fowl
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 [...]
Mole poblano guajolote: The secret to enjoying turkey
A thousand years ago the Aztecs knew something that Norteamericanos are still struggling with, at least once a year: Turkey just isn’t very good. Sure, deck it out with mom’s stuffing, aunt Carol’s squash soup, some candied carrots, a metric ton of mashed potatoes, a couple of pies and plenty of liquor, and it will [...]
Blomæth Høns – Chicken Dressed As Chicken
Neither chicken, nor something disguised as chicken, it’s chicken disguised as something disguised as chicken; a sort of entremet for the third estate.
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 [...]
Quail Stuffed Grape Leaves
Game birds are more difficult to find for a reasonable price than you’d like – makes you think about buying a shotgun – but I turned up some lovely frozen quail at my local market (The Roslindale Fish Market for those in the Boston area) and did them up with a sort of composite recipe [...]
Crudifest, March 2010
Images from crudifest 2010 – in the excitement we seem to have missed taking any pictures of some lovely 1654 apple pyes, but so be it. I’ll give a blow by blow of the recipes and methods soon – the “wild yeast bread” was left overnight to attract wild yeasts to leaven it, but was [...]
Poulet à L’Allemand – German Chicken from Le Cuisiner Gascon, 1747
Le Cuisinier Gascon, Amsterdam (probably a false imprint for Paris), 1740 is famous for its important early treatment of foie gras, and for the outlandish names of many of its recipes. My copy of Gascon is the 1747 Nouvelle edition with the added letter to an English Pastry chef. This recipe isn’t outlandish though (if [...]
Christmas Goose
I’d never cooked a goose before, but figured it would be a lot like cooking a duck – it is, but with a couple of caveats: Duck is fatty enough – and the fat is well distributed enough – that it’s pretty hard to dry it out. Goose probably produces more fat when you cook [...]
Marx Rumpolt and Christmas Goose (and lobsters)
I’ve been slogging through Marx Rumpolt’s lovely Ein new Kochbuch (1581) looking for a goose recipe (the problem is a combination of too many goose recipes and my nearly non-existent German). There are 29 recipes (though many are just the barest bones of hints on cooking a goose). It’s maybe the loveliest cookbook I’ve seen [...]
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