Allium Bacchanalium!

James Gillray, 'French Liberty, British Slavery'. Les pauvres Français  ont les oignons seulement, mais les Anglaises ont le rosbif! The price of liberty has been poverty.

I’ve been absent from this blog for a while because I’ve had other fish to fry. My book Onion: A Global History has been contracted with Reaktion Books and will be published in April 2014! It will discuss the fascinating history of onions, garlic and leeks from pre-history till the present day. Naturally doing the proposal for this has kept me busy, but now things have calmed down a bit, I’ll be back on blogging. If you want a sneak preview of Onion you could read the article ‘Onions at War’ I wrote for The Foodie Bugle last month. 

Anyway, not wishing to depart from all things allium, I thought I’d share with you Mrs Beeton on the onion: 

PROPERTIES OF THE ONION.—The onion is possessed of a white, acrid, volatile oil, holding sulphur in solution, albumen, a good deal of uncrystallizable sugar and mucilage; phosphoric acid, both free and combined with lime; acetic acid, citrate of lime, and lignine. Of all the species of allium, the onion has the volatile principle in the greatest degree; and hence it is impossible to separate the scales of the root without the eyes being affected. The juice is sensibly acid, and is capable of being, by fermentation, converted into vinegar, and, mixed with water or the dregs of beer, yields, by distillation, an alcoholic liquor. Although used as a common esculent, onions are not suited to all stomachs; there are some who cannot eat them either fried or roasted, whilst others prefer them boiled, which is the best way of using them, as, by the process they then undergo, they are deprived of their essential oil. The pulp of roasted onions, with oil, forms an excellent anodyne and emollient poultice to suppurating tumours.

Ice Cream Cookbook Competition

You can never have enough ice cream recipes.

I recently had a look at Matt O'Connor's The Icecreamists (if anyone reading this lives in the Aberdeen area, you can read my feature about it in the Press and Journal!) and decided, in the Olympic spirit, to compare it to another ice cream tome - The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz, which I just bought from Amazon and am tremendously excited about. I shall be scoring the books gymnastics-style: in other words, I shall devise a system so complicated that it almost looks arbitrary, and none of ye shall even have a hope of understanding it. There will be categories; there will be thousandths of points; and points awarded will be out of a possible fifteen and a half. There may even be a last-minute appeal by Japan that throws the medal table into uncertainty.

Round 1: Beauty

Yes, it's the swimsuit competition! The first thing to notice about The Icecreamists is its astonishing photography, by Anders Schonnemann. I don't think I've ever seen food photography this good. Simultaneously witty and sexy, without too much of the default soft-focus you get in most food books, the styling and photos really give a great feel of what the author's trying to say: that ice cream can be adult, modern, even outrageous. It's rock and roll. And the font, cover and black and pink printing really add to this. In contrast, Lebovitz's book is much more pedestrian image-wise. The text is easier to read, but the photos, though attractive, are only so-so.

Result: The Icecreamists 15.144/The Perfect Scoop 12.783

Round 2: Ideas

At first, I was pretty excited to lay my hands on The Icecreamists. Ooh, A Chocwork Orange, sez I. Mmm, Doughnut Stop Believin'. Yummy. And sounds exciting. But the second or third time you read the book through, you realise there's not as many recipes as all that. It's sort of cheating, I think, to have big sections on ice cream cocktails, milkshakes, sundaes etc. In Lebovitz's book, instructions on how to make these are given in additional notes at the bottom of the real recipes, not padded out to make sections on their own. Plus Lebovitz includes many more recipes for mix-ins, cones, cookies, sauces and so on, and information on techniques such as rippling and stracciatella. On count, I reckon Lebovitz has at least three times as much useful (i.e. cookable) content. Also, he doesn't waste my time bitching about his marriage or boasting about his celebrity friends. His personal anecdotes are food-related and charming.

Result: The Icecreamists 12.896/The Perfect Scoop 15.168

Round 3: Recipe Quality

Though it's been pretty level pegging so far, now is the time for The Icecreamists to choke spectacularly. The real shame about this book is that while it's good on ideas and great on style, it doesn't carry through on the details. O'Connor has developed a gelato-style base which he uses for nearly every ice cream recipe; nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is that he hasn't bothered to tweak it slightly depending on how he flavours his ice cream. Every recipe has the same amount of sugar - wouldn't you want less sugar in a recipe that also included a load of mashed-up After Eights? - cream, and egg yolks. In contrast, Lebovitz has painstakingly worked out the tweaks that perfect each recipe. Some have an extra egg yolk to make up for a runnier add-in or more sugar to counteract a tart ingredient. Some are lighter, some richer. O'Connor's recipes really read more like, 'Make the base as usual, then chuck in what you like!' - which I could work out on my own. In this sense, it's not really a recipe book at all - more of an idea book.

Result: The Icecreamists 9.685/The Perfect Scoop 15.355

Round 4: Technique

Lebovitz carefully tells you exactly how to check the consistency of your custard; how to coat your frozen dessert in chocolate; how to caramelize nuts to mix in to the final product; how to make your own cones. The book is full of tips that show just what an expert he is. Reading it is like having someone friendly in the kitchen with you, telling you what to watch out for, giving you advice on when something's ready. It's amazing. The Icecreamists, however, gives the same instructions word for word for every recipe in a section. I'm not convinced that Matt O'Connor actually knows how to cook. If he does, he's not letting on. 

Result: The Icecreamists 10.562/The Perfect Scoop 15.445

FINAL RESULT

The Perfect Scoop scoops the gold. By miles.

I shall now celebrate my judging prowess with a cone of strawberry froyo, which I made from The Perfect Scoop book on Friday. Mmm.

It's All Gone to Custard

Mmm, custardy goodness. Love the retro packaging too.

Excited by the sudden improvement in the weather, and inspired in part by reading Matt O'Connor's new book The Icecreamists last week (on which more later if I get around to it), I purchased myself a new ice cream maker this week. (My old one is leaking weird liquid, so I have consigned it to the bin. I wouldn't have thought it of you, John Lewis! It was own brand and everything!) I like to be prepared when I cook, so I've been doing some research on ice cream recipe books as well. As we know, ice cream can be made in various different styles - the American, or more specifically Philadelphia, style is to freeze cream with sugar and fruit, and the French or Italian style is to make a thin custard with egg yolks and then freeze that for a richer flavour and less chance of ice crystals forming.

I have purchased David Lebovitz's book after reading this article in the Guardian, as well as the excellent reviews, index &c on Amazon, and of course will be consulting my uncle Timothy Walker's book If You Can Read You Can Cook. Uncle Tim is a great ice cream maker and I have fond memories of basil ice cream and strawberries at a barbecue circa 1995.

Reading all these books' careful instructions on how to make a custard base got me to thinking about how fundamentally complicated and delicate an operation custard-making is, and how strange it is therefore that, as Alan Davidson says, it is fundamental to Western cooking (think of dishes like quiche Lorraine or bread and butter pudding, as well as the hot stuff we pour over pies and crumbles). He details how it was made in medieval times - before easily controllable hobs - by being baked in bread ovens after the bread had been taken out, or cooked slowly in a chafing dish under which hot coals were laid, presumably to allow for better control over the heat. He also mentions some medieval tips (important to know if you had unreliable equipment) on how to thicken it, such as mixing in breadcrumbs, or a gelling agent made from carrageen moss. Usually it was eaten as a semi-solid dish – rather like how Americans eat it, as 'pudding' – rather than as a sauce to pour over other things, a change of role that occurred in the nineteenth century.

It is no wonder that the cornflour-based custard powder made by 'Alfred Bird FCS, Experimental Chemist', as his shopfront described him, was a godsend to cooks in the mid-nineteenth century. No more curdling, no more scrambled eggs. I've made ice cream with Ambrosia custard before but have never quite stooped to using powder. And what with my modern gas hob, quality saucepan with no hot spots and ready supply of ice to ice-bath my cream in and avoid overheating of the mixture, I don't really have any excuse to do so.

Two more custard facts: did you know that the word comes from croustade, or tart, and in Britain came to denote the filling rather the whole thing? And, delightfully, that in the 1920s one pâtisserie in Hollywood turned their entire operation over to making the custard tarts that were thrown in films, after perfecting a recipe for a throwable tart with the perfect slurp?

Hey There Sugar

This lady also likes cake.

My article on the association of women with sugar (a follow-up to the piece I wrote on whisky back in June) has just been published by The Vagenda magazine. You can read it here.


I watched It's Complicated last night. I'm not proud of it. But I like Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin, so that's my excuse. Anyway, the film really goes overboard on domestic interiors and 'lifestyle'. Meryl lives in a perfect house, with a perfect garden and perfect kids. And her perfect job? Running a bakery. I have no problem with women running bakeries, obviously, but it seems a little odd to me that running a bakery is depicted as the dream job for a woman in so many films, books and TV shows: see also Bridesmaids and Cougar Town. It's another example of how sugar is believed to be a woman's vice. I don't think I've ever seen a romcom about a female chef or butcher.

Coffee-Making

"At that moment Zita came in with coffee. She made better coffee than anyone in the house; far better than Mr Challis, who went to the most terrific pother with special earthenware saucepans from Paris and a very difficult sort of chicory that no-one else had ever heard of, and exact calculations as to when to add the coffee to the water, and goodness knows what, and then produced a correct but unexciting beverage hardly worthy of all the fuss. Zita boiled water in a little black saucepan, then threw in handfuls of coffee, saying carelessly, 'It is easy – you chust make it strong enough', and out came a blazing-hot, fragrant black liquid worthy of Brillat-Savarin at his best. This annoyed Mr Challis . . ."

Stella Gibbons, Westwood (1946)

This sounds rather familiar to me, and I have to admit that I am a Zita, not a Mr Challis, when it comes to making coffee (and to cooking in general). By this I mean that I fling in coffee according to my mood rather than measuring exactly, with the exciting result that the coffee is always different. Frankly I think that measuring exactly is unlikely to yield a consistent result in any case, since the age and strength of the coffee and how long it has been open are also likely to affect the final flavour.

One of the things I find interesting about this passage is the coffee apparatus. Nowadays most people in the UK and Europe would agree that the preferred way to make coffee is in an espresso machine, which forces hot pressurized water through the roasted coffee, and thus is highly concentrated. Alan Davidson refers to this as 'the world-conquering Italian espresso machine', and for it we do indeed have to thank the Italians. But this is a relatively recent development. In 1946 - and for most of its history in Britain - coffee in the UK was made in a way more traditional to Arab countries, as well as Turkey and Greece: by grinding finely and then boiling. The cafetière, though it retains the oils in the beans in a way drip coffee does not, was only invented in 1929 (also by an Italian, despite the US name 'French press') and was not a common sight on British tables. Coffee was sipped from cups only a little smaller than teacups, not downed in shots from tiny cups, or served in large mugs filled from drip coffee machines, as it often is today in the USA.

Literary Eats #3: Little House on the Prairie

Food features heavily in this story of a little girl growing up as a pioneer in nineteenth-century America. In this, the second book in the series, the Ingalls family makes a trip from Wisconsin to the prairie of Kansas, builds a log cabin and starts a little farm, until they have to move on after hearing that the land they are living on is not legal to be settled after all.

            The ever-resourceful Pa brings home plenty of game – mostly prairie rabbits and fowl – and they have corn meal, sometimes fried in little cakes or made into mush (presumably like polenta), and beans (bean porridge with salt pork is one of Laura’s favourite dishes). But apart from that, no vegetables are mentioned. Of course, this is before the ‘invention’ of vitamins, but you do wonder how they, and families like them, got vitamin C. There’s no description of foraging for wild greens, which presumably they could hardly do on grassland anyway. No fruit or vegetables are mentioned, except for blackberries, and the fateful watermelon that a fellow settler has planted (which the family believes has given them malaria). It takes until the end of the book for them to plant a garden – with peas, beans, turnips and potatoes – and as soon as they do, they have to leave it behind. The pioneer cuisine detailed in the book is simple, repetitive and high on protein but low on vitamins and carbs. You can't have potatoes without a garden, or bake bread without an oven, and processed wheat goods like pasta are still far in the future. Neither does the book mention rice, which would be an ideal, compact staple for a pioneer family: but although it was grown in the Mississippi Valley in the nineteenth century, it didn't seem to be available - or perhaps just wasn't wanted - this far west.

            The luxury food of Laura’s childhood – treats the family has at Christmas – is bread and cake made with white flour, candy, and sweet potatoes. It’s interesting that with all the no doubt flavourful wild game, the more difficult to source complex carbohydrates are the real treats; and the opposite of today, when protein is usually considered the star of the meal, with carbs just the filling accompaniment.

A Carving Lexicon

Carving and serving at a meal, from Les Tres riches heures du duc de Berry (c. 1408).

'Break that deer, leach that brawn, rear that goose, lift that swan, sauce that capon, spoil that hen, frust that chicken, unbrace that mallard, unlace that coney [rabbit], dismember that hern, display that crane, disfigure that peacock, unjoynt that bittern, untach that curlew, allay that pheasant, wing that partridge, wing that quail, mince that plover, thigh that pidgeon, border that pasty, thigh that woodcock; thigh all manner of small birds. 
Timber the fire, tire that egg, chine that salmon, string that lamprey, splat that pike, souce that plaice, sauce that tench, splay that bream, side that haddock, tusk that barbel, culpon that trout, fin that chivin, transon that eel, tranch that sturgeon, undertranch that porpus, tame that crab, barb that lobster.'

From Robert May's The Accomplisht Cook; or, The Art and Mystery of Cookery (1685)

What a lovely set of words for carving. It seems odd now that we have so few: 'carve' seems to cover just about everything, with a few notable exceptions such as shucking oysters. I particularly like 'splat that pike'. So why have we lost all these phrases? Well, apart from the fact that it's simpler to make do with just a few, carving no longer holds the significance that it once did.

In medieval times meals were eaten communally. Everyone in a household – family, retainers, servants and guests – would eat together in a grand hall. Often this would mean hundreds of people. Dishes would be set on the tables (often boards balanced across the knees of the diners, hence the expression 'full board' or 'bed and board' to mean that food will be included) and the head of each table, the man of highest rank, would have the job of carving. Because dining was thus a much more communal and public event than it is today, the art of carving was taught to boys at a young age. It was considered an important part of a young man's education and essential if he were to take his place in society. Knights of the realm prided themselves on their carving skills. At the time Robert May was writing in the seventeenth century, these specialist words for this social ritual were still current; although dining in private homes, separately from servants, was more common than it had been in medieval times, you would still eat with tens or hundreds of others if you were at court or part of a grand household. Food was not plated individually before serving, and it was important to know the etiquette of serving oneself and others.

Nowadays, of course, dining at home is a more private affair. Most joints of meat are smaller and less complicated to carve because they don't have to feed such large numbers of people at once, and in restaurants they will be sliced and plated in the kitchen by professionals, but away from the public gaze. We've lost the significance of carving – almost. The rituals of dismembering the Christmas turkey or the Sunday roast at the table, in front of family and guests, are notable exceptions.