Joe Carlin, apparently a fairly well-known food historian and nutritionist, is teaching our 3 part series on Food History. Tonight was night 1 and although I struggled to stay awake given my late night last night and my very long day today, he was quite interesting.
Week 1: We’re covering history of the recipe.
Week 2: History of the kitchen
Week 3: a series of things cooked including pudding, corn chowder, medieval jumbles, sweet potato pie from 1881 and rum punch. [Nothing like ending with rum punch to get a good review form the students.]
He started off by giving us a project (due at the end of the series), where we’re asked to research a recipe and find variations of it over the years to see how it’s changed over time. Very old recipes, for example, would not have a temperature for the oven - since having ovens and controlling them temperature-wise is fairly modern. Sounds like it should be interesting (but not everyone loved hearing about more work, of course).
An excellent resource for the project will be The Historic American Cookbook Project. This site has pictures of entire old cookbooks and recipes. Totally cool, with lots of stuff that is very, very old.
To understand food history, you need to understand the origin of man and man’s travel globally. Our ancestors began in Africa about 7 million years ago. About 1 million years ago, they traveled from Africa to the Middle East. Cooked meat, when invented, led to the growth of the human brain. About 1/4 of our caloric intake goes to fuel the brain.
No animals capable of being domesticated were in Africa. Millet and Sorghum were the only grains there (much like bird seed).
Homo Sapiens have only been around about 100,000 years. Moving from the Middle East, migration went to India and China and by 12,000 B.C. move to Alaska and Canada.
This instructor is a contributor to and recommends Gastronomica Magazine.
People began creating and moving to cities with the advent of cement or mortar.
Clay tablets are the first recording of recipes.
The Library of Congress is one of the best collections of cookbooks. There are also more and more books being catalogued or available completely online from Google.
Cones of sugar were referred to as loaf sugar. Made in the Caribbean, poured as liquid, but shaped like a cone. The sugar was hard as a rock, needed to be chiseled, beaten and rolled until consistency was achieved.
Paper covering sugar cones was blue, indigo blue and the popularity of this color led to blue jeans being dyed blue.
Colonial times - it was believed that nutmeg would prevent bubonic plague.
1500’s - discovered that you could take sweet wines and add brandy to get fortified wines (no oxidation - and wouldn’t go bad). Sherry, port and Madeira are examples.
Ambergris (ambergrease or grey amber) is solid, waxy, flammable substance of a dull grey or blackish color, with the shades being variegated like marble. It possesses an earthy odor. It occurs as a secretion of the intestines of the sperm whale and can be floating in the ocean or washing up onto shores. It is believed that when sperm whales eat giant squids, the beak of the squids can’t be digested and cause this secretion by the whale.
Turtles were sent to turtle dressers, who would kill and butcher them. Careful butchery was important because improper handling would render the meat useless and in some cases even poisonous.
Turtle soup was most popular in the the 18th and 19th centuries with ship captains coming up from the Caribbean bringing turtles and tropical fruit. Captains used turtles as currency for room and board.
When turtles became rarer, calf heads were used as a substitute to make mock turtle soup.
The Schlesinger Library at Harvard University is Harvard’s only library open to the public. They have a great rare cookbook collection.
In the 1820’s, doctors announced that there were wonder ingredients in tomatoes and they invented pills called tomatotine. They advertises the tomato pills and soon thousands of acres in southeast Connecticut were allocated to growing tomatoes. Connecticut clam chowder was born and it was basically New England clam chowder, but with tomatoes. This evolved into the tomato based soup now known as Manhattan clam chowder.
A gill (old times) = 1/2 cup
Wow! That’s a lot. Next week’s seminar on kitchens should be interesting.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Whale vomit anyone? [Food History I]