Foxgloves and Oxtail

There was a mystery series, Sgt. Cribb, on public television that I loved when I was a teen. We taped it and that was one of the things I could watch in Arabia. There’s an episode where an older gentleman is in danger of being poisoned by his much younger wife. Oxtail soup figures prominently in the story. Oxtail soup does not figure prominently in American cuisine, so both my mom and I were tickled to find canned oxtail soup in the grocery store in Saudi Arabia. Curious we tried it and it was quite good. Of course half the fun was just the connection to a favorite show.

I copied an oxtail soup recipe into the margins of my cookbook as soon as I could, sans digitalis. I haven’t made it very often, but I still enjoy it. It’s not common, I’ve never seen it for sale in a can in the states, and yet you do see oxtails in the stores here and I really don’t know what else you would do with them. I have decided however, that oxtail soup is one of those foods best eaten without thinking too much. There’s something about those tails boiling that is a little creepy. I like my meat prepacked in Styrofoam with no visible reference to ever having been part of a living creature.

Oxtail soup

2 small oxtails

2 T butter

2 onions, chopped

3 carrots, chopped

3 leeks, chopped

4 celery stalks, chopped

1 bay leaf

2 t salt

10 peppercorns

2 garlic cloves

Bouquet garni

10 c water

1 T lemon juice

1 T Worcestershire sauce

Have tails cut in 1 inch sections. Wash and dry well and brown in butter. Add next ten ingredients. Boil 5 minutes, skim froth off, lower heat, cover and simmer 3 hours. Remove meat and chill. Remove bouquet garni and puree or strain liquid and vegetables. Remove fat from meat, dice, and add to reheated broth when ready to serve. Top with grated parmesan or swiss. 


Or foxgloves to speed your inheritance.

The best part of waking up, is oatmeal in your cup...

I can’t stand the taste of coffee. Not even double chocolate mocha with whipped cream on top. On the other hand, I love the smell of it, especially in the morning. It gives me cozy homey feelings. My partner is a coffee snob. He keeps whole beans in the freezer and grinds them as he uses them. On the other hand, he is also addicted to generic powdered coffee creamer, not milk, not cream, and no fancy flavors. This morning he was out and all I had to offer was a bottle of Belgian chocolate toffee Coffeemate creamer in my fridge. He wrinkled his nose but it was better than nothing.

The reason I had coffeemate was to pour over my oatmeal. That way I can pretend it’s chocolate ice cream. Work with me on this, sometimes you have nothing to binge on in the house and at least this way you can pretend it’s healthy. I realize that once you’ve poured Coffeemate over it, oatmeal has as many calories and fat as the ice cream you are avoiding. But think of the fiber!

I do love oatmeal. A day without oatmeal is like an egg without salt. I am addicted to granola bars, oatmeal cookies are my favorite, and there’s something comforting about a hot mug of belly sticking oatmeal as an evening snack. Consequently, I never make this recipe for oatmeal cake. It would be one of those things I have to shave a little bite off of every time I pass by. You know, just to even up the edges, until the whole pan is gone.

Oatmeal cake makes a nice change from chocolate and was often on the buffet when my parents had people over. I have no idea where my mom originally got it but she's made it as long as I can remember. Again, you can even pretend it’s healthy. Or substitute out some white flour for graham, throw in some shredded zucchini, carrots, or apples, or sub some applesauce for the shortening and make it healthy for real. I could suggest that lard would also be a healthier substitution but Fruitfemme won’t let me go there.

Oatmeal Cake

Pour 1 c boiling water oven

1 c oatmeal let stand

Cream 2 c brown sugar

1 c shortening

Add 2 eggs—beat well—add oatmeal.

Sift 1 c flour

½ t salt

1 t baking powder

1 t baking soda

1 t cinnamon

Add to the above, mix well. Add 1 cup nuts and 1 cup raisins

Bake at 350° for 1 hour or til done.

Glaze

1 cup powdered sugar

3 T brown sugar

1 T cornstarch

½ t salt

1 t vanilla

1 T butter

Mix above ingredients and add enough boiling cream or milk to make a thick glaze. Frost while cake is still warm. Eat while cake is still warm.

As You Like It

Love the opera glasses. Yes, dahling, nothing rounds out a night of Aida like tinned fish.

When I was seventeen, my family was in a car accident that left my mother with severe injuries and the rest of us with more than our share of bumps, stitches, and broken bones. In the aftermath, I did my best to take care of things. Given the chaos, that often meant making do with whatever was at hand to feed the family, since this was in Arabia and running to the store myself was not really an option. We did have a case of canned tuna in the pantry. I suddenly found more uses for tuna than I’d ever eaten in my life. It’s probably lucky we didn’t add mercury poisoning to the list of physical concerns. If only I’d had the help of the Tuna Research Foundation to guide me. After all:

“Open a can of tuna and you open a tale of adventure…of daring fishermen ready to travel far and wide for America’s favorite canned seafood…ready to use all their skill and courage to secure their prize catch.”

“The saga of tuna is a short but merry one. Appropriately, it unfolds in California, the center of the tuna-canning industry, for tuna’s spectacular rise to stardom as a menu of choice rivals a Hollywood success story.”

“In its initial decade, tuna played a modest part at table, slowly gathering a group of devoted admirers. But when World War I darkened the economic scene, tuna scored its major triumph. As many foods became scare, tuna performed valiant service on the home front, breaching the nutrition gap with its rich protein, valuable minerals and vitamins, and introducing many Americans to its pleasing flavor and versatility.”

Swept away by the heady proximity of this canned star of the silver screen and wartime hero, I surely would have tried these recipes.

Tuna Potato Puff

2 eggs

½ cup milk

2 cups soft bread crumbs

¼ cup minced onion

2 T minced parsley

½ t salt

½ t mustard

¼ t pepper

2 cans tuna in oil

1 envelope instant mashed potatoes

½ cup shredded American cheese

Combine eggs, milk, bread crumbs, onion,parsley and seasonings in a mixing bowl. Beat until blended. Mix in tuna. Turn into a 9 inch pie plate. Bake in a moderate oven (350) for 40 minutes. Remove from oven. Increase oven heat to very hot (550). Prepare mashed potatoes according to package directions; season to taste. Pile potatoes on top of tuna mixture; sprinkle with cheese. Place under broiler heat or in oven until cheese reaches melting point.

Tuna Corn Chowder

2 cans (6 ½ or 7 oz. each) tuna in oil

1 large onion, sliced

1 can (1 lb) whole kernel or cream style corn

2 cups diced potatoes

3 cups milk

1 t salt

2 T chopped parsley

¼ t Tabasco

Drain 2 T oil from tuna into large saucepan, add onion and cook until tender but not brown. If whole kernel corn is used, drain corn and add liquid to saucepan. If cream style corn is used, ass ½ cup water to saucepan. Bring to a boil and add potatoes; cover and cook 10 minutes. Add corn, milk, and tuna. Add salt. Heat thoroughly. Add parsley and Tabasco.

Revolutionary Recipes

It doesn’t seem to matter how far back your go, gramma always cooked better in the past. I’ve got recent cookbooks, 100 year old cookbooks and I’ve seen 200 year old cook books, and no matter what they always speak longingly of recapturing some mythical magic that our foremothers had in the kitchen that we are now too busy, too sophisticated, or too ignorant to possess. We’ve always lost something ephemeral that that particular book will help us recapture.

Here Stokely-Van Camp gives us a pastoral Colonial setting (Conner Prairie Pioneer Settlement, Noblesville, Indiana, 1977) to set us back on the wholesome path of our ancestors and make us buy more canned green beans. This is probably the tail end of the bicentennial craze too. Ohmygosh, my brain goes strange places sometimes, anyone remember the Saturday morning cartoon The Funky Phantom? The Spirit of 1776.

Back to my theme. The first recipe I read in this book was far from promising. Something about canned green beans entombed in lemon jello makes me think they'd be more likely to incite rebellion than feed a revolution.

Green Bean Crunchers

1 can [1 lb] French style green beans

1 pkg [3 oz.] lemon gelatin

1 envelope unflavored gelatin

½ cup finely chopped onion

½ cup chopped celery

½ cup coarsely chopped nuts

Drain beans, reserving liquid. Add enough water to bean liquid to make 2 cups. Bring liquid to a boil and add lemon gelatin, stirring until dissolved. Dissolve unflavored gelatin in ¼ cup cold water and add to lemon gelatin mixture. Cool until slightly thickened. Fold in remaining ingredients. Pour into a 6-cup mold or 8 individual molds and chill until firm. Unmold on crisp greens and serve with Tangy Dressing.

That means we have to take a look at the Tangy Dressing recipe too. This is a little more appealing, though definitely on some other substance.

½ c unpeeled cucumber, grated and drained

1 cup mayonnaise

½ cup finely chopped green pepper

2 t white vinegar

½ t salt

Dash pepper

Stir all ingredients together and chill before serving. Makes about 1 pint dressing.

The following recipes, while not noteworthy on their own, have a whole new spin when juxtaposed with the lovely colonial women posed serving up the family dinner.  

Beans and Franks

(“It’s a tradition.” We are reassured. I’m sure that Betsy Ross had a big bowl beside her rocking chair as she sewed the first flag. They rise to the level of haute cuisine by reason of sautéing.)

3 T chopped onion

2 T butter

1 can [1 lb. 15 oz.] pork and beans

6 wieners, sliced penny style

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 t prepared mustard

1 t celery salt

Saute onion in butter until tender. Combine onion with remaining ingredients in a 2 quart casserole. Bake, uncovered, at 350 for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Polynesian Chicken

(May be served over rice. I have it on great authority that Paul Revere preferred his Polynesian chicken over mashed rutabagas.)

2 whole chicken breasts, halved

2 T shortening

1 can [15 oz.] tomato sauce

1 cup peach preserves

2 T chopped onion

1 ½ T soy sauce

¼ t ginger

½ cup toasted sliced almonds

In skillet, brown chicken in shortening, pour off fat. Combine next 5 ingredients and pour over chicken. Bring to simmer; cover and simmer 1 ½ hours, turning chicken after 30 minutes. Sauce should thicken. Garnish with toasted almonds.

I'll leave you with one more picture of the kind of spread so dear to the hearts of our founding fathers.

Cheese Dreams

Another irony of me doing a food blog is that my children do not like my cooking. This has nothing to do with my skills or overestimation of my skill. To call them picky eaters would be to say that cats have an attitude once in awhile. Here is the complete list of foods my younger daughter will eat. Note: all vegetables and fruits are to be eaten raw. Seasoning consists of salt. Period. Nothing should be mixed with anything else. Those childhood staples of mac and cheese, PBJs, and sugar frosted cereal are strictly off limits. Some foods, like hard boiled eggs, have come and gone off the list without warning, this is the current status.

carrots

broccoli

apples

grapes

cabbage

lettuce

bananas

tangerines

lemons

orange juice

strawberries

blueberries

meat sticks

salami

yogurt, some brands, no lumps of fruit

chicken breast

turkey

tuna

salmon

tilapia

shrimp

bread: white, wheat, some rolls

crackers: goldfish, saltines, ritz

muffins: blueberry, chocolate

milk

American cheese

ice cream

some cake

some candy

French fries

cheese pizza, some brands

chicken strips, some brands

chocolate chip pancakes

some chips

Oh, and one new item as of last weekend. There was not one thing at the Renaissance Festival that she would eat until, after an entire busy day without food, she decided she could nibble the tiniest tip of a deep fried cheese curd to see if it would kill her. Then she got her own large order. Food of the Gods.

My daughter can tell when, in an effort to be healthier, I substitute turkey for beef meat sticks. She can tell when, in an effort to be more frugal, I switch to a cheaper brand of turkey for her sandwiches. (That would be plain bread and baked sliced turkey lunch meat. No condiments. No “honey- roasted” or smoked.) She knows if I mess with her pancake recipe. I think she’s one of those supertasters I’ve heard tell of. She is a strong bitter PTC taster, while I can’t taste it at all. (And yet, oddly enough, will contently devour cruciferous vegetables that supposedly taste bitter to supertasters.) The only other form of sandwich she’ll eat is grilled cheese, or rather Cheese Dreams as given in the Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, 1918, vol 2. 

CHEESE DREAMS.

If something delicious to serve with fruit or salad is desired for luncheon or Sunday night supper, the accompanying recipe for cheese dreams should be tried. They should be served at once on being taken from the stove, because as soon as they cool the cheese hardens and they are not appetizing. Cheese dreams may be sauted or prepared in a broiler or an oven, but if they are sauted, they may be made in a chafing dish.

12 thinly cut slices of bread

Butter

Cheese sliced 1/8 in. thick

Spread the bread thinly with butter and make sandwiches by placing a slice of cheese between two slices of bread. Place these sandwiches under a broiler or in a very hot oven and toast them on both sides, or omit the butter from the center, place the sandwiches in a slightly oiled frying pan, and brown them on both sides. In heating the sandwiches, the cheese melts. Serve hot.

Who wouldn’t want to eat a Cheese Dream? This book also notes:

“The use of cheese, however, is not nearly so great as its food value warrants, the amount used in the United States per capita being only about 3-1/2 pounds annually. This is a condition that should be overcome, for there is a large variety of ways in which cheese can be used to advantage in the diet. When eaten raw, it is very appetizing, and when used with soups, sauces, and foods that have a bland taste, it lends additional flavor and makes an especially attractive dish.”

I agree, extra cheese, please! Bring it on!

(I just looked it up. Americans now eat about 30 lbs. of cheese per person per year. Mission accomplished.)

On Butter and the Ultimate Pie Crust

I spent most of my life not knowing that there was a difference between American butter and European butter. This is even after spending my teen years eating Danish Lurpak butter. However, my search for the perfect pie crust led me on a butter excursion.

Some people swear by lard for pie crust. I have tried that, and yes, it makes a wonderfully flakey textured crust. But there are some folks who don’t like the thought of eating lard, vegetarians for instance, or Muslims, or people with actively functioning hearts and arteries, though it doesn’t really deserve its negative reputation since it has less saturated fat and cholesterol and more unsaturated fat than butter, and no transfat. Really. Go look it up. It’s better for you.

But I like the taste that butter adds to pie crust. So sometimes I used lard, but mostly I used butter. Then I stumbled, quite by accident, onto an article saying that top bakers typically prefer to use European butter. Why’s that? Because European butter is higher in fat than American butter. I had never given my butter much thought, wasn’t butter just pure fat? Oh no, there’s water in there, and milk proteins. American butter typically has only 80-82% fat, while European butter starts at 82% and goes up to 85%. That 5% can make a major difference in terms of how much water you are really adding to your pie crust. I never counted the water in the butter before. And water and flour = gluten = tough crust. Damn, those sneaky pâtissiers!

Another thing I had never thought about was that label on every American brick of butter I’d bought: “sweet cream butter”. I thought that was just advertising language, like “rich chocolately” or “fresh cut”, but it turns out to be an important descriptor. American butter is made from cream that is straight from the cow as it were, while European butter is made from cream allowed to sit up and culture for awhile, like crème fraiche or sour cream. One actually is sweet cream, and one is not, and the European butter has a different, and IMHO more complex flavor.

I can get Kerrygold, Lurpak, and Plugra butter here. Plugra is a domestic brand sold as “European style” (Plugra = plus gras = more fat) The search for the ultimate pie crust has led me to only using these sources of fat for my crust, oh, and cake flour (less protein and gluten), and iced vodka rather than water. Alcohol evaporates quicker and at a lower temperature, which, again, reduces the gluten. Pat the dough together into a flat disk, wrap it up, and put it in the fridge to rest for at least several hours to let osmosis reduce the amount of handling you have to do. I put them in the freezer at this point so I always have a crust on hand ready to use. I dare you to make those changes and produce a tough crust.

These distinctions must have been much more well-known in the past. Here’s an excerpt from the Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, 1918, vol 2. We’re not even going to talk about renovated butter. Erp.

“FLAVOR AND COMPOSITION OF BUTTER.--That the housewife may have an understanding of the food substances found in butter and also learn how to determine the quantity of butter needed for her family, she should become familiar with the composition of this food. The flavor of butter depends to a great extent on the kind of cream from which it is made, both sweet and sour cream being used for this purpose. Of these two kinds, sour cream is the preferable one, because it gives to the butter a desirable flavor. Still, the unsalted butter that is made from sweet cream is apparently growing in favor, although it is usually more expensive than salted butter. The difference in price is due to the fact that unsalted butter spoils readily.

RENOVATED BUTTER.--Another substitute that is sometimes used to take the place of the best grades of butter is renovated, or process, butter. This is obtained by purifying butter that is dirty and rancid and that contains all sorts of foreign material and then rechurning it with fresh cream or milk. The purifying process consists in melting the butter, removing the scum from the top, as well as the buttermilk, brine, and foreign materials that settle, and then blowing air through the fat to remove any odors that it might contain. Butter that is thus purified is replaced on the market, but in some states the authorities have seen fit to restrict its sale. While such restrictions are without doubt justifiable, it is possible to buy butter that is more objectionable than renovated, or process, butter, but that has no restriction on it.”

Grease! or butter...whatever

Yeast! 

You want your bread to be so soft and light

You got a growin' thing, you gotta feed it right
There ain't no danger it can rise too far
So add some sugar now, just a pinch from the jar

Yeast is the word

Learning to bake can be a royal pain
When your bread don't rise, It's just a crying shame
The top is burning, a disaster so real
So take it out right now, you just ruined your meal

Yeast is the word

(is the word that you heard)
It's alive, can't mistreat it
Yeast needs the time, a warm place, and devotion
Yeast is the microbe we're eating

Time to make some bread! And I’ve got a carton of buttermilk in the fridge that’s about to go bad, so…

Buttermilk Bread

6 cups buttermilk

1 cake dry yeast

½ c lukewarm water

Flour

1 ½ T salt

2 T sugar

2 T butter

Heat buttermilk, stirring constantly until scalded.(Scalding breaks up the proteins in the milk, that’s why you see it so frequently as a step in bread recipes; it’s all about the texture.) Remove from fire and let cool. Add yeast which has been softened in the water. Add sufficient flour to make a medium batter. Beat until smooth. Cover and set in a warm place and allow to stand overnight. (This creates a fermented batter, with a greater depth of yeasty flavor, called a ‘sponge’. I love that term and that’s what it looks like.)

Add sugar, salt, butter, and enough flour to make a dough just stiff enough to knead. Turn onto lightly floured board and knead until smooth and elastic. Allow to rise until double in bulk and work down. Let rise again until double in bulk. Form into loaves. Place in well-oiled pans. Cover and let rise until double in bulk. Bake in hot oven, 450°, about 45 minutes.

From Mrs. W.H. Juedeman, Bristow, OK, printed in The Household Searchlight Recipe Book, 1936.

My kitchen is not very warm so this process took most of the day. That’s fine; it gives more time for the flavor to develop. Here’s the end product, a soft dense texture with a hint of sourness from the buttermilk. I would absolutely make it again. It’s very similar to my mom’s famous dinner rolls.

A bowl of homemade tomato soup is perfect with the bread, slathered with Laughing Cow blue cheese spread. The soup is my last hurrah to the tomatoes of summer. Never any recipe there, just whatever is at hand to add to the tomatoes, in this case: zucchini, carrots, roasted Anaheim chilis, a little chicken stock, and tons of garlic. My daughter didn’t want the soup, or the Laughing Cow, but she did eat the bread…smothered in ketchup. Which proves the old adage: you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him eat the stinky cheese.

Mr. Miyagi bakes a cake

It's definitely a baking kinda weekend. Back to Pillsbury’s 15^th Grand National Bake-Off Cook Book, 1964. In it, Umejiro Kuritsubo, from Oakland, CA,  where he's--can you guess? Yes, a Japanese gardener--was one of 2 men in the contest. He submitted one recipe and walked away with the $1000 Best of Class Cake Award. Here it is.

Walnut Glory Cake

Combine:

¾ c flour

2 t cinnamon

1 t salt

Beat 9 egg whites (1 ¼ c) in large mixing bowl until soft mounds form. Gradually add ¾ c sugar. Continue beating until very stiff, straight peaks form. Do not underbeat.

Combine:

9 egg yolks

2 t vanilla

¾ c sugar

Beat until thick and lemon colored. Stir in dry ingredients.

Fold batter gently but thoroughly into egg whites using a wire whip or rubber spatula. Fold in 2 c chopped walnuts.

Turn into ungreased 10 inch tube pan.

Bake at 350° for 55-65 minutes. Invert immediately. Cool completely before removing from pan. Frost with a vanilla glaze, sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar or serve with whipped cream.

The back cover says he used the prize money to fund his first visit to Japan in  30 years. Congratulations, Mr.Kuritsubo, not only on winning the prize, but on having one of the least dorky photos in the book, even with the paper hat.

This is not what's in my oven right now. If I baked this, I would have no choice but to eat it. That's the problem with a baking craving, too many yummy things sitting around waiting to attach themselves to your butt.

This is what's in my oven, or was:

Chocolate Pillows

Sift together 2 1/2 cups flour and 1/2 t salt.

Cream:

 1 cup butter

3/4 cup sugar

Blend in 1 egg and 2 t vanilla.

Stir in the dry ingredients.

Press thru a cookie press, using saw tooth (spritz) plate, into strips onto ungreased cookie sheets. Cut 10 five-cent chocolate candy bars into 1 inch pieces. Place 1/4 inch apart on strip of dough. Press another strip over candy, covering completely. Mark bars between chocolate pieces.

Bake at 375 for 12-15 minutes until light golden brown. Cut into pieces immediately. For extra fancy touch, sprinkle with chopped walnuts, colored sugar, or coconut before baking.

I didn't happen to have any 5 cent chocolate around, so I filled them with chocolate chips. And I guess I wasn't feeling fancy. The girls give them a thumbs up. I'll put some in their lunches and save some for band practice on Wednesday. That way they won't tempt me to eat them all. yeah yeah sure sure

Maybe I should have made the Chocolate Beau Catchers on that page as well. Then instead of filling the pillows with chocolate chips, I could fill my pillows with chocolate beaus. That idea has potential. Might burn off a few of those calories as well.

Instant Blending Flour

I had never heard of Instant Blending Flour before I saw this ad. It says it's granular and pours like sugar. What on earth could they do in the milling process to produce that? And you would think that would make it dissolve more slowly in solutions rather than faster. A little more digging and I've discovered that this kind of flour has less protein too, so while you might want to use it in places where you'd use cake flour (pastry, cookies, cakes) you wouldn't want to use it in bread which belies their claim of being all-purpose. It promises smooth gravy but I quit using flour for that a long time ago and switched to corn starch so any lumps are the lumps that I put in myself, like onion, besides I don't like the flour-y taste it adds to sauces. Yes, I know, sometimes you've gotta make a roux...that's different; that's when I want the taste of browned butter and flour. I suppose Instant Blending Flour would make an excellent roux.

Pillsbury doesn't sell this anymore, but Wondra, which I do see in the stores, is the same thing. Again from my searches, I see some people prefer to use Wondra in pie crust because it has a slightly less acidic taste than cake flour. Damn, just when I thought my search for the perfect pie crust was complete, that I had uncovered all the secret elements.

Time to buy some Wondra.

I hate it when advertising works on me.

The Wages of Sin

I've got one more post about the recipes in The Perfection Stove Company's cook book and that has to do with this section on recipes for sick people and invalids. I know there was a time when people believed that sickness was the consequence of sin. Well, this would be the purgatory: eating gruel and beef tea.

Reading the recipe, I can see that beef tea is really just a beef broth but something about the idea of meat "tea" gives me the willies. I'm not sure what soaking the meat in cold water is in aid of. At first, I was afraid that it was going to be meat sun tea: put the raw meat in there awhile, take it out, and then boil the water. Mmmmm, meat tea.

Beef Tea
Secure 1 lb. steak from top of round; wipe, cut in pieces, removing fat, and soak 15 minutes in 1 pint of cold water. Put meat and water in a glass fruit jar and cover jar. Place in a kettle of cold water, allow water to heat slowly, then cook for 3 hours. Strain, season, and heat again before serving.


I assume the tea is a nice beverage with the arrowroot gruel listed above it.

Arrowroot Gruel

Use 1 t arrowroot to each half cup of boiling water. Mix with cold water to make a thin paste, adding a bit of salt; then add boiling water and cook 10 minutes. Cream or milk may be added if desired.

Arrowroot? The one thing on the planet with less taste than cornstarch, for when you can't even keep your own spit down. Oh wait, let's make it even more like spit by mixing it with cream or milk so it's slimey. There, now you don't have to go to the trouble of puking; it's already in the bowl.

English Monkey

I've certainly heard of Welsh Rabbit before (or rarebit, yeah, whatever) but not English Monkey. I would like to think that this was invented in Wales in answer to the British making fun of them with their "rabbit." I guess Monkey would be the grossest thing they could think of to eat. In the U.S. maybe we'd call it Road Kill Possum. I guess if you used stinky enough cheese.

English Monkey

1 Cup bread crumbs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup mild cheese
1 egg
1T butter
salt and cayenne

Soak bread crumbs in milk 15 minutes. Melt butter in saucepan, add cheese cut in small pieces and let it melt; then add soaked crumbs, egg beaten a little, 1/2 t salt and a few grains cayenne. Cook 3 minutes. Serve on crackers.

Matthew Arnold, British poet.
An English monkey? Or the prototype for Wolverine.

This recipe is also from the undated 1890s(?) Perfection Stove Company Cook Book. A few other odds and ends that are noticeable:

• In older cookbooks they always talk about breaking macaroni in pieces so it must have originally been sold as long tubes.
• Either they had such sensitive taste buds they needed very little flavor, or the food tasted more flavorful, which is possible given the huge but styrofoam veggies the abound in the American marketplace, or we have completely jaded palates. If there's one thing I have to adjust with these old recipes it's to give them some flavor. ("A few grains cayenne." Sheesh)
• Bread crumbs abound in old cook books. Not a scrap was left unused. Consequently the next item:
• There's often a section for ways to reuse leftovers, especially in croquettes. I have not, to my knowledge, ever actually eaten a croquette. But in the past there was nothing that couldn't be smashed together, rolled in bread crumbs, and fried.
• There's an opposite dearth of vegetable recipes. Boil the crap out of them and put them on the table. Enough said.