[Sca-cooks] Funeral foods ...

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Apr 7, 2006, at 12:48 AM, Susan Fox wrote:

> On 4/6/06 7:51 PM, "Judith L. Smith Adams" <judifer50 at yahoo.com>  
> wrote:
>
>> So we have "sweetmeats" and "nutmeats" and flesh-meat, fish-meat,  
>> and ????
>> Any other such??!
>
> "White meats" meaning dairy foods.
>
> If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding!  [Pink  
> Floyd moment
> there, I'm back now.]

I believe somewhere in Martin Gardner's "The Annotated  
'Alice'" (which is, as the name implies, an copiously annotated  
edition of Lewis Carroll's books about Alice Liddell, or the first  
two, anyway), there's a lot of commentary about when the course  
structure of an English dinner changed. I forget the details, but  
apparently the order of service between the meat and the pudding was  
swapped one way or the other.

This actually makes some sense, if you view the pudding as an  
accompaniment to meat (say, Yorkshire pudding, often cooked alongside  
the meat, served with gravy, etc.), and used to bulk out/extend the  
meat itself, versus puddings used as desserts, as sugar and dried  
fruit become less like luxuries. At some point there's this shift...

But yes, I am now hearing, in my head, a voice like a drill-sergeant  
screaming, "How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your  
meat???" To which I helpfully respond, "Well, see, sergeant-major, in  
the 19th century..."

etc., etc.

Adamantius (never much of a PF fan, and who used to sing "We don'  
need no steenkeeng badges" to that tune)




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04