William Sitwell - A History of Food in 100 Recipes

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William Collins

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Text © William Sitwell 2012

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Source ISBN: 9780007412006

eBook Edition © January 2015 ISBN: 9780007412013

Version: 2015-02-24

For Laura

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

A note on the recipes

1 – Ancient Egyptian bread, 1958–1913 BC

2 – Kanasu broth (Meat and vegetable stew), circa 1700 BC

3 – Tiger nut sweets, circa 1400 BC

4 – Fish baked in fig leaves, 350 BC

5 – To salt ham, 160 BC

6 – Roast goat, 30 BC

7 – Another sauce for fowl, AD 10

8 – Honeyed cheesecakes, circa AD 200

9 – Congee, AD 636

10 – Dried fish, circa AD 800

11 – Manchet bread, circa 1070

12 – Pasta, 1154

13 – Rummaniyya (Meatballs in pomegranate sauce), 1250

14 – Pear of pies, 1379

15 – Erbolate (Baked eggs with herbs), 1390

16 – Green porray, 1392

17 – Party planning, 1420

18 – Muscules in shelle (Mussels in white wine sauce), 1440

19 – Lese fryes (Cheese tart), circa 1450

20 – Ravioli for non-Lenten times, 1465

21 – For to bake quinces, 1500

22 – Hippocras jelly, 1530

23 – Turkey tomales, circa 1540

24 – Hot chocolate, 1568

25 – To prepare a thick broth called zabaglione, 1570

26 – Earth apples (Potatoes fried and simmered with bacon bits), 1581

27 – Trifle, 1596

28 – Prince-biskets (Prince biscuits), 1602

29 – To butter crawfish, 1604

30 – An Englishman discovers the fork, 1611

31 – Spargus with white sauce, 1651

32 – A good supper dish (Mutton baked in breadcrumbs), 1664

33 – Peas soope, 1669

34 – Roast fillet of beef, 1671

35 – Fish experiment XIII, 1681

36 – Tomato sauce in the Spanish style, 1692

37 – Salad dressing, 1699

38 – Ice cream, 1718

39 – Puff past (Puff pastry), 1739

40 – Little foie gras pastries with truffles, 1740

41 – A Yorkshire pudding, 1747

42 – To make chip marmalade, 1783

43 – Sandwiches, 1787

44 – A buttered apple pie, 1796

45 – Soufflé, 1816

46 – Spring fruit pudding, 1817

47 – Pheasant Brillat-Savarin, 1825

48 – Cupcake, 1828

49 – Petits soufflés à la rose, 1833

50 – Brussels sprouts, 1845

51 – Kedgeree or kidgeree, an Indian breakfast dish, 1845

52 – Welsh rarebit, 1852

53 – Cauliflower & cheese, 1860

54 – Roly-poly jam pudding, 1861

55 – Eggs à la Benedick, 1894

56 – Hollandaise sauce, 1895

57 – Strawberry shortcake, 1896

58 – Preparation of peas, 1902

59 – Peach Melba, 1903

60 – Scotch barley broth, 1907

61 – Onion butter sauce, 1908

62 – Croque monsieur, 1915

63 – Chocolate cake, 1916

64 – Spaghetti à la Campbell, 1916

65 – Creamed mushrooms, 1919

66 – Strawberry ice-cream soda 1927

67 – Toad-in-the-hole, 1927

68 – Quick oatmeal cookies, 1931

69 – Omelette, 1937

70 – Elderberry & apple jam, 1940

71 – French creamed oysters, 1941

72 – Rice Krispies treats, 1941

73 – Victoria sandwich cake, 1948

74 – Cassoulet toulousain, 1950

75 – Syrup tart, 1950

76 – Boeuf bourgignon (Beef stew in red wine, with bacon, onions and mushrooms), 1961

77 – Watercress soup for one, 1963

78 – A large cocktail crush for 40, 1965

79 – Négresse sans chemise, 1966

80 – Cheese fondue, 1970

81 – Mediterranean lemon soup with Middle Eastern tacos, 1971

82 – Lamb korma, 1973

83 – Ginger cake, 1974

84 – Salmon fish cakes, 1976

85 – Classic bouillabaisse, 1984

86 – Sweet & sour pork, 1984

87 – Giura (Slow-braised beef), 1986

88 – Tagliatelle of oyster with caviar, 1987

89 – Chicken & goat’s cheese mousse with olives, 1987

90 – Quails with couscous, 1990

91 – Individual sausage, tomato & artichoke-heart pizzas, 1995

92 – Pecan waffles with pecan & banana syrup, 1998

93 – Fairy cakes, 2000

94 – Bacon, leek & potato gratin, 2001

95 – Spiced prawns, 2001

96 – Smoked mackerel pâté, 2004

97 – Asian salad with ponzu ginger dressing & wasabi peas, 2006

98 – Steamed salmon with tomato basil couscous, 2009

99 – Stewed rhubarb, 2010

100 – Meat fruit (or fois gras & chicken liver parfait), 2011

Select bibliography

Searchable Terms

Text credits

Acknowledgements

From the Reviews of A History of Food in 100 Recipes

About the Author

About the Publisher

Introduction

After an auction at Sotheby’s, in the summer of July 2010, I came away with an armful of nineteenth-century cookery books and a smattering of food-related paintings and cartoons. They had been a tiny part of a vast culinary collection owned by one Stanley J. Steeger and now, as I took them home to Northamptonshire, they would be a large part of a rather small collection of one William R. S. Sitwell.

There on a shelf in my study, a room filled with giant photographs of food – ripened figs in a bowl, peas in a pod and a Damian Hirst-style ‘shark in jelly’ – the books added intellectual and historical weight to what I already had. There were cookery books sent to me by publishers and PRs over the years hoping for coverage in the food magazine I edit, autobiographies penned by famous chefs I know and the odd food tome that I had actually paid for.

I started leafing through the old books I had bought, slightly wondering if, while they certainly gave character to the shelf, they would be as dry to read as they looked from their tired bindings and browned paper. But I was quickly struck by the characterful writing that leapt from so many of the pages. Where I had expected placid cooking instruction I found verbose opinion. Entries in the nineteenth-century Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery, for instance, were filled with radical opinion and comment. ‘It is a shocking thought that many die annually of absolute starvation, whose lives might have been saved twenty times over,’ wrote the editor, A. G. Payne, in a long and ranting introduction.

That view sounded rather familiar, I thought. ‘Scraps of meat, fag ends of pieces of bacon, too often wasted, with a little judicious management, make a nice dish of rissoles,’ it continued, making the idea that using leftovers was ‘fashionable’ – as promulgated in magazines such as mine – seem laughably prosaic.