Archives

Captain Warren’s Cooking Pot

February 6, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A type of pot used during the colonial era, as well as in Victorian England in general, Captain Warren’s Cooking Pot served many purposes. Mrs. Beeton wrote of it, giving dimensions and prices, in her Book of Household Management. The pot closely resembles the couscousière, a pot used in North Africa for making couscous and familiar to the French there, and an Asian bamboo steamer, another utensil familiar to the French. Probably by means of this invention less food is wasted […]

Categories: Cooking, England, English Cooking, Food Science, France, French Cooking, Lamb • Tags: Captain Warren's Cooking Pot, Colonial era, Cooking, Cooking equipment, Cookware, Culinary History, England, Food History

Why Bother with Culinary History?

May 9, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A friend recently asked me, “Why is culinary history important?” Actually, her words came out of her mouth a little more harsh sounding than that: ”Why are you wasting so much of your time on that stuff? Why don’t you just write up some recipes, like how to make that great bread you always make?” Momentarily speechless, I realized she asked me the question that I periodically ask myself. What difference does it make if we know about French chefs […]

Categories: Chefs, Cookbooks, Cooking, England, France, Lit & Food, Methods • Tags: Cookbooks, Culinary History, England, English Cooking, France, French Cooking, French cuisine, Rick Bayless, Tom Jaine, Virginia Woolf

French Chefs Abroad: Alexis Soyer and His Irish Famine Soup Kitchen

April 26, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

It is to be regretted that men of science do not interest themselves more than they do on a subject of such vast magnitude as this; for I feel confident that the food of a country might be increased at least one-third, if the culinary science was properly developed, instead of its being slighted as it is now. ~~ Alexis Soyer, A Shilling Cookbook (1855) Jamie Oliver’s fight to bring nutritional nirvana to West Virginia might remind you of somebody. […]

Categories: Beef, Chefs, Cooking, England, France, French Cooking, Nutrition, Soup • Tags: Alcide Mirobolant, Alexis Benoît Soyer, Cuisine Francaise, England, Famine Soup, France, French cuisine, Irish Famine, Pendennis, Reform Club, William Makepeace Thackeray

News and Views

April 25, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

First of, I would like to point out a new feature on “Gherkins & Tomatoes / Cornichons & Tomatoes.” Go to the sidebar on the right and scroll down until you see ALL 700+ POSTS – CLICK ON THE BOX AND USE DOWN ARROW KEY This feature gives you the ability to browse through a listing of every single one of the past posts on ”Gherkins & Tomatoes / Cornichons & Tomatoes.” I’d like to thank Jan Whitaker for alerting me […]

Categories: England, France, French Cooking, Ireland • Tags: Alexis Soyer, England, Famine, France, Ireland, Soup Kitchens

Idylls of Cuisine, #92

December 19, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: England, English Cooking, France • Tags: Christmas in wartime, Christmas pudding, England, English Cooking, France, French soldiers, Guerre mondial, Soldats françaises, World War I

The Eels of Hannah, Or, Hannah Glasse’s Lenten Recipes

February 19, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Poor Hannah Glasse. Literally. Except for Martha Stewart, she may be the only cookery book writer who did hard time for financial woes. Author of The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, this eighteenth-century woman lived a life that her contemporary Jane Austen could have invented in one of her novels. You know, young illegitimate daughter of a moneyed gentleman marries n’er-do-well rogue, bears eight children, and ends up on the scrap heap, faced with the need to make […]

Categories: Books, Cookbooks, Cooking, England • Tags: Eels, England, English Cooking, Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy

John Evelyn: Cook, Or, the 17th C. Man Who Would Be a Locavore

February 1, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Omnia explorate; meliora retinete (Explore everything; keep the best.) ~~ Evelyn family motto Somehow, and how I wish it were so, it would be nice to time-travel, to sit at table with the people I’m meeting through their words, written by long-dead hands with quill pens and India ink. One of my new “acquaintances,” if such a word be the correct way of putting things, went (goes?) by the name of John Evelyn. Seventeenth-century English author John Evelyn chronicled upper-class […]

Categories: Agriculture, Books, Cookbooks, Cooking, Desserts, Eggs, England, English Cooking, Gardens, Herbs, Local foods, Locavores, Milk, Pies--Sweet • Tags: Cheesecake, Chess Pie, Cooking, Cooks, Eggs, Eliza Smith, England, John Evelyn, John Nott, Rennet, Robert May

Dig for Victory! Locavorism in Eons Past

December 31, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Looking at the past almost always calls up that old adage: “There’s nothing new under the sun.”* Take locavorism’s wartime antecedents … As these WWII posters from England’s “Dig for Victory!” campaign prove, the idea of local foods is not one whose time has come, but whose time has come again. Aimed at encouraging the civilian population to grow their own gardens, “Dig for Victory” freed up commercially grown food for the troops. The “Dig for Victory” program began in […]

Categories: Agriculture, American Cooking, Art, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Europe, Gardens, Hunger, Local foods, Locavores, Posters, United States • Tags: Art, Cooking, England, Food, Posters, Propaganda, United States, Victory Gardens, Wartime, World War II

Wassailing Through

December 21, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Wassaile the trees, that they may beare You many a Plum and many a Peare: For more or lesse fruits they will bring, As you do give them Wassailing. A foot of snow presses against the front door, the presents glimmer under the Christmas tree, and Aunt Lillie’s sugar cookies lie temptingly in the old painted tin box. And the Wassail punch simmers slowly on the stove, the fragrance of cinnamon wafting through the house. On a dark, cold winter […]

Categories: Christmas, England, English Cooking, Video • Tags: Celtic Music, Christmas, England, English Cooking, Recipes, Twelfth Night, Wassail

Christmas Charles_Rennie_Mackintosh_-_The_Wassail_1900

Idylls of Cuisine, #42

December 20, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A picture, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Art, Christmas, Cooking, England, English Cooking • Tags: Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Christmas, England, Wassail

Idylls of Cuisine, #40

November 29, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A picture, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Art, Christmas, England • Tags: England, Painting, Victorian Christmas

Saints, Souls, and Haints: Still Nuts

October 23, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Jonkheer L. C. van Panhuys, in Proceedings, Vol. 2 (p. 698, 1904), from the Internationaler Amerikanisten-Kongress held in Stuttgart in 1904, said: In the different names [for Halloween] we find also an explanation. The first of November, still called New-Years day on the island of Man, was the new years day on the beginning of the winter half year among Fins, Scottish, Danes, Swedish, Britons and Germans; and called Calan gaeaf, i. e. the Calends of winter, by the Welsh […]

Categories: England, Halloween • Tags: All Souls' Day, Day of the Dead, England, Halloween, Nuts

Saints, Souls, and Haints: Nuts

October 22, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Nuts, being a delicacy associated with autumn, seem to naturally be part of the Halloween pantry of the past. And Robert Chambers elaborated on this in his 1883 The Book of Days: a Miscellany of Popular Antiquities: Indeed the name of Nutcrack Night, by which Halloween is known in the north of England, indicates the predominance of the former of these articles in making up the entertainments of the evening. They are not only cracked and eaten, but made the […]

Categories: England, Halloween, Ireland, Nuts, Scotland • Tags: All Souls' Day, Day of the Dead, England, Halloween, Ireland, Nuts, Scotland

Saints, Souls, and Haints: Apples

October 21, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In Rustic Speech and Folk-lore (1911, p. 299-300), Elizabeth Mary Wright describes a Halloween custom we still practice: October 31 is Halloween, the Eve of All Saints’ Day, a night specially devoted to love-divination ceremonies, and other superstitious customs such as we have noticed in a previous chapter. The game of hanch-apple is a favourite Halloween pastime, so much so that in some districts Hanchin’-neet is another name for Halloween. The game consists in biting at an apple floating in […]

Categories: Apples, England, Halloween • Tags: All Souls' Day, Apples, Day of the Dead, England, Halloween

Saints, Souls, and Haints: Cabbages and Rings

October 20, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In Rustic Speech and Folk-lore (1913, p. 300), Elizabeth Mary Wright wrote: In parts of Ireland a dish called colcannon, made of potatoes and cabbage mashed together with butter, used to form part of the Halloween dinner. In it was concealed a ring, the finder whereof would be the first of the company to be married. In St. John’s, Newfoundland, the popular name for Halloween is Colcannon-night, so named because colcannon is generally eaten then. Colcannon 1 1/4 pounds russet […]

Categories: Cabbage, England, Halloween, Ireland, Irish Cooking • Tags: All Souls' Day, Cabbage, Colcannon, Day of the Dead, England, Folklore, Halloween, Irish Cooking

The Gift of the Bees: Mead

September 30, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

With a small tweak of the imagination, it’s not hard to see the scenario: a little rain and some honey accidentally left in a hollowed-out piece of wood. For our early ancestors, it was — once tasted — a seemingly divine elixir. And no cooking required. In other words, mead, the first fermented drink. And so fermentation crops up again, a boon to the human race in so many ways. The tale’s been told a myriad of times, in a […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture, Asia, Cookbooks, Cooking, English Cooking, Herbs • Tags: England, Hilda M. Ransome, Mead, Metheglin, Sir Kenelme Digby, The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore

Medicine (and Food) in Medieval England: A Select Bibliography

September 25, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Let food be thy medicine, and let thy medicine be food. Hippocrates Food and medicine, always intertwined in the human imagination. Because (obviously) the earliest English settlers brought their food habits and medicinal beliefs with them to what is now the United States, I relish books that provide background to the English way of viewing the world. At least the world of food and, not exactly indirectly, medicine. The following list of tomes* — by no means complete (and with […]

Categories: England, English Cooking, Europe • Tags: England, Medicine, Middle Ages

Food in Medieval England: Diet and Nutrition

September 19, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Food in Medieval England: Diet and Nutrition (Medieval History and Archaeology), by C. M. Woolgar, Dale Serjeantson, and Tony Waldron (paperback, 2009) In the unending quest to find models for culinary historiography, here’s another fairly up-to-date addition to the growing list: This book draws on the latest research across different disciplines to present the most up-to-date picture of English diet from the early Saxon period up to c.1540. It draws on a wide range of sources, from the historical records […]

Categories: Agriculture, Archaeology, England, English Cooking, Local foods, Middle Ages • Tags: Archaeology, C. M. Woolgar, Dale Serjeantson, England, English cookery, Food History, Food in Medieval England: Diet and Nutrition, Middle Ages, Tony Waldron

Fish Stomachs?????

September 10, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Fish Stomachs???? You might believe that fishcakes, along with fritters and croquettes, began as members of the thrifty Leftovers family. But in fact, early medieval English cooks made fishcakes from fish stomachs, which many might consider carrying thrift just a little too far. There is actually a fishcake recipe, on page 170 of Madeleine Pelner Cosman’s Fabulous Feasts: Medieval Cookery and Ceremony, which calls for 1 cup of fish stomachs. (For those of you with a weakness for all things […]

Categories: American Cooking, Asia, Asian Cooking, Cookbooks, English Cooking, Fish • Tags: England, Fabulous Feasts, Fish, Fishcakes, Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Medieval Cookery, Middle Ages

Aleing Herbs: Costmary

September 8, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Ale making in medieval and Renaissance England depended upon a number of herbal flavorings, especially before hops became the predominant taste. While doing a bit of research for another project, I came upon many mentions of Costmary, hence today’s post. An aleing herb (and a medicinal one, too), Costmary (Tanacetum balsamita, also Chrysanthemum balsamita), a cousin to Tansy, appears in the literature in the 16th century, mentioned in Green’s Universal Herbal (1532). Markham in The Countrie Farmer (1616) refers specifically […]

Categories: Beer, Cooking, England, English Cooking, Europe • Tags: Ale, Breweries, Brewing, Costmary, England, Herbs

The Random Herbalist: The Monastic Physic Garden

July 24, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Most of the gardens originally associated with monasteries contained numerous plants used for medicinal purposes. And, if nothing else, at least these gardens provided the background for mystery novelist Ellis Peters’s sailor-turned monk and herbalist, Brother Cadfael. The cloister-garth was a square, planted with grass and possibly shrubs, divided by two intersecting paths into four equal quarters. In the centre was a savina, supplying water for drinking and washing purposes. These cloisters were south of the church, and surrounded by […]

Categories: English Cooking, Gardens, Monasteries • Tags: England, Gardens, Monasteries, Monastic Gardens

Idylls of Cuisine #18

June 21, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Castles, English Cooking, Festivals, Photography • Tags: Banquets, Castles, England, Food Photography

At the Tables of the Monks: The Larderer

June 2, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

With this blog post, our tales of the monastic kitchen come to an end — for now. THE LARDERER (p. 203-204) [Note: The Abbey paid the larderer for his services, since this person did not belong to the cloistered community.] The larderer should be “as perfect, just, and faithful a servant” as could be found. He had charge of the keys of all the outhouses attached to the great larder of the monastery, which in one Custumnal are specified as […]

Categories: English Cooking • Tags: Cooking, Cooks, England, Larderer, Monasteries

Lavander, St. Remy, France (Photo credit: Holly hayes)

At the Tables of the Monks: The Infirmary Cook

June 1, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

THE COOK FOR THE INFIRMARY (p. 204-205) [Note: The Abbey paid the infirmary cook for his services, since this person did not belong to the cloistered community.] For the infirmary, and especially for the use of those who had been subjected to the periodical blood-letting, there was a special cook skilled in the preparation of strengthening broths and soups. He was the chief or meat-cook of the establishment, and had under him two boys, one as a general helper, the […]

Categories: English Cooking, Middle Ages • Tags: Cooking, Cooks, England, Food, Middle Ages, Monasteries, Monks

At the Tables of the Monks: The Fish-Cooks

May 31, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

THE FISH-COOKS (p. 206) [Note: The Abbey paid the fish-cooks for their services, since these people did not belong to the cloistered community.] In the large monasteries, such as, for example, Edmundsbury, there were two cooks for the fish-dishes ; the first was properly called the “fish-cook,” the other was “pittance-cook.” Their appointment was made for life, and by letterspatent signed by the abbot in Chapter, with the prior and the community as witnesses. Though called the “fish-cooks” these servants […]

Categories: English Cooking, Fish • Tags: Cooks, England, Fish, Middle Ages, Monasteries, Monks

At the Tables of the Monks: The Abbot’s Cook

May 29, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

THE ABBOT’S COOK (p. 202-203) [Note: The Abbey paid the abbot's cook for his services, since this person did not belong to the cloistered community.] This official held more the position of a steward, or valet to the superior, than that of a cook. He had to go each morning to the abbot or prior for orders, and to find out what would be required for the superior’s table for the day, and he had then to proceed to the […]

Categories: English Cooking • Tags: Cooking, Cooks, England, Monasteries, Monks

At the Tables of the Monks: The Caterer (or Buyer)

May 28, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

THE CATERER, OR BUYER, FOR THE COMMUNITY (p. 202-203) [Note the Abbey paid the caterer for his services, since this person did not belong to the cloistered community.] The caterer, says one Custumal, “ought to be a broadminded and strong-minded man : one who acts with decision, and is wise, just and upright in things belonging to his office ; one who is prudent, knowing, discreet and careful when purchasing meat and fish in the market or from the salesman.” […]

Categories: English Cooking • Tags: Cooks, England, Middle Ages, Monasteries, Monks

At the Tables of the Monks: The Cellarer

May 25, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Until June 2, because of a time-consuming project, “Gherkins & Tomatoes’ ” posts will cover the key players in medieval monastic kitchens.* We begin with The Cellarer. THE CELLARER (p. 71-73): The cellarer was the monastic purveyor of all foodstuffs for the community. His chief duty, perhaps, was to look ahead and to see that the stores were not running low ; that the corn had come in from the granges, and flour from the mill, and that is was […]

Categories: English Cooking • Tags: Cellarer, Cooks, England, Monasteries, Monks

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life