Conference Abstracts Workshop & Potluck
Interested in submitting a proposal for the 2018 ASFS conference? Not sure how to group papers into panel presentations? Curious about where you can submit your academic work? How does one write a proposal, anyway??
Join us for a potluck while we work on writing our conference abstracts on Wednesday, Dec. 13th from 6pm - 8pm in Fuller 109.
Please email Barbara at brotger@bu.edu if you plan on attending.
Student Spotlight: Krysia Villon
Eating well (and I don’t mean healthy), cooking and activism are in my blood.
I believe in food sovereignty for all of us inhabiting this Earth but do not believe we will ever achieve it unless we begin to see ourselves as the caretakers of our Mother rather than the owners of “it.” We cannot see the value in protecting her and fostering her growth if we insist on dominating her and possessing her. We cannot understand the ways in which to care for her if we do not look to our past. How do we get back to being caretakers and protectors so that peoples may achieve true food sovereignty?
I am the daughter of a Peruvian immigrant father and a Boston-born mother of Polish and Scottish/English descent. I am the oldest of five children and the mother of one fierce little girl. I am the granddaughter of a lawyer who became a judge, a homemaker extraordinaire who produced elegant meals and made her own clothes, a farmer who walked over mountains to sell his goods, and mother who became a pro-union community activist while also being godmother to many, among other things.
I come from a long-line of ancestors that have moved mountains for their family and loved ones. It is their children who continue to tell their stories so that they may live within us and through us. This is how we do not forget. This is how we remember and we value those that came before us. My family tree is chock full of creative, faithful, resourceful individuals who have collectively inspired me since I heeded their call to live and breathe into my true self. I consider myself a storyteller.
I was born and raised in the Boston-area and during my formative years my father owned a Latin American restaurant in Cambridge that focused on Peruvian cuisine. I was that little kid that fell asleep on chairs I had pushed together under the tables, that kid that hung out in the kitchen waiting to sneak a taste when someone wasn’t looking, and that kid that even learned to dance salsa after hours in the bar when I should have been home doing my homework. It is with this particular palate, spirit, and the inherited fire in my gut that I found myself attracted to the world of food, history (stories), and foodways.
I spent ten years in fundraising and volunteer management in non-profits and higher education institutions but was unfulfilled. I left my former field and ran off to Johnson and Wales University (JWU) in Providence, RI to obtain my Culinary Arts degree. I think of this as my second life.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time at JWU. I was instructed by fantastic chefs that helped me in refining my cooking skills and allowed me to bring my new found confidence in the kitchen outside the classroom. I also took advantage of the study-abroad program which landed me in Lima, Peru in 2011. I took courses and was trained by more fantastic chefs who deepened my knowledge of Peruvian food, food history and foodways. I postponed my return to the States and stayed in the capital for 6 months. I landed three jobs simultaneously: I worked as a waitress in the only Irish pub to serve Guinness in Lima for money, I worked as a translator and receptionist at a hostel for housing, and I also secured an internship at a Four Fork (Five Star equivalent in the U.S.) restaurant in Lima for experience. I think I slept for a month when I got back. I had every intention to one day open my own restaurant.
Upon my return to the U.S. I completed my culinary degree. It is also during this time I discovered I was pregnant with my miracle baby. Her arrival into my life changed my course slightly but, undoubtedly, changed it for the better. I began to re-think the way I ate, where my food came from, and what I wanted her know about the hands and ingenuity that fed and feed her.
It was during her first year of her life I began my time at Taza Chocolate in Somerville, MA. What drew me to this company was its Direct Trade program in cacao, its connection to food and foodways, and that I would be interacting with the public. I began working part-time at local farmers markets and giving tours which ultimately led me to managing the factory store and tour program today. I am responsible for creating new types of programming and events for the factory store and producing their larger events like our recent Dia de los Muertos block party. In helping plan this event for years I was also able to connect Taza with local cultural organizations to infuse an already successful event into one that was also educational. As manager, I’ve specifically developed programming for children, Spanish-language tours, built a new classroom, enhanced tour materials including video content, created classes like Cacao 101 that teaches about determining the quality of cacao, and even educational games that both inform and engage our customers in new ways.
It was in my own personal experience of learning the comprehensive material in my training at Taza that first sparked my interest in going back to school. I was actively learning again and with that learning arose more questions which only engaged me in more research. It was a beautiful cycle. One morning, two years into my role at Taza, I woke up and realized I had become a storyteller and an educator. When I was young an elder told me that I would become a teacher one day in a non-conventional setting. I had arrived at that moment. I made a decision that I would go back to school so I could immerse myself again in the things that would continue to fuel the fire in my gut. Today, that fire is burning stronger than ever.
I am pursuing my degree at an even pace to remain grounded as a mom and a working woman and to be mindful about the connections I’m making in my research, in my personal and professional networking, and in myself. I now understand more food history and the stories I must learn. I see the gaps and I believe if I learn them I can tell those stories to small and large audiences alike so that we might be reminded of the places from which we come. These stories may come in the form of written word or oral history but I definitely see some more non-conventional, or even conventional, classrooms in my future! We need to hear more stories about the hands, and hearts, that feed us. We need more storytellers before we collectively forget how we got here. I am my ancestors wildest dreams, as Brandan “Bmike” Odums says. I will keep speaking their spirits. I will keep speaking their ingenuity. I will keep speaking their heart so that we are reminded to protect and foster and not to own and possess. I will keep telling the stories. By doing so, I hope I make them proud.
Congratulations to the Julia Child Award Recipients
The Julia Child Award goes to a matriculating student in the Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy program who has been nominated by their instructor for outstanding academic work. The following students were recently recognized for their work done in the Spring 2017 semester. Congratulations to everyone!
Ashlyn Frassinelli
My name is Ashlyn and I'm in my third semester of the Gastronomy program. Before coming to Boston, I studied journalism at George Washington University. When I'm not in class I work as a graduate assistant in event coordinating for the Food and Wine program and I bartend at Lamplighter Brewing in Cambridge.Karl Koch
Karl is in his second year as a Gastronomy student after working as a school garden educator in Tucson, AZ, and is particularly interested in the intersection of food systems and social justice. He was cited for his essay for Dr. Messer's U.S. Food Policy & Culture course on rights-based approaches to food policy and discussing sometimes-competing narratives of the "food movement."Spring 2018 Pepin Lecture Lineup
The Boston University Programs in Food and Wine have announced the following titles in the Spring 2018 Pépin Lecture Series in Food Studies, Gastronomy, and the Culinary Arts.
February 13th: Julie Guthman
UCSC professor Julie Guthman will be giving a lecture on her research on the California strawberry industry. You can read more about her recent talk on New Food Activism at Harvard here.
According to news.ucsc.edu, Guthman is a geographer who has been widely recognized for her study of organic farming and sustainable agriculture in California, as well as for her critical analysis of the obesity epidemic. She is an alumna of UC Santa Cruz (B.A., sociology, 1979) who joined the faculty in 2003.
March 29th: Jonathan Deutsch
James Beard Foundation Impact Fellow and Professor at Drexel Jonathan Deutsch will be giving a lecture on his work repurposing food waste.
According to drexel.edu, Deutsch joined Drexel from Kingsborough Community College-CUNY, where he served as professor and founding director of the culinary arts program as well as deputy chair of the department of tourism and hospitality. He previously worked at CUNY Graduate Center as professor of public health and founding director of the food studies concentration. Deutsch’s research interests include social and cultural aspects of food, recipe and product development and culinary education. He received his doctorate in food studies and food management from New York University.
He is the author of six food studies books, including Barbeque: A Global History, Food Studies: An Introduction to Research Methods, and Jewish American Food Culture.
April 11th: Ken Albala
Ken Albala is Professor of History at the University of the Pacific and Director of the Food Studies MA program in San Francisco. He will be talking about his new book, Noodle Soup: Recipes, Techniques, Obsession.
"Every day, noodle shops around the globe ladle out quick meals that fuel our go-go lives. But Ken Albala has a mission: to get YOU in the kitchen making noodle soup. This primer offers the recipes and techniques for mastering quick-slurper staples and luxurious from-scratch feasts. Albala made a different noodle soup every day for two years. His obsession yielded all you need to know about making stock bases, using dried or fresh noodles, and choosing from a huge variety of garnishes, flavorings, and accompaniments. He lays out innovative techniques for mixing and matching bases and noodles with grains, vegetables, and other ingredients drawn from an international array of cuisines.
In addition to recipes both cutting edge and classic, Alabala describes new soup discoveries he created along the way. There's advice on utensils, cooking tools, and the oft-overlooked necessity of matching a soup to the proper bowl. Finally, he sprinkles in charming historical details that cover everything from ancient Chinese millet noodles to that off-brand Malaysian ramen at the back of the ethnic grocery store. Filled with more than seventy color photos and one hundred recipes, A World of Noodle Soup is an indispensable guide for cooking, eating, and loving a universal favorite."
Alumni Spotlight: W. Gabriel Mitchell
Sometimes, one needs to take a step back from what one does to gain perspective to move forward. I have been a pâtissier for close to twenty years. Sometime along my career, I became determined to combine my love of the academic with my passion for food preparation and its social constructs. The desire to attend the Gastronomy Program at Boston University was an attempt to leave the practical side of food preparation and re-enter the world of academia to look at food and identity construction. While conducting fieldwork in Perú for my master’s thesis, I received a call that would alter some best-laid plans… upon graduation, I would move to Germany. There, I would resurrect my company, Maison Mitchell, which had been established in San Francisco seven years earlier – and closed when I decided to go to BU.
Maison Mitchell is the first gourmet pâtisserie in Hamburg. In Maison Mitchell, I sell “Ladies”—a colloquialism that refers to the collection of my offerings—and fantasies. We specialize in every-day treats, as well as one-of-a-kind creations. In Maison Mitchell, customers find a selection of various seductive pastries for the discerning palate, and 
lifestyle products. Pastries range from interpretations of the classic French cannon, e.g., “Sunshine,” a lemon tart, to inspired originals. A very special original for Hamburg is “Maya,” a verrine of New-World fruits (avocado crème diplomat, half-dried yellow cherry tomato, red pepper gastrique gel), and grains (corn panna cotta, and a sweet corn pancake from Venezuela called cachapa). For our four-legged companions I created dog biscuits with duck liver (“Bella”). Moreover, for those who want to enjoy the tastes of Maison Mitchell beyond pastries, I have created a collection of scented candles, e.g., “Midori,” (perfumed with bamboo, green tea, and Thai basil). Although we are established on the French gastronomic model, for my interests it has always been imperative that we represent flavor pairings from across the globe.
Maison Mitchell, therefore, is more than haute pâtisserie. Maison Mitchell offers much to explore and enjoy to those who are open to what food could be beyond mere sustenance, i.e., a source of gustatory pleasure, and discovery.
The multidisciplinary approach to the Gastronomy Program was the perfect fit for someone like me, who had gained enough practical food experience, and now wanted to critically analyze various foodways and their social implications. The freedom to choose courses beyond the required core allowed me to better focus on personal interests such as elite foods and the effects of a professional practitioner’s intentionality on material production.
The ability to take the course Food, Culture, and Society (outside the department) afforded me a new perspective through the lens of the anthropology department. This was the catalyst to enter the master’s thesis process, where I looked at Lima’s burgeoning indigenous haute cuisine, and how the culinary paradigm of nouvelle cuisine affords professional practitioners the freedom to create a new one to be revered on the global gastronomic landscape. The readings that I selected for my thesis not only helped shape my research, but also became imperative tools in reshaping my own material production in Maison Mitchell.
The most influential class, however, was my first. It was there that my cohort and I were presented with Karl Marx’s commodity theory. Though the sixty-plus pages may not have been preferred reading material on an autumn 
weekend, it illuminated the reality that I am not just selling food, but rather that I am now creating a “commodity,” nevertheless, in pastry form. In a time when food is the new luxury item, the theories I learned during my time at school, combined with my own postulations about food, allow me to conceptualize a brand that is authentic to my sensibilities, in addition to providing a singular product to my new host city.
Cookbooks & History: Carrot Soup
Students in Cookbooks and History (MET ML 630), directed by Dr. Karen Metheny, researched and recreated a historical recipe to bring in to class. They were instructed to note the challenges they faced, as well as define why they selected their recipe and why it appealed to them. Here is the thirteenth essay in this series, written by Sami Vitale.
My name is Samantha Vitale and I am a second year Gastronomy student. For one of my classes this semester, Cookbooks and History with Karen Metheny, we were given the task to recreate a historical recipe. The recipe I choose was from American Cookery by Amelia Simmons. Amelia Simmons is deemed the American Orphan and helped to create the initial American cuisine. The version of American Cookery I chose was from 1798. As I was looking through the cookbook I found mostly meats, preserves, pies, and puddings. As I am a vegetarian, I chose to recreate a pudding recipe and because I am poor I tried to find a recipe with ingredients that I already had in my fridge. The recipe that I ended up choosing was “Carrot Pudding”. The recipe is as follows: A coffee cup full of boiled and strained carrots, 5 eggs, 2 ounces of sugar and butter each, cinnamon and rosewater to your taste, baked in a deep dish without paste. (1798: 28)
As you can see, there are no instructions regarding time or temperature which was the hardest part of recreating this recipe. I was not sure how long to boil the carrots for (until soft or until they were mush) or how long to keep the pudding in the oven. I also was unsure of the temperature that the oven was supposed to be or the temperature of the pudding when ready to eat. I ended up leaving the carrots to boil uncovered and about a half an hour in, decided to cover the pot with a lid because the water was hot but not boiling. I let this process happen for about an hour.
I then strained the carrots and added in the sugar, butter, cinnamon, eggs, and mixed them together. I put this pudding mixture (smelled rather good actually) into a Pyrex dish and stuck it in the oven.
The usual baking temperature for 75% of everything you bake is 350 degrees which is what I went with. Since the pudding has eggs in it, the pudding needed to fully cook in the oven which took about 30 minutes.
This pudding smelled so delicious and it was not the smell I was expecting. I let the pudding cool for about 15 minutes and tasted it. OMG was this carrot pudding good! Not at all what I was expecting it to taste like. I was imaging from just reading the recipe that it was going to be an interesting flavor, however, it was buttery and sweet, pretty eggy, and the carrots added a nice texture to the dish. It seems like this is a good dish for either breakfast, the season of fall, or Thanksgiving.
I then let it cool for another 30 minutes to see if the pudding would taste better at room temperature. Carrot pudding tastes much better hot or warm, room temperature was just chewy and I did not taste the undertones of cinnamon. Overall, the experience of recreating a recipe from over 200 years ago was easier than I thought, especially because the recipe was simple and had limited ingredients. I honestly did not think that I was going to enjoy carrot pudding as much as I did and I am happy that I tried something new.
Works Cited
Simmons, Amelia. 1798. American Cookery or the Art of Dressing Viand, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables and the Best Modes of Baking Pastes Puffs, Pies, Tarts, Puddings, Custards and Preserves and All Kinds of Cakes from the Imperial Plum to Plain Cake: Adapted to the Country and All Grades of Life. Hartford: Simeon Butler.
Cookbooks & History: Custard Pudding
Students in Cookbooks and History (MET ML 630), directed by Dr. Karen Metheny, researched and recreated a historical recipe to bring in to class. They were instructed to note the challenges they faced, as well as define why they selected their recipe and why it appealed to them. Here is the twelfth essay in this series, written by Danielle Tarpley.
I selected the Custard Pudding recipe from Lydia Maria Child's The Frugal Housewife (1830: 65) because the nature of this book appealed to me. In my household, I am the modern, frugal housewife. Much like myself, Child came from a middle-class family with moderate income. Even after she was married, her family relied heavily her income. It was necessary for Child to be frugal. I would describe my role as financial manager and waste monitor. I despise food waste and The Frugal Housewife has many admirable time- and money-saving tips. The author writes, “Time is money” (Child 1830:3). Truer words I have never heard.
The book also appealed to my pastry passion. I love how full fat milk products give body and richness to desserts, especially custards. I was also curious to see how the difference in milk affected the outcome of the dessert. Child suggests using boiled skim milk in this recipe as a substitute for a heavier cream. In the 19th century, it is likely skim milk was similar the whole milk we use today. It is likely 1% milk had significantly less fat that the skim milk used two hundred years ago.
Before moving forward with the project I set up my criteria for picking the recipe:
- Do not purchase anything for the assignment.
- Modify recipe as little as possible.
- Make partner (Aaron) a tasty dessert.
Once I set these parameters, choosing the custard recipe was easy. Not only did I have all of the ingredients in my kitchen, I really love custard. Below is the recipe as it is written in the book:
Custard Puddings.
Custard puddings sufficiently good for common use can be made with five eggs to a quart of milk, sweetened with brown sugar, and spiced with cinnamon or nutmeg, and very little salt. It is well to boil your milk, and set it away till it gets cold. Boiling milk enriches it so much that boiled skim-milk is about as good as new milk. A little cinnamon, or lemon peel or peach leaves, if you do not dislike the taste, boiled in the milk and afterwards strained from it, give a pleasant flavor. Bake fifteen or twenty minutes.
First, I modified the recipe for my home kitchen. I made a half batch because the dessert would only feed two people and I did not want waste. I also did not have brown sugar so I substituted white sugar with a little molasses. Because I used medium-sized eggs, I decided three eggs would be appropriate for the recipe. I then identified the challenges: 1) No oven temperature given; 2) No mix method given; 3) No quantity of sugar given. I bake quite a bit at home, custards included. With my cooking knowledge I created the recipe below.
Modified Custard Pudding (1/2x)
Ingredients:
- 3 eggs (medium)
- ½ qt. milk (1%)
- ½ c. white sugar
- 2 tbls. molasses
- pinch of salt
- ½ tsp nutmeg
- 1 tsp cinnamon
Procedure:
- Boil milk and cool
- Mix all ingredients
- Bake for 15-20 min at 325 F
After mixing, I noticed immediately that the batter was very thin, even after boiling the milk to “enrich” it. Typically, baked custards are cooked in a water bath so they do not overcook. I choose a 325 F temperature because I thought it would be hot enough to cook the custard in 15-20 minutes. This did not happen. After 20 minutes, the batter was barely set. At this point, I raised the temperature of the oven to 375 and baked it for an additional 10-12 minutes. I had a feeling it would over cook and it did.
In the mid-19th century, people’s tastes were probably different then they are today. It is likely middle class families didn’t waste money to prepare well-seasoned dishes. Taste buds were accustomed to less seasoned dishes. Modern American cuisine is very high in sugar, fat and salt. Because our taste is accustomed to high fat, sugar and salt content, it is the reason why I gave this dish a C- grade on flavor, texture and body. The flavor wasn’t terrible. It resembled flan but lacked in sweetness and richness. I felt the custard needed more fat, sugar and perhaps a little more salt. It was also overcooked. Water was leaching out of it the moment it came out of the oven. The overcooked bits were a little chewy and eggy. Once the custard cooled, I served it with preserved strawberries in an attempted in improve the dish.
Because I have formal culinary training, I know what a custard base, cooked and uncooked, should look like. I conclude that this book was meant for an audience with knowledge developed through domestic experience, or perhaps some culinary education; this is suggested by the incomplete instructions, measurements, and quantities. However, on a personal note, had I been living during this time, I would have rather gone without dessert than serve this economical version.
Work Cited:
Child, Lydia Maria. 1830. The Frugal Housewife: Dedicated to Those Who Are Not Ashamed of Economy. Second ed. Boston: Carter and Hendee.
Cookbooks & History: Syrian Khātūnī Rice
Students in Cookbooks and History (MET ML 630), directed by Dr. Karen Metheny, researched and recreated a historical recipe to bring in to class. They were instructed to note the challenges they faced, as well as define why they selected their recipe and why it appealed to them. Here is the eleventh essay in this series, written by Giselle Lord.
Recreating a historical recipe in my own kitchen is about as good as homework gets and I certainly did not intend to squander the opportunity. I cracked open my brand new book, Scents and Flavors – a recently published translation of a very old book containing recipes that represent the cuisine and aroma mania of 13th-century Syrian Ayyubid rulers (Perry 2017, xxix). The table of contents alone is a fantastic curiosity, essentially broken up into sections or categories that are (usually) further broken up into numbered variations. In the “Section on rice dishes – nine recipes,” there is a “Tenth dish – making khātūnī rice, which is wonderful” (Perry 2017, xiv). Aside from the inclusion of a tenth recipe in a section of nine recipes, the snippet of the unknown author’s voice and relatively unusual revelation of his culinary preference caught my attention. Of the dozen or so recipes that feature a nod to deliciousness from the author, this seemingly simple rice dish with pistachios and sugar seemed my most practicable option. Hence, I procured a bag of pistachios fit for the job and took to my kitchen to attempt to recreate the recipe.
All of the recipes in this volume were extracted from the original paragraph-less manuscripts and broken out into one-part recipes. The recipe for “making khātūnī rice” is translated as follows:
*Tenth dish – making khātūnī rice, which is wonderful Boil water and add tail fat and chicken fat, both melted without salt. Add rice, and when half-done, let the water reduce till nothing is left but the fat. Take pistachios toasted in sesame oil, crush, and add pounded sugar. Put them in the rice – put plenty – spray with rose water and a little musk, and serve. It is outstanding. (Perry 2017, 121).
I assumed that tail fat and chicken fat were simply the rendered fat of two animals (sheep and chicken, respectively), and substituted pork fat for them, or more specifically, the clean leaf lard I had rendered from the fat of a pig raised by local farmers. I left out the musk – which is “a glandular secretion of the musk deer and certain other animals, [and] has a strong smell… In appropriately discreet quantity or diluted form, musk was formerly used in the kitchen with rosewater to flavor such things as pies but this practice seems to have died out during the 17th century…” (Davidson 2014, 540). I recently spent some time with a 1798 cookbook by Amelia Simmons titled American Cookery wherein she consistently includes rosewater and orange flower water as interchangeable ingredients, so I substituted orange blossom water for the rosewater, since, without the musk, we would not benefit from the apparently lovely combination of musk and rosewater anyhow. All other ingredients, namely rice, pistachios, sesame oil, and sugar, I already had in my kitchen or was able to procure with an easy visit to a local grocer.
Before I describe the cooking process, I will admit a dire fault in the assumption mentioned earlier. Upon further inspection, regrettably conducted after I had recreated the recipe, I discovered tail fat to be a veritable cornucopia of flavors captured in the process of rendering the fat of a sheep’s tail. The fourth chapter of the cookbook, albeit a one-page chapter, is entirely dedicated to instructing the reader “How to Melt the Several Varieties of Tail Fat,” a process which involves quince, Fathi apple, coriander seeds, fresh dill, raw onion, Chinese cinnamon, and salt (2017, 40). While wondering how a recipe with aromatics but no spice could be quite so ‘wonderful’, I missed the simple fact that the spices were in fact captured and given to the dish by the all-important tail fat.
To recreate the recipe, I began with melting the leaf lard in a large dutch oven – a pot I often use for making large quantities of rice. I added twice the amount of water as rice I had soaked and rinsed, and let the water boil before adding the rice to the pot. I then lowered the water to a simmer, covered the pot, and let the rice cook twenty minutes. While the rice cooked, I toasted the pistachios in sesame oil and tossed them in sugar. After twenty minutes of cooking and five minutes of resting, I fluffed the rice and transferred it to a wooden bowl. I then added the pistachio and orange blossom. As you can see, this description of my process does not differ greatly from the book’s recipe, except that I used my experience of cooking rice to adapt the volume and cooking time. I also added a pinch of salt to the toasted pistachios and, ultimately, to the pistachio and rice dish. Aside from the lack of clarity on ingredient volume and cook time, the instructions were easy to follow and resulted in what seemed like a perfectly good, if not entirely wonderful or a marvelous rice dish [1].
The aromatics were fittingly the most notable and arguably the most enjoyable feature of the dish – I first noticed the tantalizing aroma of sesame-oil-toasted pistachios and then basked in the perfume-like, floral scent of the orange blossom water. The inclusion of recipes for incenses, soaps, perfumes, and hand-washing solutions suggests the prevalence of aromatics in the medieval Syrian world, and Charles Perry poetically endorses this evidence in writing, “The medieval banquet was a feast for the nose” (2017, xxix). Aside from emphasizing the importance of aromatics in the flavor spectrum of thirteenth-century Syria, Perry also points out that “The cuisine of this book is definitely banquet food, special-occasion food. Not only is it highly aromatic, it is thoroughly luxurious” and that the book “is organized roughly in parallel with the stages of a banquet” including the pre- and post-meal washing and scenting in which the diners engaged (2017, xxx). Thus, it seems this relatively simple rice dish would have greatly contributed to the aroma feast of any good banquet and likely been accompanied by a variety of other main dishes.
In an attempt to right my wrong, I decided to infuse some leaf lard with the spices and flavors included in the author’s directions on rendering tail fat. I heated the lard and the spices slowly over low heat and tossed the leftover rice into the righteously seasoned animal fat. The takeaway from this simple mistake, and its redemption, is to never underestimate the complexity of a single ingredient. I might also add that the intuitive distrust of a recipe without spices merits further research. The seasoned-fat version was truly wonderful, and I can only imagine how much of a marvel this dish may be when prepared with expertly rendered medieval tail fat. For the time being, I’m quite delighted that this thirteenth-century recipe may very well be my inspiration for a great number of nut and spice flavored rice dishes in my future, “which is wonderful” (Perry 2017, xiv).
Works Cited
Davidson, A., & Jaine, Tom. 2014. The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Perry, Charles. 2017. Scents & Flavors: a Syrian cookbook. New York: New York University Press.
Simmons, Amelia. 1798. American Cookery. Hartford: Simeon Butler.
Zaouali, Lilia. 2007. Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World: A concise history with 174 recipes. Berkeley: University of California Press.
[1] In another translation of the same recipe that appears in Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World, the final sentence is translated as “It is a marvel” (Zaouali 2007, 127).
Cookbooks & History: Indian Pudding
Students in Cookbooks and History (MET ML 630), directed by Dr. Karen Metheny, researched and recreated a historical recipe to bring in to class. They were instructed to note the challenges they faced, as well as define why they selected their recipe and why it appealed to them. Here is the tenth essay in this series, written by John Kramer.
Some recipes are written to engender delight and anticipation, to excite the senses, and to deliver upon completion a unique and enjoyable culinary experience. Others rely on their simplicity and relative ubiquity to justify their inclusion in collections of recipes. In this latter context we find the Indian Pudding, courtesy of Lydia Maria Child’s cookbook and prescriptive lifestyle guide The Frugal Housewife (1830).
Child’s Indian Pudding (1830, 63) is by all indications a filler food, something intended to serve as a large and dense store of calories that can fill the hungry stomachs around the table cheaply and with relative ease. Its flavors are subtle to the point of blandness, and its ingredients are relatively common and inexpensive. The time required to produce the pudding represents the only significant hurdle, as the recipe calls for four to five hours of boiling above a hearth. Even with a modern stove, the resulting heat was quite unpleasant.
Her recipe, as with many of the recipes found in The Frugal Housewife, relies on both an inherent understanding of mid-19th-century cooking practices and a comprehensive review of the entire section devoted to puddings. While the recipe for Boiled Indian Pudding did not contain the ratios for milk to corn meal, its immediate predecessor for Baked Indian Pudding had the necessary information (Child 1830, 63). This is common element in many of Child's recipes, with only one recipe in a given category providing the details of production that many others rely upon. Without a functional index that locates each instance, it seems that Child may have intended for the book to be consumed in its entirety and relied upon as a whole rather than a modular collection of recipes that could be drawn on at will. Thankfully, the instruction for this particular recipe was relatively simple – mix everything together, wrap it in a heavy cloth, and boil until it is ready.
Making this pudding in the modern day is a simple matter, as many of the ingredients are even more commonly encountered than they were in Child’s day. Indeed, I was able to purchase everything I needed at the local market without difficulty. After acquiring the corn meal, milk, ginger, molasses, and apple, the only material challenge I encountered was finding the right cloth to wrap the pudding. Undyed linen or burlap would have been preferable, no doubt, but because of time and material limitations I settled for many layers of cheesecloth to contain the pudding. This served surprisingly well, though I had initially feared it would remain too permeable for my purposes. I chose to add two of the three optional inclusions, namely a spoonful of grated ginger and an apple sliced very thin. I opted not to include sweet suet, both as a courtesy to my vegetarian classmates and because suet is a rather less common ingredient.
When compiling the pudding, I discovered to my chagrin that a tablespoon of today did not necessarily equate exactly to a tablespoon of 1830. The mixture that I produced was extremely watery, so I added more cornmeal to achieve the stiff mixture Child calls for (1830, 63). Once the consistency was more manageable, I continued to stir it until the cornmeal began to absorb some of the warm milk, after which I poured it into the prepared cheesecloth bag, tied it off with twine, and submerged it in steadily boiling water. Child’s recipe made no note of a need to replace the water as it boiled away, but I prepared a second pot of boiling water all the same. After approximately an hour and a half, nearly half of my original water had boiled away and the pudding had touched down on the bottom of the pot. I added more boiling water to prevent it from burning, and boiled it for another hour. As the pudding I made incorporated only half of the mixture, I reduced the cooking time to compensate for its smaller size.
After removing the pudding from the boiling water, I found that removing the cheesecloth was also compromising the outer layer of the pudding. I dipped the entire wrapped pudding in cold water, which I found to help immensely. After removing the pudding from the wrapping, I let it stand for approximately 10 minutes before slicing into it and sampling my handiwork. The final product was extremely dense and mostly devoid of flavor. Whether this is a function of the added cornmeal, the taste preferences of mid-19th century Americans, or a combination of the two is unknown. Regardless, the dish would certainly have filled its role as a filler admirably, calorically and texturally dense as it was.
Boiled puddings have largely fallen out of favor in the modern day, in no small part because of the long and involved cooking time for a dish that is ultimately quite unappealing to the modern palate. In its heyday, however, it is easy to see why puddings would have enjoyed a certain popularity. Combining comparative ease and commonplace ingredients, with room for inclusions and additions that could add some level of culinary interest to the otherwise bland dish, these puddings could occupy the position of both filling staple and an occasional treat to be savored.
Work Cited
Child, Lydia Maria. 1830. The Frugal Housewife. Boston: Carter and Hendee.
Cookbooks & History: Coffee Cream
Students in Cookbooks and History (MET ML 630), directed by Dr. Karen Metheny, researched and recreated a historical recipe to bring in to class. They were instructed to note the challenges they faced, as well as define why they selected their recipe and why it appealed to them. Here is the ninth essay in this series, written by Krysia Villon.
In seeking out historical recipes to recreate for this class, it was easy to see that much of the material and cultural documents available from which to do my research had a very European or Euro-centric slant and not always much else. I decided, to seek out historical recipes that documented that “something else,” or someone else, to put it simply. While there are a few volumes of African American cookbooks, or books that contain recipes, pre-dating the book I ultimately chose, I landed upon Good Things to Eat: A Collection of Practical Recipes for Preparing Meats, Game, Fowl, Fish, Puddings, Pastries, Etc. by Rufus Estes (1911) because I appreciated the author’s candor and voice in his introduction.
The author opens his book with a brief autobiography, illustrating for the reader his work ethic, professional history and, ultimate, by his expertise as a chef. Estes was a born a slave in Tennessee in 1857. Later, his family moved to Nashville where he was able to obtain some formal education. He mentions his wages and type of work very clearly yet without too much detail, leaving the reader with, in my opinion, loaded facts about the life of a former, and recently freed, slave. He started working in the restaurant industry and by the age of 26 found employment with the prestigious Pullman Car Company. Here he grew professionally and was educated as a chef. This position led to his employment with a private car company where he went on to serve American presidents, dignitaries and the like (1911, 7). While many of the recipes are European in their influence, Estes did manage to include some typical Southern recipes as well as other ethnic dishes, such as “Creole Sauce” (1911, 109) or “Baked Bananas, Porto Rican Fashion” (1911, 120).
This book was written as a standard recipe book and was published by the author himself in Chicago in 1911. As the foreword states, “This book, the child of [the author’s] brain, and experience, extending over a long period of time and varying environment, he frankly admits is not without its faults -- is far from perfect; but he is satisfied that, notwithstanding its apparent shortcomings, it will serve in a humble way some useful purpose” (1911, 5). The forward, while written in the third person does appear to have been written by author, goes on to say that the recipes in the book have been “demonstrated, not experimentally, but by actual tests, day by day and month by month” (1911, 5), giving the reader comfort in knowing that a humble yet learned cook has provided accurate information and is educated in his field. This elevates the author and gives him the element of distinction with his breadth of knowledge and experience.
Armed with his history and trust in his expertise I looked through the close to 600 recipes in his book. As a coffee-lover and someone who also loves baked custards, I chose the recipe entitled “Coffee Cream” on page 91.
I also chose this recipe because I already had many of the ingredients in my pantry. The technology and techniques fell within my embodied knowledge of cooking and baking as well.
I began by gathering my ingredients. I bought some things I thought would be “close” to what cooks in 1911 would most likely have used, for instance, organic whole milk and eggs. I supplemented with items already in my kitchen.
Next, I gathered my tools.
Once I gathered all that I needed, I followed the instructions, as prescribed. I found that some details were left to the cook’s embodied knowledge, as is commonplace for historical recipes. The recipe assumed the reader would know what a “double boiler” is and would know how to use it to “thicken” the mixture. It also assumed understanding the nature of whipping egg yolks and whites, and how to achieve certain textures in them to bring the contents of the coffee cream together. Another thing that had not occurred to me until I was struggling a bit to release the finished product from the mold is knowing the various tricks on how to release the custard from a pan or cup. This knowledge would come with experience and a lot of trial and error, perhaps.
After letting the mixture cool and set for about 2 hours in my refrigerator, I de-molded the Coffee Cream and revealed something that looked a lot like flan! (One of my favorite desserts and one that I make often.)
When I tasted it, I was pleasantly surprised by both the texture and the flavor. The gelatin cap was smooth and flavorful, the custard beneath was fluffy, airy and sweet. I could imagine a car attendant serving this after a heavier meal on a dainty plate as seen above, the powdered sugar being dusted on top while the private car passenger looked on with anticipation. On the flip side, this is not a dessert I would associate with the everyday household dessert in the south, the region from which the author hailed, especially because it requires some refrigeration. This imbues the dish with meaning and significance, of ‘have’ and ‘have nots,’ of privilege and access. Knowing who the author of this book is only further imbues it with the message of gaining access even when the odds are against you.
Since I found this dessert so enjoyable and thought-provoking, I felt prompted to search the internet to see if the recipe was still in circulation today. Sadly, I could not find one website that mentioned this delicious dessert, though there are many “coffee creams” out there. Perhaps that works out well for me, then, as I can make something that appears unique to many and comes with a story, too. Yum! Buen provecho!
WORKS CITED
Estes, Rufus. 1911. Good Things to Eat: A Collection of Practical Recipes for Preparing Meats, Game, Fowl, Fish, Puddings, Pastries, Etc. Chicago, Rufus Estes.