February 2006

Beef is a poor substitute for venison: Wednesday's food quotation

... till one of the clock, at which time we made an end; and I went home and took my wife and went to my Cosen Tho. Pepys's and found them just sat down to dinner, which was very good; only the venison pasty was palpable beef, which was not handsome.

1660 Samuel Pepys, Diary, 6 January 1660

Choice of meat in the Greek islands: Tuesday's food quotation

But beef is rare within these oxless isles;
Goat's flesh there is, no doubt, and kid, and mutton;
And, when a holiday upon them smiles,
A joint upon their barbarous spits they put on.

1819 Byron, Don Juan 2.154

Junk = salt meat: Monday's food quotation

Just then a man hailed us from the fire that breakfast was ready, and we were soon seated here and there about the sand over biscuit and fried junk.

1883 R. L. Stevenson, Treasure Island ch. 31

An Englishman fait chabrot: Sunday's food quotation

For the first time I was asked to have lunch with M. et Mme Vinges, our nearest neighbours and closest friends in the village. M. Vinges is a retired roadman of about my age, living on his foreman's pension.
Menu
Bouillon de boeuf with vermicelli. Ending with the ceremony of the chabrot, i.e. pouring half a glass of red wine into the last few spoonfuls of soup, then tipping the soup-plate up and drinking it. Very good. Try it.
Hors d'oeuvres. Paté de Canard truffé (bought at vast expense)
Tomato salad, salami.
Green french beans boiled and fried in butter.
Boiled beef.
Roast poulet-de-grain with green olives in a delicious caper sauce.
Cheese. Cherry cake. Fruit salad of oranges and bananas. Coffee with brandy.

1967 David Garnett, Letter to Sylvia Townsend Warner, 24 October 1967 [ Sylvia and David: the Townsend Warner / Garnett letters. Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994, p. 127]

A classically simple supper: Saturday's food quotation

She set about preparing her supper. It would have to be one of those classically simple meals, the sort that French peasants are said to eat and that enlightened English people sometimes enjoy rather self-consciously – a crusty French loaf, cheese, and lettuce and tomatoes from the garden. Of course there should have been wine and a lovingly prepared dressing of oil and vinegar, but Dulcie drank orange squash and ate mayonnaise that came from a bottle.

1961 Barbara Pym, No fond return of love [Grafton Books, 1987, p. 56]

Why Philip Larkin favoured the EU: Friday's food quotation

One forgets that nobody stays in hotels these days except businessmen & American tourists: the food is geared to the business lunch or the steak-platter trade: portion-control is rampant, and the materials cheap anyway (or so I guess: three lamb chops I had were three uncuttable unchewable unanswerable arguments for entry into EEC if - as I suspect - they had made the frozen journey from New Zealand). The presence of the hotel in the Good Food Guide is nothing short of farce. Of course it's a Trust House, which guarantees a kind of depersonalised dullness. Never stay at a Trust House.

1971 Philip Larkin, Letter to Barbara Pym, 18 July 1971 [Selected letters of Philip Larkin 1940-1985, edited by Anthony Thwaite. Faber and Faber, 1992, p. 441]

Italian digital library

Liber Liber, a rich Italian digital library

Visitor's tea: Thursday's food quotation

Downstairs, the table was laid with a 'visitor's tea'. There were the best tea things with a fat pink rose on the side of each cup; hearts of lettuce, thin bread and butter, and the crisp little cakes that had been baked in readiness that morning. Edmund and Laura sat very upright on their hard windsor chairs. Bread and butter first. Always bread and butter first; they had been told that so many times that it had the finality of a text of Scripture. But Mr Herring, who was the eldest present and ought to have set a good example, began with the little cakes, picking up and examining each one closely before disposing of it in two bites. However, while there were still a few left, Mrs Herring placed bread and butter on his plate and handed him the lettuce meaningly; and when he twisted the tender young hearts of lettuce into tight rolls and dipped them into the salt-cellar she took the spoon and put the salt on the side of his plate.
Mrs Herring ate very genteelly, crumbling her cake on her plate and picking out and putting aside the currants, because, she explained, they did not agree with her. She crooked the little finger of the hand which held her teacup and sipped its contents like a bird, with her eyes turned up to the ceiling.

Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford [Penguin modern classics, 1975, p. 296]

The inexorable spread of oleomargarine: Wednesday's food quotation

Speaking of manufactures reminds me of a talk upon that topic which I heard--which I overheard--on board the Cincinnati boat. I awoke out of a fretted sleep, with a dull confusion of voices in my ears. I listened-- two men were talking; subject, apparently, the great inundation. I looked out through the open transom. The two men were eating a late breakfast; sitting opposite each other; nobody else around. They closed up the inundation with a few words--having used it, evidently, as a mere ice-breaker and acquaintanceship-breeder--then they dropped into business. It soon transpired that they were drummers--one belonging in Cincinnati, the other in New Orleans. Brisk men, energetic of movement and speech; the dollar their god, how to get it their religion. 'Now as to this article,' said Cincinnati, slashing into the ostensible butter and holding forward a slab of it on his knife-blade, 'it's from our house; look at it--smell of it--taste it. Put any test on it you want to. Take your own time--no hurry--make it thorough. There now-- what do you say? butter, ain't it. Not by a thundering sight--it's oleomargarine! Yes, sir, that's what it is--oleomargarine. You can't tell it from butter; by George, an EXPERT can't. It's from our house. We supply most of the boats in the West; there's hardly a pound of butter on one of them. We are crawling right along--JUMPING right along is the word. We are going to have that entire trade. Yes, and the hotel trade, too. You are going to see the day, pretty soon, when you can't find an ounce of butter to bless yourself with, in any hotel in the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, outside of the biggest cities. Why, we are turning out oleomargarine NOW by the thousands of tons. And we can sell it so dirt-cheap that the whole country has GOT to take it--can't get around it you see. Butter don't stand any show--there ain't any chance for competition. Butter's had its DAY--and from this out, butter goes to the wall. There's more money in oleomargarine than--why, you can't imagine the business we do. I've stopped in every town from Cincinnati to Natchez; and I've sent home big orders from every one of them.' And so-forth and so-on, for ten minutes longer, in the same fervid strain. Then New Orleans piped up and said-- Yes, it's a first-rate imitation, that's a certainty; but it ain't the only one around that's first-rate. For instance, they make olive-oil out of cotton-seed oil, nowadays, so that you can't tell them apart.' 'Yes, that's so,' responded Cincinnati, 'and it was a tip-top business for a while. They sent it over and brought it back from France and Italy, with the United States custom-house mark on it to indorse it for genuine, and there was no end of cash in it; but France and Italy broke up the game--of course they naturally would. Cracked on such a rattling impost that cotton-seed olive-oil couldn't stand the raise; had to hang up and quit.' 'Oh, it DID, did it? You wait here a minute.' Goes to his state-room, brings back a couple of long bottles, and takes out the corks--says: 'There now, smell them, taste them, examine the bottles, inspect the labels. One of 'm's from Europe, the other's never been out of this country. One's European olive-oil, the other's American cotton-seed olive-oil. Tell 'm apart? 'Course you can't. Nobody can. People that want to, can go to the expense and trouble of shipping their oils to Europe and back--it's their privilege; but our firm knows a trick worth six of that. We turn out the whole thing--clean from the word go--in our factory in New Orleans: labels, bottles, oil, everything. Well, no, not labels: been buying them abroad--get them dirt-cheap there. You see, there's just one little wee speck, essence, or whatever it is, in a gallon of cotton-seed oil, that give it a smell, or a flavor, or something--get that out, and you're all right--perfectly easy then to turn the oil into any kind of oil you want to, and there ain't anybody that can detect the true from the false. Well, we know how to get that one little particle out--and we're the only firm that does. And we turn out an olive-oil that is just simply perfect--undetectable! We are doing a ripping trade, too--as I could easily show you by my order-book for this trip. Maybe you'll butter everybody's bread pretty soon, but we'll cotton-seed his salad for him from the Gulf to Canada, and that's a dead-certain thing.' Cincinnati glowed and flashed with admiration. The two scoundrels exchanged business-cards, and rose. As they left the table, Cincinnati said-- 'But you have to have custom-house marks, don't you? How do you manage that?' I did not catch the answer.

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

Golden Chicken: Tuesday's food quotation

A couple have celebrated their golden anniversary by eating a tinned chicken given to them on their wedding day. Les Lailey, 73, a former soldier, and his wife, Beryl, of Denton, Greater Manchester, were given the Buxted chicken, part of a hamper, in 1956 but decided to keep what was regarded as a rare treat.

2006 The Times [London], Wednesday 8 February 2006, p. 2

D. H. Lawrence as vegetable gardener

[Zennor, Cornwall:] For the rest, what is there to say? — I have made wonderful gardens, where things grew by magic: fat marrows, on plants that seemed as if they were going to roam till they encircled the earth; long, flat beans in festoons among the red flowers, and a harvest of peas, myriads of rich full pods — and kohl rabi, and salsify, and scorzonera, and leeks, and spinach, — everything in the world it seems. But we have had massive storms that have smashed my pea-rows back into the earth. Sic transit.

1917 D. H. Lawrence, Letter to Lady Cynthia Asquith, 3 September 1917 [ Letters, vol. 3, pp 157–8]

Links to dictionaries, especially French and English

A useful collection of links

Judging doughnuts: Sunday's food quotation

Lucy took a single plain donut from the bag and held it for me to take a bite. Tender and light and still warm from the frying. Not too sugary.

1995 Robert Crais, Voodoo River ch. 30

Po-boys =/= Subs

Can you tell the difference between po-boys and subs (hint: both are sandwiches)? If not, read this thread on alphadictionary .

Grits = White Polenta

If you're not sure whether what Italians call polenta is the same as what Americans call grits (it is, according to the majority) read this thread on Chocolate & Zucchini 

Frugal cruising: Saturday's food quotation

The eating regime on board went as follows: breakfast ... lunch ... happy hour ... and dinner (grilled red snapper with caramelised onions and Duchess potatoes , followed by glazed apple tartlets on vanilla cream).

2005 Travel puff in the Independent on Sunday [London], 16 December

Paris restaurants: Friday's food quotation

Ten cooks' shops! ... and all within three minutes' driving! one would think that all the cooks in the world ... had said -- Come, let us all go live at Paris: the French love good eating -- they are all gourmands -- we shall rank high.

1765 Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy l. 7 ch. 17

Crêpes Suzette in Llangattock: Thursday's food quotation

I am off to Carmarthenshire next week to eat Crêpes Suzettes at the Red Lion in Llangattock, a hideous village where a mysterious M. Pierre has chosen to napkin his talent. (They are the best I have ever eaten).

1967 Sylvia Townsend Warner, Letter to David Garnett, 4 April [Sylvia and David: the Townsend Warner / Garnett letters (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994) p. 118]

Not-so-frugal breakfast: Wednesday's food quotation

There was a little plate of hothouse nectarines on the table, and there was another of grapes, and another of sponge-cakes, and there was a bottle of light wine ... 'This is my frugal breakfast ... Give me my peach, my cup of coffee, and my claret.'

1853 Charles Dickens, Bleak House ch. 19

Workers' supper: Tuesday's food quotation

Supper was at nine. There were cakes, buns, sandwiches, tea, and coffee, all free; but if you wanted mineral water you had to pay for it. Gallantry often led young men to offer the ladies ginger beer.

1915 W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage ch. 104

Food plants in Britain: archaeological evidence

As a survey on this subject I have thus far used, and cited, J. R. Greig, 'Plant foods in the past: a review of evidence from northern Europe' in Journal of plant foods vol. 5 (1983) pp. 179-214.

I could have added a more recent survey by Philippa R. Tomlinson and Allan R. Hall, focusing on Britain and Ireland exclusively: 'A review of the archaeological evidence for food plants from the British Isles: an example of the use of the Archaeobotanical Computer Database'. This was published on line in 1996 in the first issue of Internet Archaeology.

Here's the full set of updates to Food in the Ancient World from A to Z.

A Golden Age: Monday's food quotation

From the greengrocer tree you get grapes and green pea, cauliflower, pineapple, and cranberries,
While the pastrycook plant cherry brandy will grant, apple puffs, and three-corners, and Banburys.

1882 W. S. Gilbert, Iolanthe act 2

Indo-European languages: dating the splits

In Linguistica Brunensia, year 2005, there are two interesting papers on Indo-European philology. In one, Vaclav Blazek collaborates with Petra Novotna on a glottochronological study of the Slavic languages. The hundred-word table that they used is usefully set out in full, for all the languages, on pages 67 to 77. According to their calculations, North Slavic (Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian) split from the rest in AD 520/600, South Slavic (Slovene, Serbo-Croat, Macedonian and Bulgarian) in 720, Czech-Slovak in 900. The remaining three, Sorbian, Polabian and Polish, split in 1020. The split between Russian and the two other North Slavic languages came in 1070, between Macedonian and Bulgarian in 1220, between Slovene and Serbo-Croat in 1300, between Czech and Slovak also in 1300, between Ukrainian and Belorussian in 1630 and between North and South Sorbian also in 1630.

If you believe in glottochronology your faith will probably not be shaken by the enormous differences between this calculation and the one developed by the late S. Starostin at Santa Fe in 2004. Starostin found that the earliest split was between Bulgarian-Macedonian and all the rest, and this happened in 130 AD. North Slavic then separated off in 270, said Starostin, followed by Polabian-Sorbian in 420 and by Slovene-Serbo-Croat in 670. Polish split from Czech-Slovak in 780.

An appendix to this paper gives the glottochronological analysis of the whole Indo-European that emerged from the same research by Starostin, who calculated that Anatolian separated from the rest ofIndo-European in 4670 BC, Tocharian in 3810 BC, Celtic in 3350 BC, Armenian-Albanian-Recky in 3020 BC, Italic-Germanic in 2860 BC. Indo-Iranian separated from Balto-Slavic in 2710 BC. Armenian, Albanian and Recky split in 2590 BC, Italic and Germanic in 2500 BC, Iranian and Indic in 2000 BC, Baltic and Slavic in 1210 BC, Brythonic and Goidelic (the two branches of Celtic) in 1000 BC, and Tocharian A and Tocharian B in 20 BC.

Here's the full set of on-line additions to Notes in the Margin.

Anglo-Saxon Plant Names

Here's the Anglo-Saxon Plant-Name Survey and here's a thread discussing it in soc.hist.medieval

Breakfast in bed in San Francisco: Sunday's food quotation

Michael was serving Mona breakfast in bed: poached eggs, nine-grain toast, Italian roast coffee and French sausages from Marcel & Henri.

1978 Armistead Maupin, Tales of the City [Corgi ed. p. 147]

Heavenly bodies in Indo-European languages

In Linguistica Brunensia, year 2005, there are two interesting papers on Indo-European philology. One, by Vaclav Blazek, is a study of the names of heavenly bodies in Indo-European languages. It takes the form of a small comparative dictionary, dealing in turn with terms for sun, moon, star, Orion, Pleiades, Polaris, Sirius, Ursa Major. In the case of Orion, there is no clear Indo-European parentage for the Greek name, which may be a loanword ultimately traceable to Sumerian. In all other cases, astronomical names recorded in various early Indo-European languages appear to be cognate and to tell us something about the astronomical vocabulary of proto-Indo-European, though only three terms (for sun, star and moon) can be confidently reconstructed as common to Hittite and other Indo-European groups.

Blazek suggests that pIE sun is inherited from Nostratic, that pIE star might be borrowed from Semitic, and that pIE moon may represent semantic shift from a word meaning month. A quick glance at the list of abbreviations shows that forms from over 90 languages are cited in this 18-page article.

Here's the full set of on-line additions to Notes in the Margin.

Fish and chips in Edinburgh: Saturday's food quotation

He stopped for fish and chips, which he ate at a formica-topped table in the chip shop. Lashings of salt, vinegar and brown sauce on the chips. Two slices of white pan bread thinly spread with margarine. And a cup of dark-brown tea.

1992 Ian Rankin, Strip Jack ch. 6

Victorian tea: Friday's food quotation

So Guster ... prepares the little drawing-room for tea ... There is excellent provision made of dainty new bread, crusty twists, cool fresh butter, thin slices of ham, tongue and German sausage, and delicate little rows of anchovies nestling in parsley; not to mention new-laid eggs, to be brought up warm in a napkin, and hot buttered toast.

1853 Charles Dickens, Bleak House ch. 19

Rye bread and other cures for constipation: Thursday's food quotation

He tells me ... that I must drink now and then ale with my wine, and eat bread and butter and honey -- and rye bread if I can endure it, it being loosening.

1663 Samuel Pepys, Diary, 17 November

E-books at Adelaide

ebooks@adelaide from the University of Adelaide Library, a handy source for electronic texts of classics (English and in English translation) which can be used online or downloaded

What to do with four-day-old bread: Wednesday's food quotation

Alway thy soveraynes bred thow choppe, & þat it be newe & able;
se alle oþer bred a day old or þou choppe to þe table;
alle howsold bred iii. dayes old, so it is profitable;
and trencher bred iiii. dayes is convenyent & agreable.

c. 1465 John Russell, Boke of Nurture 53 ff.

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Pandora 

Imge Kitabevi  

Online bookstores in other countries are on the Street of the Booksellers 

Beware of cold junket: Tuesday's food quotation

Bewar at eve of crayme of cowe & also of the goote, þauy it be late,
of strawberies & hurtilberyes with the cold joncate,
for þese may marre many a mann.

c. 1465 John Russell, Boke of Nurture 53 ff.

A banquet for Queen Catherine: Monday's food quotation

There was v cours of fflesshe to every messe of mete, and at every cours vii disshes, and aftir that a cours of frute of v disshes, and than cam in wafers and ipocras. This banket began at vii of the clok and contynued two hourys.

1503 Receyt of the Lady Kateryne, 4, line 307

The great 16th century Dutch herbal is now available on line!

Rembert Dodoens, Cruyde Boeck (Antwerp, 1563): Digitales Faksimile nach dem Exemplar der Universitätsbibliothek Marburg. Herausgegeben und mit einer Einführung von Thomas Gloning, Lydia Kaiser und Ans Schapendonk (Marburg 2005).

What should I call my fizzy drinks?

They have been discussing this burning issue on Alphadictionary , but if you want more structured advice, you can go to the dedicated website pop vs. soda.

Fig Sunday: Sunday's food quotation

Palm Sunday, known locally as Fig Sunday, was a minor hamlet festival. ... The children ... loved the old custom of eating figs on Palm Sunday. The week before, the innkeeper's wife would get in a stock to be sold in pennyworths in her small grocery store. Some of the more expert cooks among the women would use these to make fig puddings for dinner and the children bought pennyworths and ate them out of screws of blue sugar paper on their way to Sunday school. ... The original significance of eating figs on that day had long been forgotten; but it was regarded as an important duty, and children ordinarily selfish would give one of their figs, or at least a bite out of one, to the few unfortunates who had been given no penny.

Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford (Penguin modern classics, 1975, p. 231)

The odour of Burgundy: Saturday's food quotation

The odour of Burgundy, and the smell of French sauces, and the sight of clean napkins and long loaves, knocked as a very welcome visitor at the door of our inner man. We pegged and quaffed away in silence for a while ...

1889 Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat ch. 19

Nanny's delicacies: Friday's food quotation

We used the house in Rutland Gate only occasionally for the London season. Most of the time it was either let or stood unoccupied; then, very, very rarely, one or two of us were allowed to stay for a few days with Nanny in the Mews, a tiny flat, formerly chauffeur's quarters at the back of the house over the garage. Life in the Mews had the quality of camping out. There was no cook there, so Nanny did the cooking, and she sometimes let us help her prepare unfamiliar delicacies whose recipes she dug up somewhere out of her memory: prune whip, tripe and onions, bread pudding.

1978 Jessica Mitford, Hons and rebels (Quartet Books) p. 42

Gilbert White makes blackcurrant jelly: Thursday's food quotation

10 July: Preserved cherries, & currans; & made curran-jelly. Not one mess of wood-strawberries brought this year ...
22 July: Made black-curran jelly, & rasp: jam.

1785 Gilbert White [Gilbert White's year, OUP, 1982]

Chocolate at Fordlow Feast: Wednesday's food quotation

"At the beginning of the 'eighties [1880s] the outside world remembered Fordlow Feast to the extent of sending one old woman with a gingerbread stall. On it were gingerbread babies with currants for eyes, brown-and-white striped peppermint humbugs, sticks of pink-and-white rock, and a few boxes and bottles of other sweets. Even there, on that little old stall with its canvas awning, the first sign of changing taste might have been seen, for, one year, side by side with the gingerbread babies, stood a box filled with thin, dark brown slabs packed in pink paper. 'What is that brown sweet?' asked Laura, spelling out the word 'Chocolate'. A visiting cousin, being fairly well educated and a great reader already knew it by name, 'Oh, that's chocolate,' he said off-handedly. 'But don't buy any; it's for drinking. They have it for breakfast in France.' A year or two later, chocolate was a favourite sweet even in a place as remote as the hamlet."

Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford (Penguin modern classics, 1975, p. 231)