Grog to Grits

A lot of old recipe books have a section at the back featuring something like miscellaneous tips and tricks, and I found the following in a book from 1912, when cars would have still been unusual:

A ten-cent megaphone is a most useful article to carry on motor trips. It enables one to ask directions of people some distance away and makes one's "Thank you" audible to the kind informant one has already passed.

HEY YOU! CAN YOU DIRECT ME TO ROUTE 12? THANK YOU!

Source: The Book of a Thousand Recipes, Arranged for The River Forest Women’s Club. River Forest, Illinois, 1912

I like flambe recipes because they are, after all, about setting food on fire when presenting it to the diners. Who wouldn’t love the combination of drama and danger involved in that?

Fanny Farmer’s New Book of Cookery, from 1921, includes three flambe recipes, and they’re all for what is essentially sweet potato hash. This makes the flambe element a bit of a head-scratcher–why set these dishes on fire instead of mashed potatoes, or peas, or anything else?

The recipes are reprinted below. The first has the cook saute cubed sweet potato until browned, then make some sugar syrup. A small amount of that goes into a chafing dish with the potatoes, a few spices, and a quarter-cup of brandy. The brandy is lit and then the potatoes are tossed until the fire goes out. This last part is happening at the table, so be careful with that tossing.

The second recipe has the cook slice sweet potatoes lengthwise, parboil them, and then saute until browned. Once in the serving dish rum is added and lit.

The third dish is another variation on the other two. Peeled sweet potatoes are boiled until soft, then sliced and sautéed until brown. The pieces are put on a serving platter, brandy is poured on, a fire is lit, and then the cook bastes the potatoes until the brandy burns itself out. 

Sweet Potatoes, Brulé
Cut three medium-sized cold boiled sweet potatoes in one-third-inch slices and sauté in butter until delicately browned. Put one-fourth cup sugar and one tablespoon boiling water in small saucepan, place on range, bring to the boiling point and let boil until of the consistency of a thick syrup. Put one-half tablespoon syrup in chafing dish, add potatoes, sprinkle with salt, paprika and a few grains cayenne. Add one-fourth cup brandy, put lighted match to brandy, and as soon as brandy begins to burn, toss potatoes (using a fork and spoon) until brandy stops burning.

Sautéd Sweet Potatoes with Rum
Wash and pare medium-sized sweet potatoes, and cut in one-third-inch slices, lengthwise. Parboil in boiling salted water eight minutes, drain and sauté in butter until well browned on both sides. Remove to a hot serving dish, pour over Jamaica rum and light when sending to table.

Sweet Potatoes, Flambant
Wash and pare large sweet potatoes. Cook in boiling salted water until soft, drain, cut in one-fourth-inch slices lengthwise and trim in oblong shapes of uniform size. Sprinkle with salt and sauté until browned. Arrange pieces overlapping one another on a silver platter and pour over and around brandy. Light liquor and baste, using brandy in dish until it stops burning.

Source: A New Book of Cookery, by Fannie Merritt Farmer, Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1921, pages 191-2.

I came across this recipe for baked macaroni with peanut butter sauce in a Fannie Farmer cookbook from 1921. The addition of peanut butter makes it a bit of a strange recipe, and I’m not sure where the idea came from. The dominant taste would likely be the peanut butter, since there’s not much else in it. While the recipe calls for macaroni, at that time “macaroni” was a catch-all for any type of pasta, which is why the cook is supposed to break the macaroni into pieces–Farmer is likely referring to what we would call spaghetti today. 

Baked Macaroni with Peanut Butter
1 cup macaroni, broken in 1-inch pieces
2 cups milk
3 1/2 tablespoons peanut butter
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup buttered bread crumbs

Cook macaroni in boiling salted water twenty minutes, or until soft, drain in strainer, and pour over one quart cold water to prevent pieces from adhering; then put in buttered baking dish. Heat milk in double boiler, and add gradually to peanut butter. Pour over macaroni, cover and bake in a slow oven forty minutes. Remove cover, sprinkle with crumbs, and bake until crumbs are brown.

Source: A New Book of Cookery, by Fannie Merritt Farmer, Boston: Little, Brown,And Company, 1921, page 43.

I was looking through a copy of Gourmet magazine from April, 1955, and was struck by the writers’ inability to describe food. In case you are unaware, Gourmet is usually remembered as being the most influential food magazine of the years after World War II (the late 1940s through the 1960s). It was focused on high-class foods, which back then were European, particularly French, and rather than being a simple purveyor of recipes it is known for its descriptions of food and food culture.

Which is why the lack of actual food descriptions is so odd.

For example, the issue includes an article titled “Yankee in Paradise,” about the author’s recent trip to Hawaii (the “Yankee” in the article’s title could refer to non-Hawaiian-Americans in general or to the magazine’s fairly extreme New York City bias). The author relates the kind of information that is typical of any article about Hawaii, like a brief description of the various islands and the fact that “Hawaii” is actually the biggest of the islands that make up the chain.

He also describes several restaurants visitors to Hawaii might be interested in, including one with the memorable name of Don the Beachcomber, which was an early tiki bar. The article does a good job of describing the exterior and interior of the restaurant, and says that the restaurant offers “as dramatic a bit of Polynesia as you are likely to find anywhere.” (page 34) When it comes to the food, though, the author simply lists off popular dishes like fried shrimp Cantonese, fried won ton, and Mandarin duck. He comments that the fried shrimp was “delectable,” but beyond that there isn’t any hint of just how the food tastes. Apparently the idea was that the place was popular and so the food must be good.

This inability to describe food isn’t a hiccup limited to the pages of a mid-1950s food magazine; it was widespread until the 1990s. Or, rather, the ability to actually describe food didn’t come along until the 1990s, with the advent of televised cooking competition shows where the judges had to offer some sort of justification for picking one cook, or team of cooks, over another. That’s where foodies and Americans in general got the ability to describe how food tastes, and how flavors mingle, and how texture can enhance a food.

At any rate, it’s somewhat shocking to look at what food writing was like before that time. Before that food writers could describe a restaurant’s interior and menu and general look and feel–they just weren’t very good at describing the actual food.

From a 1694 London cookbook comes this recipe that I thought amusing. Unfortunately it leaves a lot out, like cooking time, but I’m sure a modern cook could experiment and figure it all out.

Bread Pudding in Guts
Take some Cream and boil it with Mace and mix therewith some Almonds blanched and beaten with Rosewater, then take Cream, Eggs, Nutmeg, Currans, Salt and Marrow, and mingle them all together, with as much grated white Bread, as you shall think sufficient, and herewith fill your guts.

Source: The Compleat Cook, by T. P. J. P. R. C. N. B., et. al., London, 1694, pages 317-8.