Fool’s Food.

Today is April Fool’s Day. I just know I am going to get an email from someone (who assumes that this is my April Fool joke – or that I am just stupid) pointing out that ‘today’ is still Thursday. Believe me when I tell you that here in Australia it is already Friday.

The origins of April Fool’s Day traditions are lost in the mists of antiquity, and as such are subject to much conjecture and fanciful embroidery. There is much about the day that suggests a spring festival of renewal – it is a day of organised havoc, with rules. Beware that you don’t continue your pranks beyond midday or …. I am not sure what will happen, but you just don’t do it, it is the rule. Perhaps the April Fool Gods will turn your nose into a stick of rhubarb, or you will be doomed until the next Fool’s Day to wear your underpants on the outside of your trousers, or you will be forced to eat only low-fat, low-carb, high fibre chocolate until Christmas.

The day is strongly associated with fish, for some (to me) very obscure reason. This is relevant to us today because this is a food blog after all. The fish symbolism is particularly strong in France (some experts do blame the French for originating the tradition) where the day is called Poisson d’Avril, or April Fish Day. They even have a fish called the April Fish, as is explained in Kettner’s Book of the Table, (London, 1877)

MACKEREL: A great authority, Grimod de la Reynière, says : “The mackerel has this is common with good women – he is loved by all the world. He is welcomed by rich and poor with the same eagerness. He is most commonly eaten à la maître d’hôtel. But he may be prepared in a hundred ways; and he is as exquisite plain as in the most elaborate dressing.” (au maigre comme au gras). This is immense praise, and is a complete justification of the common English method of serving him – plain boiled, with fennel or with gooseberry sauce. Nevertheless I give my vote to those who assert that there is but one perfect way of cooking a mackerel – to split him down the back, broil him, and serve him with maître d’hôtel butter. Still better, take his fillets and serve them in the same way.

The name of mackerel is supposed to be a corruption of nacarel, a possible diminution of nacre – from the blue and mother-o’-pearl tint of the skin. In one of the dialects of the south of France he is called pies d’Avril, the April fish – or as we should say, and April fool, both because he is a fool coming easily to the net, and because he first comes in April. He is not only quickly caught, but he spoils so quickly that the law accords him a peculiar privilege: he is the only fish that may be hawked about the streets on a Sunday. For the same reason he is the only fish besides the salmon that is much soused or marinaded in this country.

For those of you living in the other hemisphere, where April means Spring, not Autumn, and who can source a mackerel in season , I give you a simple version of the traditional gooseberry sauce to serve with him.


Gooseberry Sauce.
Put some scalded gooseberries, a little juice of sorrel, and a little ginger, into some melted butter.
The universal cook: and city and country housekeeper (1792), by By Francis Collingwood.

There is a slightly different version of the sauce (from 1709), intended to be served with goose here, and one for mock gooseberry sauce (made with rhubarb) here.


Previous April Fool’s Day stories are here, here, and here (my favourite, the amazing spaghetti trees of England.)


Recipes for Fools are here and here.

Fun Pudding is here.


Quotation for the Day.

Food is so fundamental, more so than sexuality, aggression, or learning, that it is astounding to realize the neglect of food and eating in depth psychology.
James Hillman.

An Emergency Dinner.

I moved house, finally. Although delighted with my new home, I found myself too tired to cook dinner. And anyway, I had not yet stocked the fridge. I had a dinner emergency (or rather, a ‘no-dinner emergency’). I remembered some ‘emergency dinner menus’, with recipes, in one of Fanny Merritt Farmer’s many works. Surely this famous lady would have an idea to suit the occasion?

In What to Have for Dinner: Containing Menus with the Recipes Necessary for Their Preparation, (1905) I found the chapter I was looking for. There were two ‘Emergency Menus’, one of which I give you below. Clearly ‘post-house move exhaustion and empty fridge situation’ was not the sort of emergency that Ms Farmer had in mind, as you will see. I assume it was an ‘unexpected guest in the context of a well-stocked pantry’ sort of emergency.

Call me bold, if you will, but I do take issue with Ms Farmer on a couple of small points. The inclusion of cayenne in both the timbales and their accompanying sauce, for one. And if I was using five egg whites in the timbales, I would have adjusted the ‘hollandaise’ to use up all of the yolks, not just four of them.

Menu No.1.

Small cheer and great welcome make a merry feast.

Shakespeare.

Emergency Soup. Croûtons.

Salmon Timbale, French Hollandaise Sauce.

German Fried Potatoes.

Creamed Peas.

Dresden Sandwiches. Wine Sauce.

Café Noir.

Salmon Timbales.

¾ cup soft breadcrumbs

1 cup milk

½ teaspoon salt

Few grains Cayenne

1 ½ cups flaked canned salmon

Whites 5 eggs.

Remove salmon from can, rinse thoroughly with hot water and separate into small flakes. Soak breadcrumbs in milk fifteen minutes, then cook over hot water and stir to form a smooth paste. Add salt, cayenne and salmon. Cut and fold in whites of eggs, beaten until stiff. Turn into slightly buttered mould set in pan of hot water, cover with buttered paper, and bake until firm; time required being about fifty minutes. Serve with French Hollandaise Sauce.

French Hollandaise Sauce.
½ cup butter
Yolks 4 eggs
½ cup boiling water
½ teaspoon salt
Few grains Cayenne
½ tablespoon lemon juice.
Work butter until creamy and add egg yolks one at a time, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne. Put in small sauce pan and place in larger sauce pan of hot water.

Quotation for the Day.

I once read cooking is something you do for your family. But when you’re alone you sometimes have to treat yourself like family. And now that my apartment’s redolent with the smell of food it feels more like a home than a box where I hang my hat.
Waiter Rant, Waiter Rant

The Original Chowder.

Today I want to discuss chowder, for the very good reason that today is an anniversary of sorts for the famous New England fish soup/stew. On this day in 1751 the first known printed recipe for chowder appeared in the Boston Evening Post, and very poetical the recipe was too.

Directions for Making a Chouder
First lay some Onions to keep the Pork from burning,
Because in Chouder there can be no turning;
Then lay some Pork in Slices very thin,
Thus you in Chouder always must begin.
Next lay some Fish cut crossways very nice
Then season well with Pepper, Salt, and Spice;
Parsley, Sweet-Marjoram, Savory and Thyme;
Then Biscuit next which must be soak'd some Time.
Thus your Foundation laid, you will be able
To raise a Chouder, high as Tower of Babel;
For by repeating o're the Same again,
You may make Chouder for a thousand Men.
Last Bottle of Claret, with Water eno' to smother 'em,
You'll have a Mess which some call Omnium gather 'em.

I have been unable to check the source of this recipe myself, but the Oxford English Dictionary is reliable enough, I think – and it uses the poetical recipe as its first reference for the word chowder. The definition given by the OED for chowder is ‘In Newfoundland, New England, etc.: A dish made of fresh fish (esp. cod) or clams, stewed with slices of pork or bacon, onions, and biscuit. ‘Cider and champagne are sometimes added’ (Bartlett).

The OED proposes that the word ultimately derives from the Latin calderia, which meant ‘a place for warming things’ and later, ‘a cooking pot’ (or cauldron.) There is another etymological possibility for the word however, and one which I much prefer. It may derive from an old English word jowter (of various spellings) which originally meant a fish peddler before it extended to apply to other sorts of hawkers and dealers. The OED does not hazard a guess as to the etymology of the word jowter, but it seems to have referred particularly to the female of the species, and has been used since at least the sixteenth century.

If the poetical recipe above is not to your liking, here is an alternative from a century later. I look forward to the inevitable authenticity debate which will surely follow.


Chowder.
As this is the season for deep-sea fishing, and as the chowder is the favorite mode of preparing the fish thus caught, we give the following genuine recipe for making that celebrated Yankee dish, furnished by a correspondent of the New York Commercial Advertiser, who obtained it at the Massachusetts coast, from the most authentic source.
“Here let me tell you how to make a chowder:-
1st, Fry a large bit of well salted pork in the kettle over the fire. Fry it thoroughly.
2nd, Pour in a quantity of water, then put in the head and shoulders of a codfish and a fine, well-dressed haddock, both recently caught.
3rd, Put in three or four good Irish potatoes, and then boil them well together. An old fisherman generally puts in three or four onions.
4th, When they are about done, throw in a few of the largest Boston crackers, and then aplly the pepper and salt to suit your taste.
Such a dish, smoaking hot, placed before you after a long morning spent in the most exhilarating sport, will make you no longer envy the gods.
Bangor Daily Whig and Courier, [Maine] August 9, 1843


Quotation for the Day

Chowder breathes reassurance, it steams consolation.
Clementine Paddleford.

A dainty dish of eels.

Isaac Walton, the English writer and biographer was born on this day in 1593. His best known work - The Compleat Angler; or, the Contemplative Man's Recreation: A pastoral discourse on the joys of fishing, published in 1653 – is scattered with snippets of culinary information, giving us a very good idea of the role of fish in the diet of the seventeenth century Englishman.

I was a little puzzled by one of his comments about the eel:

“It is agreed by most men, that the Eel is a most dainty fish"

Dainty? The eel? The OED defines ‘dainty’ as ‘of delicate or tender beauty or grace; delicately pretty; made with delicate taste.’ The eel is a fish with the misfortune to look like a snake, which hardly qualifies as ‘delicately pretty’ in most people’s eyes. Nor would eel flesh be considered delicate or delicate-tasting on account of it being very oily – and high cholesterol oily, not Omega-3 oily at that.

In Walton’s time, ‘dainty’ also meant ‘valuable, fine, handsome; choice, excellent; pleasant, delightful’ and ‘precious; hence, rare, scarce.’ I don’t know about ‘scarce’ in Walton’s time, but the eel was certainly valuable as a food – precisely because it was high in oil. Fatty foods were desirable in a time when being thin meant you were starving or sick. Oily fish do taste more substantial and ‘meaty’ too, so were particularly desirable during the many fast days on the religious calendar.

The eel has also been associated with the poor – perhaps because the robust, meaty, oily flesh was considered suitable for less refined folk, or perhaps because it was easily obtained and inexpensive? Just guessing, friends, I don’t really know. Walton himself noted in relation to small eels that ‘The poorer sort … make a kind of Eele-cake of them, and eat it like as bread.’ These ‘eel cakes’ seem to have been patties made from infant eels, known as elvers – I assume these are made much in the same way as is done with whitebait.

The author of The Cult of the Chafing Dish, (1905) certainly felt that eel dishes were not refined:

‘Jellied eels and stewed eels, both East End and racecourse prime favourites, are somewhat too rich and coarse for any save the very ravenous, but it is certain that there is a deal of rich, if perhaps somewhat heavy, nourishment in the eel, and its meat is a great delicacy in any form.’

The popularity of eels in the past is indicated by the fact that there are 25 recipes for eel in Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery (circa 1870’s). Here is my choice for you today.

Eels, Stewed.
Divide four large eels into pieces of about two inches, and season them with pepper, salt, and a little pounded mace. Lay them in a deep dish with a little veal stock, a bundle of sweet herbs, and a very little chopped parsley sprinkled in over them. Tie down with a paper, first putting some small bits of butter on the top. Stewed eels are always best when done in a moderate oven. Time, one hour or more. Probable cost, 6d.to 1s. per pound.

On this topic.

A previous post included Isaac Walton’s instructions for making a Minnow Tansy.

Quotation for the Day.

I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning.
Isaac Walton.

Colly-feasts.

Samuel Pepys, who is a dear friend to this blog, made mention one day of a style of dinner that was unfamiliar to me.

“… At noon went by water with Mr.Maylard and Hales to the Swan in Fishstreete at our colly-feast, where we were very merry at our Jole of Ling.”

The world of dictionaries is pretty quiet on the topic of colly-feasts, but the definition which pervades the Internet is that a colly-feast is ‘a feast of collies (cullies, good companions) at which each pays his share.’ The OED doesn’t seem to know colly-feast (which seems strange to me since it was mentioned by Pepys) but it does have an interesting definition of ‘cully’ (etymology uncertain), which it says is ‘a man, fellow; a companion, mate.’ It seems, then, that a colly-feast was an early version of a boys-only meal.

It also seems difficult not to believe some connection with the word colleague, doesn’t it? The OED opines that colleague derives from the French, and originally meant ‘one chosen along with another, a partner in office.’ The idea of choice in relation to work colleagues is intriguing, isn’t it? Anyhow, perhaps you have a new name for the next office get-together – one that makes it quite clear who is paying, which might save embarrassment.

The other words in Pepys’ diary entry that might need explaining are – ling and jole. Ling we have dealt with previously. A ‘jole’ is a jowl, or a jaw, but in the case of fish (especially salmon, sturgeon, and ling) usually refers to the ‘head and shoulders’ which used to be considered a delicacy in Britain, and still are in many parts of the world.


The following recipe, from a very popular cookbook of Pepys’ era -The Accomplish’t Cook, or, the Art and Mystery of Cookery, by Robert May (1660) can be adapted to ling, if you want to eat fish seventeenth century style.


To broil Sturgeon, or toast it against the fire.
Broil or toast a rand or jole of sturgeon that comes new out of the sea or river, (or any piece) and either broil it in a whole rand, or slices an inch thick, salt them, and steep them in oyl-olive and wine vinegar, broil them on a soft fire, and baste them with the sauce it was steeped in, with branches of rosemary, tyme, and parsley; being finely broiled, serve it in a clean dish with some of the sauce it was basted with, and some of the branches of  rosemary; or baste it with butter, and serve it with butter and vinegar, being either beaten with slic’t lemon, or juyce of oranges.

Quotation for the Day.

Good cookery is not an extravagance but an economy, and many a tasty dish is made by our Continental friends out of materials which would be discarded indignantly by the poorest tramp in Whitechapel.
General Booth, in Darkest England and The Way Out.

Dinner Rules.

It sometimes seems that in modern times we live in an over-legislated society, but perhaps the rules in previous times were not less, but just different. For example, I don’t suppose the staff at Buckingham Palace have the exact details of their meals set out in their work agreements nowadays.

Princess Cecily, the mother of King Edward IV (1442-1483), outlived her son by many years – managing to get to the then very ripe old age of 80 years. The Ordinances governing the day to day business of her household state exactly what the staff (most of whom lived in) were to receive for their meals on each day of the week.

Uppon sondaye, tuesdaye, and thursdaye, the houshoulde at dynner is served with boyled beefe and mutton, and one roste; at supper leyched [sliced] beefe and mutton roste.

Uppon mondaye and wensdaye at dynner, one boyled beefe and mutton; at supper, ut supra [as above].

Upon fastinge days, salte fyshe, and two dishes of fresh fishe; if there come a principal l fasted, it is served like unto the feaste honorablye.

If mondaye or wensdaye be hollidaye, then is the houshold served with one roste, as in other days.

Upon satterdaye at dynner, saltfyshe, one fresh fishe, and butter; at supper saltfishe and egges.

Here, for satterdaye dinner, is a nice recipe for fish with herbs and sorrel sauce. It is from a manuscript dated about 1500, called A Noble Boke Off Cookry Ffor A Prynce Houssolde


Freche makrelle
To dight a freche makerelle tak and draw a makerelle at the gil and let the belly be hole and wesche hym and mak the sauce of water and salt and when it boilithe cast in mynt and parsly and put in the fisshe and serue it furthe with sorell sauce.

Quotation for the Day.

Fishing is boring, unless you catch an actual fish, and then it is disgusting.
Dave Barry.

Sharks as Food.

Popcorn yesterday, shark today. Why not? I am currently exploring some of the small promotional cookbooks which focus on single, very specific, ingredients. A nice little book published by the US Bureau of Fisheries in 1918 called Sharks as Food; with Thirty Recipes, is our source for today.

Sharks have a reputation for eating humans whenever they get the opportunity, but the reality is that we eat them far often than they eat us (memo: keep a roasted pumpkin handy when swimming in shark-infested waters). Sometimes the eating of shark is opportunistic – one should not waste good protein, even if it is caught inadvertently, and especially when one is thoroughly sick of the alternatives, as the explorer William Dampier found in 1699. More often we eat it unknowingly (as, it could be argued, we eat many things).

Shark goes by the name of ‘flake’ in Australia, where it is commonly purchased from take-away establishments, battered and deep fried as an accompaniment to chips. It more often goes by no name at all, appearing anonymously in all sorts of vaguely piscatorial food ‘products’ such as fish fingers. The fins alone appear in the infamous Chinese Sharks’ Fin soup – a delicacy which supposedly gives a medicinal and aphrodisiac boost to those who believe in it, and a sense of outrage to those who find it cruel and immoral.

Here is my selection from the Bureau of Fisheries booklet: recipes for two salads, one using smoked shark, the other canned.

16. Shark Salad.
2 cupfuls smoked shark.
2 cupfuls potatoes.
1 tablespoonful onion,
1 cupful celery.
2 tablespoonfuls green peppers.
2 cupfuls mayonnaise.
Salt and pepper to taste.
Wash the smoked shark and boil until tender. Shred when cold, and add to the
potatoes, which have been diced. Then put in the minced onion, celery, and green
peppers. Mix thoroughly and add the mayonnaise, stirring slightly.
The addition of 3 hard-boiled eggs gives a more nutritious and palatable salad.


30. Shark Salad.
I pound can of shark.
1 cupful celery.
1 red pepper.
1 cucumber, sliced.
1 head chicory.
1 lemon.
1 onion.
Mayonnaise.
Drain and flake the shark and add to the other ingredients. Mix all lightly with
the mayonnaise and garnish with olives.

Quotation for the Day

When you consider what a chance women have to poison their husbands, it's a wonder there isn't more of it done.
Kin Hubbard.

A Rhyming Recipe.

Silly me. A post popped up “yesterday” (Sunday) instead of “today”(Monday), because I accidentally typed the wrong date into the post-ahead schedule. Lucky you, because this means you get an extra post this week (I have undertaken to post every Monday to Friday, you know, so any Sunday posts, inadvertent or intended, must count as extras.) I will make up the mistake, by giving you a couple more recipes on the same theme.

It seems that producing cookery books was an early consciousness-raising and fund-raising effort of women suffrage advocates. It probably worked well – bringing home a new cookbook must have been a delightfully subversive act for some young wives and daughters, as even the most chauvinistic of the menfolk in the family would hardly have thought it necessary to check the culinary literature entering the household. Similarly, being seen writing or compiling a cookbook would hardly have raised any suspicious eyebrows. There were very few ways for decent women to earn a living in the late nineteenth century, and very few had few a disposeable income that was not scrutinised by a husband or father.

The Woman Suffrage Cook Book: Containing thoroughly tested and reliable recipes for cooking, directions for care of the sick, and practical suggestions... by Hattie A.Burr was published in Boston in about 1886. Many famous women contributed, including Julia Ward Howe, who provided “yesterday’s” quotation. The social activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) contributed the following rhyming recipe for a breakfast dish.

Breakfast Dish.

Cut smoothly from a wheaten loaf
Ten slices, good and true,
And brown them nicely, o'er the coals,
As you for toast would do.

Prepare a pint of thickened milk,
Some cod-fish shredded small;
And have on hand six hard-boiled eggs,
Just right to slice withal.

Moisten two pieces of the bread,
And lay them in a dish,
Upon them slice a hard-boiled egg,
Then scatter o'er with fish.

And for a seasoning you will need
Of pepper just one shake,
Then spread above the milky juice,
And this one layer make.

And thus, five times, bread, fish and egg,
Or bread and egg and fish,
Then place one egg upon the top,
To crown this breakfast dish.

Quotation for the Day.

Any influence I may happen to have is gladly extended in favor of woman suffrage.
Lydia Maria Child (famous cookery book author)

Food for Journeys, Part 3.

As you read this I will be somewhere in the air, en route home to Australia after a wonderful few weeks in the UK. I continue with the theme of food for travelling, and, technology-willing, this story will reach you about the usual time.

In yesterday’s post, we considered the sorts of new food that travellers eat in new places, courtesy of the land and its existing inhabitants. Of course, sensible travellers go prepared with supplies from home, and they take their preferences with them too. Here is a novel idea for preserving fish.


Russian Method Of Preserving Fish.
When the Russians desire to keep fish perfectly fresh, to be carried a long journey in a hot climate, they dip them into hot beeswax, which acts like an air-tight covering. In this way they are taken to Malta, sweet, even in summer.
Practical American Cookery and Domestic Economy, Elizabeth M. Hall; 1860

There are numerous recipes for preserving milk for long journeys – and presumably for infants and children this may have been important. It is difficult however, to imagine the necessity or desire for cream to be so great that an American or European traveller would wish for a recipe – but here is one example:


To Preserve Cream.
Take four quarts of new cream; it must be of the richest quality, and have no milk mixed with it. Put it into a preserving kettle, and simmer it gently over the fire; carefully taking off whatever scum may rise -to the top, till nothing more appears. Then stir, gradually, into it four pounds of double-refined loaf-sugar that has been finely powdered and sifted. Let the cream and sugar boil briskly together half an hour; skimming it, if . necessary, and afterwards stirring it as long as it continues on the fire. Put it into small bottles; and when it is cold, cork it, and secure the corks with melted rosin. This cream, if properly prepared, will keep perfectly good during a long sea voyage.
Miss Leslie's Complete Cookery; Eliza Leslie, 1831.

As for dripping (the fat collected from roasting meat), it is nowadays totally shunned by the nutrition police. Once upon a time the very quality that makes us discard it - its greasy calorie count - made it extremely desirable, particularly for pastry-making (encasing meat in a dense ‘coffin’ being another great preserving method). The book The Housekeeper's Instructor, Or, Universal Family Cook, by William Augustus Henderson (1805) has an entire section devoted to food for long voyages, and includes this recipe (note the suggestion to minimise its pilfering by rats!)


To preserve Dripping.
This is one, among many other useful articles at sea, and in order that it may properly keep for that purpose, it must be made in the following manner: Take six pounds of good beef dripping, boil it in some soft water, strain it into a pan, and let it stand till it is cold. Then take off the hard fat and scrape off the gravy which sticks to the inside. Do this eight times, and when it is cold and hard take it off clean from the water, and put it into a large saucepan, with six bay-leaves, twelve cloves, half a pound of salt, and a quarter of a pound of whole pepper. Let the fat be all melted, and just hot enough to strain through a ceve into a stone-pot. Then let it stand till it is quite cold, and cover it up. In this manner you may do what quantity you please. It is a very good maxim to keep the pot upside down, to prevent its being destroyed by the rats. It will keep good any voyage, and make as fine puff-pafte crust as any butter whatever.


Quotation for the Day.

Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own country-men, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untraveled minds.
Caleb Colton

Food for Journeys, Part 2.

One of the great travel experiences is the opportunity to taste new foods – how much more exciting must this have been in times past, when so little was known of other places?

History is full of stories of the strange foods eaten by adventurers and explorers out of curiosity, as well as, at times, absolute necessity, and some of these have featured in this blog before (see the links below). There are many stories too, of such men (for they are virtually always men) being saved from starvation by thanks to gifts of food from the local ‘savages’.

Sometimes of course, the sharing of food between the indigenous people and their visitors was a friendly and joyful experience, as in the following description of an event that took place in early in the seventeenth century, and recorded some decades later in New-England's memorial 1669 by Nathaniel Morton, William Bradford, Thomas Prince, Edward Winslow

1621 (?): Tuesday [July … ]. At nine this morning, we set out travel fifteen miles westward to Namasket by three in the afternoon. The people entertain us with joy, give us bread they call Maizum, and the spawn of shads which they now have in great plenty, and we eat with spoons. By sunset we get eight miles further to a Ware, where we find many of the Namascheuks, i.e. Namasket men a fishing having caught abundance of bass; who welcome us also, and there we lodge.

Recipe for the Day.

We don’t know how the shad roe in the story above was prepared, but here are simple instructions from Mrs. Fryer's Loose-Leaf Cook Book, published in the USA, 1922

Shad Roe.
Shad roe may be baked, broiled, or fried. To broil, wipe dry; sprinkle with pepper and salt and cook five minutes on each side. Butter well and stand in the oven for a few minutes; then serve garnished with parsley and lemon. To fry, proceed as with fish, but cook the roe for ten minutes first in boiling water.


Explorer Food.
This list may not be exhaustive, but here are some stories from this blog about explorers and their food:

Stories featuring the Australian explorer Ludwig Leichardt are here, here, and here.


Stories from the Lewis and Clark expedition across the North American continent are here, here, and here.

A story about Australian explorer John Horrocks is here
A story about David Livingstone in deepest, darkest Africa is here.
A story about Australian explorer Ernest Giles eating parrot soup, here.

Australian explorer John Oxley has a fish dinner, here.

A story about Australian explorer John Eyre is here.


Quotation for the Day.
When we examine the story of a nation's eating habits, describing the changing fashions of preparation and presentation and discussing the development of ifs cuisine throughout the ages, then we find an outline of the nation's history, harking back to those distant days when a scattered tribe lurked in dismal caves, feeding on raw fish and plants and the hot. quivering flesh of wild beasts, lately slain with a rude spear.
Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935)

Dublin Turbot.

Today I should be in Dublin. Today this post may appear later than usual, due to the vagaries of internet access while travelling – the vagaries that interfere no matter how well planned one thinks one is, and the vagaries that provide some of the interest and adventure of travel. And, of course, the fact that I did not get around to pre-posting this week’s stories as I did last week!

I don’t know what the modern fish and seafood situation is in Dublin, but will find out in the next few days. In the meanwhile, I trust in its reputation, and give you some comments and a recipe from Maria Rundell’s A New System of Domestic Cookery, published in 1844.

“Turbot is said to improve by keeping for a day or two; but the acknowledged superiority of the Dublin Bay turbot arises from it being dressed immediately upon being caught: it then tastes as if it had been boiled in cream.”

Turbot.
May either be boiled in vinegar, salt and water, or in the following marinade. One part of wine to two of water, simmered for a quarter of an hour ,with a bundle of Sweet herbs two bay leaves three onions, one stuck with cloves, three carrots chopped, three turnips sliced a large piece of butter, some salt and whole pepper, the liquor to be strained and allowed to grow cold before using. The garnish for turbot is made thus:- Take the spawn out of the inside of a lobster, dry it well before the fire and shift through a sieve, then scatter it over the turbot.

P.S. In lieu of a quotation (I do not have access to my sources today), I hereby faithfully promise a full report on my visit to the Pudding Club in Mickleton in the Cotswolds. I am proud to report that I managed to sample all seven of the traditional British puds on offer that night.

A Foodie Birthday.

This day, Juy 24, was the birthday in 1802 of Alexandre Dumas (père), the French author of The Three Musketeers. Dumas was a dedicated and famous gourmet (‘foodie’, if you like), and wished to be remembered for his Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine – finally published two years after his death – rather than his novels. He left a legacy of some of the best nineteenth century French food stories and quotations, many of which have been fodder for this blog in the past.

Here is a selection of my favourite quotations from the birthday boy:

“Wine is the intellectual part of a meal, meats are merely the material part.”

“When I eat truffles, I become livelier, happier, Ifeel refreshed. I feel inside me, especially in my veins, a soft voluptuous heat that quickly reaches my head. My ideas are clearer and easier.”

"The most learned men have been questioned as to the nature of this tuber [the truffle], and after two thousand years of argument and discussion their answer is the same as it was on the first day: we do not know. The truffles themselves have been interrogated, and have answered simply: eat us and praise the Lord."

Dumas was inordinately proud of his salad recipe which we have featured in a previous post. He was moderately famous in his own time – at least amongst his friends – for this salad, which he prepared with his own hands. He was also in possession of “a certain recipe for stewed carp” which has retained the air of mystery it had in his own time, and has refused to reveal itself (to me, at any rate.)

Instead, I give you a recipe for fish named in his honour by the very famous nineteenth century chef, Alexis Soyer. The dish will also perfectly fit the bill for those of you in parts of the world where it is still July 23rd and therefore still Neptunalia (see “yesterday’s” post.)


Filets of Mackerel à la Dumas.
Fillet your mackerel as you would whitings by passing the knife down the back bone, lay your fillets in a buttered sauté-pan (the skin side upwards) with two tablespoonfuls of oil, two of port wine, and season with a little pepper and salt; place them over a sharp fire ten minutes, then turn them and place them over again five minutes longer, or till they are done; take them out cut each fillet in halves and dish them round on a dish without a napkin; then put twelve tablespoonfuls of brown sauce (No. 1) into the sauté-pan, let it boil five minutes then add a teaspoonful of chopped mushrooms half ditto of chopped parsley, a little lemon juice, and a small quantity of sugar ;chop the roe of the mackerel and put in the sauce, let it simmer five minutes; pour it over the fillets cover them lightly with bread crumbs, brown lightly with the salamander and serve very hot. The sauce must not be too thick.
The Gastronomic Regenerator, by Alexis Soyer


Quotation for the Day.

I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?
Douglas Adams.

The riches of the sea.

Today, July 23, is the day that we would have devoted to honouring Neptune, the god of the sea and water, if we were in Ancient Rome. Actually, now that I think about it, Neptune should be honoured here in Modern Brisbane, which has some pretty damn divine seafood that any god would be honoured to be offered. In fact, I think we’ll go and eat fish (and chips) tonight at the usual place, if we can find a coupla friends to go with us (you know who you are …)

What, exactly, the Romans did to celebrate Neptune is not entirely clear to me, but I am not an ancient historian (you can take that any way you like.) They apparently built small shelters (umbrae) of leaves and branches and so on, under which they enjoyed the Roman equivalent of picnics, drank cool spring water and wine, and otherwise desported themselves.

Today I make a symbolic offering to Neptune and all seafood lovers. I give you all a recipe for the famously, spectacularly, ridiculously extravagant fish soup supposedly made for the Russian Empress Catherine II.

Soup Of Fillets Of Perch ; from the Empress Catherine II.

(Potage de Filets de Perches a la Catherine II)

The consommé being prepared as before, trim, in small escalopes, the fillets of three perch, throw salt over them; an hour after wash, drain, and lay them in a saute-plate; afterwards make a quenelle of cray-fish, with cray-fish butter; mark an essence of fish thus: cut in lengths a small eel, a sole, a small pike, and the trimmings of the perch ; add four pottles of mushrooms, two onions sliced, parsley-roots, two cloves, a pinch of pepper and grated nutmeg, bay-leaf, thyme, basil, two new anchovies, the flesh of a sound lemon, a bottle of Champagne, and a little salt; boil it slowly for an hour, squeeze it through a tammy upon the fillets of perch, which boil for ten minutes; add six livers of burbots, six roes of carp, and twenty-four small mushrooms turned and very white; having simmered the escalopes of perch for some minutes, drain them and lay them in the tureen, and upon them place the livers, roes, and mushrooms; pour the liquor from them into the consomme, which thicken slightly with a light roux; when serving, add a liaison of twelve eggs, and four ounces of cray-fish butter; stir the soup, that the liaison may mix perfectly smooth; and, as soon as it begins to boil, pour it into the tureen, adding the points of a bundle of asparagus, prepared as for an entree; serve.
The Practical Cook, English and Foreign, J. Bregion and A.Miller, 1845

If anyone wants to make this soup for me today, I am willing to forgo the fish restaurant. I can be reached by email (see the top of the sidebar), which I will check frequently throughout the day.

Quotation for the Day.

[T]his planet is covered with sordid men who demand that he who spends time fishing shall show returns in fish.
Leonidas Hubbard, Jr.

Any Oranges With That?

Lemon with fish is pretty much an incontrovertible rule in the kitchen, is it not? Break the rule and risk punishment by mass exodus of customers, and mass sackings of staff. Once upon a time citrus was used pretty commonly with meat too. Of course we are all familiar with the idea of duck with an orange sauce. Sadly, usually nowadays it comes as a tacky, sickly-sweet marmalade-y mess that is centuries away from the elegant original form made with the bitter Seville orange - a far better foil for the rich and fatty duck meat, methinks.

Here is an early version of the idea, from The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin (1594)


To boyle a Capon with Oranges after Mistres Duffelds way.
Take a Capon and boyle it with Veale, or with a mary bone [marrow bone], or what your fancie is. Then take a good quantitie of that broth, and put it in an earthen pot by it selfe, and put thereto a good handfull of Corrans [currants], and as manie Prunes, and a few whole Maces, and some Marie [marrow], and put to this broth a good quantitie of white wine or of Claret, and so let them seeth softly together: Then take your Orenges, and with a knife scrape of all the filthinesse of the outside of them. Then cut them in the middest, and wring out the ioyse [juice] of three or foure of them, put the ioyse into your broth with the rest of your stuffe, then slice your Orenges thinne, and haue upon the fire readie a skellet of faire seething water, and put your sliced Orenges into the water, & when that water is bitter, have more readie, and so change them still as long as you can finde the great bitternesse in the water, which will be sixe or seven times, or more, if you find need: then take them from the water, and let that runne cleane from them: then put close Orenges into your potte with your broth, and so let them stew together till your Capon be readie. Then make your sops with this broth, and cast on a litle Sinamon, Ginger, and Sugar, and upon this lay your Capon, and some of your Orenges vpon it, and some of your Marie, and towarde the end of the boyling of your broth, put in a little Vergious [verjuice], if you think best.


We did play with the idea of orange food once before, and our source was Aunt Babette's Cook Book: Foreign and domestic receipts for the household (Cincinnati, 1889). On that occasion I gave you four orange recipes – all sweet ones however - orange fritters, cake, ice, and orangeade. I was reminded of that post recently as I was browsing 365 Orange Recipes; an Orange Recipe for Every Day in the Year (c1909). Today, to match the numbers, I give you a further three recipes for the use of orange in savoury dishes, taken from the latter book.


Onions with Orange Sauce.
Boil 1 dozen onions in three changes of water until tender but not broken; drain them and add ½ cupful of melted butter mixed with a little grated rind, 1 teaspoonful of minced parsley and salt and pepper to taste. Serve very hot.


Calf’s Liver with Orange.
Cut 1 pound of calf’s liver in slices one-half inch thick, cover with boiling water for a minute, drain and cook brown in bacon fat. Chop one onion and brown in butter adding 1 peeled and chopped orange two minutes before removing from the fire; season with salt and pepper and place one spoonful of the sauce on each slice of liver.


Finnan-Haddie with Orange Butter.
Soak finnan-haddie for one hour in two changes of warm water, drain well and fry in butter or broil over slow coals. Melt ½ cupful of butter, stir into it the diced pulp and the grated rind of ½ an orange; spread over the fish and serve at once.

Quotation for the Day.

When life sucks and hands you lemons, I say beat the crap out of it and demand some Florida oranges as well.
By ?

Twice-Laid Fish

It is a few weeks since I felt the need to revive a forgotten (to me) food phrase. Today’s contribution is from The Slang Dictionary: or, the Vulgar Words, Street Phrases, and “Fast” Expressions of High and Low Society, published in 1865. It is “Twice-Laid” - a seafaring or maritime expression for “a dish made out of cold fish and potatoes.”

Occasionally when I have been in pursuit of a “lost” food phrase I have been unable to find any other reference beyond the one in the source dictionary (usually of slang or regional dialect), but Lo! and Behold! there are indeed other instances of “twice-laid.” In some contexts it indicates any dish twice-prepared (even ship’s bread – already impossibly hard - re-baked and used to provision a second voyage), but in most cases it does specifically refer to fish. I find that in Newfoundland for example, it particularly refers to a “favourite breakfast and supper dish amongst rich and poor” of cod mashed with potatoes.

Here, from a man who (to judge by his name) should know about these things, is the description of twice-laid fish, and one interpretation of the idea.

Twice Laid Dishes Of Fish.
Although any portions of fish that are left un-consumed are usually considered so worthless as to be thrown away and wasted, they may always be turned to some and very often really profitable account .The smallest portions may assist in making fish soups or enriching gravies and the larger may often be submitted to some process of cookery by which they may be rendered quite as agreeable as when first produced in the way they were originally cooked.


Fish Sausages.
Take any previously dressed fish and after carefully extracting all the bones, mince it up fine, season with cayenne, common pepper and salt and mix up with it a sufficient quantity of raw beaten egg to bind the whole together; make the mixture up into the form of sausages or of small balls. Fry them brown and serve them up with plain melted butter; bread crumbs or cold mashed potatoes may be mixed up with the fish and they may also be coated with breadcrumbs by rubbing a little raw egg about the outside of the balls or sausages, and then strewing the bread crumbs over them. Fish that has been previously stewed, particularly skate, the gravy that is left being mixed up with the fish, are really delicious prepared in this manner

From: A Practical Treatise on the Choice and Cookery of Fish, by Piscator (William Hughes), 1854.


Quotation for the Day.

Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement: but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
Samuel Johnson.

Rosemary Comfits, etc.

We discovered yesterday that the Shuttleworths of Gawthorpe Hall (our source of inspiration for the week) in Lancashire regularly ordered special supplies to be sent all the way from London. In November 1617, they purchased from Mr. Thomas Lever,confectioner, one lb. of rosemary comfits.

I have met comfits made from caraway, aniseed, coriander, cinnamon, and orange (and the infamous ones used by the Maquis de Sade, supposedly containing Spanish Fly) in my reading, but I don’t believe I have come across a reference to rosemary comfits before, and I am most intrigued by them.

Rosemary was used regularly in those times for medicinal purposes, to make pot-pourri, and to flavour beverages such as mead. Comfits were somewhere in the first group – as a sort of after-dinner digestive. Musing on the use of the herb led me to wonder when it became used for more definitive culinary purposes. I don’t pretend to have researched it in any depth, but I give you a few gleanings to get the discussion going.

Firstly, for the comfits themselves, I found a nineteenth century recipe:

Lavender and Rosemary buds may be put into just as much white of egg as will damp them, and then shaken amongst fine-pounded sugar till they are well-covered, and left to dry in it.
Domestic Economy, and Cookery, for Rich and Poor, by a Lady (1833)

I did find one reference from 1867 (from a book supposedly of Welsh cookery ideas) of it being added to the water used to clarify lard when a pig was killed, which sounds a very elegant touch to the inelegant process of rendering. Then there was this idea (from America) at a further point in the pig processing:

Souse for Brawn, and Pig’s Feet and Ears.
Boil a quarter of a peck of wheat-bran, a sprig of bay, and a sprig of rosemary, in two gallons of water, with four ounces of salt in it, for half an hour. Strain it, and let it get cold.
Irving’s 1000 Receipts, by Lucretia Irving (America) 1852

Here is a proper cookery recipe from 1804.

The Head of a Turbot Stewed.
Fill a sauce-pan nearly full with water, and put in a few anchovies, some marjoram and rosemary, two or three cloves, some whole pepper, and scraped ginger. Stew these for the space of an hour ; then strain, and put in the head to be stewed till tender ; when enough, thicken the gravy with flour rolled in butter; add to the butter an anchovy or two, and a little nutmeg. When ready to be served up, put in some spoonfulls of white wine, together with some balls made in the following manner : Bone and skin a piece of turbot; then chop it small, with a little thyme, marjoram, grated bread and nutmeg. Form these into balls with some melted butter and cream, or the yolk of an egg. Put jnto the stew-pan, before the head is taken out, a large piece of the forcemeat, and salt to the taste.
Culina Famulatrix Medicinae, by Alexander Hunter, 1804

And finally, a more familiar application from much more recent times. It is a dish of lamb with rosemary, from Mrs Beeton’s Cookery book and Household Guide, of 1909 – which is to say that it is Isabella’s in name only as she had been dead since 1865. Her original collection was progressively changed and manipulated after her death – exponentially so after the Beeton company was sold in the wake of her husband’s financial failure. It is a nice recipe nonetheless – a sort of herby pickle of lamb that methinks would adapt well to the modern slow cooker.

Baked Saddle of Lamb.
Ingredients: A small saddle of lamb, shalots, marjoram, rosemary, bay-leaves, cloves, juniper berries, lardoons, ½ pint vinegar, ½ pint of claret, pepper and salt.
Mode: Chop the shalots, rosemary, marjoram and bay-leaves; crush the berries, add the cloves and pepper, and having skinned the saddle, rub it thoroughly inside and out with the mixture. Put it in an earthen pan, pour over the claret and vinegar, and let it remain in this liquor for 4 days, frequently turning it. Then lard it, and bake it in an earthenware pan, carefully basting it, and adding a little salt, for 1 to 1 ¼ hour.


Quotation for the Day:

There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember; and there is pansies, that's for thoughts.
William Shakespeare.

A Café in the Colonies.

Migrants and colonists are sometimes faced with an uncomfortable move away from the food of their homeland when they arrive in their new land. How - or if - they adapt to this change depends on a multiplicity of factors, not the least of which is the availability of familiar ingredients.

The early settlers in Australia not only brought with them livestock and seedstock from Britain, they also brought an absolutely firm determination to make everything as much like “Home” as possible, and were resolute, on the whole, to avoid the food of the “natives”. Those who settled around the penal colony of Moreton Bay in what is now Brisbane could however hardly eschew the abundant local seafood (which would indeed have been foolish, as it is magnificent) even if they had wanted to, for fish cannot be farmed as easily as land, and cannot be preserved as readily and “sent for” from home.

The following menu for a Brisbane café in 1898 could have been lifted from any English café. Although the snapper and oysters must have been local varieties, they were prepared in a thoroughly English way. Not a sliver of kangaroo or a sprinkle of lemon myrtle or a bit of macadamia crust anywhere to be seen. This was solid, heavy English fare for the mild Queensland winter season.

From the Brisbane Courier, July 22, 1898, this advertisement for the Café Imperial.

BILL OF FARE FOR THIS DAY

Pea Soup. Beef Tea.

Boiled Schnapper and Oyster Sauce.

Fried Schnapper and Anchovy Sauce.

Saute of Kidneys and Bacon.

Veal and Ham Pie.

Lamb Cutlets and Tomato Sauce.

Roast Turkey and Pork Sausages.

Roast Fillet of Beef.

Grills.- Fillet Steak and Oyster Sauce.

Loin Chops and Chip Potatoes. French

Cutlets and Bacon. Peas. Potatoes.

Fruit Salads and Wine Jellies, 6d. extra.

Soup, Fish, Meat, or Poultry, with Tea,

Coffee, Bread and Butter, and Cheese, Is.

Three Courses for One Shilling.

Cafe Imperial, 28 Queen-street.

P.Hart, Proprietor

From Phillip Muskett’s The Art of Living in Australia (1893), a recipe for a local ugly but not particularly interesting fish, cooked in a thoroughly Victorian English style:


STUFFED FLATHEAD
1 Flathead—9d.
2 oz. Forcemeat—2d.
1 gill Gravy
1 oz. Dripping—1d.
Total Cost—1s.
Time—Half an Hour
Take a little veal forcemeat and season nicely. Sew this into the flathead and truss it into the shape of the letter S. Rub some dripping on to a baking sheet, which should only be just large enough to take the fish. Put some dripping on the top, and bake in a moderate oven for half-an-hour, or longer if large. Slip it on to a hot dish, draw out the trussing string carefully, flavour and boil up the gravy and pour round it. Serve very hot.


Quotation for the Day.

"In the hands of an able cook, fish can become an inexhaustible source of perpetual delight."
Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826)

A Law about Eating.

There have been numerous attempts throughout history to regulate personal extravagance in food and drink on the basis of religious, political, economic or moral grounds. In the midst of a period of great dearth and famine in 1346, Edward II promulgated one of Britain’s earliest sumptuary laws.

“Whereas, by the outrageous and excessive multitude of meats and dishes which the great men of our kingdom have used, and still use in their castles, and by persons of inferior rank imitating their example, beyond what their stations require and their circumstances can afford, many great evils have come upon our kingdom, and the health of our subjects hath been injured, their goods consumed, and they have been reduced to poverty; we, being willing to put a stop to these excesses, with the advice and consent of our council, make the following rules and ordinances, - That the great men of the kingdom should have only two courses of flesh meats served up to their tables; each course consisting of only two kinds of flesh meat: except Prelates, Earls, Barons, and the great men of the land, who might have an intermeat (une entremesse) of one kind of meat if they please. On fish days they should have only two courses of fish, each consisting of two kinds, with an intermeat of one kind of fish, if they please. Such as transgress this ordinance shall be severely punished.”

Needless to say, whenever or wherever they have been enacted, sumptuary laws have proven almost impossible to police, and we can be reasonably confident that the great men of Edward’s realm took little or no notice of the restrictions, and continued feasting as they had always done.

There are no early fourteenth century English cookery books known to us, so we must turn to The Forme of Cury, compiled by the Master Cooks of King Richard II in about 1390 for our recipes for today. Here are a couple of nice ideas for you – pork with sage for a “flesh” day and salmon with leeks for a “fish” day.


Pygg in sawce Sawge [sage]
Take Pigges yskaldid [scalded] and quarter hem and seethe [boil] hem in water and salt, take hem and lat hem kele [cool]. take persel [parsley] sawge [sage]. and grynde it with brede and zolkes of ayrenn [eggs] harde ysode [boiled]. temper it up with vyneger sum what thyk. and, lay the Pygges in a vessell. and the sewe onoward and
serue it forth.

Cawdel Of Samoun.
Take the guttes of Samoun and make hem clene. perboile hem a lytell. take hem up and dyce hem. slyt the white of Lekes and kerue hem smale. cole [cool] the broth and do the lekes therinne with oile and lat it boile togyd yfere. do the Samoun icorne therin, make a lyour of Almaundes mylke & of brede & cast therto spices, safroun and salt, seethe it wel. and loke that it be not stondyng [too thick].


Quotation for the Day.

Pork - no animal is more used for nourishment and none more indispensable in the kitchen; employed either fresh or salt, all is useful, even to its bristles and its blood; it is the superfluous riches of the farmer, and helps to pay the rent of the cottager.”
Alexis Soyer (1851)

Clean Feet and Full Bellies.

This date in 1731 was a Thursday – “Maundy Thursday”, to be exact, and good King George II was 48 years old. According to the tradition of the day this meant that he was obliged to wash the feet of 48 poor women at a special ceremony before the distribution of the royal gifts or doles known as “maunds”. “Maundy Thursday” is also called Holy Thursday in the Christian calendar. It commemorates the Last Supper - the day that Christ washed the feet of his disciples in a demonstration of his humility, thereby obliging many centuries worth of clerics and royals to imitate the act with varying degrees of attention to the true meaning.

As with most such acts on the part of elevated individuals, the royal foot-washing practice was purely symbolic on this occasion in 1731. The actual washing was done by the King’s Almoner (and I suspect a quick pre-wash was done already by office bearers further down the chain), so it is to be hoped that the old ladies were not too disappointed with the service.

The origin of the word “maunds” is obscure. It may be from the ancient Latin mandatum, meaning ‘command’ (refering to Christ’s command to the disciples to love one another), or from an ancient Saxon word maund for basket (and hence refers to anything offered in a basket), or from an ancient French word mendier meaning ‘to beg.’ It is unlikely that the token cohort of poor women of 1731 were disappointed with the maunds (including "maundy money") dispensed that year, even if the foot-washer was not whom they expected. They received:

“… boiled beef and shoulders of mutton, and small bowls of ale, which is called dinner; after that large wooden platters of fish and loaves, viz. undressed, one large old ling, and one large dried cod; twelve red herrings and twelve white herrings, and four half quarter loaves. Each person had one platter of this provision; after which were distributed to them shoes, stockings, linen and woolen cloth, and leather bags, with one penny, twopenny, threepenny and fourpenny pieces of silver and shilings; to each about four pounds in value”

Ling is an elongated fish from the cod family, and can be cooked in a huge variety of ways. Here are some early eighteenth century ideas.

For Ling
As for Ling you may send it up dry, garnish with raw Parsly; another way is boil'd with poach'd Eggs on it; another way is fry'd after it is boil'd, warning it over with the Yolk of an Egg, or with Eggs; or you may make a Ling Pafty, putting Cream, Eggs, and melted Butter over it.
The Compleat City and Country Cook, Charles Carter, 1732.

Quotation for the Day.

A converted cannibal is one who, on Friday, eats only fishermen.
Emily Lotney

“Bombay Duck”

I cannot resist this final (for the time being) and famous Misleading Food Name. Bombay Duck is not a bird but a fish.The official name of the fish is Harpadon nehereus, and in various Indian dialects is bamaloh, bumla, or bombil. It is native to the waters of the coastline of South East Asia and Western India, and forms an important article of food for the poor. It is sold fresh or salted, and it is the latter that is known in Anglo-Indian cuisine as Bombay Duck.

Bombay Duck’s great claim to notoriety is its extraordinarily pungent smell, which manages to seep out of the most airtight container, and which is nothing at all like duck. The dried salted smelly crumbly fish was held in such great affection by returning British colonials (who used it as a relish to accompany their curries) that until 1997 over 13 tonnes a year were imported into England. In the fateful year of 1997 the European Commission of the European Union banned its importation under the rule (based on a vaguely sanitary justification) that denied any Indian fish not produced in “approved” canning or freezing facilities.

The name is slightly mysterious. One theory is that it derives from the Bombay Dak (the Bombay Mail train) which carried large quantities of the fish and consequently smelled strongly of it as did everything else carried by the train. The Bangladshi version of this that Clive of India himself gave it the name because of the smell of the newspapers that came from Bombay. It may of course have its origins in an ethnic-slur in the same way as Welsh Rabbit and some of the other examples we have considered this week.

This is how to use it:

“Bombay Ducks” or “Bummaloes”
Use the prepared kind sold at the Army and Navy Stores, Westminster, to eat with curry.
Toast these dried fish as you would bread, and send them to the table hot in a warm napkin – allow one apieces for each person, to put by his plate like a bit of toast, to eat with his curry, or to crumble over, eating the whole with a spoon.
It is nicest hot, but is also eaten cold.
If bought unprepared it means that each fish must be split and soaked before toasting, to draw out the salt.
The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie (1909)

Quotation for the Day.

“To-day have curry and rice for my dinner, and plenty of it as C—, my messmate, has got the gripes, and cannot eat his share.”
Entry in 1781, the Hon. J. Lindsay’s Imprisonment, in Lives of Lindsays,