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Improving frozen chicken: Monday's food quotation

Here is a kitchen improvement, in return for Peacock. For roasting or basting a chicken, render down your fat or butter with cider: about a third cider. Let it come together slowly, till the smell of cider and the smell of fat are as one. This will enliven even a frozen chicken.

1967 Sylvia Townsend Warner, Letter to David Garnett, 21 December 1967 [ Sylvia and David: the Townsend Warner / Garnett letters. Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994, p. 134]

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

Milk, bread, bloaters and right-wing politics: Sunday's food quotation

The law requiring pasteurization of milk in England was a particular target of Uncle Geoff's. Fond of alliteration, he dubbed it the "Murdered Milk Measure", and established the Liberty Restoration League, with headquarters at his house in London, for the specific purpose of organizing a counter-offensive. "Freedom, not Doctordom!" was the League's proud slogan. A subsidiary, but nevertheless important, activity of the League was advocacy of a return to the "unsplit, slowly smoked bloater" and bread made with "English stone-ground flour, yeast, milk, sea salt and raw cane sugar.

Wherever he went Uncle Geoff carried stacks of copies of his letters to the Times and Spectator, together with printed directions for preparing unsplit, slowly smoked bloaters and home-made bread. My mother gave wholehearted support to his ideas on health, to which she added a few of her own. Not only were we strictly forbidden to eat any tinned food, but adherence to Mosaic diet laws was enforced as rigidly as in any orthodox Jewish household. Pork, shellfish, rabbit were proscribed for schoolroom fare on the grounds that Moses had considered these foods unhealthy for consumption by the Israelites, and because my mother had a theory that Jews never got cancer.

1978 Jessica Mitford, Hons and rebels (Quartet Books) p. 29

Chocolat Angélique and its preliminaries: Saturday's food quotation

Last night the Cronyns ... came to dinner. I gave them:
Soup. Bayonne ham and salad. Paella and red cabbage sweet and sour cooked in wine with apple and onions, Chocolat Angelique, cheese. Chocolat Angelique is made with 2 oz butter, 2 oz grated chocolate, 4 tablespoons of sugar, 3/4 pint of milk - boiled down to a thick cream - then 3 tablespoons of rum stirred in.

1973 Sylvia Townsend Warner, Letter to David Garnett, 21 February [ Sylvia and David: the Townsend Warner / Garnett letters (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994) p. 173]

Baker's cake: Monday's food quotation

The Monday of the Feast [Fordlow Feast] was kept by women and children only, the men being at work. It was a great day for tea parties; mothers and sisters and aunts and cousins coming in droves from about the neighbourhood. The chief delicacy at these teas was 'baker's cake', a rich, fruity, spicy dough cake, obtained in the following manner. The housewife provided all the ingredients excepting the dough, putting raisins and currants, lard, sugar, and spice in a basin which she gave to the baker, who added the dough, made and baked the cake, and returned it, beautifully browned in his big oven. The charge was the same as that for a loaf of bread the same size, and the result was delicious."

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

Christmas sandwiches: Thursday's food quotation

29 December. Snow in the night and when we stop for our sandwiches on the road to Garsdale Head Dentdale is in immaculate relief with the Howgills ghostly beyond. They're Christmas sandwiches (cold pheasant, apple sauce, Cumberland sauce and lettuce, followed by mince pies) then we go on down to Mallerstang.

2002 Alan Bennett, Diary [Untold stories p. 303]

Specialties of Ville Platte, Louisiana: Wednesday's food quotation

Across from the Pig Stand there was a little mom-and-pop grocery with a hand-painted sign that said We sell boudin and a smaller sign that said Fresh cracklins ... The boudin were plump and juicy, and when you bit into them they were filled with rice and pork and cayenne and onions and celery.

1995 Robert Crais, Voodoo River

Truffles and how to prepare them: Saturday's food quotation

A trufle-hunter called on us, having in his pocket several large trufles found in this neighbourhood. He says these roots are not to be found in deep woods, but in narrow hedge rows & skirts of coppices. Some trufles, he informed us, lie two feet within the earth; & some quite on the surface: the latter, he added, have little or no smell, & are not so easily discovered by the dogs as those that lie deeper. Half a crown a pound was the price which he asked for this commodity.

1789 Gilbert White, Diary, October 11 [Gilbert White's year (OUP, 1982)]

Stewed some trufles: the flavour of their juice very fine, but the roots hard, & gritty. They were boiled in water, then sliced, & stewed in gravy.

1790 ib., November 4

Don't try this at home: punch as made in colonial Malaya. Tuesday's food quotation

He had emptied most of the bottled beer, a quart of stout, a flask of Beehive Brandy, half a bottle of Wincarnis, and the remains of the whisky into a kitchen pail. He had seasoned this foaming broth with red peppers.

1958 Anthony Burgess, The Enemy in the Blanket chapter 4

Clabber and cornbread: Friday's food quotation

What you got to eat, Miss Celie? he say, going straight to the warmer and a piece of fried chicken, then on to the safe for a slice of blackberry pie. He stand by the table and munch, munch. You got any sweet milk? he ast.
Got clabber, I say.
He say, Well, I love clabber. And dip him out some ...
He rummage through the drawer for a spoon to eat the clabber with. He see a slice of cornbread on the shelf back of the stove, he grab it and crumble it into the glass.
Us go back out on the porch and he put his foots up on the railing. Eat his clabber and cornbread with the glass near bout to his nose. Remind me of a hog at the troth.

2004 Alice Walker, The color purple (Phoenix ed., p. 58)

Making polenta from maize, a novelty in 1585: Wednesday's international quotation

Formento turco: I villani che habitano ne i confini che disterminano l'Italia dalla Germania fanno della farina la polenta, laquale dipoi che è cotta in una massa tagliano con un filo in larghe fette & sottili & acconcianla ... con cascio & con boturo.

1585 Matthioli, Discorsi p. 308

How to make botargo: Monday's international quotation

Ova tarycha. Ova cephali sale trito consparges, reservata membranula illa in qua ova ipsa tanquam in folliculis nascuntur. Post diem a salitura inter duas tabulas per diem et noctem opprimes; inde ad furnum suspendes procul flamma.

1475 Platina, De honesta voluptate et valetudine

Blueberry pancake: Monday's food quotation

I found Bisquick and frozen blueberries and some low-fat cottage cheese ... I poured a cup of the blueberries into a little bowl and covered them with water, then found a larger bowl and made a batter with the Bisquick and the cottage cheese and some nonfat milk. I sprayed the pan with butter-flavored Pam, then put it on a medium fire ... I drained the blueberries and was mixing them in the batter ... I increased the heat under the pan, then spooned in four equal amounts of batter, making sure each pancake had a like number of berries. I made the batter dry so the cakes would be thick and fluffy ... I adjusted the heat down. When they're thick like that you have to be careful with the heat, hot at first to set the cake and keep it from spreading, then low so it will cook through without burning ... When the pancakes were done we heaped them with sliced bananas and maple syrup.

1995 Robert Crais, Voodoo River chapter 23

Bouillabaisse: Thursday's food quotation

This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is --
A sort of soup, or broth, or brew,
Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes,
That Greenwich never could outdo;
Green herbs, red peppers, muscles, saffron,
Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace;
All these you eat at Terré's tavern,
In that one dish of Bouillabaisse.

1855 W. M. Thackeray (noted from foodreference.com)

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