[Sca-cooks] OOP: Interesting Jewish recipe...

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Hullo, the list!

I just ran across this in the 1871 "Mrs. Esther Levy's Jewish Cookery
Book" and thought some might be interested. Mrs. Levy seems to be an
English Jew writing for either other English or American Jews; the
implication seems to be that this book is for those who, for whatever
reason, lack a proper Jewish [culinary] education (which is kind of
what the original "Settlement Cookbook" was originally intended to
be), and a way to re-integrate Jews who had perhaps wandered out of
their own culture and lost their Jewish culinary traditions, or
didn't see how they could follow them and continue to live in the
modern world. Naturally, a certain amount of compromise seems to be
involved. This is billed as the first American Jewish cookbook.

I'm curious as to whether Mrs. Levy (nee Jacobs) is Sephardic, or
simply a Sephardic-influenced Ashkanazic; she uses a patois of
Yiddish/German terms mixed with Spanish in this recipe; see below:

"COOGLE, OR PUDDING, AND PEAS AND BEANS

"Take a shin bone and a piece of bola, about three pounds; get a pint
of Spanish beans, others will serve the same, and a pint of Spanish
peas; put them in a brown pan, one that will fit the oven, and put
the beef, peas, and beans in it, and cover it over with water; add
pepper, ginger, salt, and a little cayenne pepper. Make the coogle in
the following manner: a quarter of a pound of currants, a quarter of
a pound of raisins, a quarter of a pound of sugar, the same quantity
of bread crumbs and suet, chopped fine, four eggs, a quarter of a
pound of flour, some spices and a small piece of citron. Mix well
together; put the coogle (or pudding) in a basin, place it in the pan
with the peas and beans, and cover the pudding basin with a plate.
Let it cook a day and a night, and dish up the soup without the meat.
Some persons like the meat, others do not. Turn out the pudding and
eat with a sauce. Be sure while cooking this dish, to see there is
sufficient water on it; if plenty is put on at first, it will not
require much when cooking."

Okay, first off, a bola seems to be a leg cut, known in English as
the thick flank. It looks akin to bottom round, to me. You can see a
nice chart (with pictures in a pull-down box) of comparative
languages' terms for the different cuts; unfortunately lacking US
meat cuts, at:

http://www.mhr-viandes.com/en/docu/docu/d0000340.htm

So, am I imagining things, or is this a simple cholent (beans cooked
a day and a night, with meat, not to mention the plum pudding cooked
right in the same pot)? Probably a very convenient thing for those
wishing to avoid such work on the Sabbath. But why, then, cook it "a
day and a night", and not "a night and a day"?  Pretty darned
brilliant, either way.

Adamantius
--
"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes
deserves to be called a scholar."
	-DONALD FOSTER