18th Century
A 1703 Flemish Cookery Book
I recently acquired a Belgian manuscript recipe book dated 1703 – there’s a long French section on varnishes, paints, fireworks (!), but the cookery section is all in Flemish and mijn Vlaamse zuigt, as they say in Flanders. I’ll be poking through this when I get a chance, because I’d love to make some of [...]
The First English Curry Recipe
Hannah Glasse’s enormously successful 1747 cookbook contained the first curry recipe to appear in an English cookbook. It didn’t make a notable splash in the moment, but 264 years later, curry is far and away the most popular dish on that flavor starved island, and the English and curry are inextricably linked. My copy of [...]
Calves Brains, Syllabub and Bubble and Squeak
From The Anti-Union, February 23, 1799. The Anti-Union was an Irish newspaper published from December 1798 – March 0f 1799 and was hysterically, viciously, relentlessly against the proposed union with Britain. Here a dinner party with many of the main Unionists is described – you need more context than I have to get the whole [...]
Egg Marmalade
Marmalade of Eggs the Jews Way: TAKE the yolks of twenty four egg,s beat them for an hour, clarify one pound of the best moist sugar, four spoonfuls of orange flower water, one ounce of blanched and pounded almonds, stir all together over a very slow charcoal fire, keeping stirring it all the while one [...]
Ouefs à l’ail
Take 10 cloves of garlic, cooked in water for 15 minutes (I skipped this – the French, at this point, were still afraid that garlic would DO THINGS TO YOU because it was too powerful), crushed with 2 anchovies, a good pinch of capers (do you pinch capers? That’s a funny measurement even for the [...]
Eating Eggs: Crêpes
Oeufest 2010: 7 adults, 57 eggs. We tested the limits of egg consumption with a variety of sweet and savory dishes – high in cholesterol, high in protein, high in fun: The Egg. The simple delicious crêpe – originating in Britanny as an accompaniment to their ubiquitous apples, the crêpe is today the most recognizable [...]
Salmon with a little Italian Sauce from Soupers de la Cour (1755)
Soupers de la Cour, by Menon, is the last major pre-revolutionary cookbook, and though it doesn’t have the over the top, debauched, pyrotechnics of Le Cuisinier Gascon, its solid, well thought out recipes are more indicative of the state of haute cuisine (Menon wasn’t himself a snob though, he had already written La Cuisiniere bourgeoise [...]
Sweetbreads can’t be made to look like hedgehogs
The Accomplished Housekeeper, and Universal Cook by T. Williams, 1797 They just didn’t look like hedgehogs – I fluffed them out, made them all spikey, but as soon as they started cooking they flattened right out again. If you did them in more of a batter, and deep fried them, it could work. Naturally this [...]
A Brief History of Sauce Espagnole [née Partridge Sauce Espagnole]
The earliest recipe I’ve found for sauce Espagnole is in François Massialot’s Cuisinier Royal et Bourgeois which first appeared in 1691 – the edition is from 1705, but there wasn’t a revised edition until 1712. Massialot’s appears under the recipe “Perdrix sausse à L’Espagnole” or Partridge sauce Espagnole and calls for Burgundy wine, partridge and [...]
Rolled, Grilled, Polish Steaks with Sauce Espagnole
Filets de Boeuf grillés à la Polonoise. Vous Prenez un filet de Boeuf motifié, vous le parez, le coupez en deux & en levez plusieurs feuilles, que vous étendez, en les battant; vous avez une farce de foyes gras que vous mettez dessus, & les roulez feuille par feuille, & les mettez griller en les [...]
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