Since modern photography only came into being around 1816, when Nicéphore Niépc combined camera obscura techniques and paper with photosensitive qualities, the faces of so many people will never be known to us. Those of the rich, the powerful, and the occasional peasant – thanks to artists such as Pieter Bruegel the Elder – we their…
Category: English Cooking
Day 5: Tomatoes – Celebrate American Food History
Tomatoes, poisonous or aphrodisiac? That was the question lurking in the pot for quite some time after the Spanish and the Portuguese began their voyages to the New World beginning around the late fifteenth century and likely introduced the tomato (and other New World foods) to Europe and Africa. John Gerard, a renown herbalist and…
Day 4: Corn – Celebrate American Food History
English novelist Charles Dickens once compared eating cornbread to eating a pincushion. In that disdainful sentiment, I see generations of English and other European people trying to adapt to this New World grain when their favorite grain – wheat – failed to thrive. Corn, or maize/Indian corn as it was called by the early settlers, originated –…
Day 3: Chicken – Celebrate American Food History
On June 20, 2016, Jas. Townsend and Son posted a remarkable video on YouTube. Over 1 million people have since watched Mr. Townsend cooking fried chicken, based on a recipe from an English cookbook from 1736: Dictionarium Domesticum, by lexicographer Nathan Bailey. Bailey’s greatest work appears to have been his Universal Etymological Dictionary, published in 1721….
Day 1: Tuckahoe – Celebrate American Food History
It’s soon to be a big, big day for Gherkins & Tomatoes – on July 28 G&T will celebrate eight (8) years (!) of writing about food and food history. Why, that’s 1,181 posts. Yes, there could – and should – have been more lots more, but we must take into account the time spent writing…
Dandyfunk, Burgoo, Salt Horse, Loblolly, Duff, Skillygalee, Lobscouse and Lapskaus: Oh, a Sailor’s Life is the Life for Me!
Yer may talk of yer flummadiddlers and fiddlepad- dies, but when it comes down to gen-u-ine grub, there ain’t nothing like good old salt hoss that yer kin eat afore yer turns in and feel it all night a-Iaying in yer stummick and a-nourishin’ of yen.* Think of the seaside on a windy day, waves…
Tooth Dullers and Weevil Castles – Life Before the Mast
Englishmen, and more especially seamen, love their bellies above anything else. ~ Samuel Pepys In which we meet ship’s biscuit,* that sustainer of seafarers, soldiers, and travelers since the days of the Romans’ buccellum and before. Only a hammer could do justice to this twice-cooked, rock-hard bread made only of flour, water, and salt, this…
A Tarte to prouoke courage either in man or Woman.
Thomas Dawson’s pie recipe (The Good Housewife’s Jewell, 1596) was meant to impart courage to a man or a woman, the sweet potato being considered an aphrodisiac at the time: A Tarte to prouoke courage either in man or Woman. TAKE a quart of good wine, and boyle therein two Burre rootes scraped cleane, two good Quinces,…
A Juneteenth Commentary: Edna Lewis and the Myths Behind Southern Cooking
Powered by the mythology that has grown up around Southern food over the last several years, many voices claim ownership, hurling harsh accusations of cultural appropriation, and silencing and shaming contrary opinions. The argument is not easy to prove, as it remains hampered by a lack of statistics, contemporary documentation, and clear evidence of outright…
