Cinnamon Moon

First Look To Your Oven

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 17:30:00 +0000

Be-Ro was (and is) a well known brand of self-raising flour in Britain. The firm is still in business; their website is here. Thomas Bell, a Newcastle grocer, sold self raising flour and baking supplies in the late 19th century under the name "Bells Royal" (no apostrophe). Self raising flour was invented by Bristol baker Henry Jones in 1845, but Be-Ro really popularized it in the early 20th century.

After the Edwardian era it was illegal to use "Royal" in product names so Bell renamed his products Be-Ro. It looks like you can now get a reprint of the first Be-Ro cookbook from 1923, too - see here.This promotional cookbook featuring a girl apparently wearing lipstick dates from the 1920s.

The booklet is full of wonderful things and is well worth paging through, virtually (just follow the link under the image). Early on in it, under the heading "Why BE-RO Flour is so Popular" it is stated that it is "the ideal Self-Raising Flour for the slow amateur." Not just amateurs, you understand - the slow ones. I have been baking for some time, but even if you do know your way around a muffin tin, sometimes you have times when the term "slow amateur" fits like a perfectly tailored oven mitt. I know I do. So I read on.

Next we are all encouraged to teach our daughter to make "Scones and Cakes for daddy's tea." I was hoping that after that there would be a section on teaching the girls to make Mummy's cocktails and hot hors d'oeuvres, which she is going to need after a long baking section, but alas, no. I then read the Useful Hints section and was delighted with this one:

First, look to your oven.

I felt enormously clever without even getting up from the kitchen table, I tell you, as I glanced over at the oven. Check that one off the list!

Duke University Collections

Anyway, there are some nice recipes in Be-Ro Home Recipes, all the standard traditional British cakes and scones and pasties and things. Having married a Briton (do people say 'Briton' anymore, by the way, or do you only use the term when referring to, say, 'Arthur, King of the Britons'?) - I always like to check any British cookbooks i come across, to see if there's anything I might want to know about. The Family Cake recipe is one that I will probably copy out and stick in my recipe file box.

Family Cake is a light fruit cake that is very similar to Luncheon Cake in my 1920s Mrs. Beeton's Cookery, or to a Dundee Cake without the almonds. It travels well and really isn't heavy at all, unlike the stereotypical fruit cake typically dreaded around Christmas. This recipe makes a pretty small cake, so I'd suggest doubling the ingredients. I think it would freeze quite well, too.

Some Hot Tomata Sauce

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Mon, 19 Aug 2013 21:53:00 +0000

Mr. Samuel Pickwick is the hero of Dickens' first novel, The Pickwick Papers (1836). He and his three fellow Pickwick Club members travel around the countryside observing things and occasionally getting into trouble (Dickens hadn't quite got the hang of plotting yet, but I still enjoyed it). Anyway, Mr. Pickwick writes a very curious little note to a landlady named Mrs. Bardell, who uses it as evidence in the breach of promise she brings against him. That is, she is suing him for promising to marry her and not doing so. The note containing the so-called promise is read out in court:

"'Dear Mrs. B. - Chops and Tomata sauce, Yours, Pickwick.' Gentlemen, what does this mean? Chops and Tomata sauce. Yours, Pickwick! Chops! Gracious heavens! and Tomata sauce! Gentlemen, is the happiness of a sensitive and confiding female to be trifled away, by such shallow artifices as these?"

All this time I thought that part of the humor of the note was Pickwick misspelling the word tomato. But it seems that I was wrong. Mutton chops and "tomata" sauce was indeed a dish listed in several cookbooks of the 1830s. Simpson's Cookery (1834) uses the spelling "tomata" all throughout the book and includes two recipes for "Cutlets of Mutton with Tomata Sauce."

As The Virtual Linguist points out, tomata was a spelling also used by Jane Austen and that indeed there were several spellings of the word. As I know from hunting for ancestral surnames in the census, spelling conventions were a little lax back in the day.

But why did Pickwick's note meet with such indignation, if not for the spelling? Why did they think it was code for a proposal of marriage? Critic J. Hillis Miller writes that "perhaps this is because tomatoes were thought to be an aphrodisiac" and that "for a man to says 'Chops and Tomata sauce' to a woman is an implicit proposition." I assume that Mr. Miller is being ironic here. But tomatoes were certainly associated with love and sometimes even called "love apples." And the phrase "a hot tomato" was slang for a passionate woman, by the 1920s or the 1950s, depending on which slang dictionary you check.

The recipe above, for "Tomatas, or Love-Apples," is from an 1838 cookbook with the grand title The Modern Process for the Preservation of All Alimentary Substances. Imagine what trouble Mr. Pickwick would have got into if he had sent that in a note to Mrs. Bardell.

A Piece of Coffee Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Wed, 14 Aug 2013 19:04:00 +0000

Who invented coffee cake and when did they do that? I mean yeast-based coffee cakes, the ones that have a vein of cinnamon and brown sugar in them and scribbles of white icing. When did they first appear? Streusel kuchen (crumb cake), fruit kuchen, stollen, and babka are among the many traditional European sweet breads eaten at breakfast and they have been around for generations. But it was probably the German crumb cake that gave rise to the modern American coffee cake at the end of the 19th century.

Before that, in the 1870s and 1880s, Coffee Cake was often featured in American cookbooks but meant something else altogether. These early Coffee Cake recipes are for something very close to gingerbread: a coffee-flavored molasses and spice cake. According to The Home Cook Book (1876) you were to use a full pound of raisins and a cup of cold coffee in your cake, and it could be turned into a proper fruit cake with the addition of more candied or dried fruits.

Aunt Babette's Cook Book (1889), by Bertha F. Kramer, has a whole chapter on Coffee Cakes - all sorts of cakes to have with coffee. Included among them are recipes for German and French Coffee Cakes. The The Complete Bread, Cake and Cracker Baker's German Coffee Cake was to be made from leftover bread dough with sugar and cinnamon sprinkled on top. Here you can see both types of coffee cake recipes in the book.

French Coffee Cake is a sweet yeast bread with candied fruit, baked in a ring. Aunt Babette's standard, plain Coffee Cake, however, is the same coffee-flavored raisin-gingerbread, to which you could add chopped citron and "English currants" if you liked. Her recipe for "Kaffee Kuchen" is closer to modern coffee cake: a sweet yeast bread brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and chopped almonds. In 1881,

This coffee cake recipe from a 1936 newspaper states that it is a "novelty" that "never lets a man down" when it's time for breakfast. Presumably it didn't let women down either. I've boiled down (hah) the recipe below:

Coffee Cake

1 cup sifted flour to which add 1 1/4 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt, and resift.
Cream 3 Tb butter or shortening and add 2 Tb sugar and an egg, beating which each addition.
Add alternately, to the creamed mixture, the flour mixture and 1/2 cup of milk.
Turn the dough into a 9 inch greased pie pan.
Sprinkle with a mix of 4 Tb sugar and 1/2 tsp cinnamon.
Bake "in a moderate oven" (350 degrees, in other words) for about 20 minutes.
Take out of oven, moisten top with 2 Tb each mixed melted butter and milk. Return to oven for another 15 minutes and "serve piping hot."

Now of course there are hundreds of coffee cake recipes and mixes and you can pretty much make or buy whatever you like best. At our house we have blueberry coffee cake made with applesauce and soy milk on holiday mornings - by which I mean mostly Christmas, because I bake more in the winter and I only haul out the Bundt cake tin around the middle of December.

Holiday Cards and Mincemeat Pies

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 10:00:00 +0000

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Mrs. Smith's for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

I've been thinking about pies a lot because during the holidays, that is one of the things people tend to like having on hand. Every year I make mince pies for my British spouse, who loves them and for whom December just isn't right without a supply of mince pies. Mincemeat, as you probably know, originally had quite a bit of meat in it, as well as the now-familar dried and candied fruits and peel, shortening or suet, and a good dose of brandy or rum.

If I don't have time to make them, I could always buy some from Mrs. Smith's, though, who has been purveying delicious pies since the 1920s.

One reason I tend to get behind in the pie-baking is the sending out of the holiday cards. If you're like me and still need to send out some holiday cards, you can go to the Mrs. Smith’s pies microsite and send some delicious e-cards. And not only that, but both you and your lucky holiday e-card recipients will get a free Mrs. Smith's coupon. But wait, there's more! A portion of all Mrs. Smith's pie sales for November and December will be donated to Operation Homefront (they also provided pies for Thanksgiving for Operation Homefront this year).

I went over to visit the Mrs. Smith's microsite and it is so great - my favorite part was the very clear and easy-to-access nutritional information, because even when we're indulging insome treats, it's nice to know these things. I also liked the section on Mrs. Smith's history, not surprisingly (there really was a Mrs. Smith, by the way, in the early 1900s). And if I was bringing a Mrs. Smith's pie to a holiday meal, I think I'd go with those mince pies. They look wonderful, and would please all the English traditionalists at home.

Don't forget, Mrs. Smith's is donating $1 for every pie that we buy until the end of the year, so please visit them and send some of their pie-friendly, toothsome e-cards. Then you can use some coupons for the real-life pies, too.

A 1930s Halloween Party

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 13:28:00 +0000

There just aren't many advertisements for Halloween candy before the 1940s, but I did find one in the Schenectady Gazette of October 30, 1931 (over here at Fulton History if you're interested, though I warn you there are no delicious pictures involved). A store in Schenectady called Carl's was selling

Pure butter creams in assorted Halloween colors - pumpkins, carrots, moon faces, and assorted nuts. Also hard candies in Halloween colors, filled with fruit and pecans. Be sure to get your supply early.

Wikimedia Commons

Carl's Halloween candy was 39 cents a pound - which was rather a lot, if you look at the other items on the page for comparison - overcoats for boys were $9.95, dresses were just over $6, and something called "The Tie of the Hour" ("new colors, new stripes") was 55 cents (there is a slightly alarming typo that makes this $55 a tie, which is what drew my eye to it - then I saw that they were actually 2 for a dollar).

I really like the idea of candy in the shape of moon faces - do they do this any more? And has anyone heard of hard candy filled with both fruit and nuts? I hadn't. I am about to go buy some more Halloween candy since we only bought a little bit, which has been sitting on top of a high cookbook shelf for a couple of weeks, quite forgotten. The dollar store has gummy fangs and things, so I might get some of those. The stuff in drugstores is so expensive - much more than Carl's, even.

The ad at the top of the post is from 1930, and shows you what you'd want to get after you went to Carl's for moon face candies - provided, that is, you could get to Chicago and back in time to set everything up. Maybe you should just order them from the catalogue (you can see one over here at Etsy, by the way). Because Van Housen's promises to make your party "sizzle and bake" with their "sparkling and fresh merchandise." I'm not sure you want your party to bake, exactly, but the point is that you could.

Safe As After School Jell-O

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 20:01:00 +0000

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Insurance Hunter for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Well, back in 1959, according to this ad, National Jell-O-For-After-School-Snacks Week (try saying that three times fast) was in September, so we may be a little late telling you about it. But you can definitely celebrate this important culinary occasion right now, if you like.

One suggestion I have for this snack, from a 1960s edition of The Joys of Jell-O, is to make gelatin cubes - just mix one packet of flavored gelatin with 1 cup of boiling water, mix to dissolve, then add just 3/4 cup of cold water. Pour it in a pan and stick it in the fridge. When it is set, you cut it into cubes (of course). Which the possible outcomes of the scene on your left. I do not recommend making two gigantic bowls of gelatin and then letting over-excited young children rush into the kitchen and deal with it. This is just asking for trouble.

And that's because when you walk to and from school - just like I did back in the retro 60s and 70s - you do need a little something when you get home. I liked tea and toast when I got home, when Iwas in high school. In good weather I was walking almost a mile both ways (when New York was all winter-sloppy with slush I sometimes took the bus, I confess).

In any case, the snack is a good idea and the walking to school is also good, I think, if you live within walking distance of school. Now, according to Insurance Hunter’s survey on driver safety in school zones of parents in Ontario and Alberta whose children are between 4 and 14. Did you know that more than three-quarters of these parents have witnessed people driving without regard for regulations, right near their schools? Of course, they are worried, too, because if you aren't beying the speed limit, and/or talking on a cell phone (among other things) - the potential for accidents goes way, way up.

You can have a look at the Ontario School Zone Safety Survey and lots of tips and articles about cars and auto insurance in general by visiting InsuranceHunter.ca. And while you do, why not take some time out for a restorative cup of tea and some toast? Or maybe even some Jell-O. Just make sure keep your young, hungry school children safe at home as well as en route - by serving it in nice plastic bowls.

Suffrage Pudding

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 19:01:00 +0000

Equal rights, and apple pudding

Susan B. Anthony, the noted 19th century feminist, civil rights leader and writer, was also, according to journalist and cookbook author Jane Cunningham Croly, "an excellent cook and housekeeper." And when Susan did the cooking at home, Croly noted in her Jennie June's American Cookery Book (1878), meals were on time, delicious and healthy, too.

Anthony was a culinary modernist among her fellow Victorians, preferring simply prepared natural foods. Although she also seems to have been of the opinion that a little cream and powdered sugar never hurt anyone, not in moderation, anyway.

This was her favorite pudding:

Susan B. Anthony's Apple Tapioca Pudding

Peel and core eight apples, fill them with sugar in which a little nutmeg has been grated. Take a cupful of tapioca,which has all night been soaking in water, add to it a little milk or water if needed, and pour it round the apples, which have been laid in a buttered dish. Bake slowly one hour, and served with cream and powdered sugar. It is good hot or cold, the tapioca forming a jelly round the apples. [Jennie June's American Cookery, p. 330]

You might want to sweeten the tapioca mixture, or possibly cut up the apples and mix them, along with the nutmeg-sugar, with it before baking. Although given Miss Anthony's expression in the above picture, maybe you ought to just do what she says.

Cooking Up A Sense of Community

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Aviva Community Fund for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Cooking and community cookbooks were a huge and important part of people's lives in 19th century America (and they still are, in many places). I can't tell you how many of the books in my vintage cookbook collection were written by ladies' community organizations or church guilds. These were sold to riase money for community projects, and, of course, helped the people who bought them, too - because they usually have some really interesting recipes in them.

Take The Home Cook Book (1876), for example, whose collective authors were the Christ Church Women's Working Guild (St. Thecla Chapter) of East Orange, New Jersey. These ladies show us how to make everything from Asparagus Soup to Picnic Salad, Egg Gems, Federal Cake, and a toasted cheese recipe subtitled "Household Treasure." And Miss Hattie Buck contributed a curious little snack that she called Taste Warms: they were bits of pie crust that you cut out in shapes, baked, then cut open when warm and spread with preserves.

Community cookbooks like The Home Cook Book not only shine a light on the local traditions and recipes of a place, but they help bring people together, and raise money for a common community cause - just the sort of thing that the Aviva Community Fund supports so generously. Aviva Community Fund is an annual charity event that’s funded and supported by Aviva Insurance. The goal? To create and encourage positive change in local communities. People like you and me can submit their ideas for helping the place they live, and let family friends and neighbors know about it, and get everyone voting. All you have to do is create a great idea - you can use photos and video to really make it come alive. Then register at Aviva Community Fund - after that, you can enter your idea into the competition. Make sure you get all your friends and family to vote for you, and promote your idea on social media, too. You can learn how to enter the Aviva Community Fund charity contest and Like Aviva Community Fund at Facebook - and you can Follow @Aviva on Twitter, too.

Coffee Is Not Enough

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 01:00:00 +0000

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of InsuranceHunter for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Plenty of coffee, and chocolate coffee beans, sometimes, too. Great music specially chosen from my mp3 player that makes you feel bright and energetic. These are the things that I offer the spousal driver on long trips. I’m the car DJ/barista, you see, because at the moment I don't drive (I grew up in Manhattan so driving was not something I grew up with naturally.) And when the driver (aka my dear spouse) gets tired of all that, I engage him in excellent conversation. And what I mean by that last is that I try to. Because sometimes on a long road trip (um, mostly, that is) I am not feeling terribly scintillating. So maybe I talk about what new blend of coffee he is trying.

But you know what? According to a new survey of Ontario family driving patterns, coffee and clever repartee isn't enough.

I have just read InsuranceHunter’s survey on driver’s safety and it was really rather, well, eye-opening. Did you know that in Ontario, dads do most of the family driving, and are much more likely to continue driving even when they are tired? A full 10% of these tired dads actually do get into accidents simply because they are tired. And even if you do have auto insurance, that isn't going to make your vacation any better.

Conclusion: we need to start thinking more about the driver’s needs. He needs more breaks, and that means either stopping off the road for a rest or switching drivers. And you don't have to get to the cottage or the beach in the shortest amount of time - it's not a contest, right? We break long trips up into 2 days, and treat it as part of the vacation. For example, when we drive down to New York City, we always stop in upstate New York overnight. The hotel is fun to stay in, the mountain scenery is a treat and we always have a great time. Best of all, everyone starts out the next day having had a good sleep. Especially the valiant driver.

Do go and check out Insurance Hunter’s safety survey - you can read about this important survey in greater detail at the link. And you can find some excellent suggestions about auto insurance over there, too.

Some Frozen Yogurt With the Moon

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 14:20:00 +0000

Wikimedia Commons

Even the moon likes yogurt, as you can see in the 1951 ad on the right. Not surprising. A lot of us do. And it's especially delicious when it comes in the form of frozen yogurt, I think - especially with a few berries on top. If you have some frozen yogurt mix on hand, it's easy to make some yourself.

Back in the 1970s frozen yogurt was a startlingly new thing. I remember how thrilled my mother was about the first frozen yogurt popsicles - raspberry flavored, from Dannon, and covered in chocolate. I liked them a lot, too. They were better than ice cream because they were creamy and sweet, but with the lovely tang you get with yogurt.

Yogurt itself was a fairly new thing to us North Americans in the 70s, even though of course it is a centuries-old food in Russia, Turkey, Greece and many parts of the Middle East and Asia (especially India and Nepal). I was surprised to learn that it had been available in the US since the early 1900s - the first big yogurt company in the US, Columbo, was founded in 1929 - but it really took hold in the groovy 1960s. The ad on the right, for Yami Yogurt, was a rare one in the 1950s. It suggests that you make a Nature's Nightcap before retiring each night - that would be fruit and yogurt mixed together. And that's still a nice idea for any time of the day.

Nowadays, a lot of brands of commercial frozen yogurt do not have that tangy flavor that you get when you make it yourself using soft serve equipment - so it is definitely on my list of Things I Will Make Myself, Someday. That list, by the way, includes homemade preserves, pickles, and wine. I've actually been talking about these fine plans, as I do every year in the late summer when I notice the quinces a-quincing out in the backyard and say: you know, I am totally making something with those quinces this year. And also making some wine. And maybe also some pickles! I guess you could say I'm working up to it really slowly.

In any case, frozen yogurt ought to be easier for me to get going, especially since I am not exactly going to be opening a frozen yogurt business or anything, although you never know, right? I just need a frozen yogurt maker and - well, ingredients. I am thinking of coconut frozen yogurt, or pistacchio, or dark chocolate orange. What are your favorite frozen yogurt flavors?

Cinnamon Stick Biscuits

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 21:57:00 +0000

Cinnamon sticks (not the cookie kind)

I came across these cookies - confections, really, more than cookies or biscuits - in a book called The Italian Confectioner (1829) by the very non Italian-sounding William Alexis Jarrin. To make them you take "the quantity you want" of marzipan and add powdered cinnamon and "a little bol ammoniac" - he doesn't say how much, so we'll have to guesstimate.

Bol ammoniac is actually soft bright red clay or earth also known as Armenian Bole, since it's found in Armenia. In the 1830s, bol ammoniac was used in a kind of French toothpaste. In an 1838 issue of the Magazine of Domestic Economy there's a recipe for this which includes myrrh, ginger, orris root and bol ammoniac. It also has honey in it, which probably wasn't the best thing to brush your teeth with. The picture below of Armenian Bole is from an art supply website (link under the image) - so take that into consideration, too.

Armenian Bole

After you get the marzipan tinted red and flavored with cinnamon, you're supposed to roll it out very thin, on "wafer paper" (wax paper would be all right). Then you are to cut it into oblongs and roll it on "little rods" to look like cinnamon sticks. Bake at a low heat, which Jarrin calls rather charmingly "a slack oven" (which is perfect for me since I'm a fairly slack sort of cook most days). If you bake the cinnamon marzipan in a round or oval shape, Jarrin says that they are called Cinnamon Blow Biscuits. As ever, he does not explain why they are called that.

That's it really. I've never seen anything like this - cinnamon sweets made to resemble real cinnamon sticks - and, well, I thought it would make an appropriate little post here on Cinnamon Moon. Yes, culinary history can be relaxed and brief sometimes! Slack, even. And happy Friday afternoon! - time for us all to have a cup of tea and a cookie, with or without cinnamon.

Kitchen Magic, Meringues and Roman Punch Ice

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 04:17:00 +0000

Everyone needs a little Kitchen Magic in their lives - especially, of course, in their kitchens. And one of the simplest forms comes in the shape of a really good whisk. For example - and I know that this defies conventional wisdom, but it works - when I'm baking, and don't want to sift the dry ingredients, I whisk them for a minute. It works really well, because sifting is pretty much aerating and mixing, right? This is just so much easier to perform with a whisk.

With the beautiful pink Kitchen Magic whisk, you can speed up your baking, yes, but wait! There's more! The traditional uses of the whisk include, of course, making one of my favorite confections, meringues. Named (perhaps) for the Swiss town of Meiringen, these egg white and sugar clouds have been known since the 17th century. One of the most original uses I've ever seen for meringues comes from an 1844 book by Eleanor Parkinson called The Complete Confectioner, Pastry-cook, and Baker. This is a recipe for a water ice that is enriched with meringue (as well as with a great deal of liquor, which is another matter altogether). It is called Roman Punch Ice (or Frozen Roman Punch) and was often served as an in-between course, or palate-cleanser, at fancy Victorian dinners. Edith Wharton mentions it twice in her novel The Age of Innocence (published in 1920, but set in New York in the 1870s).

Edith Wharton liked Roman Punch Ice

Roman Punch Ice

Make a quart of lemon ice, and flavour it with a glass or two of each, of rum, brandy, champagne, and Maraschino; when it is frozen, to each quart take the whites of five eggs and whip them to a very strong froth; boil half a pound of sugar to the ball, and rub it with a spoon or spatula against the sides to grain it; when it turns white, mix it quickly with the whites of eggs, stir it lightly together, and add it to the ice; when cold, mix it well together, and serve it in glasses.

This would have been mixed with spoons back in the 1840s, I suppose; modern whisks were only invented at the end of the 1800s. But it would have been so much easier to whip up (so to speak) this elaborate frozen dessert with a really great whisk. After which we could all retire to the back porch with our cool dishes of Roman Punch Ice. That sounds rather magical, actually, doesn't it?

[Images from Wikipedia]

Skating On A Slice Of Bread

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 18:30:00 +0000

This Bread Diet from 1939 is pretty much the opposite of the Dieta Atkins or the dieta Fricker. These are both, as you probably know, low carb eating plan based around meats, veggies, eggs and other high protein, low/no sugar foods (Dr. Fricker allows things like yogurt, though). Something else that won't surprise you is that the Bread Diet was dreamed up by the puffy-hatted bakers at the American Institute of Baking.

So if you wanted to be surrounded by simpering gentlemen in white tie, you would need to eat a ton of bread. Six slices a day, at least. And then very soon you'd be wearing a white ballgown and also be sporting some pretty fancy jewellery. And if you got tired of flirting, you could "skate more than 1 mile on one slice of bread." Guess that was a pretty big slice of bread. Or else you'd be wearing skates with that ballgown.

Funny how things like this never seem to happen when I eat toast.

I've been meaning to feature some retro diets here, because in addition to collecting vintage cookbooks, I also have a small collection of retro dieting books - ranging from the surprisingly good (Dr. Bircher and his muesli recipes) to the delightfully wacky (June Roth's fancied-up 60s diet fare). Of course, eating plans such as the traditional dieta mediterranea have been around for centuries, and mostly involve eating whole foods prepared in simple and delicious ways. And thanks to tons of information online - in all kinds of languages - we know a lot more than we did back in 1939. And not only about healthy eating - also about not trying to skate on pieces of bread.

A School of Swedish Fish

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 13:47:00 +0000

Wikipedia

If you've ever seen Swedish Fish - those soft red chewy candies shaped like, not surprisingly, fish - in a candy store - did you ever wonder why they were, specifically, Swedish Fish?

I never did. They are actually originally Swedish-made jelly candies that were invented in the late 1960s, especially for export to the North American market. Swedish Berries and Swedish Shells were also developed at the same time, also for export, by a company called Malaco. The Shells came in a variety of colors and were sold, like the Fish, in bulk candy stores and a few other places.

I associate Swedish Fish with this very hot weather, because I first had them when there was a heat wave in the mid 1970s and we were visiting my cousins in Massachusetts. The only air-conditioned place was the car (there were no swimming pools near them, none at all) - so my dad drove my cousins and I around for awhile to cool off. We stopped at a little old general store out in the country and the only thing I remember us buying was - you guessed it, Swedish Fish. They just came in red, as I recall. But as you can see in the picture, they come in other colors, now, too. There's even a mixture called Aqua Life that features different colored candy sea creatures, not just fish.

But if, like me, you like the original Swedish Fish, you can still find them in specialty candy stores; or, if you don't feel like swimming around in the heat, at wholesale candy sites online.

Mr. Ogburn's Tree House

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 21:59:00 +0000

Post brought to you by Insurance Hunter. All opinions are 100% mine.

In honor of the summer season, I’ve been reading all about how people used to cook when they went camping a hundred or so years ago. Some are actually quite good. At the end of this post I’ll be giving you a recipe for Adirondack Pancakes which looks rather good and easy. I may use it as an excuse for us to go off to the Adirondacks to test it out.

I also came across a gentleman who cooked this way, I think, pretty much every day. Please meet Thomas J. Ogburn, 1920s resident of Manasquan, New Jersey. Specifically, resident (from 1921 to 1926) of a tree house in Manasquan, New Jersey. I love this picture of him sitting at his front door, in a suit and hat, smoking and reading the paper. Unfortunately his house was “marked for destruction’ in 1926 because the town wanted to put a road through where the tree stood.

If only Mr. Osburn had had some tree house insurance. If he could travel to the future - and if his tree had been in Ontario - he might have been using his laptop up there instead of reading the paper and having a good look at Insurance Hunter. Because, you see, residents of Ontario, Canada can use Insurance Hunter - an online, 24/7 insurance brokerage site. And it makes finding a good quote for auto, house or travel insurance perfectly simple.

Insurance Hunter helps you (not the insurance companies) by locating the best quotes tailored just to your specific needs. It bases them on their research and on the results of a short questionnaire that you fill in online. Insurance Hunter is the best choice because it’s an independent brokerage designed to help the consumer, and save them time and money. And because it’s online, you can use it any time, in the comfort of your home. Your information is secure, too, since they use VeriSign security.

It’s really convenient and easy to do the Insurance Hunter questionnaire - I tried it and it’s quite simple. You get three quotes in about three minutes. I also really liked the Knowledge Center which has some great tips about home and travel insurance and Auto Insurance, too. I learned a few really good tips, such as just what you need to do if you leave home on vacation to keep things safe (such as getting a house sitter and making sure you put a hold on the mail). So if I do get to try making pancakes in the Adirondacks, I'll know where to look for travel insurance rates.

Do try Insurance Hunter for yourself. It’s free, quick to use, secure, and gives you insurance quotes based on your specific circumstances whether you need insurance for traveling, or Car Insurance, or home insurance. Even if your house is up in a tree.

[The story about Mr. Ogburn is from Popular Science, June 1926]

Mother Johnson’s Adirondack Pancakes*
Take a quart of sour milk and add enough flour to make “a rather thick batter.” Let it stand overnight. In the morning add two beaten eggs and half a tsp of baking soda dissolved in a tablespoon of warm water. Make your pancakes at once. [From Practical Hints on Camping, by Howard Henderson, 1882, p. 64

[I have no idea who Mother Johnson was, by the way, but I guess she was taken camping and needed an quick easy thing to make for breakfast]

The White Soup of Gover

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 15:58:00 +0000

Welsh ladies in traditional dress, 1851

This is the story of a Welsh hermit with a flair for cooking and a good sense of humor, too.

Augusta, Lady Llanover (1802-1896) was a Welsh heiress who was a champion of the Welsh language and arts in the 19th century. She is said to have popularized (or even invented, which appears to be an exaggeration) the Welsh national costume, as seen on the left. In any case, she was a remarkable woman, devoted to all things Welsh; her bardic name was the Bee of Gwent. She married Benjamin Hall, 1st Baron Llanover, who was a politician best known for being the Commissioner of Works after whom (it is said) the iconic London clock tower "Big Ben" is named.

Clytha Castle, a folly in Monmouthshire

Busy as she was, Augusta also found time to write a cookbook - inspired by a mysterious Hermit. Hermits were often kept by wealthy Victorians to lend a Gothic/literary tone to their estates. They usually lived in odd, decorative buildings known as follies, which were often built to resemble ruined Gothic towers or crumbling temples. The most famous of the Victorian hermits was real-life Miss Havisham, James Lucas, the Hermit of Hertfordshire. Lucas was a wealthy landowner who, after the death of his mother, locked himself in his house and lived in increasing disarray and filth in his kitchen (he sounds like the famously eccentric, hoarding Collyer brothers of early 20th century New York).

Lady Llanover's hermit was called the Hermit of St. Gover's Cell. She writes in her introduction to Good Cookery Illustrated (1867) that many of her friends wanted her to write about the tasty things they'd eaten when they went to visit the Hermit in his cell, which was "a house cut out of a rock adjoining the cell and opposite the Well of St. Gover" (p. 2). There was a St. Gover's Well in Kensington Gardens, London, according to The Antiquary (vol. 22, 1890, p. 183). And this was set up by none other than Benjamin Hall, in honor of his estate:

The name "Llanover" is derived from a British saint named Gover, and in the grounds of Llanover House, Monmouthshire, are still to be seen the celebrated St. Gover's Wells.

The Hermit kept the recipes written in a day-book and on a chalk-board in his larder. He also seems to have had "four Welsh women of advanced age" - all widows, between 50 and 80 - in traditional Welsh costume, cooking for him. So this was no ordinary hermit. A lot of the book consists of the hermit showing a male Traveler how good food should taste, as opposed to the nasty things the latter has been eating in modern railway station restaurants.

The soup-inspiring White Cliffs of Dover

The book contains a large number of the Hermit's best recipes, and this one has the amusing name The White Soup of Gover:

Put one quart of veal stock in a double saucepan to warm, then chop fine six ounces of onion, six of celery, four of leeks, six of pumpkin, four of onions, four of carrots; stir the whole in a single saucepan over the stove for ten minutes, with as much top fat as will make them into a pulp, without burning or being oily; then shake in with the dredger as much flour as will form the whole into a pulpy paste, stirring briskly for five minutes more; then add the whole mass to the hot veal stock in the saucepan, and let all stew slowly together surrounded with boiling water for an hour and a half, frequently stirring; then pass through a wire sieve, return into a clean double saucepan, add whatever flavouring is deficient, either in salt or herbs, with six spoonfuls of cream; let the whole be well stirred and thoroughly hot, and it is ready for the table. (p. 391)

And make sure that you have a fully equipped kitchen and several Welsh widows to serve as sous-chefs, too (he doesn't actually say this, of course).

There are plenty of fabulous photographs over at the Lady Llanover Society website. I don't think I'm allowed to use them, so you'll have to go over and visit them. My images are all from Wikipedia, by the way.

A Wine Rack Full of Plum Wine

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 21:02:00 +0000

At the moment our Wine Storage is quite basic, to put it mildly. That is to say, we have our bottles lined up on the sideboard and have been meaning to get a proper wine rack for some time. Since we're fixing up the house a bit this year, I think we might actually spring for a wine rack. Maybe we'll even make one of these from Popular Science in 1970, which you have to cut out and then put together (though happily you do not have to also make the matching lamp and pipe rack).

It's really a good idea, if you like and collect wines, to have a proper rack or two. Whether they are wood or metal, free-standing or mounted onto a wall - or even a wine cube as in the picture, below right - wine racks keep your bottles safe and sound and display them at the same time. My mother used to paste wine labels on the kitchen wall, just above the sink back splash, because she liked the artwork on them. Why not enjoy the decorative look of the label and the bottle?

Someday I am going to start making my own wine - I've always wanted to do this, along with making jams and things. I don't really have the space or time now. But what I do have are the retro wine-making books! This is a recipe from a terrific little book called Do's and Don'ts of Wine Making (1959) by Peggy Hutchinson. She tells the reader how to make wine out of just about every fruit, vegetable and herb you can think of. Banana wine? Carrot wine? Peggy knows how to make them and she'll tell you everything to do, as well as all the don'ts. But I'll probably start with something more conventional, like Plum Wine - the perfect thing to make, bottle, store on a beautiful wine rack, and then enjoy,chilled, with a slice of lime in each glass:

Plum Wine

4 lbs plums
4 lbs sugar
5 quarts water
1/2 lb toasted bread
1/2 oz. yeast
1 lemon

Boil the plums, toast and lemon rind 20 minutes in the water. Squeeze out. Strain.
Add sugar, lemon juice, and when cool add yeast. Sit well. Bottle and cork.

Peggy Hutchinson adds aproovingly, "This will make any kind of plums into good wine." Guaranteed! But first, I need to get a good wine rack. And some bottles. I'll just put our other wine bottles on the rack as placeholders for now, though.

[Pictures of the wine cube and the plums are from Wikipedia.]

Around the World In At Least 80 Hot Sauces

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 22:43:00 +0000

Middle Eastern Harissa sauce

Hot sauce - the main components of which are usually hot chili peppers and vinegar, plus or minus a myriad of other ingredients - has been popular around the world for a long time. Also called chili sauce or pepper sauce, it will generally contain hot peppers of some kind, and vinegar - as well as any number of other ingredients. And there are so many kinds of hot peppers, from the Scotch Bonnet (whose shape resembles a Scottish tam o'shanter hat) to the banana pepper, the birdseye and the habanero. And those are just a few!

There are chili sauces used for dipping meats and spring rolls in Asian countries, fiery North African harissa, Tabasco sauce in its familiar McElhenny bottle, African piri piri sauce (made from the very hot, little pepper of the same name). For the daring diner, there are sauces made from peppers like the current world champion Hottest Chili Around - which has the wonderful name of the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion. Scorpion-based sauces are for extreme hot-sauce fans because the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion packs quite a wallop on the Scoville scale.

Wilbur Scoville

What's the Scoville scale? Named for Wilbur Scoville, the mild-looking pharmacist on your right, it is the scale he devised back in 1912 for ranking the hotness of chili peppers by rating their levels of capsaicin oil, which as you might guess, is what gives a chili pepper its brightness - its pep - its very zing, if you will. He called it the Scoville Organileptic Test, but today we just call it the Scoville scale and get on with rating all those delicious, spicy peppers.

The Trinidad Moruga Scorpion is ranked at 1 1/2 to 2 million Scoville heat units. That's about what police-grade pepper spray is ranked, too - just to give you an idea of how super-hot it is. Tabasco sauce, which most of us have had, is between 3500 and 8000 Scoville units. And the sweet, mild red bell pepper rates not a single Scoville unit.

Tabasco peppers

If you are a real fan of all kinds of special and artisan hot sauces, why not try joining the Hot Sauce of the Month Club and become a card (or bottle) carrying member of the Hot Sauce Club - it's an easy way to create your own collection of interesting hot pepper sauces to try on all your favorite foods. You'll be able to discover some amazing new flavor combinations - and give the bottle of classic Tabasco some terrific company on your pantry shelves. And what's more, it's a delicious way to travel the world - right in your own kitchen.

[All images are from Wikipedia]

Gone With the Mutton

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 15:19:00 +0000

Not amused by mutton without caper sauce!

What does Queen Victoria have in common with Scarlett O'Hara, the fiery and magnetic heroine of Gone With the Wind?

They both ate in secret, before attending public banquets. Or at least Scarlett was supposed to. Remember how in Gone With the Wind, Mammy ordered Scarlett to eat a plate of food before the Twin Oaks barbecue, because gentleman mostly did not like to see ladies stuffing themselves? Scarlett, as you might remember, refused to do such a thing, and had all the gentlemen bringing her delicious things on plates.

If only the cook at Tara had sent up a plate of boiled mutton with caper sauce, well - Scarlett would have been the daintiest lady at Twin Oaks, and then who knows how things would have turned out. Maybe she would have impressed Ashley Wilkes so much that they would have married, and then...well, who knows? In any case - behold the power of boiled mutton with caper sauce, as told to us by Victorian cooking authority Jennie June:

Victoria relishes boiled mutton caper sauce. Has a hearty meal of it every day at two, when she sits down with her children. Never eats any thing at state banquets, because she dined so heartily off mutton, at two, that she has no appetite left.

Which I am sure impressed Victoria's Ashley Wilkes, Prince Albert (and happily, she did get to marry him, as we all know). Boiled mutton and caper sauce was a standard, ordinary dish for ordinary folks in mid-19th century England; Mrs. Beeton spends a fair amount of time explaining how to prepare both the boiled mutton and the caper sauce.

Capers, by the way, are the flower buds of the caper bush (Capparis spinosa), a perennial that also bears a caper berry (these are the round pickled capers that you can buy in fancier grocery stores). The caper sauce served with mutton was made from the flower buds because you could use nasturtium buds as a substitute. They were chopped fine and added to a combination of melted butter and milk, all of which was simmered and "served in a tureen."

In 1887, Gustave Louis Maurice Strauss - clearly a culinary rebel - ordered roast mutton with caper sauce in a London restaurant, which horrified the waiter no end. He went to fetch the owner, who asked, did he not want boiled mutton? Strauss said no, roast please "and asked him whether he had any moral objection to it. He went away shaking his head." But the next time Strauss went to the restaurant the owner smilingly told him that he'd tried roast mutton with caper sauce and my was it good!

Strauss, also known as "the Old Bohemian," was born in Quebec, Canada in 1807, received a Ph.D. in Germany, went to France for awhile before being banished in 1839 for concocting a "revolutionary plot." He then spent the rest of his life in London as an "author, linguist, chemist, politician, cook, tutor, dramatist, journalist [and] surgeon." In other words, a man of the world - and someone who knew what he liked in the way of roast meats and sauces.

Jennie June, by the way, recommends boiled mutton with rice, mashed potatoes, pickled beets and mince pie. Not a drop of caper sauce in sight.

Kaiser Wilhelm liked a good pie

Do check out the Food Timeline, here, to read more about what Victoria liked to eat. Quite a lot of different things, apparently - roast beef, fruit, brown Windsor soup, and "Raized Pie," which sounds something like turducken (a whole turkey stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a pheasant stuffed with a woodcock - all in a pie pastry). According to this 1954 article, Victoria's nephew, the Kaiser, liked Raized Pie too, when he came to visit; the article notes that there was also a stuffing of forcemeat, tongue and truffles added to the pie. All of which is pretty rich eating.

So much for being the Queen being delicately sated by plates of secret mutton. I'm not certain where Jennie June got her information, though of course Victoria's eating habits would have changed over the course of her long life.

Sources
Beeton, Isabella Mary. The Book of Household Management (1861), pp 187, 331.
Beeton, Isabella Mary. Mrs. Beeton's Dictionary of Every-day Cookery (1872), p. 64.
Croly, Jane Cunningham. Jennie June's American Cookery Book (1878), p. 326.
"G.L.M. Strauss" [obituary], The Athanaeum ( Jul-Dec 1887) p 374
Strauss, Gustave Louis Maurice. Dishes and Drinks: or, Philosophy in the Kitchen (1887), p. 75.

Pata Negra: A Spanish Delicacy

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 13:01:00 +0000

Jamon iberico canapés (Wikipedia)

Jamon iberico is a dry cured Spanish ham similar to Italian prosciutto or Parma ham, but it is not widely known outside of Spain. It has been available in the US for the past 5 years, but since it is very expensive, not many people know just how delectable it is. There are several types of Spanish cured ham, such as jamon serrano (mountain ham), but the finest type of ham is made from the black Iberian pigs and is known as jamon iberico.

The ham is also called pata negra ham after the black nails and coats of the Iberian pigs raised to produce it - the term "pata negra" literally means "black leg." The pigs are raised in the south of Spain, where they feed on all sorts of natural things like barley, corn, herbs, acorns and olives, all of which give the jamon iberico a complex flavor unlike that of any other ham.

You can enjoy this delicious ham cooked in an omelet or other egg dishes. It is also wonderful layered with cheese and grilled in a sandwich, or used in canapés. The canapés in the picture feature pata negra ham served on what look like toasted baguette rounds. You can substitute it for ordinary ham in all kinds of recipes. Best of all, just serve it very thinly sliced, with figs, melon, cheese, crusty bread and butter, and some wine.

Cocoa In the Bathtub

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 18:05:00 +0000

Louis Napoleon could use some chocolate right now!

Jennie June was the pseudonym of 19th century American writer Jane Cunningham Croly. She was born in England in 1829 but had lived in the US since she was a child. She was a newspaper editor as well as an author, and her Jennie June's American Cookery Book was published in 1874. This book includes a section entitled "Favorite Dishes of Distinguished Persons," which is something I always like to know. I have always liked the sort of everyday tidbits that you don't find in history books, and these certainly qualify. Also, they will make for some rather fun posts here. I wish that Jennie June gave her sources, but she doesn't (she may have got her information out of the newspapers) - so I'll try to find extra culinary evidence if I can. I didn't this time, though.

Let's start with Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (1808-1873), who was both President of the French Second Republic from 1848-1852, and after that became Emperor. Very, very busy with foreign affairs, with the transformation of Paris into a modern city, eventually exiled after the Franco-Prussian War of the early 1870s. So - what did a multi-tasking, super-charged, Type A type President/Emperor like to nibble on when he had a few moments?

Chocolate, that's what. Lots and lots of delicious chocolate. Jennie June said that he had "an inordinate liking" for it, so you and I probably have something in common with him that we never knew about. She adds:

Napoléon at Solferino, with chocolate-laden holsters

He has a cup of chocolate served him while in his bath-tub every morning; and during the war in Italy, before, during and after the battle of Solferino - a period covering three days - he ate nothing but common cake chocolate. He had a package of it in his holsters.

The Battle of Solferino was in 1859 - the French and Sardinian armies won a victory against the Austrians. It was the last time a battle was fought in which the rulers of the respective countries actually led their own armies. It was an enormous battle with several hundred thousand soldiers and basically had to do with the Italian struggle for independence (you can go to the link if you want a full run-down).

It really gives you a sense of the great French emperor as a human being, doesn't it? Having to have that cup of cocoa first thing in the morning (not even being able to wait until after his bath!), munching on more chocolate while no doubt stressed on the battlefield. Cake chocolate, as you may have guessed, was akin to what we call baking chocolate today. There were chocolate bars in England - Fry's had been making them since about 1847 - but presumably Louis Napoléon did not know about this.

Louis Napoléon was also instrumental in the development of margarine, which I wrote about over here. And just to round things out - I promise I'm not obsessed with Louis Napoléon! - I wrote about his encounter with a wicker eagle on my history blog. Oh, and the images are from Wikipedia - thanks, Wikipedia.

I can't wait to tell you about what Queen Victoria loved to eat. Not next time (I have something else lined up for next time - but soon). You'll never guess, I'll bet. Hint: it is not fancy at all.

Stainless Steel Cabinet Pudding

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Even the little pineapple at the bottom of this cookbook cover, waiting to eat, knows the benefits of blomus stainless kitchenware. Stainless steel was enormously popular by the time this book was published back in the 1940s. Stainless steel is made of steel plus an alloy, chromium, and as such resists rust and wear and tear beautifully - which is perfect for anyone who has faced a sinkful of dauntingly crusted pots and pans after cooking a meal.

Stainless steel really took off after a German inventor in the 1890s was able to produce chromium without carbon in it (the carbon made alloys really brittle) and just before the First World War stainless steel alloys were beginning to be used in buildings, ships and gun barrels. By the 1930s, stainless steel moved into the kitchen, and cooks have never looked back since. You can enjoy all kinds of blomus stainless steel pots and pans, and make any number of dishes in your blomus kitchen without the slightest fear of rust or a difficult and annoying clean up later on. Stainless steel can also be used in the kitchen for making counters and cabinets (which we will keep in mind when we get to the pudding recipe at the end!).

Steamed pudding with sauce*

The Canadian Waterless Stainless Steel Cookware people (who made this 1940s booklet of mine) do not seem to have named their company anything flashy, like the 1910s companies who called their product "Staybrite" or "Allegheny metal." Still, it was wonderful enough without a catchy name. you only needed some hot soapy water to wash your cookware - "no special Polishing Creams, no Pastes, no Steel Wool, no Steel Brushes are ever needed," they said.

And that is good to know when you were making one of their suggested recipes, like this one for a Steamed Pudding. It is pretty much a version of what is known in Great Britain as Cabinet Pudding, which is made from bread or cake crumbs and dried fruits, steamed and served with a nice sauce. It was perfect for the English and Scottish ex-pats in Canada, and is here renamed by me in honor of the booklet, and of stainless steel in general:

Stainless Steel Cabinet Pudding

2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup seedless raisins
1 small can milk [regular, I think, not condensed]
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup of brown sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1 egg
1/2 cup cocoanut

Mix graham cracker crumbs and brown sugar thoroughly, add baking powder, raisins, walnuts, cocoanut and egg. Then stir in can of milk. Place in greased casserole pan, cover with two thicknesses of wax paper, and steam 1 1/2 hours in Dutch Oven. Serve with sauce.

They give recipes for a couple of sauces but the nicest one is also the easiest - a win/win! Here it is:

Wine Sauce: Cream 1/2 cup butter and 1 cup sugar; add 1 cup hot water. Cook until consistency of honey. Add a beaten egg yolk and 3 Tb sherry, stirring constantly. Serve hot.

*The steamed pudding in the picture (which is from Wikipedia) is, alas, a Sticky Toffee Pudding, but they did not have a nice picture of a Cabinet Pudding. They are both made with cake crumbs and dried fruit and steamed, then served with sauce, though.

Pennsylvania Ghosts and Some Kümmel

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 07:16:00 +0000

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of PA Tourism for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

My great great grandmother Elizabeth was born in rural Pennsylvania in 1828, and I got to know her, a little, through my own grandmother (born in 1889), who adored her and spent a lot of time with her as a child. Elizabeth, or Lizzie as she was called, once frightened her cousin by dressing up as a ghost and waiting for him to pass through the local cemetery one evening on his way home from work - this would have been in the 1840s. Scared him silly, my grandmother said. But other stories she told made me think that Lizzie somewhat believed in ghosts herself.

And that I why I think that Lizzie would like the Ghost Rides tour from the wonderful Roadtrip-a-Matic at pa-roadtrips as much as I would. I know that all of my family would like this one, too - so they’re all coming along! I love how easy it is to choose a theme for a Pennsylvania vacation, and get all sorts of interesting recommendations for where to stay, where to eat - and most of all, where to go. And listen to where we could go on the Ghost Rides tour: walks in the woods of Butler County, visits to cemeteries such as the Harmony Society Cemetery and the Evans City Cemetery, where “Night of the Living Dead’ was filmed.

And I am certainly going to want to visit Nemacolin Castle in Pittsburgh, also known as Bowman's Castle for the family who lived there in the Victorian era. It's over on your right - it is red brick, by the way, and has had several additions; the earliest part of the castle dates from 1789. It is haunted, too - at least 10 ghosts have been sighted or at least sensed on house tours.

We will also go to Washington’s Landing/Herr’s Island in Pittsburgh, where Washington really did sleep when his raft broke in the middle of the Allegheny River in 1787 (during the French and Indian Wars). Even if Washington’s ghost isn’t there, it will still be fascinating.

Now, after all this, you might need a little “Dutch courage” - especially if you have indeed encountered a Pennsylvania ghost or two. Since this is a culinary history blog, I am pleased to be able to offer you just the right beverage - a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch specialty called Kümmel, a caraway-seed liqueur brought to Pennsylvania by the Germans. To make it, infuse 2 ounces of bruised (i.e., slightly crushed) caraway seeds in 2 quarts of dry gin and ½ lb. of sugar. Keep the mixture in sealed bottles and shake them up every day. They need to infuse for a month or so, so you might need to plan ahead for this. When the Kümmel is ready, strain it into clean bottles, and seal with corks.*

I really want to just pack a bag and get in the car right now - and if it wasn’t for things like work and school - you know, obligations! - I could, because everything else is sorted out for me (and you) with this great trip planner. Really, roadtrips have never been easier.

I know so little about most of Pennsylvania - I went to school just outside Philadelphia, and my family was from nearby Chester County, but I've always wanted to see more of the state. I’ve had a look at the other Roadtrip-a-Matic tours and they all look really interesting, too! I am going to be adding to my must-go-there travel list for sure.

*Recipe from America Cooks (1949), p. 739, my go-to retro/vintage American cookbook. And the images are from Wikipedia.

Tea at the St. Francis

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Tue, 29 May 2012 17:48:00 +0000

The St. Francis Hotel in 1904

Imagine going for a luxurious afternoon tea at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco in the early 1900s. It was built in 1904, two years before the great earthquake, and expanded in 1913. It is still there today at the corner of Powell and Geary Streets, serving the wealthy, the famous and those, like us, who just would really like some delightful refreshments.

I have a vintage St. Francis menu right in front of me, reprinted in a 1910 book called Fellows' Menu Maker (a treasury of old menus) - and I must tell you that this is exactly where I'd like to go on a hot May afternoon like this.

Loganberries

So what shall we have for our tea? There is tea, coffee or hot chocolate on offer, but perhaps since it is getting on to summer now, you might prefer some real fruit softdrinks. The St. Francis had all sorts of lovely cool fruit drinks in their Tea Room, including Red or White Grape Juice Cobbler and iced Loganberry Lemonade (mix lemonade and loganberry juice to make this drink, not surprisingly). Along with the drinks, we can have sandwiches filled with chicken, ham or lettuce (no cucumber on the 1910 menu). And we will also want little cakes like chocolate eclairs and Napoleons, and petits fours.

Delicious honey

Or perhaps an ice cream sundae would be best, since it is so very hot outside! The St. Francis understood this and offered a variety of cool ice cream treats in their circa 1910 Tea Room. Their special St. Francis Sundae had vanilla ice cream, roseleaf jam and cream; and the Fedora was a mixture of chocolate ice cream, praline and whipped cream.

Chocolate sundae

The roseleaf jam served at the St. Francis was and is a Middle Eastern treat, which you can easily make at home if you have access to organic, pesticide-free rose petals (the jam is actually made from petals, not the leaves of the rose). The recipe proportions are from Sarah Garland's The Complete Book of Herbs and Spices (1979 edition, p. 211). Just cut off the white ends off of 1 lb (12 cups) organic, washed rose petals. Simmer them in water to cover and add a cup white sugar, 2/3 cup of delicious honey and the juice of 2 lemons. Cook until the mixture is thick.

It wouldn't be hard to recreate this sort of lovely tea at home - roseleaf jam and all. But to really recreate the Tea Room ambiance, make sure you use the finest ingredients. Chocolate ice cream, or chocolate cakes, will taste best if you use the best ingredients, like fine quality organic c hocolate. You can find every kind of ingredient you need for cooking amazing things even if you don't live in a city with specialty stores - just go online and check out comparison shopping sites and any number of online gourmet shops, where you can put all the money you might have spent going to San Francisco in 1910 (time machines aren't cheap!) on some classically delicious ingredients.

[All images from Wikimedia Commons.]

Frangelico: A Winning Hazelnut Liqueur

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Thu, 17 May 2012 09:52:00 +0000

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Frangelico for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Frangelico is a variety of hazelnut liqueur, or noisette as it is sometimes called, made in the Piedmont in northern Italy. Supposedly, it was named either for a hermit called Fra (Brother) Angelico or for a Renaissance painter of the same name.

First produced in the 1980s, Frangelico is known both for its smooth and delicious taste and for the unique bottle it comes in - in the shape of a friar, complete with a rope belt. Wild hazelnuts from the Piedmont, as well as other local ingredients, go into the making of Frangelico. The crushed toasted nuts are infused in an alcohol-water mixture to make hazelnut distillate; cocoa and vanilla essences are added, and the whole is mixed with alcohol, sugar and water, filtered, and aged in vats for several weeks. During this time it evolves into a smooth golden liqueur, perfect for after-dinner sipping or as an ingredient in mixed drinks and desserts. It is lovely in coffee, and is especially good as a flavoring in cheesecake.

The beautiful Piedmont, home of Frangelico

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Please note that this Sweepstakes is in no way sponsored, endorsed, administered by or associated with Facebook. By participating, you agree that you are providing your information to Campari America and their Sweepstakes Administrator and not to Facebook. And all this is subject to the full Official Rules, of course.

That's it - you don't have to buy anything; and purchases don't influence your chances of winning whatsoever. The contest begins on May 16 at 12am PT (Pacific Time) and ends on May 28th at 11:59 PT - so do visit Frangelico online and enter their Sweepstakes today!

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