“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.” — Brian O’Driscoll, Rugby Player

Botanically, the tomato is a fruit. According to botanists at the New York Botanical Garden, fruits are usually sweet and eaten as a dessert.

In contrast, vegetables are savory and usually eaten as part of a main course.

More technically, a fruit is the edible ovary of a plant. The ovary protects the reproductive part of the plant from its youngest stage in developing a flower until seeds develop.

Common fruits include stone fruits like peaches, apricots, and plums. Bananas are among the most popular fruits in the world. Berries of all kinds and dragon fruit are also fruits. And tomatoes, the focus of this blog, are a fruit containing seeds.

How Tomatoes Became Vegetables

In the early 19th century, plantation agriculture in the American South grew tomatoes as well as other agricultural products. Southern growers shipped their tomatoes to market in the northern states until 1860 when civil war broke out between the northern and southern states.

During the war, northern merchants sourced tomatoes from the Caribbean. After the war ended in 1865, southern farmers wanted to re-establish their business exporting tomatoes and other vegetables to northern markets. So, they lobbied Congress for a 10 percent tariff on all vegetables imported from outside the United States, resulting in the Tariff Act of March 3, 1883 which imposed the tariff on “vegetables in their natural state, or in salt, or brine.”

Not so fast, importers John Nix & Co. argued. The same act also listed food imports not subject to the tariff, I.e., “fruits, green, ripe, or dried.” Nix & Co argued the tariff didn’t apply to tomatoes, because the tomato was a fruit.

John Nix & Co were among the first merchants to source produce from Florida, California, and Bermuda. At one time the company chartered a steamship to bring onions to market more quickly. Nix & Co. exported fruit to Europe and returned with potatoes.

Nix v. Hedden, 149 U.S. 304

On February 4, 1887 John Nix & Co. filed suit against Edward L. Hedden, Collector of the Port of New York to recover back tariff duties paid under protest for tomatoes imported from the West Indies in the spring of 1886.

The plaintiffs read dictionary definitions for the words ‘fruit’ and ‘vegetable.’ They also called two witnesses who had been selling fruit and vegetables for 30 years and asked them whether the words ‘fruit’ or ‘vegetable’ had any meaning in trade that differed from the dictionary definitions.

Neither thought the words had any special meaning in trade or commerce.

The defendant’s attorney read definitions of the words pea, egg plant, cucumber, squash and pepper.

Nix’s attorney countered with definitions of potato, turnip, parsnip, cauliflower, cabbage, carrot, and bean.

The defendant’s attorney requested the court to direct a verdict in favor of the defendant, and the court agreed.

Justice Horace Gray, delivering the opinion of the court, concluded that since the words fruit and vegetable had no special meaning in trade or commerce, they must have their ordinary meaning.

Botanically, he said, tomatoes were a fruit of a vine, like a cucumber or a squash. But in the common language of the people, tomatoes were vegetables, eaten the same way as potatoes, cabbage, or celery at dinner, and not as a dessert when fruit was more generally eaten.

And that is how a fruit became a vegetable, and southern farmers once again supplied tomatoes to vegetable markets in the northern states.

Illustrations & A Few Sources

Bright red tomato & cross-section of another tomato, Fir0002/Flagstaffotos; Autumn red peach; from Vilmorin-Andrieux & Co.; Edward L. Hedden; Horace Gray; from Vilmorin-Andrieux & Co. Lawrence M. Kelly. “What is a Fruit?” New York Botanical Garden. Aug. 6, 2014. “The Tomato Conundrum: How a Supreme Court Case Redefined Fruits & Vegetables.” The Holcomb Group.

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The post When is a Fruit a Vegetable? Consider Tomatoes. first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

Have you planted tomatoes in your garden or windowsill pots yet? You might even be on your second planting by now. Statistically, 55 percent of American households have a garden. About 43 percent of those gardens grow food, and tomatoes are planted in 86 percent of food gardens. In fact, Americans eat about 1 billion pounds of tomatoes annually. With over 10,000 varieties to choose from in a cornucopia of colors, tomatoes could be called an all-American fruit. Or are they vegetables?

Tomato Trivia

Tomatoes originally grew wild near the Andes mountains. Over time indigenous people brought the plant they called tomatl north through Central America and into Mexico. The tomatl was used in cooking and as a gift for newlyweds to promote fertility.

When Spanish conquistadors arrived in Mexico in the early 16^th century, they called the food tomate. It is said Cortez discovered the fruit in Montezuma’s gardens and brought the seeds back to Spain. The first variety of tomato to reach Europe was probably yellow, leading to the name poi d’oro, or yellow apples.

Over time, the plant made its way further into Europe, most commonly as an ornamental plant. The new plant had several names. In 1544 Italian herbalist Pietro Andrea Mattioli classified the tomato as a nightshade and a mandrake. Mandrakes were known as aphrodisiacs, which may be why the French called the new fruit a love apple —the pomme d’amour—or golden apple. This potentially scandalous application limited the number of people willing to try the new food.

Many thought the new plant was poisonous, and called the fruit a poison apple. In fact, the leaves, stems and roots of the tomato plant contain solanine, a neurotoxin and should not be eaten. The tomato plant is also a relative of deadly nightshade. Botanist Joseph Pitton De Tournefort gave the new fruit its official name of Lycopersicon esculentum. The moniker translates as edible wolf peach. Peach because the fruit was round, and was thought to be the poison Galen referred to in the 3rd century when discussing ways to entice and then kill unwanted wolves.

Alternatively, German myths claimed that witches used mandrake and nightshade to summon werewolves. And the earliest German name for tomatoes was Wolfpfirsich which translates to wolf peach. Later in the 18th century, Carl Linnaeus modified the translation of Lycopersicon esculentum to “edible wolf peach.”

Some people tried the fruit, and lived to tell the tale. But, the didn’t care for the taste or the smell. In 1597 English botanist John Gerard declared tomatoes were corrupt and of rank & stinking savor.

However, these technical details were not why people thought the tomato was poisonous. Many upper class Europeans died after consuming tomatoes, proving it was better not to eat the fruit, no matter how delicious it looked. It turns out this was a false association. Upper class Europeans ate off of pewter plates, and acidic tomatoes leeched lead out of the pewter. Thus wealthy diners died from lead poisoning after consuming tomato based dishes off pewter dishes. Sometimes common pottery makes the best dinnerware.

But tastes change. In the 19^th century Italians began using tomatoes in their pasta dishes. Previously, Italians had used lardo, the pig back fat that was a byproduct of processing prosciutto, with their pasta dishes. But in the 19^th century, pig farmers changed to a different breed that produced a leaner prosciutto. The lardo, however, did not taste as good as before. Italian cooks began experimenting and settled on tomato based sauces to accompany pasta dishes.

Over time, tomatoes became better known in North America. Maria Parloa’s 1872 Appledore Cook Book included an early recipe for Tomato Soup.

Peel & slice tomatoes enough to fill a two-quart basin. Put them into the soup kettle with six quarts of water & 2 pounds of beef. Boil 3 hours. Season with pepper, salt & and spoonfuls of butter. Strain. Serve with toasted bread.

During the tomato’s checkered history, it was considered a fruit. The story of how the tomato became a vegetable is in my next blog.

Illustrations & A Few Sources

Garden Tomatoes by Mdmad1234; Yellow Tomatoes by Goldilocks; Tacuinum Sanitation Mandrake Dog c. 1390; Tomatoes, gouache on vellum by Hans-Simon Holtzbecker, 17th century; Pasta Eater: Allegory of Taste by Luca Giordano, 17th Century; Illustration from the original Appledore Cook Book; Bowl of Tomato Basic Soup by Srujanabotcha. Jacqui. “Neapolitan Zita Pasta with Italian Lardo.” the Pasta project. Feb. 23, 2022. Peggy Trowbridge Filippone. “The History of Tomatoes as Food.” The Spruce Eats. Dec. 28 2022. Dale E Hammerschmidt & Michael J. Franklin. “The Edible Wolf Peach.” Translational Research. Vol. 146, Issue 4, October 2005.

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The post Tomatoes: From the Andes to Your Garden first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

The Year of the Tiger begins tomorrow, February 1st , but celebrations for the Lunar New Year take place from January 31st through February 15th.

New Year —New Luck

Prior to the first day of the new year, people deep clean their homes to remove huiqi [inauspicious breaths] and to appease the gods who will inspect the home. The first day of the new year is not a time to sweep the house, lest you sweep out good luck, or wash either your hair or your clothing, which will also wash out good fortune.

The Great Race

According to legend, there was once a Great Race among the animals to see who could reach the Jade Emperor first. The first twelve animals to complete the race received a year in the 12-year lunar cycle.

The Ox would have been first if she hadn’t been tricked by the Rat who hitched a ride on her back, and then jumped off so he arrived ahead of the Ox. This explains why the Rat is first animal in the cycle and the Ox, second. The other ten animals are the Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig. It is said the pig came in last, because he stopped for a snack.

A person is assigned the attributes of the animal in control the year he or she is born and these animals reflect how a person is seen by other people and how she sees herself.

Someone born in a Tiger year is said to be brave, competitive, unpredictable, confident, charming, well-liked, and stubborn. All of these are useful attributes, except in the year of the Tiger.

During a Tiger year, people born in the year of the Rabbit, Dragon, Horse, or Rooster will have an easy year and good luck with their finances. Those born in Rat, Snake, Monkey, Dog, or Pig years can still have good fortune, but will have to work harder for it. Tiger people need to be careful this year and keep a low profile. They will have better prospects next year.

Special Foods

Traditionally, New Year celebrations are a time when families enjoy special foods.

CHANG SHOU MIAN [Longevity Noodles] are eaten during the first five days of the celebration to encourage long life. The noodles are not cut, and are supposed to be eaten with one long slurp rather than chewing.

SPRING ROLLS are shaped like gold bars to symbolize wealth.

NIAN GAO [Rice Cakes] symbolizes the hope that every year will be better than the last, because the word GAO is pronounced the same way as the word for tall or high.

TANGYUAN [Sweet Rice Balls] are round to encourage family togetherness.

STEAMED WHOLE FISH is the last item to be eaten at the meal. The word for fish is pronounced YU, which sounds the same word for surplus. The fish symbolizes wealth and prosperity and is served with the head and tail intact.

JIAO ZI [Dumplings] are shared on the 15th and final day of the celebrations as a sign of the family unit. The dumplings ae shaped like gold ingots, so the more dumplings you eat, the more wealth you will have. The word jiao zi has two other meanings. It was the name of the first form of paper money, and also refers to the hour just before the new year as a time of transition between old and new. Sometimes a coin is placed one of the dumplings for extra good luck.

I think of the Lunar New Year celebrations as the last of the holidays that began in December. May the year ahead bring you good health and prosperity.

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Illustrations

Indonesian Stamp, 2010 Year of Tiger.

Chinese Zodiac by RootOfAllLight.

Tiger by S. Taheri, edited by Fir0002.

Longevity/birthday noodles by N509FZ.

Spring rolls by Hiroooooo.

Imprinted black sesame rice cake by DragonSamYU.

Glutinous Rice Balls by BYTE RIDER.

Steamed whole fish by KM Francois George Pierre.

Dumpling by Macgills2.

Alex Nelson. “Chinese Zodiac Signs.” National World. Jan. 25, 2022.

Xenia Fong. “All the Lunar New Year Dishes.” Food Network. 

The post Gung Hay Fat Choy — Year of the Tiger first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

Recent research for my current project has turned up a few interesting insights into how eighteenth century New Englanders celebrated Thanksgiving, which makes an interesting change for the annual stories about the first Thanksgiving in 1621.

Over a hundred years since the Pilgrims stepped ashore, colonial Americans did not worry about starvation or share the holiday with Native Americans who, by this time, had been largely banished to the western frontier. Salem and other towns on the Eastern Seaboard had different holiday traditions.

Thanksgiving was the most important holiday on the New England calendar, particularly since most people dismissed Christmas as a day of almost pagan excess. Thanksgiving occurred between late November and mid-December, after the harvest was in, but before annual butchering of animals. That labor-intensive event took place about a week after Thanksgiving. Consequently, various species of poultry took pride of place on the menu. 

Thanksgiving celebrations began with a church service, so people could express their gratitude for a successful year. In 1750 Calvinist churches in Salem still took a grim and fearful approach to God, but as the century moved on, a more intellectual Unitarian attitude affected the worship services.

Once church was over, people returned home to prepare for the holiday. Dinner was a family party with about thirty guests, and began at 3:00 in the afternoon. Usually there would be two full tables of food, plus a smaller table for the children. The menu sounds similar to our modern traditions, but the ingredients differed.

Wild turkeys, in particular, were much smaller than the turkeys available in our supermarkets. Male turkeys were about 16 pounds, and female about 9 pounds.

Dinner was served in two courses.

First Course Menu

The first course featured turkey which might be roasted or baked in a pie, as well as chicken pies. Side dishes included various seasonal vegetables, pickles, preserves, breads, honey, and cheese.

Second/Dessert Course Menu

The dessert course consisted primarily of fruit pies. Mincemeat and plum pudding were also served

After dinner, gentlemen enjoyed wine or other beverages while ladies retired to the drawing room.

Hunting the Slipper

After the guests reunited, there were various games, including Hunt the Slipper, a circle game in which one person is a customer and the others are the cobblers. The customer takes his slipper to a cobbler and asks him to repair it. The cobbler accepts the slipper. When the customer returns, the cobbler says the slipper is lost. Now the customer must try to find the slipper while players pass the slipper under their knees so the customer can’t see who has the slipper.

People went for after dinner strolls and called on their neighbors. Many hosts included hired musicians. the day might conclude with a cold super of leftovers from the earlier meal. Most people departed for home by 11:00.

Contemporary Recipes

As a sample of 18^th century cooking, I’ve included two recipes from the Compleat Housewife: or, Accomplish’d Gentlewoman’s Companion, published in 1758.

To Roast a Turkey

Take a quarter of a pound of lean veal, a little thyme, parsley, sweet marjoram, a spring of winter savory, a bit of lemon peel, one onion, a nutmeg-grated, a dram of mace, a little salt, and half a pound of butter.

Cut your herbs very small.

Pound your meat as small as possible and mix all together with three eggs and as much flour or bread as will make it of a proper consistence. Then fill the crop of your turkey with it, paper the breast and lay it down a good distance from the fire. An hour and quarter will roast, if not very large.

To Make a Chicken Pie

Take six small chickens; roll up a piece of butter in sweet spice & put into the chickens; season them; lay them in the pie with marrow of two bones and with fruit & preserves – prunella’s, damsons, gooseberries. Close the pie.

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Illustrations

A Wild Turkey During Mating Season.

New England Thanksgiving Dinner in Falmouth, Maine 2005.

Female Wild Turkey by Judy Gallagher.

Hunt The Slippers by Thomas Rowlandson.

Open Hearth Cooking, Kent Plantation House by Billy Hathorn.

The post Thanksgiving in 18th Century New England first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

There are many ways we know the season of Autumn has begun. The calendar informs us the official date is September 22. People whose school days ended sometime in the last century associate Autumn with the beginning of school. There’s the turning of the leaves, the nights drawing in, and the nip in the air. But for most of us, Autumn begins in late August when our favorite barista offers us a Pumpkin Spice Latte, available for a limited time only.

Before delving into the exciting world of pumpkin spices, I must note that Starbucks released its exotic coffee blend in 2003. At the time, naysayers said no one would purchase spiced coffee. In fact, consumers flocked to buy the coffee blended with caramel, spices, and lots of sugar. Forbes reported that in 2018, the “pumpkin spice complex” had a combined market value of over $600 million.

The Spices of Fall

There’s nothing inherently special about the ‘pumpkin spice’ blend. You can assemble it at home with 18 parts ground cinnamon, 4 parts ground nutmeg, 4 parts ground ginger, 3 parts ground cloves, and 3 parts ground allspice. How much is a “part”? As much as you like. It could be a teaspoon or a tablespoon or more or less. Mix the parts together, and you have your own pumpkin spice blend. Sometimes people add ground cloves and or mace to taste.

A Little Spice History

In the 15th Century, the search for spices influenced European efforts to sail around the world. Prior to that, spices came into Europe via trade routes established by the Muslim World. The resulting product was very expensive. One source reveals that during the 14^th century, a pound of nutmeg had the same value as 7 fattened oxen. And nutmeg could be found only in the Banda Islands, later called the Spice Islands, a part of Indonesia.

So, if a nation or company could cut out the middle man and sail directly to the source, it would be extremely wealthy. In the early 17^th Century, the Dutch East India Company took exclusive control of the region, and used the newly available spices to create speculassakruiden, a blend of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, coriander seeds, aniseed, white pepper, ginger, and cardamom — a clear predecessor of pumpkin spice.

Next, The Pumpkin

That same 17^th Century brought the first English settlers to America where they reluctantly came to appreciate local foods, particularly the prolific pumpkin. They could consume the mostly tasteless vegetable in soups and stews. They could roast it and bake it. Native Americans added chili peppers for flavor. The colonists added sugar and spice. 

While the settlers filled their stomachs with the anti-oxident that is pumpkin, their English cousins laughed at them for eating the squash and called them ‘pumpkin-blasted brains’ for choosing frontier America over civilized England.

Lacking what we think of as baking equipment, the early settlors came up with what now seems a unique way to make pumpkin pie by hollowing out the pumpkin, filling the shell with a mix of milk, honey and spices to make a custard, and then roasting the filled pumpkin in hot ashes. If you want to try this method, you can find a modern recipe here.

During the 19^th Century pumpkin pie took on modern characteristics as American bakers made pumpkin pie with whatever spices they had on hand. Most often, these included cinnamon. But, as anyone who has ever carved a pumpkin knows, it takes a lot of work to pulp a pumpkin.

Pumpkin Spice Blend is Born

Then, in 1929, Libby’s came out with the first canned pumpkin pulp, the same product many of us still use for baking pumpkin based foods.

Five years later, in 1934, McCormick, then the largest purveyor of spices, came out with the first “Pumpkin Spice Mix,” and pumpkin baked goods became the most popular desserts of the season.

In 1936, the Washington Post published “Spice Cake of Pumpkin Newest Dish: Delicacy Tempting to All Appetites and Easy to Prepare. Ideal Dessert for Family Dinner, Healthful for Children.” The recipe shown below had no actual pumpkin pulp, but it did feature pumpkin spices.*

In 1950 Libby’s 100% Pure Pumpkin printed a classic pumpkin pie recipe that has become a favorite across generations on the side of its can.

Pumpkin Spice Is In Almost Everything

From its humble beginnings as a spice mixture for bakers, pumpkin spice now infuses countless products. Among them: Bailey’s Pumpkin Spice Liqueur; Burt’s Bees Pumpkin Spice Lip Balm; Captain Morgan Jack-O’Blast Pumpkin Spice Rum in a pumpkin shaped bottle; Greenies Pumpkin Spice Dental Dog Treats; Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day Multi-Surface Everyday Cleaner, Pumpkin Scent; and Limited Edition Pumpkin Spice Spam. In short, this is the time of year when we are surrounded by the scent and flavors of pumpkin spice.

* 1936 Recipe for Pumpkin Spice Cake The baker can use the pumpkin spice mix or mix her own spices.Cream 1/2 cup shortening well and add 1-1/2 cups brown sugar. Mix until light and fluffy. Add 4 egg yolks, beaten until thick. Sift 3 cups of cake flour once before measuring. Add 4 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp cloves, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp nutmeg. Sift all together three times. Add flour mixture alternating with 1 cup milk. Beat well after each addition. Bake in 350 degree oven.

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Illustrations

Spice Box by Testmaskara

Starbucks Grande Iced Pumpkin Spice Latte by JimmyStardust.

Spice Bazaar by Christophe Schindler.

Map of the Spice Islands by Blaeu, 1630.

Pumpkins in Geneseo NY. Attribution: Benjamin D. Esham / Wikimedia Commons.

McCormick Pumpkin Pie Spice by Stephen Witherden.

Tiny Dutch Kitchen

SouffleBombay

1936 Spice Cake Recipe from the Honolulu Advertiser

Shannon Dwyer. “The 20+ Coolest Pumpkin Spice Products to Try This Fall.” The Real Deal. Oct 4, 2021.

Dań Nosowicz. “The Fascinating Journey of How Pumpkin Spice Found Its Way Into Our Lattes.” Better Homes & Gardens. Aug. 17, 2020.

Audrey Stanton. “The History of Pumpkin Spice.” The Good Trade.

The post Pumpkin Spice & All Things Nice first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

Except for point number 5 advising less wheat and meat products, this 1917 poster for about the acquisition, preparation, and consumption of food is similar to advice we receive today. Number 6, “use what is left” is  tricky, because it refers to the dreaded food category of “leftovers.”

One 1948 cook book observed, the word “leftovers” brings an unpleasant mental picture “of a lot of odds and ends of food someone else didn’t want, mixed together with plenty of salt — boiled in a pot, and served on heavy, blue, restaurant china.” The same is true today. Yet, we carefully save uneaten food in plastic containers that float around the refrigerator until they are finally thrown out.

But this attitude towards leftovers didn’t always exist. In the 19^th century, leftovers were a basic part of everyone’s diet. Breakfast was usually whatever food remained from the day before. Stews of varied ingredients simmered on the stove. These food choices weren’t about conservation. There simply wasn’t a realiable way to preserve food. Women (who were generally held responsible for all food preparation) routinely pickled, potted, smoked, salted, and preserved food in various containers until it could be consumed.

Habits began to change in middle and upper class homes during the 1890s with the advent of the Icebox. This marvelous invention was a food storage cabinet made of wood with a tin or zinc lining packed with straw, sawdust, cork or seaweed for insulation. The main attraction was a compartment for an ice block that kept food cool. Cheaper iceboxes had a drip pan that had to be emptied daily. Iceboxes on the higher end featured a spigot that drained melted ice into a holding tank. Suddenly, perishable food could be kept for several days.

In 1910, home refrigerators became available to the very wealthy. Suddenly, serving leftovers was a status symbol. A refrigerator company commissioned Left Over Foods and How to Use Them, a pamphlet that explained what to do with the new opportunity to serve food in the same way it had been originally prepared. Upper and middle class Americans eagerly puchased refrigerators as a new status symbol.

World War I changed public attitudes about leftovers. One of the consequences of being able to keep food, was the tendency to prepare more food than was necessary. Americans were urged to conserve food and use every crumb in goulashes or casseroles. Nothing should be wasted.

At least not until the 1920s, when Americans had money to spend on consumer goods, particularly refrigerators, and food prices fell. Since refrigerators were common and food was cheap, the new mantra was to be so wealthy it wasn’t necessary to eat leftovers.

The boasting lasted until the 1930s when America fell into an economic depression. Leftovers, once again, symbolized virtue and thrift. But there was no reason they had to be boring. Food remnants could be reborn in a sauce, hidden in pot pies, or molded into meatloaf. The trend continued into World War II, when once again Americans were urged to use every scrap of food, so surplus rations could be sent to the troops or to refugees.

When World War II ended in 1946, factories retooled to produce consumer goods, the economy boomed, and food prices fell. In 1940, 50 percent of American homes had a refrigerator; in 1944, 85 percent of American kitchens included a refrigerator.

By 1960, Americans had a new view of leftovers, especially those found in the back of the fridge. “When in doubt, throw it out.” It’s not bad advice, but it also reflects that consuming leftovers wasn’t as necessary as it had been.

Cookery Books

These trends are reflected in popular cookbooks. When Irma S. Rombauer published the first edition of Joy of Cooking in 1931, the handbook included a listing of recipes suitable for leftovers. 

In 1948 a popular cookbook called Cooking by the Clock featured entire menus, with preparation times, so the family cook could present meals in which all the menu items were ready at the same time. One menu focused on a main course featuring leftovers.

I, don’t find this to be a particularly appetizing menu. And, one and a half hours to prepare dinner seems a bit much, but it was 1948. The authors point out that this menu was carefully constructed. “Prepare it just as it’s written and you’ll break down the most finicky of appetites. It’s the little extra touches that make the difference. The sardines will stimulate the taste buds —the baked tomato will furnish eye appeal—and the sweetness of the apricot pudding will give the meal the piquancy any good meal needs.”

The recipe for stuffed tomatoes calls for one cup chopped cooked or leftover meat (ham, tongue, chicken, veal, etc.) If the only leftover used is the meat, I’m not sure this is a recipe about leftovers, however, it does demonstrate that times had changed. Leftovers had lost their virtue and should not be noticed.

Two years later, Rombauer noted that too much budget cooking would only cause family protests. When the 1963 edition of Joy of Cooking came out, Rombauer’s daughter condensed the section on leftovers. Since then, refrigerators have become larger; leftovers reside in cute, matching containers until eaten or tossed, and microwaves make reheating their contents a quick and easy snack.

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Illustrations

Food, Don’t Waste It. 1917.

1920s Icebox by Ferna.

1936 Refrigerator.

Give It Style. 1940s.

Food is a Weapon. 1940s.

Tomates farcies prêtes à passer au four by r.g-s

Food refrigerated in plastic containers by Kathleen Franklin.

Title Page. Cooking by the Clock. Farrar, Straus & Company. 1948.

Menu. Cooking by the Clock. Farrar, Straus & Company. 1948. page 128.

Helen Veit. “Economic History of Leftovers.” The Atlantic. Oct. 7 2015.

The post Leftovers: Once Virtuous, Now Annoying first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

At its most basic version, a hamburger is a sandwich featuring one or more patties of ground meat served inside a bread roll. From here variations begin. Besides meat, hamburgers come with other ingredients inside the bun from lettuce to pickles; tomatoes to onions, and then there’s the sauce. Mustard, ketchup, mayo, or the so-called secret sauce which is a lot like Thousand Island dressing. So many potential choices.

Some say the Menches brothers invented this all-American sandwich at the Erie County Fair [then called the Buffalo County Fair] in 1885. They were selling pork sausage sandwiches when they ran out of pork. So they put in an order with their pork supplier, who repied he wasn’t going to butcher more hogs, because the weather was too hot and the pork might spoil. However, the supplier could sell them ground beef.

Reluctantly, the Menches brothers tested the new product. The first result was dry and bland, so they added coffee and brown sugar to the mix to liven up the flavor, and sold the new sandwich with ketchup and sliced onion. The brothers named their new product a hamburger, because the fair was in the town of Hamburg, New York.

It is unclear whether the Menches brothers created the “first” hamburger, or “one of the first” hamburgers. Another potential creator is Charlie Nagreen who sold his product at the 1885 Seymour Fair. He may be the first to put the hamburger in a bun. Initially, Nagreen sold hamburger steaks from his street stall, but people wanted to walk around the fair while they ate. The solution: the hamburger bun.

Americans Want Fast-Food

Regardless of the inventor, hamburgers filled a new need at the beginning of the 20^th century. As more people moved to urban centers, workers needed food that was both quick and cheap. The 5-cent hamburger was a perfect solution and was sold in the new diners and drive-ins that often included car hop service to serve food quickly so patrons could dine inside their cars, or in some cases, wagons.

One of the first roadside restaurants was the Texas Pig Stand that opened off a busy highway near Dallas, Texas in 1921. Three years later there were ten locations selling burgers and other sandwiches, as well as onion rings, chicken fried steak and Texas Toast. All of these delicacies could be ordered and consumed from the comfort of the customer’s car. Not only were the “Tray-boys” delivering barbecued pork and soda a novelty, they were also less expensive than hiring staff for indoor dining. The word “car-hop,” by the way, was inspired by the hotel occuption of bellhops. Alas, the last Pig Stand closed in 2006.

However, Bob’s Big Boy is still going strong. In 1936 Bob Wian founded his restaurant that he named after himself and what he dubbed the Big Boy Sandwich. Pre-dating MacDonald’s Big Mac by some years, the Big Boy Sandwich was a double-decker sandwich with a bun sliced into three parts interspersed with a hamburger patty. Wian invented the sandwich for a customer who wanted something different. Wian’s second site located in Burbank was designned in 1949 as a drive-in with car hops bringing food to the cars. As a child in California, I loved the rare occasions the family went to Bob’s Big Boy. The burgers were great, with no table manners required.

By the late 1930s, car hops were primarily young white women who earned their living from tips and paid for their own uniforms and food. In 1940 the California Division of Industrial Welfare ordered 30 drive-ins to pay car hops the legal minimum wage of $16 per week. The owners went to court. After hearing car hops testify that they made between $25 and $70 per night in tips, the judge granted an injunction.

By the 1960s, drive-ins with walk-up windows made car hops a topic of 1950s nostalgia and drive-through service made them obsolete. But in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, car hops, at least temporarily, are making a come back with contactless service and secure social distancing.

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Illustrations

Hamburger on black plate. Public Domain.

Erie County Fair Sign by Martybiniasz.

Pig Stand in PA, 1927. Public Domain.

Big Mac. Public Domain.

Bob’s Big Boy Statue. Big Boy Restaurant, Burbank. Public Domain.

Roller skate car hops from West Hollywood Halloween Costume Carnival by Clinton Steeds.

Nate Barksdale. “How Drive-Thru Dining Changed Fast Food.” History. Jan. 8, 2021.

Debra Kamin. “The Latest U.S. Food Trend is 1950s Nostalgia. CNN. Aug. 6, 2020.

Jan Whitaker. “Carhops in Fact and Fiction.” Restaurant-ing Through History. July 23, 2017.

The post Hamburgers + Car Hops = Fast Food first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

Pecans (carya illinoisensis) are an edible nut most often associated with desserts, particularly pecan pie, an extraganza of added sweetness. [Recipe Below] Pecans are also found in praline candy, cakes, cookies, and candied nuts. But this is misleading association, because, in fact, raw pecans are loaded with healthy monounsaturated fat and fiber, as well as being a good source of calcium, magnesium,  potassium, and anti-oxidents. A handful of pecans (about 19 halves) is a mere 200 calories that can be consumed in a salad.

Technically, pecans are a fruit known as a drupe, which is a fruit with a single stone surrounded by a husk. And though we refer to the pecan as a type of nut, it is more correctly a seed produced by a decidous tree that is part of the hickory family.

In the wild, these trees grow near water sources in northern Mexico and the southern United States. The name pecan, which has different pronunciations in each region, comes from a Algonquin word, pecanes, which meaning the shell needed to be cracked with a stone. The same word referred to walnuts and hickory nuts. Spanish explorers called the nut nuez de la arruga, or “wrinkle nut.”

A commercial nut crop requires consistent fruit. However, pecans don’t reliably reproduce for seed – a seed taken from a certain tree can produce a completely different type of pecan from its source. Consequently pecans had no future as a commercial crop until the correct variety could be grafted onto solid stock.

Enter Antoine, a slave living on Oak Alley Plantation in Louisiana who was an expert at grafting trees. In 1846, Antoine produced a consistent variety of pecan with a shell so thin it was called a “paper shell.” With the official name of Centennial Variety, Antoine’s pecan was entered into the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, and won a prize.

During the 1880s pecan orchards began to appear, and in 1886 the first recipe for pecan pie became available. It seems to have been based on a pre-existing recipie for Sugar Pie, sometimes known as Chess Pie. The pie’s popularity coincided with the success of Karo Syrup, which introduced light and dark corn syrup in 1902. In the 1930s, the wife of one of Karo’s sales executives discovered she could make pecan pie with Karo’s lighter corn syrup instead of using molasses or dark syrup.; Karo printed a the recipe on the side of their containers, and the standard pecan pie recipe took off.

There are many variations on the basic pecan pie recipe. The one illustrated in the video below is from Food Wishes and uses the following ingredients:

Enough pie dough for a 9 1/2 inch glass pie dish [Pre-bake crust]; 2 cups pecan halves; 1/2 cup butter (4 oz); 1 cup light brown sugar; 1/2 cup white sugar; 1/2 cup light corn syrup; 1/2 tsp fine salt; 1 tsp vanilla; 1 tbsp bourbon; 2 tbsp milk; 3 tbsp flour; 3 large eggs.

*Bake at 350 F. for about 45 minutes, or until browned and set.

After watching the video, I concluded two things. Pecan pie is, technically, not difficult to make. It is, however, far too time consuming for me. Besides, I’d have to triple my walking time to work off the sugar.

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Illustrations

Carya illinoinensis – Pecan, 1812

Two Pecan Halves by Markus Brunner

In-husk pecan nuts

Avocado-Pecan Salad by FranHogan

Pecan Tree by Bruce Marlin

Oak Alley Plantation by Emily Richardson.

Pecan Pie by Jonathunder

Classic Pecan Pie Recipe.

American Pecans.

Jaclyn London. “9 Health Benefits of Pecans.” Good Housekeeping. Dec. 6, 2017.

The post Pecans: An American Nut first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

Last month’s blog on Iced Tea got me thinking about other thirst quenching drinks for hot summer days, and Lemonade is every bit as common as Iced Tea as a summer beverage.

Lemons and sugarcane, two prime ingredients for lemonade, are native to India where people mix a beverage called Nimbu Pani. The ingredients include simple syrup, freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice, cold water, toasted and crushed cumin seeds, and sea salt for the rim of the glass.

In 1630 a lemonade made from sparkling water, lemon juice, and honey appeared in Paris. Vendors sold it in cups filled from a container strapped to their backs. Needless to say, the cups weren’t washed between customers. The beverage proved so popular, the vendors united in an organization called Compagnie de Limonadiers.

There wasn’t much technical change in the recipe until the 1830s when Schweppes introduced a carbonated lemonade.

Lemonade retains its popularity, because of its ability to quench thirst. Sour drinks, such as an unsweetened lemonade, stimulate salivation, which moistens the dry mouth caused by thirst and dehydration. The benefit continues after the drink is finished, thereby quenching thirst.

In America the introduction of lemonade coincided with the Temperance Movement’s efforts to provide non-alcoholic beverages for a thirsty public. Lemonade was a popular at fairs and other public events, as well as on the front porch.

Since the 19^th century, Americans have preferred what is called cloudy lemonade, a non-carbonated drink made with fresh lemon juice. However, pink lemonade is also popular. Generally, the color comes from added fruit juices or food coloring. There is, however, a fanciful story about the origins of pink lemonade that might even be true.

In 1857 a man named Pete Conklin mixed lemonade to sell at his circus beverage stall. One day he ran out of water and was in a rush to mix the next batch for his thirsty customers. He grabbed the nearest tub of water and added it to his mixture. What he didn’t realize was that the circus bareback rider had rinsed her pink tights in the tub. He sold the pink liquid as strawberry lemonade, and later claimed sales increased by 100 percent.

Temperance supporters got another boost when President Rutherford B. Hayes took office in 1877. Hayes banned alcoholic beverages at all White House functions. Journalists claimed the person responsible was really his wife who was known for her temperance position. After Hayes left office, Lucy became known as Lemonade Lucy.

In 1907 California Citrus Growers formed a cooperative called the California Fruit Growers Exchange, and sold their products under the brand name Sunkist. To encourage consumers to buy their products, they coined the slogan: Good-bye to liquor, here’s to lemonade.

After absorbing all this information about lemonade, you might want to mix up a batch. Divas Can Cook has a quick and easy way to make lemonade at home. 

1. Wash lemons thoroughly, so you can zest the rind.
2. Roll lemons firmly on a hard surface until they become soft. This will make them easier to juice.
3. Zest 2-3 lemons. Set aside
4. In a pot over medium heat, add sugar, lemon zest and 2 cups of water.
5. Simmer lightly for about 5 minutes or until sugar has dissolves and the mixture has a light yellow color. Do not boil.
6. Remove from heat.
7. Juice the lemons.
8. Strain the lemon juice into a large pitcher.
9. Strain the sugar mixture into the large pitcher.
10. Add in 4 cups of cold water.
11. Fill chilled glasses with ice & pour in the lemonade

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Illustrations

Mug of Lemonade by Adryan R. Villanueva

Nimbu Pani by Archana Joshi

Lemonade seller in Berlin 1931 by Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-2004-0701-502 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

Bareback Rider.

President & Mrs Rutherford B Hayes. 1870

Lemon crate label, Progressive Brand, Lehmann Printing and Lithographing Co., Crate, can, and bottle label collection, Kemble Spec Col 08, courtesy, California Historical Society, Kemble Spec Col 08_035.jpg.

Lucy Ware Webb Hayes. White House

Carrie Tatro. “The Fascinating History of Lemonade.” How Stuff Works. May 30, 2020

Kathleen Williams. “When Life Hands You Lemons.” History. Aug 22, 2018

The post ICE COLD LEMONADE ON A HOT SUMMER DAY first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

Ketchup is the go-to of  all American condiments. In fact, the average American consumes 71 pounds of ketchup each year.

[Incidentally, this 1953 advertisement by Alcoa Aluminum uses the Del Monte catsup bottle as a prop to demonstrate how easy it is to open aluminum screw tops.]

It’s easy to understand why Alcoa used a ketchup bottle for its demonstration. Almost every American has ketchup in their cupboard, because it’s the condiment that goes with everything from hot dogs, hamburgers, and fries to meatloaf, pot roast, and scrambled eggs. I even know one woman, who shall remain nameless, who adds ketchup to runny soft-boiled eggs.

In other words, ketchup goes with just about anything edible whether its purpose is to enhance flavor or cover it up. And, in a word association test, most Americans associate ketchup with tomatoes, despite the fact that ketchup can be made out of almost anything.

Is the correct word CATSUP or KETCHUP?

Ketchup began in China as a pickled sauce made from fermented fish. The sauce was variously known as ke-tsiap in Hokkien Chinese, k`ēchap in Cantonese Chinese, or kēhap in Malay Chinese. When the term migrated into English, some people spelled the word as catsup; others as ketchup. In the late 1900s, ketchup began pulling ahead as the preferred spelling, and won the competition in 1988 when Del Monte changed the spelling of its product from catsup to ketchup.

Early Ketchups

The British liked ketchup, and took the tasty sauce home with them in the 18^th century. They made ketchup out of mushrooms, walnuts, oysters, anchovies, lemons, celery, plums or peaches. One recipe for oyster ketchup featured 100 oysters, 3 pints of white wine, and lemon peels spiked with mace and cloves for a spicier flavor.

Charlotte Mason’s 1787 Lady’s Assistant for Regulating and Supplying Her Table included this recipe for a Ketchup of Walnuts. Bruise a hundred or two of walnuts, just before they are fit to pickle. squeeze out the juice. Let it stand all night. Boil it. When the anchovies are dissolved, strain the liquor. add half a pint of red wine, a gill of vinegar, ten cloves of garlic, mace, cloves and nutmeg, half a quarter of an ounce each, pounded. Let this simmer till the garlic is tender.

No 18^th century ketchup used the poison apples we now call tomatoes.

This video shows how 18^th century Americans made mushroom ketchup. To find out how tomatoes took over ketchup, skip to the section after the video.

Tomato Ketchup Becomes Popular

One of the first recipes for a tomato ketchup comes from James Mease of Philadelphia in 1812. He favored tomato pulp, unknown spices, and brandy. Jonas Yerkes came out with the first bottled ketchup in 1837.  

Early ketchup producers faced a challenge, because the tomato growing season was short and they needed to preserve the tomato pulp. Favored preservatives were coal tar derivatives and sodium benzoate. However, these weren’t healthy choices.

Enter Dr.  Harvey Washington Wiley who suggested preservatives weren’t needed if the ingredients were of high quality and properly used. Wiley took his theories to Henry J. Heintz of Pittsburg who launched Ketchum in 1876. The recipe used tomatoes, (which were processed the same day they were harvested), distilled vinegar, brown sugar, salt and spices. One version featured allspice, cloves, cayenne pepper, mace, and cinnamon. Another set of spices included pepper, ginger, mustard seed, celery, salt and horseradish.

During the 1880s, Heinz changed the name of his product to Heinz Tomato Ketchup, and added “57 Varieties” to the label. At the time, Heinz produced 60 flavors of ketchup, but he liked the number “57” better than “60.” Or, perhaps he thought it looked better on the label. In 1905, Heintz sold 5 million bottles of ketchup.

Heinz wasn’t, and still isn’t, the only ketchup producer. According to Statista, 197 million Americans used Heintz ketchup in 2019. But 86.29 million used Hunt’s ketchup; 37.2 million used a store brand; and 28.24 million consumed Del Monte ketchup. Ketchup production is about 12 million tons a year with a value of over $900 million.

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Images:

“You Mean a Woman Can Open It?” Advertisement for Alcoa Aluminum. 1953.

Tomato Shaped Ketchup Container by Builhem Vellut.

Geo. Watkins Mushroom Ketchup.

Blue Label Tomato Ketchup. 1898.

Heinz Ketchup. Photo by Author.

“Catsup vs. Ketchup: What’s the Difference?” Writing Explained.

“U.S. population: Which Brands of Catsup/Ketchup do You Use Most Often?” Statista. Aug. 20, 2019.

Kevin Carter. “Did George Washington Use Ketchup?” Savoring the Past. Aug. 1, 2012.

Peggy Trowbridge Filippone. “The History of Ketchup.” The Spruce Eats. Feb. 12, 2019.

Jasmine Wiggins. “How Was Ketchup Invented?” National Geographic. Apr. 24, 2014.

The post Ketchup: The All-American Condiment first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

Did you know February 6 is National Chopstick Day? It’s an obscure commemoration for unique eating utensils used by about one-third of the world’s population. Chopstick use requires a surprising amount of dexterity, and involves 30 joints and 50 muscles in the right-hand fingers, wrist, arm, and shoulder.  In other words, using chopsticks is harder than it looks.

Place the first chopstick in your right hand between the index finger and thumb, and balance it against your ring finger. Place the second chopstick the same way, but rest it on your middle finger instead of the ring finger. The bottom chopstick remains stationary while the index and middle fingers work the upper chopstick up and down. Be patient until you get the hang of it. And remember, if small children can learn how to use chopsticks, so can you.

When did people start using chopsticks & why?

Chopstick history is a story of ingenuity and adaptation. The word chopstick may be derived from Chinese Pidgin English. The term chop-chop meant quickly. So chopstick might translate to “quick-sticks.” The Chinese word for chopsticks, kuaizi, translates as ‘quick little bamboo fellow.’ Neither explanation connects chopsticks directly with food.

The earliest archeological evidence of chopstick use is from tombs found at Yin in Henan province. The bronze implements date from 1200 BCE, and mostly likely were used to reach into boiling water or oil while cooking. Wooden twigs probably predated chopsticks. But these chopsticks were about stirring pots and moving wood under the cooking fire.

The first eating utensil was probably a spoon, partly because millet was the dominant grain. Millet is best consumed in the form of porridge or gruel. 

People began eating with chopsticks about 400 CE. Population growth forced cooks to develop cost-saving measures. One change was chopping food into smaller pieces that could cook quickly and use less fuel. The smaller pieces were a perfect fit with chopsticks.

The change in dominant grains from millet to wheat and rice further encouraged the use of chopsticks.

Knives, which may have once joined spoons on the table, weren’t needed any more. Confucius advised that “The honorable and upright man keeps well away from both the slaughterhouse and the kitchen. And he allows no knives on his table.” In keeping with this spirit, Chinese chopsticks have blunt, rather than pointed, ends.

As Chinese culture spread throughout Asia, so did the use of chopsticks. Each culture adapted chopsticks for their own use.

From top to bottom, this picture illustrates plastic chopsticks from Taiwan, porcelain chopsticks from Mainland China, bamboo chopsticks from Tibet, palm wood chopsticks from Indonesia, stainless steel flat chopsticks with matching spoon from South Korea, two sets of Japanese chopsticks, Japanese chopsticks for children, and disposable chopsticks.

Japanese refer to chopsticks as Hashi, or bridge. Japanese chopsticks are shorter than Chinese, partly because Japanese diners bring food containers, particularly bowls, closer to their mouths. Men’s chopsticks are 8 inches long; women’s, a mere 7 inches. In 1878 Japan developed disposable chopsticks, called waribashi.

Korean chopsticks are unique, because they’re made from metal. Korean rulers worried their food might be poisoned and ate with silver chopsticks, because they thought it would corrode or turn black if the metal touched anything poisonous. Common people imitated the custom with chopsticks made from other metals. Now, most chopsticks in Korea are made from stainless steel, because it’s easier to clean to a high level of hygiene.

Chopsticks can be made from almost any firm material, most often bamboo or wood, but also ivory, jade, coral, brass, silver, or steel. Disposable chopsticks are probably the most common.

In 2011 the New York Times reported that about 3.8 million trees are needed to manufacture 57 billion disposable pairs of chopsticks in China. Cotton wood, birch, and spruce trees provide raw material for 45 percent of these, with the remainder produced from bamboo. A 2013 report in the South China Morning Post placed the production figure at 80 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks, at an annual cost of 20 million trees.

About half the disposable chopsticks produced in China stay in China, with the other half going to export. Seventy-seven percent of exports go to Japan; 2 percent to South Korea, and 2 percent to the U.S.

According to a 2008 United Nations report, 10,800 miles of Asian forests disappear each year. Production of disposable chopsticks is responsible for a significant amount of this deforestation.

Activists are trying to reduce production of disposable chopsticks by campaigns encouraging people to bring their own chopsticks to restaurants.

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Chopsticks in use by Takashi Mukoda.

Cooking in Hot Pot by Jason M. C., Han

Many Chopsticks by Five Rings at English Wikipedia.

Rice, miso soup, tsukemono, and chopsticks by Sunday driver in Kyoto

Disposable Wooden Chopsticks on Kappabashi-dori street in Asakusa, Tokyo by Steven-L-Johnson.

Myhashi portable chopsticks by Blue Lotus.

“How to Use Chopsticks.” The Woks of Life.

Stephanie Butler. “A Brief History of Chopsticks.” History. Aug. 22, 2018.

Emily Kuo. “Think Before You Use.” Expedition PR. July 11, 2013.

Chris Luo. “China’s 80 billion disposable chopsticks a ‘burden’ on forests.” South China Morning Post. Mar. 11, 2013.

Rachel Nuwer. “Disposable Chopsticks Strip Asian Forests.” New York Times. Oct. 24, 2011.

The post The History & Impact of Chopsticks first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

On August 23, 1902 Fanny Farmer opened her School of Cookery and continued her revolution in American cookery. In order to appreciate her efforts, it’s useful to start with a recipe comparison for Bird’s Nest Pudding.

The original 1833 recipe is from The American Frugal Housewife by Lydia Maria Child.

Bird’s Nest Pudding

If you wish to make what is called ‘Bird’s-nest puddings,’ prepare your custard, take eight or ten pleasant apples, pare them and dig out the core, but leave them whole, set them in a pudding dish, pour your custard over them, and bake them about twenty or thirty minutes.

The baking occurred in a Dutch oven set to the side of the fire with hot coals on top of the lid.

Questions arise. What is a ‘pleasant’ apple? What temperature should the oven be? Where’s the custard recipe?

Compare Lydia’s recipe with modern directions

Modern recipe from the Old Sturbridge Village website.

6-8+ apples

2 cups of milk

3 eggs

½ cup of brown sugar

½ teaspoon of cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350⁰F

Grease a deep casserole dish (round or rectangular- 9 by 9 inches square or a 9 inch deep pie plate, or a 9 inch Bundt pan)

Peel and core apples and leave whole, to fit snugly in the baking dish.

Make the custard by beating the milk, eggs, brown sugar, and cinnamon together well.

Pour the custard over the apples in the dish.

Bake for 30-40 minutes until the custard is set.

Eat hot or cold.

If you find the modern recipe easier to understand, thank Fanny Farmer.

Fanny Farmer & the Modern Recipe

Fanny Farmer invented the modern recipe such as the one above. She was the first professional cook to insist on precise measurements — level teaspons, level cups, level ounces. No more ‘a handful of this’ and ‘a goodly amount of that.’ 

Fanny didn’t expect a career in cookery. She wanted to attend a women’s college and become a teacher, but at the age of sixteen she suffered what may have been a paralytic stroke and was told she shouldn’t leave the house, or apply herself intellectually.

Fanny didn’t give up, and took a position as a governess for the Shaw family. Her employer saw Fanny’s interest in cooking and encouraged her to enroll in the Boston Cooking School that had been founded to enable women of modest means to obtain employment as cooks. When Fanny graduated in 1889, she joined the school staff. Two years later she became the principal. And in 1896 Fanny published her first cook book, one that didn’t assume women naturally knew how to cook.

“Good judgment, with experience, has taught some to measure by sight,” she wrote, “but the majority need definite guides.”

The 1896 cook book had 1800 recipes. The publisher wasn’t confident the book would sell, because he thought women already knew how to cook. Fanny raised money to pay for the first 3,000 copies, and kept the copyright. The cookbook sold millions of copies.

Fanny’s book and her methods became popular. She became a leading figure on the lecture circuit with her weekly lectures published in the Boston Evening Transcript, and was one of the first women to lecture at Harvard Medical School. She believed that “the time is not far distant when a knolwedge of the principles of diet will be an essential part of one’s education. Then mankind will eat to live, will be able to do better mental and physical work, and disease will be less frequent.“

In 1902 Fanny established Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery in Boston and made enough money to build a house and support her parents and other family members.

Fanny Farmer’s Brownies

Fanny’s 1896 recipe for brownies didn’t contain any chocolate, because it wasn’t readily available.

Original 1896 recipe:

1/3 cup butter

1/3 cup powdered sugar

1/3^rd cup Porto Rico [sic] molasses

1 egg well beaten

7/8 cup bread flower

1 cup pecan meat cut in pieces

Mix ingredients in order given. Bake in small, shallow fancy cake tins, garnishing top of each cake with 1/2 pecan.

Modern Translation:

1/3 cup (75 mL) butter at room temperature

1/3 cup (75 mL) powdered icing sugar

1/3 cup (75 mL) cooking or fancy molasses

1 egg

7/8 cup (240 mL) bread flour

1 cup (250 mL) chopped pecans

Pre heat oven to 350ºF (180ºC)

Mix ingredients in order, then bake 15-20 minutes in small, shallow tart tins. 

Makes about 4. 

Let cool on rack before serving.

You can easily substitute darker molasses or Maple syrup for the fancy molasses if you wish. 

In 1902, Fanny opened her cooking school on August 23. This Friday, whether you cook or not, take a moment to think of Fannie Farmer and the modern recipes we use today.

Woman in replica of 19th century kitchen by Jorge Royan

Lydia Marie Child

Fanny Farmer

Advertisement for Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery, 1903

Kat Eschner. “Fanny Farmer was the Original Rachel Ray.” Smithsonian. Aug. 23, 2017.

Julie Moskin. “Overlooked No More: Fannie Farmer, Modern Cookery’s Pioneer.” New York Times. June 13, 2018.

The post Fanny Farmer & Modern Cooking first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

Ice cream and its cousins can be had all year round, but during these Dog Days of Summer when the temperature climbs, frozen deserts are especially welcome.

Considering reliable freezers are a 20^th century invention, it’s surprising how long frozen desserts have been around. In China during the Tang Dynasty, ice men produced a concoction of cow, goat or buffalo milk heated with flour. Camphor provided texture and flavor. The mixture cooled in an ice pool.

Roman emperors sent slaves to the mountains to bring back fresh snow that could be flavored to produce a sort of snowcone.

There are two stories about how iced desserts came to Italy. One says Marco Polo introduced them after his return rom China. Another says Italians received ice cream from the Middle East. Arabs drank a chilled drink flavored with, among other things, cherry, pomegranate, quince, or rose water. The Italians mastered the technique and called their invention sorbet.

When Italian princess Catherine de Medici married Henri II of France, she brought iced cream with her (along with forks). In England, Charles I didn’t want to share the recipe and offered his chef £500 a year to keep the recipe a secret.

Ice Cream in America

In 1777 Philip Lenzi, a New York confectioner, put an advertisement in the New York Gazette announcing he would have ice cream available almost every day. He was not the only purveyor of frozen delights. During the summer of 1790, the first ice cream parlor opened in New York. Coincidentally President George Washing spent about $200 for ice cream that summer. [In 2016, the equivalent of $200 in 1800 was $3,809. That’s a lot of ice cream.]

In 1800 ice cream was produced at home using a hand crank. In 1851 ice cream became more readily available, and by 1874 the soda fountain staffed by “soda jerks” became a common sight in every town.

At the time ice cream was generally served with soda (carbonated water), much like a cola float. A glass of soda would have syrup at the bottom for flavor, milk, soda, and two scoops of ice cream.

Ice cream sodas were popular, so popular that churches became alarmed at the number of people indulging themselves at the local ice cream parlor. The result? The Ice Cream Sundae. In 1890 at the instigation of the Methodist Church, the city of Evanston IL passed a law prohibiting the sale of ice cream sodas on Sundays. The law didn’t close the ice cream parlors, however. Entrepreneurs came up with the idea of a dish of ice cream covered with syrup, and called the new item an Ice Cream Sundae, sold only on Sundays.

Another favorite item, the Ice Cream Cone, also appeared just in the nick of time to avoid disaster. At the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, the ice cream vendor’s stand was next to waffle vendor Ernest E. Hamwi. It was a hot day, and the waffles weren’t selling. But the ice cream seller ran out of dishes and needed to move his ice cream quickly. Hamwi rolled a waffle so it could hold the ice cream. Both vendors and customers went away happy.

*Now about that famous phrase: “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.” It’s a line from a forgettable silly song recorded in 1925 by the Waring’s Pennsylvanians. In addition to the chorus, the song claims that “Tuesdays, Mondays, we all scream for sundaes.” And so it goes.

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Clip Art Waffle Cone.

Marco Polo. Public Domain.

Horlucks Ice Cream Soda Fountain. Public Domain.

Ice Cream Sundae. Public Domain.

Waffle Cone by Bbxxayay.

Inflation Calculator.

Tori Avery. “Explore the Delicious History of Ice Cream.” The History Kitchen. PBS. July 10, 2012.

Jeff Wells. “Ice Cream Sundae.” Mental Floss. July 20, 2016.

The post We All Scream for Ice Cream* first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

I’m doing research for my next novel set in Anglo-Saxon England. One of my nuggets of discovery is the historical importance of honey, and its many uses as an antibacterial agent. Anglo-Saxons didn’t know anything about bacteria, but they did observe honey’s beneficial effects in wound care.

Early humans discovered honey as nothing short of a miracle. It’s intensely sweet and doesn’t spoil. Honey’s sweetness comes from fructose and glucose. Archeologists have found traces of honey on artifacts thousands of years old — which is a significant testimony for honey’s shelf-life.

About 4,000 BCE Egyptians began keeping bees in cylinders of unbaked hardened mud pots that could be stacked in rows, and used smoke to calm the bees before harvesting their honey. Egyptians used honey as a sweetener, and an ingredient in embalming fluid. They baked honey cakes as offerings to their gods. Honey was even used as currency. In Lower Egypt, the bee was one of the symbols for Pharaoh.

The Greeks kept their hives in terra cotta pots, dubbed honey as ‘nectar from the gods,’ and made their own honey cake offerings. The bee is a symbol for the goddess Artemis, and Eros (more commonly known as Cupid) who dipped his arrows in honey before shooting their love potents into unsuspecting couples.

Romans introduced beekeeping throughout their empire which may be how honey came to England. The word ‘honey’ derives from the Old English hunig. The most famous Anglo-Saxon use of honey is the brewing of mead, a drink composed primarily of honey and water with some yeast thrown in for fermentation. The libation was famously consumed in Mead Halls, such as the one visited by Beowulf.

At that time, there were three types of mead. The most common mixture used empty honey combs which were steeped in water, strained, and set aside in earthen vessels until the mixture transformed into mead. The longer the mixture was left, the more potent the drink.

The wealthier classes drank a type of mead called morat. This was made from actual honey, water, and mulberry juice for flavoring. A third type called pigment was made from pure honey, flavored with spices to which wine was added. This was possibly the type served to Beowulf.

[Mead as a home brew is presently enjoying great popularity. The process is significantly more sanitary and precise than during the medieval age.]

Medicinally, Anglo-Saxons used honey to make salves, mix into soothing drinks, and cleanse wounds. It was also a mild laxative. The Anglo-Saxons had no way of knowing honey’s qualities as an antibacterial and anti-fungal remedy, or that it naturally contains hydrogen peroxide. They only knew the results when they applied mixtures containing honey.

One remedy for stomach disorders stipulated: Dig up a beet and shake off the dirt. Do not wash it. Boil in a kettle until it is cooked and thick. Add a little salt, 5 spoonfuls of honey, and 1 spoonful of oil. Have the patient drink a bowl of the mixture.

The recipe gives me a new appreciation for Mary Poppins’ advice that a spoonful of sugar [or in this case, honey] makes the medicine go down.

In 12th century Europe, the average person consumed four and a half pounds of honey annually. Beeswax was also in high demand for the production of candles. Beeswax has a cleaner burn than candles made from animal fat, and drops little or no ash.

And did you know the origin of the term honeymoon is actually a reference to honey itself. During the Middle Ages, newlyweds drank honey wine for a full cycle of the moon to insure a fruitful union. The bride’s father supplied the wine. No doubt, after a month of drinking honey wine with her new husband, the bride found herself pregnant.

After granulated white sugar became available, honey lost its premier position. By the early twentieth century, honey consumption dropped to just a half pound per person annually.

Honey may not be the curative it once was, or the only source of sweetness in what was once a bland diet, but raw honey is still a good source of anti-oxidants, soothing on a sore throat, and very tasty on bread. And, as long as the lid is tightly sealed, it can be left in the cupboard indefinitely.

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Illustrations:

Bee on Flower by Author.

Honeycomb by Merdal at Turkish Wikipedia.

Mesolithic rock painting of honey hunter. Public Domain.

Egyptians Gathering Honey, Tomb of Rekhmire. Public Domain.

Cupid in a Tarot trump card design. Public Domain.

Sickbed of Louis le Gros. Public Domain.

Honey on Biscuits. Public Domain.

Peggy Trowbridge Filippone. “Fun Facts You Probably Don’t Know About the History of Honey. The Spruce Eats. Jan. 28, 2018.

Rena Goldman. “Top 6 Raw Honey Benefits.” Healthline

Katherine Martinko. “The Remarkable History and Healing Power of Honey.” Treehugger. Nov. 18, 2016.

Joseph Nordqvist.”Everything You Need to Know About Honey.” Medical News Today. Feb. 14, 2018.

The post Honey – Nectar of the Gods first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

The Anglo-Saxons called this month Gerst monath, Barley Month. It was the month for harvesting barley which was processed into a malt barley used in brewing beer.

The name September is from the Latin Septem, which means seven. The oldest Roman calendar had ten months, with March as the first month and September the seventh. The Julian calendar added two new months, January and February, and started the year in January. Which is why although the name September indicates the seventh month, it’s really the ninth.

There are three flowers associated with September.

The first is the Forget-Me-Not. Not surprisingly, the flower represents true love, lifetime connections, and remembrance. There is a German folk tale about the Forget-Me-Not. As two lovers walked along the Danube River,  they saw the bright blue flowers at the edge of the water. The man stooped to pick the flowers for his love, and was swept away by the river. As he swirled away, he asked her not to forget him.

The Greeks called this family of flowers Myosotis genus, mouse ears, due to the small petals.

The second flower of the month is the Aster, representing patience, elegance, and daintiness. A Greek myth explains that when Zeus decided to flood the earth to stop a war among men, Astraea, goddess of innocence, asked to be turned into a star. When the flood waters receded, Astraea wept for the lives lost. Her tears turned to stardust and fell to earth. Wherever her tears fell, an aster grew.

The third flower of September is the Morning Glory, a vine from South America. The symbolism is about unrequited love, and mortality.

TIME TO BAKE FOR THE HOLIDAYS

I know you don’t want to think about December holidays yet, but if you’re planning to make a Christmas cake from scratch, this is the month to bake it. A Christmas cake is not the same thing as the dreaded Fruit Cake, though they share similar ingredients.

In the Middle Ages, people fasted on Christmas Eve day, and ate a plum porridge in the evening. In search of better taste, they added dried fruit, spices, and honey to the mixture until it became a pudding. The spices were very expensive, exotic, and reminded people of the gifts brought to the Baby Jesus by the Wise Men. In the 16th century, someone came up with the idea of adding butter and eggs to the mix — YUM. Even better, bakers started using marzipan for frosting.

Christmas cakes have to be made in advance. Opinions vary on how far in advance —September, October, or even November. After the cake is baked, the baker puts it in an airtight tin. Once a week, the baker takes the cake out of its container and adds about two tablespoons of brandy, whiskey, or sherry to keep the cake moist. The non-alcoholic version adds orange juice or a strong tea such as Earl Grey. This is called feeding the cake.

When it’s time to indulge, a marzipan frosting is added.

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Illustrations

September. Tre Riches Heures du duc de Berry. Public Domain.

Forget Me Not Flower. Attribution: User:Bernie Kohl

Aster Flower by glacier LLC. Creative Commons

Morning Glory. Public Domain.

Christmas Cake by James Petts. Creative Commons Attribution.

A History of Christmas Cakes. Puckles.

Flower Meaning.

The post SEPTEMBER TRIVIA first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

WHY IS AFTERNOON TEA A FEMININE PURSUIT?

This pleasant custom raises the question of why Afternoon Tea is often considered a feminine pursuit. I don’t mean men never indulge, but while you may see a group of women enjoying Afternoon Tea, you seldom, if ever, seem men doing the same. With that question in mind, I checked into this elegant pastime.

HIGH TEA, LOW TEA, & AFTERNOON TEA

First, it’s worth noting there is more than one meal that uses the term “Tea.” There is High Tea and Low Tea, terms based on the height of the table. High Tea, eaten between the hours of five and six o’clock, is a full evening meal enjoyed at a table of standard height by the entire family.

Low Tea, served at a low table, is a synonym for Afternoon Tea. The custom arose from the availability of tea, the distance of time between breakfast and dinner at eight o’clock, and the opportunity for women to gather and discuss the news of the day. In the 18th century, servants often were banned so their employers could gossip freely.

ANNA, DUCHESS OF BEDFORD, POPULARIZES AFTERNOON TEA

Though tea drinking was already popular, Anna (1783-1857), Duchess of Bedford, created the mid-afternoon event that became Afternoon Tea. By four o’clock, Anna was too hungry to wait until dinner. So she sent for a pot of tea, bread and butter sandwiches, and cake to be served in her bedroom. Anna often entertained in her rooms. At her London house Anna invited people to join her for “tea and a walking in the fields.” The custom caught on, and the venue moved into the drawing room. Tea at four concluded at the perfect time to join in the evening promenade in Hyde Park.

The growing popularity of tea among all classes inspired a new porcelain industry to produce the appropriate dishes for enjoying a cup of tea. Original tea potteries included Wedgwood, Royal Doulton and Aynsley. The custom of “steeping” tea leaves meant the pot needed to be covered so the liquid would remain hot while the leaves steeped. Ewers once used for wine evolved into the modern tea pot. Pots with small bases and wide spouts don’t clog as easily. In this illustration the tea pot is on the right hand side towards the back. The taller vessel is a coffee pot. The cups evolved from Chinese porcelain cups. The English added the handle and saucer.

As refreshments became standard, the two or three tiered tea stand joined the teatime dish ware. Savory foods, usually sandwiches, were at the bottom and sweeter foods at the top. The top tier was reserved for scones so they could be kept warm by a warming dome. These were served with cream and jam. The middle plate is for cakes, petits fours, and marzipan. And the bottom is for an assortment of finger sandwiches. Today this is generally a sampling of egg mayonnaise with cress, smoked salmon with cream cheese, coronation chicken or some other chicken based filling, and ham and mustard sandwiches.

Tea offerings usually include Assam, a strong bodied tea from India; Darjeeling, also from India; Earl Grey, a black tea with oil of bergamot, and Lapsang Souchong, a Chinese tea fired over smoking pine needles with a strong smoky flavor. Other teas and infusions can also be offered.

And then there’s Tea Etiquette which includes how to pour the tea, how to hold the cup, how to drink the tea, the correct order of finger food consumption, and other delicate maneuvers. This may be why champagne is often offered as part of Afternoon Tea. And may also explain why men are less enamored with the custom than women, many of whom had tiny tea sets from which they served imaginary tea when they were children.

For a change of pace, I found a video from the BBC program Two Fat Ladies in which Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson prepare sandwiches and a pastry for tea at a cricket club. It’s hard for me to picture either of them following the correct social procedures in involved in Afternoon Tea. The video is about nine minutes.

I wish you a pleasant Mothers Day, no matter where you are in the generational tree. And if you receive an invitation for a Ladies Tea, so much the better.

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Illustrations from Wikimedia Commons.

Ladies at Tea by Thomas Rowlandson. Public Domain.

Anna Maria Stanhope, Duchess of Bedford, 1820. Public Domain.

Staffordshire Tea and Coffee Service by Valerie McGlinchey. Creative Commons Attribution.

Vintage Tea Service, 1822. Vienna Porcelain Manfactury by Jorge Royan. Creative Commons Attribution.

“Tea Time Etiquette and the History of Afternoon Tea.” An Afternoon to Remember.

“What is Afternoon Tea?” Afternoon Tea.

David Ross. “Tea In Britain.” Britain Express.

 

The post LADIES, MOTHERS DAY & AFTERNOON TEA first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.