it with a little white of egg, after it is taken from the oven, some ready-baked leaves of almond-paste, either plain or coloured.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Victory Sausages.

A Previous Story for this Day …

The story on this day last year featured the explorer David Livingstone.

Quotation for the Day …

I have fed purely upon ale; I have eat my ale, drank my ale, and I always sleep upon ale. George Farquhar, Irish dramatist (1678-1707?)