Description
PPC 95 (April 2012)
ContentsBuy an individual article as a PDF
|
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
JAN GROSS was a solicitor and lives in Melbourne. She has recently published Journey Round my Family, a fictional memoir, and Jam Dreaming, a novel, with Sid Harta in Melbourne. CHARLES PERRY is a journalist and writer on food; he lives in California. His particular area of interest is medieval Arab cookery; see the book of that title published by Prospect, with many of his deathless contributions. BETINA PIQUERAS-FISZMAN is a researcher at the Crossmodal Research Laboratory in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford. She undertook her postgraduate research at the Universitat Politècnica de València. CHARLES SPENCE is Professor of Experimental Psychology and a fellow of Somerville College. His publications in the field are manifold. He is the director of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory. LAYINKA SWINBURNE is a doctor in Leeds and researches into both domestic and medical history and those places where they intersect, particularly early manuscripts of receipts. DAVID S. WALDDON lectures on food history as well as cooking medieval and Renaissance banquets in the north-western states of America. His website www.vastrepast.net will give you full information on his many activities.
Preliminaries
†MARY PRIOR
It is with much sadness that we record the death of Mary Prior on 7 December last year. Martin Dodsworth contributed an obituary to the Guardian which I reproduce below:
In my friend Mary Prior’s first book, Fisher Row (1982), a photograph shows ‘Mrs Rose Skinner and Miss Jean Humphries emptying a boat at Juxon Street, 1956’. They are working hard shovelling coal. The picture sums up her concerns as a historian – the lives of working people and of ordinary women. Mary, who has died aged 89, is best known for the ground-breaking Women in English Society 1500–1800 (1986) which she edited. Hitherto most women’s history had been concerned with moneyed people or those who had been in trouble with the law. Mary and her colleagues worked patiently in archives to reconstruct the unsensational lives of female traders, bishops’ wives, nursing mothers and others whom history had largely forgotten. In 2010 the journal Women’s History dedicated an entire issue in her honour. Mary became a historian in mid-life. She was a New Zealander, born of missionary parents in China. In the early 1940s she studied at Otago University in Dunedin, met the gifted logician Arthur Prior (later to teach at Christchurch University) and married him. The family eventually moved to Britain, first to Manchester, then, in 1965, to Oxford, where Arthur was fellow at Balliol College. He died in 1969. Mary became a doctoral student at St Hilda’s, supervised by Joan Thirsk; the thesis became Fisher Row. The book studies a small community of river and canal people over a 400-year period; tracing change through generations of the same families in eloquently simple prose, as much sociology as history. She came to know and win the respect of descendants of several of those families. She was a small, unassuming figure, of quiet determination and high principle. This is reflected in Rhubarbaria: Recipes for Rhubarb (2009), one of the few English cookery books to have been translated into French. Rhubarb was part of her New Zealand childhood, and part, too, of her life in Shetland, which she visited every summer from Oxford. But the other thing about rhubarb was that anyone could grow it. It was honest stuff, and didn’t deserve the condescension with which it was often treated – like women, like working people. She is survived by her children, Martin and Ann.
†CONSTANCE B. HIEATT
It is with great regret that I report the death of this giant of medieval culinary history. Her last book was Cocatrice and Lampray Hay, the manuscript of which she delivered in a timely and error-free manner. When it was first mooted, I had warned her of a certain hesitation between delivery and appearance in print, but it was with some alarm that I received my first intimation that she was not in the best of health. In the event, she saw everything but the finished volume. I hope she would have been pleased. As I write, there is a further manuscript in preparation (and now in the capable hands of her sister Ellen Nodelman) which comprises a digest of all known English medieval recipes. I give below an edited text of the obituary notice issued by her family, although I am sure there will be many more in journals forthcoming.
Constance Bartlett Hieatt died at her home in Essex, CT, on December 29, 2011. A professor of English, a medieval scholar and a pioneer in the field of medieval cookery, Dr Hieatt moved back to Connecticut, where she had spent her childhood summers, upon her retirement, as Professor Emeritus, from the University of Western Ontario. Dr Hieatt continued her scholarly work and published numerous works after her retirement, including her latest Cocatrice and Lampray Hay. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Constance Hieatt grew up in New York City and in Connecticut, graduating from Friends Seminary, attending Smith College, and earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Hunter College. She was awarded a fellowship from Yale and earned her PhD in 1960. Before her entrance into academia, Constance Hieatt worked in a variety of positions in print media and other businesses in New York City. After two brief marriages, to George Loomis and to Michael Bodkin, she met and married fellow-medievalist A. Kent Hieatt, then teaching at Columbia, forming a lasting partnership that took the pair from New York City to full professorships at the University of Western Ontario. They spent their summers at Wytham Abbey, outside Oxford, before they retired and returned to Connecticut, living first in a house built in back of the old family home on River Road in Deep River and, finally, in Essex Meadows. Dr Kent Hieatt died in January 2009. Like her husband, Dr Hieatt began her medieval studies as a Chaucerian, but she moved on to focus her scholarly work largely on writings in Old English and Old Norse. She also formed an interest in children’s literature and taught countless undergraduate courses on that subject. She combined her fascination with things medieval with her considerable expertise as a cook to begin her trail-blazing work in medieval cookery. Her substantial publishing record reflects the variety of her professional interests. She and Kent Hieatt co-authored a children’s version of The Canterbury Tales in the late 1950s. Later, they collaborated once again on The Canterbury Tales, this time the Bantam dual-language edition still in use in schools and universities the world over. Constance Hieatt also published Beowulf and Other Old English Poems, again familiar texts to English students past and present, as well as her translation of the Old Norse saga, Karlamagnus: The Saga of Charlemagne and His Heroes, and a basic text for learning Old English: Essentials of Old English. Dr Hieatt wrote a series of children’s books as well, based on the ‘Matter of Britain’ or Arthurian legends, including Gawain and the Green Knight, The Castle of Ladies, The Knight of the Cart, and others. Among her many medieval cookery offerings was the popular Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks, co-written with Professor Sharon Butler; Curye on Inglysch with Sharon Butler; Concordance of English Receipes: Thirteen through Fifteenth Centuries; Libellus De Arte Coquinaria: An Early Northern Cookery Book with Rudolph Grewe; An Ordinance of Pottage; The Form of Cury: The Cuisine of the Court of Richard II of England. In the past few years, Constance Hieatt shared her medieval expertise with her fellow residents in Essex Meadows by giving some very well-received talks on the subject, including one on medieval cookery, one on Beowulf and, most recently, one on ‘The Miller’s Tale’ from The Canterbury Tales.
HERMAN(N) CAKE
When the sourdough starter for a friendship cake came back from a church function in the village, it was news to me. Then I resorted to the Guardian and the Internet and found it was two a penny. You receive a starter, build it up, keep a fraction and pass three fractions on to your friends while making an apple and cinnamon cake for yourself (other recipes are possible). The process is never-ending, an edible chain-letter. Some maintain its origins are Amish, others that it is German (perhaps it is both). The cake is not bad, but there’s a lot of it. It does keep well. One poster on the Net maintained her starter had been going since the 1970s when her family were in the Middle East. Can anyone trace the practice back further?
YOGHURT
Periodically we make our own yoghurt. It is hardly complicated. However, previous campaigns have usually petered out. The end-product starts well and gets worse. This present episode, however, has been more successful, and consistent, perhaps because the equipment (a salt-glazed jar, a thermometer and the Aga) has been better. I now can’t imagine eating shop-bought yoghurt, even French. I find it surprising that no matter which yoghurt is bought as a starter, the result is the same. I also have been interested by the texture that we achieve. If you only heat the milk to ±100°F then start making the yoghurt in the usual way, the texture is much more slippery or junket-like than if you first boil the milk, let it cool to ±100°F then commence the yoghurt. Presumably this is because certain bacteria are killed off by the boiling.
A SAUCE OF FIGS AND DATES
Doing the editing for Cocatrice and Lampray Hay stimulated us to make one of the sweet sauces that fill the manuscript. The recipe chosen was for beef olives and I give you Constance Hieatt’s translation:
Take chuck beef. Cut it as thin as you can, three fingers broad and no more than a handful long; lay it in a container. Take parsley, hyssop, and savory and onions and the suet of beef; chop this small together. Take ground pepper, ground cinnamon, and salt; draw it together. Mix together the herbs and the spices, than lay your slices of beef flat and put on each one some of this garnish of seasonings; then roll each, one after the other. When it is [all] made together, then put it on a small spit and roast it. Then set a pot with fresh broth on the fire. Mince onions and dates, and take currants and add to this, and also crushed maces or cloves and cinnamon. Take figs; grind them in a mortar with crusts of bread. Draw them up with wine or good ale; cast this draught into the pot, and saffron. When the pot boils, add these slices roasted before you put in your liquid. Boil it together and give forth.
If you like your meat sweet, this is for you. The texture of the chopped and ground dried fruits is delicious and the flavour quite novel. It is not for every day.
DRYING CHILLIES
Who would have thought, twenty years ago, that half a dozen chilli plants would be a fixture of many English kitchen gardens? They are so easy to grow, and nurseries make the task easier. So, come the autumn, there is a host of red and yellow gems winking at you from their corner bed and conservation comes into view. Hitherto we have frozen them. This year we tried drying some on the back of the Aga, but they were never sufficiently desiccated. So for the second batch (so large was the crop) I put them in the coolest oven for a day. My consternation on withdrawing them was palpable. They seemed dark brown and smelling of carbon. I carried on regardless, mashing them in the coffee grinder. What a miracle! No longer burnt, wonderfully fragrant, addictive to all.
RAMPANT MALES
Our ram, Julius, was let go in 2010. Last year, therefore, we did not lamb. A relief for my wife and no doubt for the ewes. This year, instead of having a ram en permanence, we had a visitor. He was a Vendéen, a French breed that is neither too large for our hill sheep nor too violent for gentlemanly handling. We hope for his progeny, due in the middle of spring. Among the pigs, the sad demise (though not before impregnating Isabella) of Ferdinand, the young Berkshire boar, left the sows bereft. His place has been taken by Hector, a Gloucester Old Spot–Sandy Black cross. Currently there is much discontent, but we hope that things will settle down and piglets will result.
ACETARIA
John Evelyn’s discourse of sallets has had an enduring afterlife. There seems to be always one, if not two versions available at any one time. I picked up from the remainder store the collection Directions for the Gardiner and other Horticultural Advice, published by Oxford in 2009 and edited for them by Maggie Campbell-Culver. This compact yet handsome hardback is impressive value. The texts of Acetaria, Kalendarium Hortense and Directions… are reproduced in a modern setting and given a full work-over by the editor. I envy it.
OXFORD SYMPOSIUM PROCEEDINGS
In pursuit of greater accessibility, the trustees of the Oxford Symposium are making past proceedings freely available online (via Google books). I have supplied them with PDFs of the volumes since Fish (1997), though excluding the most recent (so that sales of these may continue) and not including 2002 and 2003 which were not published by myself.
FRENCH SCHOOL FOOD
We are all familiar with chef Jamie Oliver’s attempts to improve school food. His inspiration, Jeanette Orrey, was awarded a well-deserved MBE in the New Year Honours. While Oliver’s efforts merit admiration, it was their medium that threw them into high relief. There were many who anticipated him, they just weren’t as famous. And we in Britain, it seems, may have been anticipated by the French. Richard Storey sent me an interesting pamphlet De la cantine scolaire au restaurant d’enfants published in 1979 by the Centre de Création Industrielle at the Centre Georges Pompidou which tells of the great efforts made in France to humanize school food, improve its nutritional value and its delivery. These date back as far as the 1940s and the work of Raymond Paumier in the Essonne. Le plus ça change…
FITZHERBERT
Fitzherbert’s Husbandry (1534, the author signed himself ‘Master’ and may be Sir Anthony or John) is a profitable read (www.archive.org/details/bookofhusbandry00fitzuoft). Andrew Dalby drew my attention to the heading of section 79 of the W.W. Skeat edition of 1882 which is, ‘The .x. properties of a woman.’ These are deemed to be, ‘mery of chere … well paced … a brode foreheed … brode buttockes … harde of warde … easye to lepe uppon … good at a longe journeye … well sturrynge under a man … alwaye besye with the mouthe … ever to be chowynge on the brydell.’ Which clerk or printer’s devil substituted ‘horse’ for ‘woman’? Section 152 is headed ‘Of delycyouse meates and drynkes’ and has some enlightening reflections on the increase in luxury in Tudor England. It goes,
Howe costely are the charges of delycious meates & drynkes, that be nowe most commonly used, over that it hath ben in tymes paste, and howe fer above measure? For I have seen bokes of accompte of householde, and brumentes upon the same, & I doubte not, but in delycyous meates, drinkes, and spyces, there is this daye foure tymes so moche spent, as was at these dayes, to a lyke man in degree; and yet at that tyme there was as moche befe and mutton spent as is nowe, and as many good householdes kept, and as many yomenne wayters therin as be nowe. This began with love and charytye whan a lorde, gentylman, or yoman desyred and prayed an other to come to dyner or soupper, and bycause of his commynge he wolde have a dysshe or two mo than he wolde have had, if he had ben away. Than of very love he, remembrynge howe lovyngely he was bydden to dynner, and howe well he fared, he thynketh of very kyndnes he must nedes byd hym to dyner agayne, and soo ordeyneth for hym as manye maner of suche dysshes and meates, as the other man dyd, and two or .iii. mo, & thus by lyttel and litell it is commen fer above measure. And begon of love and charyte, and endeth in pryde and glotony.
This might be called the potlatch effect.
DRESSING UP
This is the title of a book by Ulinka Rublack (OUP, 2010, £22.99 paperback). The subtitle is Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe. I recommend you read it. It’s a study of how people perceived themselves, particularly their dressed selves, and how they perceived cultural difference by dint of alternative costume, etc., etc. The author, a German now teaching at Cambridge, draws almost exclusively on German sources, especially from Nuremberg. It is an excellent introduction to the importance of costume history as well as how to read pictures. She is blessed by some arresting materials, not least the friendship albums of the later 16th century which were sort of elaborate autograph albums or commonplace books to which your friends and your betters might contribute a coat of arms, a motto or a painting. She could also draw upon a ‘book of clothes’ compiled from 1520 by Matthäus Schwarz, accountant and right-hand man to the Fuggers of Nuremberg, for which he commissioned portraits of himself in all sorts of clothing (and twice naked) at regular intervals until 1560. He also commented on his portraits, at first noting details of dress, later recording actions and events. It is intriguing and remarkable. Ms Rublack is also very good on the beginnings of illustrated literature and broadsides, as well as on the way in which religious differences were pointed up by clothing as the Reformation took hold. As a book, I was not so impressed. The publisher has made little effort to edit the not very good English of the foreign author; frankly it is sometimes not English at all. Then the layout and typography makes it difficult for an old man to read – the lines too long, the face too small, the paper too reflective. Although there are plentiful photographs and reproductions, they are often so tiny that you cannot see the detail the author is describing. All of which is a pity; and another is that the many reviews quite failed to mention it. The neophyte will be put off. I will forebear from quoting some classics of academic writing and extended statements of the bleeding obvious, but it is still a book worth reading, big time.
LEEDS SYMPOSIUM ON FOOD HISTORY AND TRADITIONS
The twenty-seventh symposium, entitled ‘Five a Day: Vegetables’, part 1, will take place on 21 April 2012 at the Friends Meeting House, Friargate, York. The speakers planned are: Eileen White on vegetables in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; Malcolm Thick asking to what extent did people in England eat vegetables in the early eighteenth century; Ivan Day and Peter Brears making a closer approach to salads; Ivan Day discussing sallets in early modern England; Rob Gooderidge explaining the twenty-first century Victorian workhouse garden at Ripon; and Ivan Day again on growing period vegetables. Enquiries should be addressed to C. Anne Wilson, c/o Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT. The fee is a modest £20.
A SECONDHAND BOOKSELLER
As our familiar dealers in secondhand cookery retire, so we have found it difficult to know where else to turn. I have discovered a new site, however, with a very long catalogue and prices that do not scare the horses. They are called Books & Bygones, and are located at 40 Hollow Lane, Shinfield, Reading RG2 9BT. Their website is http://www.booksbygones.co.uk
OUR TRIPE BOOK
I am delighted to announce that Marjory Houlihan’s Tripe: A Most Excellent Dish, with contributions by the late Roy Shipperbottom and Lynda Brown has been shortlisted for the André Simon Food Book of the Year Award. Of course, it’s well deserved.
BRITISH FOOD IN 1930
I have just finished reading the biography of Nikolaus Pevsner by Susie Harries (Chatto & Windus, £30). It is excellent. There are some longueurs, as there will always be in a long academic life, but the material dealing with his early years in Germany, his struggle to get established in England, his writing of the Buildings of England, his standing and reputation among others in the field: all this is very rewarding. Here, I wish merely to share with you his comments on British food in 1930, the year of his first foray to this country. They interest me because of my slightly rose-tinted glasses when thinking of the pre-war era. My mythology is that everything was ruined by the war itself. Not if we believe Dr Pevsner: ‘The meals are big enough, but they are disgusting, quite tasteless. Every day the same beans, the same Yorkshire pudding, a ghastly floury gravy and the same tough beef or mutton … Even the sandwiches are in uniform; in no tea rooms is there anything but ham and tongue, cheese is apparently “inappropriate”, and you need binoculars to see the butter.’
BAKING COURSES
Andrew Whitley has sent me his programme of bread-making courses at Bread Matters, Macbiehill Farmhouse, Lamancha, West Linton, Peebleshire EH46 7AZ (www.breadmatters.com). You can choose from one- to five-day visits and will come away enthused by the teaching, skilled in the making and relaxed by the views.
CAT FOOD
An ageing cat has meant more careful nutrition. Close inspection of the ingredients of cat food sachets seems to indicate that there is virtually no meat in them at all, the protein is all from soya. Small wonder the cat takes a dim view.
FROM GALWAY TO SOHO
This is a ballad sung by Máirtin Mac ConIomaire, who contributed to the last issue. The notes explain all.
BOOK REVIEWS
Clarissa Dickson Wright: A History of English Food: Random House, 2011, 500 pp., hardback, £25.00. Readers who have followed the author’s various television programmes will immediately recognize her voice in the printed word. The style is chatty, almost breathless, and personal. For some this will increase the appeal of this long book, for others it may get in the way of an ambitious historical survey of the nation’s eating, from the mid-twelfth to the twenty-first centuries. (But which nation? Page 269, for example, features both an ice-house in Northern Ireland and Keiller’s Dundee Marmalade.) Without wishing to depersonalize a narrative which will appeal to many who are perhaps new to the fascination of food history, one could argue the need for a stricter editorial hand, not only to correct the spelling of Barnack (p. 10), Mazawattee tea (p. 369), and the misnaming of Kenilworth Castle as House (p. 497). As far as the structure of the book is concerned, removing such details as a chamberlain’s duties (pp. 80–81) and building construction details (p. 100), as distinct from kitchen layout, would have resulted in a shorter and more focussed work. This is very much food history from the top down: the first half of the book, to the late Stuart period, being a seemingly endless sequence of banquets, difficult to digest in any sense, with crumbs falling from the rich men’s tables to the less fortunate classes. The author is aware of this, but the weight of the feasts so described threatens to crush the wide-ranging and significant contextual material which she also supplies. As she approaches the Georgian age, such developments as the use of turnips for winter cattle feed, attempts to popularize the potato, learned consideration of salads, even the introduction of the sweet orange, bring us closer to the modern scene. In this context the opportunity is missed on pp. 30–31 to draw a parallel between the medieval practice of culling greenstuff from the hedgerow and the modern advocacy of foraging. There are no footnotes, but assiduous use of the bibliography will help to identify sources when these are not given directly in the text. In summary, an enthralling story, told by a (slightly garrulous) friend, who knows her subject thoroughly, from hard work in the kitchen as well as the library. RICHARD STOREY Joyce Molyneux and Gerard Baker: Born to Cook: Angel Food: Adam White, 2011, 149 pp., paperback, £14.95. This book appeared in late 2011, ready to make a timely appearance as a Christmas gift both on its own merits and also because all the profits go to the Save the Children Fund. Anyone attracted by the author’s name, and also as in my case, by very pleasant memories of calm and delicious lunches at the Carved Angel in the 1970s, will find much of interest. Prue Leith’s enthusiastic introduction rightly draws attention to the wide range of cuisines drawn upon for the contents. She also refers to the author’s extensive experience of teaching the skills and enjoyment of her craft. The authorial tone is indeed gentle and encouraging; however, many of the recipes are sophisticated and require a degree of technical competence which may be somewhat daunting for the average, if keen, domestic cook. Similarly, depending on your resources, some ingredients may not be easily available. However there is also a good choice of simpler recipes, and in any case the format of the book will certainly help. The large pages are helpfully laid out, frequently with a brief description of the dish, followed by the method, and the list of ingredients highlighted to the side. Each recipe is contained within a single page, and the book remains conveniently open and flat(tish) on the kitchen work surface. Many dishes are accompanied by a colour illustration. If you wish to have an idea of what you are trying to achieve, then some are more useful than others. The depicted slice of apple and cinnamon tarte Tatin (p. 129), for example, shows clearly what you might hope to take to table, whereas the photograph accompanying the roast pheasant (p. 109) is at somewhat of a remove, being of several birds still in their feathers. In her final paragraph Prue Leith declares that she personally wishes to cook everything in the book: all can share in its interest and aspiration. JENNIFER STOREY Andrew Webb: Food Britannia: Random House, 2011, 560 pp., hardback, £25.00. Barny Butterfield is an artisan cidermaker who has recently won CAMRA’s Champion Cider award. As you approach the farm where the cider is made the scent of fermenting apples reaches you down the muddy track giving a very clear clue as to what goes on there. But like many small food and drink businesses Barny doesn’t stand still, so when asked to supply soft drinks for a local event he made up a batch of lemonade; Sandford Orchards now makes a range of fruit-based soft drinks, as well as great ciders with layers of taste that show up mass-produced ciders for the bland products they are. This last year he even came up with a mulled cider based on an old Devon recipe with a secret ingredient which I managed to wheedle out of him. And no, I’m not letting on; you’ll have to taste it yourself. Barny isn’t in Andrew Webb’s book but many other great producers are. The book, born from the diary he made whilst putting together the Channel 4 documentary, The Big British Food Map in 2008, is a wonderful exploration of British food, ranging from the more obvious such as haggis and Whitstable oysters to the perhaps less well-known Devon cheese, Sloe Tavy (whose rind is washed in Plymouth Sloe Gin). Similar in some respects to Rick Stein’s British Food Heros project, Andrew tells some great stories about a range of foods and their producers with passion and respect; he correctly states that ‘the food sector today is one of incredible dynamism for those who want to seek, if not their fortune, then at least their own destiny.’ One such is Richard Ord, in South Shields, whose grandfather started the family fish and chip shop in 1905. According to Andrew it continues as a chip shop with Richard moving with the times by signing up to Greenpeace’s Seafish Sea Life campaign to promote sustainable fishing thereby becoming ‘the closest thing to an eco-chippie you could find.’ The book also highlights the cosmopolitan nature of traditional British food, something Jamie Oliver has attempted recently, but Andrew Webb has added some of the detail, albeit tantalizingly brief at times. For example, and perhaps appropriately for this journal, Andrew starts his journey in south-west England telling some great stories particularly about th