SC - Steak Pye with a French Pudding in the Pye

[Philip & Susan Troy]

On Mon, 4 Aug 1997, Terry Nutter wrote:

> Hi, Katerine here.  Ceridwen asks about fresh beans.  Yes, there is some
> indication that beans were eaten fresh; but that doesn't make them modern
> string beans.  Peas were also eaten both fresh and dried, and both young
> and old.  There are a few extant recipes for fresh veggies, but there's
> every reason to believe that far more were eaten than the recipe corpus
> would suggest, and an indication in Taillevent as to the reason for that:
> they were simply prepared, and everyone knew how.  Period culinary
> collections were written, if not precisely for experts, at least for
> competant cooks, not novices; they didn't include what any competant
> cook would already know.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> -- Katerine/Terry
>    (who has long wished that there was a period equivalent to the modern
>     cookbook for those who can barely boil water, so that we could see
>     in detail all the stuff the collections take for granted!)
> 

	Katerine,

	I couldn't agree more. Although I haven't been involved with period
cooking research as long or as intensely as you (I checked out your web
page) I have come to some of the same conclusions. I have a couple of my
great-grandmother's cookbooks, printed just before 1900, and they are mush
the same as the ones we discuss here. "Take such-and-such, add this and that
and cook till done". It seems that cookery as chemistry, with everything
measured and specified came into being after the World Wars, with less women
learning at Grandma's knee. In those old books I have, there are no recipes
for simple things like fresh veggies either, or for basic breads. You were
supposed to *know* how to do those things already.
	One thing I found intriguing  - there is a recipe in one of them for
" A Pretty Dish Of Venison" that is nearly word for word with the same name
from one of my period cookbooks (can't look it up right now). I find it
amusing that many of our food habits didn't change much until the middle of
this century. Many of the things in the old american cookbooks are very
nearly identical to those we study.
	One of my favorite things to do is to take down my period cookbooks
and *read* through them, looking for recipes which seem to jump right off
the page as "modern", meaning I recognize the food from the description,
though the name in the manuscript may seem strange or unfamiliar. Things
like pulled taffy, dill pickles, corned beef, mincemeat (the real kind),
"candy" Easter eggs,funnel cakes, apple pies, and such. Of course, where you
come from determines your familiarity with some foods, but being raised
Pennsylvania Dutch, how could I help but notice such things :).

Ceridwen









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