Reader Ann Drak recently wrote us with the following request: “I’m looking for foods of England from the early 1900s, particularly the foods of the Virginia Woolf set.”

In reading the diaries and letters of author Virginia Woolf and her Bloomsbury friends, it’s pretty apparent that meals were little more than an excuse for interesting people to gather. Comestibles were beneath consideration and played a secondary role. Woolf was curious about the actual food and understood its importance to her work, yet she was also keenly aware that in the writing of her day, too much attention to such seemingly mundane topics would be regarded as de classé. Bear in mind the context in which Woolf lived. She and her social friends were of the educated class and had servants who did the cooking. She and her literary friends were products of British universities, where the classics—whose epic authors rarely mentioned the preparation of meals—were regarded as the foundation of literature.

Woolf, clearly torn between what she knew to be significant and what she knew to be literary decorum, lamented this conundrum in A Room of One’s Own: “It is part of the novelist’s convention not to mention soup and salmon and ducklings, as if soup and salmon and ducklings were of no importance.” Still, when food was mentioned in her novels, it was only in passing or in tandem with female characters, who were naturally involved in things of the table. There are, however, three notable exceptions:

In Orlando, she writes about the time that Orlando spends with gypsies in Greece and how he discovers that the Greek language had no word for beautiful. To describe a sunset, Orlando instead exclaims the closest approximate: “How good to eat!”

In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf famously compares the dinner fare served at male and female colleges. While the men eat sumptuously, the women must make do with bland, dreary foods. “A good dinner is of great importance to good talk,” she complains. “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

In To the Lighthouse, the reader encounters countless small domestic scenes including coffee cups and ordinary meals. We also see a sharp departure from this restraint when Woolf passionately serves up two pages of a rapturous description of boeuf en daube, contrasting its succulence with the abomination that “passes for cookery in England.”

It’s tempting to think that Woolf’s appreciation for French food came from writers like Elizabeth David, but Woolf’s suicide occurred a decade too early. Nonetheless, David’s books can provide an outline of what was considered to be good cooking at that time, at least in the south of France and Italy, places that people of Woolf’s class would have known well. Here are two of David’s recipes over which Woolf may very well have swooned.

Boeuf en Daube a la Niçoise
Elizabeth David, from whose files this recipe comes, suggested accompanying this meal with a hearty red wine from the Rhone region, such as a Gigondas or Châteauneuf-du-Pape. She consented that a Vin de Pays from  Mt. Ventoux or the Ardeche may work well should a budget be in place.

For the marinade
Olive oil, 1/2 cup
Onion, 1 sliced
Carrot, 1 chopped
Celery, 1/2 stalk chopped into small pieces
Shallots, 4 chopped
Red wine, 2/3 cup
Garlic, 3 cloves
Parsley, 2 sprigs
Peppercorns, to taste
Herbs*, to taste
Salt, to taste

For the daube
Round of beef, approximately 3 pounds
Carrots, 1/2 pound cut in 1-inch rounds
Garlic, 3 cloves
Herbs*
Slab bacon, 1/2 pound
Black olives, pitted, 1/2 pound
Tomatoes, 3 peeled and chopped

Method
1. Heat the oil in a small pan, then add the onion, carrot, celery, and shallots. Sweat them for a minute or two.

2. Add the remaining marinade ingredients and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. Cool, then strain the marinade before using.

3. Choose an earthenware or other flameproof casserole with a lid that is just large enough to contain the beef. Arrange the beef in the casserole and the carrots, garlic, and herbs around the beef.

4. Pour the cooled marinade into the casserole, then top with the slab bacon.

5. Cover the casserole with oiled paper and the lid.

6. Cook in a slow oven (300°F/150°C) for 2 1/2 hours.

7. Remove the lid, add the olives and tomatoes, and cook for an additional 1/2 hour.

8. Remove from the oven. Slice the beef thickly. Cut the bacon into cubes and serve atop the beef, which should be served moistened with a bit of the cooking liquid.

*Note: David suggests bay leaves and the typical blend of herbs de Provence (thyme, marjoram, and rosemary). She says they may be fresh or dried; consequently, the measurements are “to taste.” Note that all temperatures and measurements have been adapted for use in American kitchens.

.

Aigrossade Toulonnaise
This simple garlicky aiöli was commonly served in the South of France, often with vegetables and chickpeas. It is intended to be served as a side dish with the daube.

For the aiöli
Egg yolks, 2
Garlic, 2 or 3 cloves crushed to a paste
Dry English mustard, 1 teaspoon
Salt and pepper, to taste
Olive oil, about 1 cup
Tarragon vinegar, a few drops
Lemon juice, 1/2 teaspoon

For the aigrossade
Mixed vegetables, approximately 3 pounds steamed or boiled, such as artichokes and green beans, dried beans, or chickpeas

Method
1. In a heavy bowl or mortar, combine the yolks, garlic, mustard, salt, and pepper. Stir until uniformly combined.

2. Slowly add a few drops of the oil and stir until all the oil is absorbed. Slowly add a little more oil, a few drops at a time, stirring all the time. Continue to add the remaining oil in this fashion. From time to time add tiny amounts of tarragon vinegar, and then — when almost done adding the oil — add the lemon juice. Ms David says you should “Stir steadily but not like a maniac.”

3. Strain the cooked vegetables, coat with the aiöli, and serve in a warmed dish. Do not attempt to reheat.

References
David, Elizabeth. A Book of Mediterranean Food. London: John Lehman, 1950. (reissued in Elizabeth David

Drummond, Jack Cecil, Sir, and Anne Wilbraham. The Englishman’s Food: A History of Five Centuries of English Diet. London: Tralfalgar Square, 1993.

Flandrin, Jean-Louis and Massimo Montanari. Food: A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present. New York: Penguin, 2000.

Hartley, Dorothy. Food in England. London: Warner, 1999.

Mennell, Stephen. All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1996.

Tannahill, Reay. Food in History. (rev. ed.) New York: Crown, 1995.

Toussaint-Samat, Maguelonne. History of Food. Anthea Bell, trans. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1994.

Wilson, C. Anne. Food and Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to Recent Times. London: Constable, 1973.

Article © 2009 Gary Allen. All rights reserved.
© 2009 Leite’s Culinaria, Inc. All rights reserved. Terms of use.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find much in the way of side dishes. I was, however, sufficiently intrigued by this curiously named Beefsteak Stanley to procure a recipe for it. But first, a little background information on its purportedly healthful precursor, the Salisbury steak.

Long before Dr. Atkins and even Dr. Kellogg became household names, people looked to famous physicians to help them lose weight and, presumably, attain spiritual purity through their diets. Dr. James H. Salisbury was one of these early diet gurus. Dr. Salisbury believed that a corrective diet could cure everything from anemia to tuberculosis. His approach included the avoidance of almost all vegetables and starches in favor of—you guessed it—minced meat. Lots of minced meat. One pound, three times a day, to be exact. It’s hard to imagine that a hearty, meaty staple of middle-class dining rooms has its origins in a strict dietary regimen, but it’s true.

The recipe for what came to be known as Salisbury Steak appears in his book, The Relation of Alimentation and Disease:

“Eat the muscle pulp of lean beef made into cakes and broiled. This pulp should be as free as possible from connective or glue tissue, fat and cartilage. The ‘American Chopper’ answers very well for separating the connective tissue…The muscle should be scraped off with a spoon at intervals during chopping. Simply press it sufficiently to hold together. Make the cakes from half an inch to an inch thick. Broil slowly and moderately well over a fire free from blaze and smoke. When cooked, put it on a hot plate and season to taste with butter, pepper and salt; also use either Worcestershire or Halford sauce, mustard, horseradish or lemon juice on the meat if desired.”

And the doctor’s beverage of choice? A somewhat less suspect dose of three quarts of plain hot water a day.

Over time, Americans grew bored with Salisbury’s bland, monotonous diet and, it appears, were anxious to move on to newer, more ridiculous diets—such as those requiring adherents to restrict themselves to grapefruit or sauerkraut. But the Salisbury Steak lived on, gradually acquiring homier sauces and garnishes such as flour-thickened gravies and mushrooms—indulgences our good doctor would never have countenanced. Eventually, Salisbury Steak acquired a garnish, and a new name, that must have been beyond the doctor’s wildest dreams: sauteed bananas.

No one seems to know the origins of the name “Beefsteak Stanley” anymore. One story says it was invented by Sir Henry Morton Stanley (of “Dr. Livingston, I presume” fame). I have my doubts about that. Stanley was pretty famous when he died in 1904—famous enough to have things named after him—but other than the bananas, there’s nothing to suggest that an African explorer had anything to do with the dish. I suppose we could make up our own story. If so, I’m going with the Stanley Steamer connection, as a harbinger of the culinary weirdnesses published in Manifold Destiny.

I found this Beefsteak Stanley recipe in Cooking Instructions for the Preparation of Dishes Served in Dining Cars Throughout the System, a dated guidebook for cooks on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Books like this typically dated to the 1940s, but this one includes no date at all. My guess is that it comes from the 1920s or 1930s, by which time Salisbury Steak had long ago become an American staple.

Beefsteak Stanley
Make 4 portions

Ingredients
2 cups of finely ground beef
1/2 cup of fresh bread crumbs
1/2 cup of cream
1 egg
1 small onion minced, washed and sauteed
Salt and pepper

Preparation
1. Mix ingredients well together and form into oblong steaks, fry in pan on both sides nice and brown for about 10 minutes.

2. Cover the bottom of dish with Horseradish sauce, set steak in sauce, top garnished with 2 halves of glaced banana (see Note). A little tomato sauce poured around.

Horseradish Sauce: Make a roux with 1/2 cup of flour, 1 kitchenspoon of butter. Let cook 10 minutes, then add 1 quart of boiling strained broth, stirring constantly, and 1/2 cup of cream. Cook 20 minutes, strain in jar, then add 1 kitchenspoon of grated horseradish (if bottled horseradish is used, squeeze dry).

LC Note: To make “glaced banana,” slice a banana lengthwise (as for a banana split), then saute it in a little butter. A “kitchenspoon” is what we call a teaspoon nowadays.

References
Cooking Instructions for the Preparation of Dishes Served in Dining Cars Throughout the System. n.p.: Pennsylvania Railroad, Dining Car Department, n.d.

Salisbury, James H. The Relation of Alimentation and Disease. New York: J. H. Vail and Company, 1888.

Schwartz, Hillel. Never Satisfied: A Cultural History of Diets, Fantasies & Fat. New York: Anchor Books, 1990.

Article © 2009 Gary Allen. All rights reserved. Photo © 2008 skinnyde | Creative Commons License.
© 2009 Leite’s Culinaria, Inc. All rights reserved. Terms of use.

Until the advent of modern drugs like Viagra, aphrodisiacs were construed as folk medicine. Because of that, they were divided into two basic categories: weird stuff that we take as potions, and stuff that we eat, bizarre or otherwise. For our purposes, let’s ignore all but the remedies we take some pleasure in eating, either as regular fare or on special occasions.

What we’re looking for are true aphrodisiacs, magical ingredients that can succeed in provoking lechery, either because of some kind of intrinsic biochemical characteristic or placebo effect, when other methods have failed. They must be able to seduce where all other seductions have fallen short, to inspire the objects of our lust with such longing that they find us irresistible, and to allow us to rise to the amorous occasion when it presents itself.

Yohimbe, a tropical vine, is said to work like a natural Viagra—but it’s closer to potion than foodstuff, so it’s not what we’re seeking here. That said, there are some foods that contain compounds that may actually aid sexual performance—albeit somewhat indirectly. These work by providing vitamins and minerals needed to maintain normal bodily function. Since they’re not exactly titillating, we’ll ignore them, too.

Chocolate contains substances that mimic the sensation of the well-being we feel when falling in love, but it’s not exactly an aphrodisiac, either. Alcohol reduces inhibitions and makes a person feel heated by dilating blood vessels near the skin, which tends to make us shed clothing—both acts that could be construed as encouraging sexual intimacy. As Ogden Nash said, “Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.”

The famous Spanish Fly (Lytta vesicatoria) is not truly an aphrodisiac—it is a kind of blister beetle that causes a burning and itching sensation in the urinary tract of anyone unfortunate enough to eat one. No doubt the painful writhing of the victim was mistaken for passion. This brilliant green beetle is occasionally found in the Moroccan spice mixture called Ras el Hanout—but then, Moroccans don’t always make a clear distinction between spice, perfume, and aphrodisiac.

If a food bears a physical resemblance to a sexual organ, it’s suspected to have aphrodisiacal properties. This form of analogous thought is known as The Doctrine of Signatures. While oysters contain trace minerals said to enhance sexual performance, it’s their resemblance to the vulva, their briny taste, and their reputation that do the work. Several foods shaped like the male sex organ—carrots, cucumbers, bananas, etc.—are routinely considered to be aphrodisiacs. Cloves, and parts of the clove root, are vaguely phallic in form. Because of the level of joyful expectation—or immoderate optimism, depending on one’s vantage point—even a vague resemblance is, it seems, resemblance enough.

Similarly, there is what could be called The Linguistic Rationale. Clavo, clove in Spanish, means “nail.” Nails are phallic, both in form and function. It’s no coincidence that an American slang term for sexual conquest is the verb “to nail.” (Oddly enough, oil of clove is used in some salves designed to delay the male orgasm. It does this by anesthetizing the skin of the penis.)

Closely related (to the rationale, not the anaesthesia) is what may be known from here on as The Assumptive Method, in which someone who consumes a certain food assumes the characteristics of animal or plant. A large juicy steak is assumed to confer the lusty attributes of a bull. Likewise, the randiness of rabbits and goats is said to be acquired by eating their flesh.

Ultimately, though, aphrodisiacs are not to be found in our food but in our “sweet little imaginations.” The Moroccans may have the right idea, after all: Anything that arouses our senses, arouses us. So, bring on the spices and perfumes! Ras el Hanout, that variable blend of warm and fragrant spices, typically includes allspice, cardamom, coriander, mace, nutmeg and various peppers, among them black pepper, cubebs and long pepper, all of which suggest sweet passion. It also features a seduction that is considerably more subtle than Spanish Fly: dried rose buds.

While foods rumored to be aphrodisiacal may not work literally, serving up oysters and chocolate to a potential lover this Valentine’s Day sends the message that we want them to work, which may be all the aphrodisiac we need.

And to help you in your amorous pursuits, consider some of these:

Oysters
Oyster Stew
Pacific Oysters with Asian Vinaigrette
Broiled Scallops and Oysters with Watercress

Beef
Côte de Boeuf with Caramelized Shallots
Medallions of Beef with Foie Gras and Truffles

Rabbit
Portuguese Rabbit Hunter Style
Rabbit in Red Wine in the Style of Ischia

References
Ackerman, Diane. A Natural History of the Senses. New York: Vintage, 1990.
Davidson, Alan. The Oxford Companion to Food. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Article © 2010 Gary Allen. All rights reserved. Visit Gary’s Web site, On the Table.
© 2010 Leite’s Culinaria, Inc. All rights reserved. Terms of use.

When on Christmas morning Scrooge wanted to mend his ways, he sent an errand boy to buy the biggest turkey available, “not the little prize turkey, the big one.” In Victorian times, as today, nothing said holiday like a big roast, and Scrooge’s surprise for the Cratchit family conveys the ultimate in celebration. But how did these long-held beliefs about holiday food take root?

To understand the importance placed upon such types of meals, we turn to French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. According to him, the fundamental difference between the ordinary meals we serve to our immediate families and those we make for company or during holidays is that everyday fare is boiled not roasted. Going back to at least the Middle Ages in Europe, the large cuts of meat, deemed suitable for roasting were seen only in the kitchens of the most wealthy—at that time, the nobility. Consequently, to offer roasted meat to guests was to confer noble status upon them.

Lévi-Strauss’s notion also reflects the reality of French kitchens at this time: most didn’t contain ovens. For such special occasions as Christmas or the arrival of honored guests, large stuffed birds or carefully larded haunches would be carried to the local boulangerie, or bakery, for roasting in the huge, bread-baking ovens. In light of this, I would argue that it isn’t the cooking method itself, but the extra effort expended that indicates the higher status of special-occasion meals.

One of the primary functions of holidays is the promotion and affirmation of group cohesiveness. The shared memories and rituals that define our families—and our societies—are renewed and restored during the preparation and eating of traditional foods. The essential ingredient in any Thanksgiving meal is its invariability. Other holidays, like Christmas, allow for some experimentation, but the Thanksgiving meal is a ritual that must be performed with absolute adherence to a family’s traditions.

It’s curious then that the menu for Christmas dinner, a mere month after Thanksgiving, often repeats certain foods. Some items appear on both menus precisely because they’re family favorites, but others take their place on the table due to societal traditions that extend farther back than the immediate generations. For example, many details of American Christmas celebrations are based upon English models such as the Yule log, the repetition of seasonal songs, and, of course, the annual retelling, or re-televising, of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. But because the English don’t celebrate the American Thanksgiving feast, a roasted turkey at Christmas isn’t redundant in England as it is stateside.

In addition, though the pairing of sweet and savory on the same plate is unusual—the English usually keep them separate—it isn’t unknown. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, immediately preceding the age of exploration and the colonization of America, such sweet-savory combinations were common. So if your Christmas meal is intended to serve as a ritual reenactment of ancient ways, cranberries make perfect sense. In western tradition, only roasted meats are normally served with a sweet side dish: leg of lamb with mint jelly, glazed ham with pineapple, or roast goose with red currant jelly. While these aren’t always holiday meals, they’re generally reserved for special occasions. Likewise, it should be noted that these celebratory meals often end with another ancient pairing of sweet and savory, fruit and meat: the mince pie.

In recent years, the pairing of fruits and meats has become more common, largely because of the increased popularity of non-European cuisines. The Chinese, for example, don’t usually save room for dessert because each of their dishes balances the four basic flavors: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. Most Americans order sweet-and-savory dishes at ethnic restaurants, and they’re beginning to enjoy them at home as well.

Perhaps in keeping with this broadening of the American palate, and of a more general interest in our history and cultural genealogy, adventurous cooks are experimenting with much older cuisines. Historical re-enacters strive to create “authentic” foods at mock Revolutionary and Civil War battles, and members of Society for Creative Anachronism reproduce as accurately as possible the cooking of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

The image of ancient eating habits is changing. Most of us now know that historic meals didn’t consist solely of gruel for the peasantry and giant haunches of roasted game for the royalty. The food of the Middle Ages and Renaissance was rich and varied with exotic ingredients, elaborate preparation and presentations, and a level of conspicuous consumption that could be the envy of today’s fashionable foodies.

Just as our knowledge of our kitchen heritage is increasing, today’s cookbooks are beginning to look for ways to incorporate that knowledge into modern cooking. A perfect example is Francine Segan’s book, Shakespeare’s Kitchen: Renaissance Recipes for the Contemporary Cook. Ms. Segan has sought out period recipes, which she includes, but rather than slavishly re-creating them, she’s made them anew for modern tastes. This isn’t geographical, or cultural, but rather chronological-fusion cooking. This is our own culinary heritage, revived and recharged after 400 years.

What better way to celebrate Christmas and reconnect with our collective past than by making some classic English recipes? The extra effort spent on these dishes communicates to family and friends that they’re special and honored. It says, as did the Bard of Avon in As You Like It, “Sit down and feed, and welcome to our table.” However, in keeping with modern tastes, let’s set aside the huge steaming roast—with apologies to the reformed Scrooge—and revisit some ancient treats, at once savory and sweet.

Recipes
Prime Rib Roast with Orange-Glazed Onions
Individual Meat Pies with Cointreau Marmalade
Scallops in Berry Glaze

References
Segan, Francine. Shakespeare’s Kitchen: Renaissance Recipes for the Contemporary Cook. New York: Random House, 2003

Photo ©2003 Tim Turner. Article © 2002-2009 Gary Allen. All rights reserved.
Visit Gary’s Website, On the Table.
© 2009 Leite’s Culinaria, Inc. All rights reserved. Terms of use.

LC reader Mary Cannon wrote in, asking if we had a recipe for manchup. A quick search of the Web told me that manchup is a dish from the Cape Verde Islands, but nothing more. Additional searches found very few recipes from Cape Verde, and none of them for manchup. Suspecting that the dish’s name might have variant spellings, I tried looking for anything that sounded reasonably close to manchup, on the Internet and in books on West African cuisine (since I couldn’t find any Cape Verdean cookbooks).

No luck.

Human nature being what it is, food writers can usually count on the nostalgia that people feel for the cooking of their homeland. A query was posted to a bulletin board for Cape Verdean émigrés. Four people read it, but none answered. There was still one avenue of hope: Cape Verde’s embassy in Washington, DC. An appropriately desperate e-mail was sent, explaining the problem.

An hour later, Jose Brito, the Republic of Cape Verde’s ambassador to the United States, wrote back. According to Brito, “Cachoupa [is] translated here in the US [as] manchup.” This was a significant clue. Going back to the Cape Verdean recipe sites, finding an answer became a relatively simple matter — although cachoupa’s name does indeed have a variant spelling: cachupa. But where did the name manchup come from? It’s apparently a corruption of munchupa, a name for cachupa that is used on Brava Island, at the southwestern end of the Cape Verde archipelago.

Cachupa is the national dish of Cape Verde. Like other great rustic dishes, such as the cassoulet of France and feijoada of Brazil, it uses highly seasoned meats in relatively small amounts together with grains and beans, and is slowly cooked to build a great depth of flavor. And like those dishes, it is even better when reheated the next day.

Cape Verdeans created one of the first fusion cuisines, incorporating the tastes and ingredients of Europe (livestock), Africa and Asia (sugar and tropical fruits), and the Americas (beans, chiles, corn, pumpkins, and manioc). They were able to do so because of their location: Just off the west coast of Africa, they were ideally suited as a stopping point, first for Portuguese explorers, and later for slave traders.

Cachupa can be very simple — barely more than samp (hominy), beans, and some salt pork, much like old-fashioned succotash. This simple peasant fare is known as cachupa povera. Wealthier Cape Verdeans — or even the poor, on special occasions, such as weddings — add more ingredients, such as a little meat or fish, in which case the dish is known as cachupa sabe, a more savory dish, like Brunswick stew. At the other end of the spectrum you’ll find cachupa rica — the richest variation. Like feijoada completa, it’s a long way from the simple peasant dish of legumes and grain. Here are two recipes for cachupa rica.

Notes: These recipes don’t indicate the number of portions or portion size; they have been edited, but not tested.

Cachupa Rica I
Ingredients
Olive oil, as needed
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled
2 bay leaves
4 cups dried hominy, soaked in plenty of water overnight
1 cup dried kidney beans, soaked plenty of water overnight
1 cup dried large lima beans, soaked plenty of water overnight
2 pounds beef or pork spareribs
1 chouriço or linguiça sausage, sliced
1 blood sausage, sliced
1/4 pound lean bacon, diced
1/2 cup fresh green beans
2 pounds cabbage, coarsely chopped
2 pounds plantains, peeled and sliced
2 pounds fresh yams, peeled, 1-inch dice
2 pounds fresh sweet potatoes, peeled, 1-inch dice
2 pounds winter squash, peeled, 1-inch dice
1 chicken, cut in 12 serving pieces
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 pounds tomatoes, quartered
Sofrito (a seasoning paste of sauteed garlic, onion, and tomato paste), to taste
Cilantro, chopped

Method
1. In a stock pot, combine 6 cups of water, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, the onion, garlic, and bay leaves. Bring to boil. Add soaked hominy and beans. Simmer until nearly fork-tender.

2. In a separate pot, brown the spareribs, chouriço or linguiça, blood sausage, and bacon, then add the green beans, cabbage, plantains, yams, sweet potatoes, and squash. Set aside.

3. Season the chicken with salt and pepper, then cook in skillet filmed with olive oil until lightly browned. Add the tomatoes and the meat-vegetable mixture to the stock pot of hominy and beans. Cook on low heat for approximately 40 minutes. Add the sofrito to taste, and simmer 20 minutes longer. Turn off the heat and let rest, covered, for at least 30 minutes.

4. Arrange the meats and vegetables on platter. Garnish with the chopped cilantro. Serve the hominy and beans in a separate bowl.

Cachupa Rica II
Ingredients
4 cups crushed dry hominy
1/4 pound dried kidney beans
2 onions, chopped
2 bay leaves
2 garlic cloves, chopped
Olive oil, as needed
Salt
1/4 pound beef, cubed
1/4 pound bacon, diced
1 pig trotter
4 sausages (linguiça or chouriço), thickly sliced
Paprika, to taste
2 potatoes, peeled, 1-inch cubes
1/4 pound savoy cabbage, coarsely chopped
2 cassavas, peeled, 1-inch dice
Chopped cilantro, for garnish

Method
1. Add the hominy, beans, half the onions, one of the bay leaves, 1 garlic clove, 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, and a pinch of salt to a stock pot. Cover with water and boil 30 minutes. Turn off the heat and set aside.

2. In large pot or Dutch oven, heat 3 tablespoons of oil over low heat and add the beef, bacon, pig trotter, sausage, the rest of the onions, the remaining garlic clove and bay leaf, paprika and salt to taste. Cover and let stew for 3 hours. Add a splash of water if the pan threatens to dry out.

3. Return the beans and hominy to a boil. Then add the meat mixture. When the beans and hominy are nearly tender, add the potatoes, cabbage, and cassavas. When the potatoes are fork-tender, remove the pot from heat. Allow the dish to rest 30 minutes before serving. Garnish with the chopped cilantro.

Cachupinha
Here’s a similar dish, more quickly prepared and brighter tasting, as it substitutes fresh ingredients for the dried ones usually found in cachupa.

Ingredients
2 tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion, sliced
1/4 pound linguiça, sliced
2 peppercorns, crushed
5 ears of corn
1/4 squash, sliced
1/2 pound fresh fava or lima beans
2 ripe tomatoes
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 bunch cilantro, chopped

Method
1. Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the onion, linguiça, and peppercorns and cook gently until the onions are softened.

2. Cut corn kernels from the cobs. Add the corn, squash, beans, and tomatoes to the linguiça-onion mixture. Add just enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until the vegetable are tender and the water has been absorbed. Taste for seasoning and garnish with chopped cilantro. Serve.

References
Cape Verdean Foods
Cape Verdean Cooking

Article © 2002–2009 Gary Allen. All rights reserved. Visit Gary’s Web site, On the Table.
© 2009 Leite’s Culinaria, Inc. All rights reserved. Terms of use.

On June 11th, I had the pleasure and honor of being on a panel at The New School with some esteemed colleagues—John T. Edge, Anne Mendelson, Betty Fussell, and Molly O’Neill—to talk about one of the 20th century’s most important and controversal food journalists, Craig Claiborne.

Because I’ve been publishing Leite’s Culinaria for more than ten years, I was given the exciting and onerous task of discussing the future of food journalism, a topic about which if you ask 100 people you’ll get 125 responses. I was utterly terrified. To be in such company, who collectively have published enough about food to fill a library, was overwhelming enough. But then to grapple with a topic few people have a viable, concise answer to? (I had visions of suffering the same fate as many Elizabethan actors at the rotten-vegetable-filled hands of a displeased crowd.) After all, if people knew the future of journalism, they’d already be making money from it.

In my research I discovered that technology, with its Internet, mobile communications, computers, etc., is both an asset and liability to food writers. To tackle my topic, I chose to speak to leaders in the writing, publishing, and technology industries…aw, hell, it’d be so much easier, and you’d get so much more out of it, if you just watched the panel instead of listening to me blither on here.

When we pick up a dinner fork we rarely think about how or why it came to be. Using it is as natural as using our own hands. But the fork is a relative newcomer to the table, appearing many centuries, even millennia, after the knife and spoon. The fork’s short and rocky history is the story of the evolution of etiquette and table manners. It’s also the story of how a doomed Byzantine princess, a French Cardinal disgusted by his dinner guests, and an intrepid English traveler forever changed the way western society eats.

Forks were in use in ancient Egypt, as well as Greece and Rome. However, they weren’t used for eating, but were, rather, lengthy cooking tools used for carving or lifting meats from a cauldron or the fire. Most diners ate with their fingers and a knife, which they brought with them to the table. Forks for dining only started to appear in the noble courts of the Middle East and the Byzantine Empire in about the 7th century and became common among wealthy families of the regions by the 10th century. Elsewhere, including Europe, where the favored implements were the knife and the hand, the fork was conspicuously absent.

Imagine the astonishment then when in 1004 Maria Argyropoulina, Greek niece of Byzantine Emperor Basil II, showed up in Venice for her marriage to Giovanni, son of the Pietro Orseolo II, the Doge of Venice, with a case of golden forks—and then proceeded to use them at the wedding feast. They weren’t exactly a hit. She was roundly condemned by the local clergy for her decadence, with one going so far as to say, “God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks—his fingers. Therefore it is an insult to him to substitute artificial metal forks for them when eating.”

When Argyropoulina died of the plague two years later, Saint Peter Damian, with ill-concealed satisfaction, suggested that it was God’s punishment for her lavish ways. “Nor did she deign to touch her food with her fingers, but would command her eunuchs to cut it up into small pieces, which she would impale on a certain golden instrument with two prongs and thus carry to her mouth. . . . this woman’s vanity was hateful to Almighty God; and so, unmistakably, did He take his revenge. For He raised over her the sword of His divine justice, so that her whole body did putrefy and all her limbs began to wither.”

Doomed by God for using a fork. Life was harsh in the 11th century.

After this inauspicious debut, forks were understandably slow to catch on. But Maria’s Byzantine manners did make inroads. By the late Middle Ages the spread of forks can be tracked by their appearance in city inventories and as items of value bequeathed in wills. These suckett forks were used primarily for eating candied fruits in syrup or foods likely to stain the fingers. According to some sources, eating sweets with a fork was a practice common among courtesans, causing the Church to ban forks as immoral.

By the 1400s dining forks began to appear in Italian cookbooks, and it was another noble marriage that spread the influence. Italian forks became popular in the French court when Catherine de Medici arrived from Italy to marry the future Henry II, bringing several dozen intricate silver forks with her. Henry’s courtiers were ridiculed for the amount of food they spilled trying to eat with the unfamiliar forks. Despite the laughter, the use of forks spread to wealthy French families eager to adopt the new Italian vogue.

While forks were becoming more common on the continent, it took a brave English traveler to bring them across the channel. Thomas Coryate traveled extensively throughout France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany in 1608 and published an account of his journey after his return to England. Crudities Hastily Gobbled Up in Five Months or Coryates Crudites contained this observation on eating in Italy:

“I observed a custome in all those Italian Cities and Townes through which I passed, that is not used in any other country that I saw in my travels . . . The Italian, and also most strangers that are commorant in Italy, doe alwaies, at their meales use a little forke when they cut the meate; for while with their knife, which they hold in one hand, they cut the meate out of the dish, they fasten their forke which they hold in their other hande, upon the same dish, so that whatsoever he be that sitteth in the company of any others at meate, should unadvisedly touch the dish of meate with his fingers, from which all at the table doe cut he will give occasion of offence unto the company as having transgressed the lawes of good manners . . . The reason of this their curiosity, is because the Italian cannot by any means endure to have his dish touched with fingers, seeing all men’s fingers are not alike cleane. Hereupon I myselfe thought good to imitate the Italian fashion by this forked cutting of meate, not only while I was in Italy, but also in Germany, and oftentimes in England, since I came home.”

For his troubles his friends called him Furcifer. Our word fork comes from the Latin furca, so furcifer literally means “fork-bearer” but was also an acerbic pun; in the slang of the day, furcifer was also a man doomed to hang.

As the fork grew in popularity it also changed form. The straight, two-pronged fork was fine for spearing foods but not well adapted to scooping. A third, and sometimes fourth, tine made food less likely to slip through, and adding a slight curve to the tines made it an even more efficient scoop. The new shape and function of the fork led to a remarkable change in the design of table knives, which led to a dining divide between Europe and American that continues today.

The rift started, by some accounts, with Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister to France’s King Louis XIII, who was so disgusted by a frequent dinner guest’s habit of picking his teeth with his knife that l’Éminence Rouge, as Richelieu was known, had the tips of the offender’s knives ground down to prevent it happening. Always desperate to follow fashion, others in the court soon did the same. Whether the story is true or not, once forks began to gain popular acceptance there was no longer any need for a pointed tip at the end of a dinner knife to hold and spear the food. In 1669, King Louis XIV of France decreed all pointed knives on the street or the dinner table illegal. Not only were new knives to be made with rounded tips, all existing table knives were to be rounded off to reduce the potential for violence. The new style of knife rapidly spread to other European countries, including England.

By the beginning of the 18th century, knives imported to the American colonies had the new blunt tips. Because Americans had very few forks and no longer had sharp-tipped knives to spear food, they had to use spoons in instead. They’d use the spoon in the left hand to steady the food as they cut it with the knife in the right. They’d then switch the spoon to the opposite hand in order to scoop it up to eat. Our distinctly American style of eating continued even after forks became commonplace in the United States. Emily Post calls the practice “zigzagging” in her 1920s etiquette books. I like think of it as the American Shuffle.

Well into the 1800s forks were still considered an affection by some, and the source of confusion to others. One diner in Maine complained that, “Eating peas with a fork is as bad as trying to eat soup with a knitting needle.” In his 1824 memoir, wealthy English silversmith Joseph Brasbridge had to admit to his host at a dinner, “I know how to sell these articles, but not how to use them.” And as late as 1842 Charles Dickens noted that fellow passengers on a Pennsylvania river boat, “thrust their broad bladed knives and two-pronged forks further down their throats than I ever saw the same weapons go before, except in the hands of a skilled juggler.”

By the time of the first World’s Fair in 1851, the fork reigned supreme and required a new set of rules to help the confused or socially self conscious. Like it or not, the fork had arrived and modern dining began. As one 1887 book of manners put it,

“The fork has now become the favorite and fashionable utensil for conveying food to the mouth. First it crowded out the knife, and now in its pride it has invaded the domain of the once powerful spoon. The spoon is now pretty well subdued also, and the fork, insolent and triumphant, has become a sumptuary tyrant. The true devotee of fashion does not dare to use a spoon except to stir his tea or to eat his soup with, and meekly eats his ice-cream with a fork and pretends to like it.”

As Jacob Bronowski points out in The Origins of Knowledge and Imgination, “A knife and a fork are not merely utensils for eating. They are utensils for eating in a society in which eating is done with a knife and fork. And that is a special kind of society.” Other societies have evolved chopsticks or more ritualized use of the fingers for eating, but the fork is a uniquely western approach to dining. However, following the delirious profusion of pickle forks, fish forks, pastry forks, and oyster forks of the Victorian table, the pendulum has swung the other way. The rise of casual dining, convenience foods and drive-throughs means that for the first time since the 1500s we regularly eat complete meals with our hands. Forks and knives may again become the source of confusion and social unease. If history is any guide, it’s about time for another Furcifer, an intrepid and well-traveled diner, ridiculed at first, who will change the way we eat forever.

Every year, around this time, food writers fill thickets of pages—actual printed pages or virtual pages like this one—with recipes for turkey.

There are traditional New England turkeys, stuffed with bread and sage and onions and studded with everything from sausage to chestnuts. There are southern turkeys, with dressings made from cornbread that never visits the nether regions of the accompanying fowl. There are instructions for deep-frying, replete with warnings about all the terrible things that can befall a neophyte attempting to prepare the bird indoors. There are endless instructions about the proper way to thaw a giant turkey—and phone numbers to call if, on the morning of the Big Day, readers discover that they have neglected a task that should have begun three days earlier.

Certainly, those people who have never prepared a Thanksgiving dinner might benefit from the experience of others. However, the idea that experienced cooks might actually try one of the countless new recipes for the holiday is fundamentally flawed.

Think about it: Thanksgiving is one of the most traditional meals of the year. During the rest of the year, zany combinations and concoctions are fair game, but on this, the holiest of holy culinary days, traditions stand firm. Which is why editors pull their hair out trying to come up with something new. And while the holiday itself has been officially recognized only since the Civil War, it’s part of a harvest tradition that’s at least as old as agriculture itself, which is, give or take, some 10,000 years. The turkey part is somewhat newer—it dates to the colonization of the New World in the seventeenth century—but the idea of serving meats with fruit, as we serve cranberries with turkey, was popular in Europe during the Middle Ages. The spice mixture that creates the characteristic scent of most pumpkin pie (cloves, nutmeg, and ginger) are also Medieval favorites—and were traditional even then, though the tradition was borrowed from Arabic traders and medical writers. This stuff is in our DNA.

When we pull up to the holiday table, we expect to be comforted by really familiar flavors and aromas. Most families would be horrified to discover that the cook had decided, willy-nilly, to mess with their traditions by indulging in all these fancy new dishes splashed across magazine pages.

Some of these articles serve a purpose, beyond filling all that dead space between ads. Some readers may not be saddled with family traditions and may be interested in try something new. Some may be dreading yet another dried-out turkey—and are willing to try anything, once. Some may have just recovered from the experience of Thanksgiving past and want to banish the specter, once and for all.

In any case, you won’t be getting any turkey recipe from me. I will, however, steer you to a discussion of another troublesome part of the Thanksgiving experience: the somewhat bizarre, yet fully expected, utterly 20th-century combination of sweet potatoes and marshmallows.