balmagowry

Well I think that we can all agree that it matters not one jot about the discussion with me, but it does matter a great deal that you gave us this amazingly excellent story and explantation . 'Course I love this stuff, so I am easily won. The big N was from Corsia correct? Famous for its bread trees and short people yes? Also, traded a lot with Catalans, who are famous for their 'Sea and Mountain dishes' including chicken with shrimp/crayfish. Corsicans picked up the recipe, obviously. I reckon that the big N was craving a little bit of home cooking asked for this dish to be made at one point, not pre-Marengo, but later it was "attached" as per your explanation. Obviously this is all rubbish, but I bet that with a little research I could develope a brilliant fake-history, which is most of history I guess. Hey, that's what "History Marengo" is all about! Glad you like the story, anyway. Yes, the Corsican angle is a good one - fits with the tomatoes too. That's well thought of, Mrs. Jewkes! I must go back and dig up my notes and see whether I have any specifics as to poor old Kellermann's foraged supplies; all I remember is that a detachment of his heavy cavalry went to the Convento del Bosco and (as was apparently their wont) "offered their protection" to the good brothers in return for a "voluntary" contribution amounting probably to the complete contents of larder and cellar. (IIRC Bourrienne merely says "ample provisions of food and good wine" - but Bourrienne was not the only diarist in camp, by a long chalk.) A scenario worthy of Mario Puzo. In any case, we had ourselves a little fun indulging in a favorite pastime, the Culinary Deconstruction of a piece of fiction: we worked up a study of the season and the locale, growing conditions, characteristic local fauna and flora, and so on, to determine whether they met the underlying hypotheses of Dunand's story; much to our amusement, they did indeed. This adds another delicious layer to the silliness of it all, because Marengo was fought in June, making fresh tomatoes and crawfish a distinct possibility; Austerlitz, however, was fought in the dead of winter and in the middle of frozen Moravia - so if that is indeed when Napoleon made the demand (there's no proof of this, but it is strongly implied by the exchange having occurred "on the eve of his next great battle"), Dunand certainly had ample reason to be nonplused. BTW re Kellermann - the ill-will between him and Napoleon after Marengo is legendary. The reason usually given for this in the popular histories is that Kellermann had conducted one of the great heroic charges of the battle, only to be snubbed by Boney when the time came for awarding honors. Of course that aspect of the story is far more convoluted than my description of it (there are all sorts of letters back and forth, strange innuendoes, etc.), but it also fails to take into account the poor bugger's consternation on returning to camp close to midnight and finding Napoleon and cohorts making merry amongst the ruins of his supper. Bourrienne is very cutesy about it - burbles archly about the generosity of their host in "giving" them such a fine meal. Talk about adding insult to injury! No wonder Kellermann was furious.

Oh. My. God. You said a mouthful. Carolyn, you're a genius. If there's one thing I have a lot of in my freezer, and access to a lot more of, it's venison. More, embarrassingly, than I know what to do with. Terrines! That's the perfect answer! Waaaah! I know! I know I'm an unreconstructed philistine, a lost soul! But... what's a girl to do? Must I forbear the terrine altogether because I really can't stand the cornichon? That's... cruel. I have no ideological objection to them, you understand; I'm perfectly happy to serve them and to watch others enjoy them; I'm even discreet about my own foible, so discreet that I doubt anyone has ever twigged (but I couldn't conceal it from you guys - full disclosure, and all that). But for me it's a combination that just... doesn't... work. I'm sorry. I guess I'll slink off with my tail between my legs now. (I'm reallly hopeless. I don't like Brad Pitt either.)

I totally agree - but I haven't been able to devise a plan to french fry 11 eggs at the last minute. So I'll call the dish Chicken Marenga - and just dance around the classic recipe. Why not call it Chicken Miranda? You could serve it appetizingly piled on your hat!

Thank you! This is exactly the kind of information I was looking for! Into my Yogurt Bible it goes. (And I continue to be astounded that my recent series of misadventures ever produced yogurt at all.)

Aw, shucks, ma'am... thankee kindly. See, for me it is way way cool to be in a place where people are actually into my favorite brand of esoterica. There aren't many places where one can hold forth about French culinary etymology, y'know. (And if you want to see me get really insufferable, check out the Chicken Marengo thread on this forum!) Well, it has similarly inspired me, and I have never been a terrine-maker, except a little bit in the armchair sense. Lucky for me I have an obliging butcher, so caul shouldn't be impossible. After seeing Trillium's pictures, I am sorely tempted to follow her example. (And more convinced than ever that a Keyboard DroolGuard ought to be standard equipment for all eGulleters.) As for the cornichons - oh dear, I know it's heresy, but I don't even like the damn things, so I don't know whether I should bother planting 'em. But that doesn't have to be decided for another couple of months.

You're most welcome - I'm afraid I love to hold forth on this subject. And yes, I think it is perfectly legitimate to make the dish any way you want, as long as it's done in the ostensible spirit of the thing. Hey, it ain't a recipe - it's a concept! An illustration: I've jury-rigged a strange contraption of fencing to keep my dog out of the cat's food: my husband took one look at it and said "Aha! I see you've made Fence Marengo!" OTOH, to play devil's advocate on the eggs... I'm not an egg-white eater myself, but even I have to say that the crispy little edges of the fried eggs really added something to the dish. Well... in fairness, he wasn't the only one, and at least he was only trying to cover his own ass. It certainly appears that Dunand did invent the dish - just not at the time and place he claimed. See, part of the subtext here is that according to the standards of flavoring at the time, according to classic notions of what did and didn't go together, Chicken Marengo was a bit of an embarrassment to any self-respecting chef. Under normal circumstances Dunand wouldn't have been caught dead serving anything so outlandish. I'm not sure whether it was the combination of the chicken and the crawfish - Carême was certainly guilty of far more incongruous pairings than that - or perhaps the fact that the dish was not constructed artistically or moulded into some pleasing neoclassical form. Or maybe the eggs were the crowning indignity - who knows? In any case, Napoleon had demanded a dish of chicken and crawfish and eggs, had associated it with Marengo, and had made it clear that what he had in mind was rather like the chicken à la provençale with which he was so familiar. Dunand was stuck with the job: faithful stewards are not in the business of disobeying imperial commands. Now, Napoleon was not at all an artistic eater, but Dunand had his dignity as a chef to uphold. What's an homme de bouche to do? Why, tell all his friends that he had improvised an amusingly eccentric dish for the emperor out of battlefield scroungings, of course. Laugh it off as a grand joke, with an indulgent tip of the hat to Imperial Majesty. And the rest... is history. "History Marengo," that is! [Pedantic chronological footnote: throughout the above I have referred to Napoleon as emperor - of course, he was not yet emperor at the time of the battle of Marengo (1800), nor at the time when Dunand entered his service (1801) - he remained First Consul until 1804. He was emperor, however, at the time of the battle of Austerlitz (1805), which is when the exchange about the chicken apparently took place - and of course he was emperor when Dunand made the dish and first told the story - so for convenience's sake, and because there simply IS no consistent and un-confusing way to handle it - emperor he is. Thane of Cawdor that shall be hereafter....]

There again you run into the idiocy of the FDA, which forbids the sale of some of these things. I think the heart and kidneys are legal, but the blood sure isn't. The intestines might be, if you buy them pre-cleaned and coiled as sausage casings... but the sheep version is far easier to get. It is, of course, possible to get these things, but the only way I know of to do it is to get cozy with the right farmer and be in the right place at the right time for the handoff - preferably on a moonless night. (I am not kidding about this!) Technically it's supposed to be legal as long as no money changes hands, but the reach of an FDA inspector tends to exceed his grasp, and he can always come up with some way to make a farmer's life miserable; not a system you want to run afoul of. Way cool! Fatback just would not have done the trick. You're the second person to recommend the book to me, so maybe I better go find it! It wasn't available at the library, which is why I didn't consult it. I don't think it is (and I'm the third!). I have the 1976 Knopf paperback; the hardcover was copyright 1967. It is generally considered THE bible on the subject - and she's a lovely writer. I just looked it up on ABE, and they currently list 24 copies. It's more expensive than I expected - paperback starts at $18 - but very well worth it. [EDIT for redundant language]

Wait! Wait! This has been bugging me, and finally I realized why - because I have the answer right here on my shelves: the 1873 edition of Littré. If that ain't French etymological authority, I don't know what is. So I looks it up, and sure as hell it's unequivocal. To begin with, the first of the 14 possible meanings of the word is Sorte de pâtisserie qui enferme de la chair ou du poisson - that is, "a type of pastry which encloses meat or fish." This in itself certainly implies that the type wrapped in pastry came first. Note that nothing is said about the meat or fish being chopped or cut up at all, let alone to a paste-like consistency; this makes a lot of sense, because the word is bourgeois in derivation and actually (both etymologically and culinarily, if I may so express it) runs much more parallel to the origins of the English "pasty" than to "pastry" or "pie." Haven't hauled out my OED yet, but what do you bet that the origins of the English word are OF or MF. Norman, perhaps. Consider the close kinship betweel Cornwall and Brittany, and the equally close kinship between pâté and "pasty" is unmistakable. (Early pasties, BTW, didn't contain chopped meat either, but large chunks of meat or fish. Sound familiar?) And THEN - after literary/historic citations dating to the 13th century, and after the obligatory blah blah blah about how the word comes from pasté and the 's' evolved into the circonflexe as such things so often do, Littré sayeth: Pasté a la forme d'un participe passé formé de paste, pâte: ce qui a été pasté, fait avec la pâte. That is: "Pasté has the form of a past participle formed from paste or pastry; that which has been pastried, or made with pastry." I don't see where that leaves much room for doubt, do you? BTW sorry if my different modes of emphasis got confusing - there are only so many ways to mark this stuff up.... EDIT: Yes!!!!! OED quoth re "pasty": ME from OF. I knew it! Wheee!!!! :undignified little triumphal dance:

OK. Monet's Table is by Claire Jones, Simon & Schuster 1989; the Toulouse book is called The Art of Cuisine, by Alfred Joyant, Holt Rhinehart 1966, reprinted Henry Holt 1995. As I said, not tied to specific restaurants, but powerfully evocative of region and period and style. Oh, and here's an oddity from that department - it isn't even a cookbook but it oozes "branding" and recognizable style: The Iron Gate. I'm not quite sure how you would classify it - it's a private issue in honor of the 25th anniversary of "21," and it's almost like a yearbook - full of literary and artistic contributions/tributes from the celebrities who hung out there as of 1950. Actually, I guess it's more of a glorified magazine (including the quantity of advertising), but again it really evokes style, time and place. Sorry - I'm afraid this part is not very helpful, because I don't know where you'd find a copy (I've never seen another) - but it's a cool thing I'd fogotten I had, and having rediscovered it I couldn't resist telling about it. (And now it will be hard to resist sitting down and reading it cover to cover, instead of getting on with my work.)

Well, I continue to be astonished by what I have wrought. By the purest happenstance, that is - I take no credit for it. It shouldn't have worked, a thousand times over, but we seem to be backing into something that looks like success. This morning I tasted, and found the flavor good, a nice tang to it - but the texture, not surprisingly, was a bit flabby. Well, I've been straining it for the past three hours or so, and though that process ain't finished yet by a long shot, I scooped me a nice bowlful from around the edges, and hey! it's wonderfully rich and creamy. OK, it's probably giving off more whey than one would normally want to see, but I don't think this is a big surprise given the vagaries of its manufacture - and for this one batch it's a small price to pay, considering that I'm getting a decent batch of very good yogurt where I fully expected to end up with bupkis! Have swirled in some lekvar in the present bowlful, and by gum it really does remind me of the long-lost Prune Whip flavor from my childhood. Life is good! Had planned to do next batch with 1% milk, but The Boy misread list and bought whole milk (not an unreasonable error since that's what I normally buy for drinking, coffee, etc.) - so what the hell, the new batch will be all the richer. Shall try organic one of these days (and maybe Brown Cow for starter), but so far I'm happy with what I've got. Dannon for starter; lucky I looked again at an old Stonyfield carton before making shopping list - I'd forgotten that they'd started adding pectin to theirs. Bummer - it was plenty good without. EDIT: Oh! Just noticed Fat Guy's remark about testing against Stonyfield for texture. As mentioned above, Stonyfield puts pectin in theirs - has done for the past year, I think - so you're never going to match their texture exactly unless you do something similar. The powdered milk thing apparently does the trick, but I wonder how the two methods would compare. IAC, I've become addicted to strained yogurt, or yogurt "cheese" (though when I do it, somehow it seems creamier than I remember from when my mother used to make it) - you want body, you want smoothness, just let go of the whey!

Yes, I was wondering and thinking much the same - the books that come to mind, though not strictly restaurant-y, are Monet's Table and the Toulouse one whose name escapes me at the moment (will look when I get home). Oh. Oh, I see, for a restaurant that wants a book. Well, still - I think there's value in looking at really handsome productions like those for style and so on. Ultimately, you want to do something that will express the style and feel of the restaurant itself, even if it deliberately violates tacit conventions established by other restaurant books. (Well - I guess I mean that's what I'd want if it were me. ) Oh! one that I think is really well done, albeit a bit obscure, is Chef Chu's. Should be getting the Waldorf-Astoria one any day now - will report if it's of interest. (And I think I have one or two others, though it isn't my main focus.) You don't say where you are, so I dont know if this is an option for you, but if I were involved in such a project I'd high-tail it to Kitchen Arts & Letters or [insert name of comparable local emporium here] and scope out the genre.

OK, I tasted it. It's yogurt. I'm not saying it's great - because it isn't - but it is yogurt. Straining it now. Next batch: fresh starter, 1% milk. And on a happier note, I think I'll go over to the onion confit thread and make my confessions there!

I don't know for sure but maybe this is the problem. If you look up-thread to my "gospel of yogurt according to mother" she did all of this manic whisking. When stirring in the starter culture, that has a lot to do with separating the little buggles so that they can "romp free and propogate". The fact that you had this goop on the bottom indicates to me that your culture was not well dispersed. But the 48 hours baffles me. I am beginning to think that your culture was really weak. Yup, I'm inclined to agree. What I didn't recap in my post for fear of tedium was the relationship of events to my reading of this thread. See, the reason for the gentle stir business was that the recipe I was working from took a different approach to mixing in the starter - some nonsense about the culture being so fragile (???) that violent stirring would kill it. Seemed dubious, but I figured, who am I to question it? By the time I'd read the very different views and recommendations expressed here, I was already in my what-the-hell-nothing-to-lose phase on this batch - which is why I then whisked it as per your mother's method and let it stand longer. As I think I said last night, the starter was not very fresh and there was less of it than I had planned on using (one of the pitfalls of starting these things at night; I'm lucky in that I have 24-hour markets nearby, but my stamina for schlepping doesn't always match them! ) Frankly, the only surprise to me in the whole business is that the stuff ever clabbered up at all! I'm not too worried about the problem of a consistent heat source. I think I should have put the incipient yogurt IN the oven to begin with, that being the whole point of insisting on a pilot light. (The need to use the oven in the middle of the process was unforeseen - but then again whoda thunk the yogurt process would still be going on after 24 hours? Anyway, that sort of thing is normally preventable.) On the butterfat question, I'm of two minds; as a rule I like mine, too, but with yogurt I've generally found that the no-fat ones have a tangier flavor, and Stonyfield at least doesn't sacrifice texture. (And none of them sacrifices texture if you strain them!) Whey: yes, I had read somewhere that it was good for animals, so I offered it to mine; made the mistake, however, of giving it to them straight. Cat turned up his nose. Cocker spaniel delightedly snarfed it down... then barfed it right back up. Chowhound.... I'll try it in the kibble. But I'm still interested in other uses. OK. Next time: fresh starter, and enough of it, violent whisking. And now to taste the stuff....

Well, I'll be damned. Had to take the bowl out again last night so I could use the oven. Left it in warm spot on top of stove overnight (NOT over oven while it was on or cooling). This morning an exploratory finger produced no joy - ditto a taste of what was on the finger. With (again) nothing to lose, I then plunged a hand to bottom of bowl. Found starter yogurt at bottom, still lying lumpen. Wanted to believe there was a bit more of it than formerly, but sternly controlled that hope as improbable. Well, what the hell, I was going to be out for most of the day, so I shoved the bowl back in the oven and took off. Pulled the bowl out this evening, and... damned if it wasn't full of yogurt! Texture looked and felt about right, far as I could tell. Some whey around the edges, not an inordinate amount. Didn't want to disturb the new curd yet, but tasted the whey and it tasted like - whey. So far so good. Shoved bowl into fridge and sat back full of wonder. So now, oy do I have questions! because I certainly intend to keep doing this, but will be even happier about it if I can get it to work in 12 hours rather than 48. I can't remember how specific I've been about describing the process - ingredients, amounts, temperatures, etc. But maybe one of you long-running yogurt pros can cut to the chase and tell me whether you can name any one factor that would be likeliest to slow the process so dramatically. Ah, hell with it, might as well run through it all again. Scalded 1/2 gallon skim (no-fat) milk; cooled it to about 105F; poured it into Pyrex bowl; poured a little into container of starter yogurt & stirred it in; poured that back into the scalded milk; stirred gently; covered bowl w/ towel; put in warm place (top of stove, above pilot light) overnight. By morning no change, so whisked it a bit, re-covered it, and put it in oven (pilot light - temp is about 105) for thre day. Had to leave it out again overnight; no apparent change by morning; left it in oven today: yogurt. It occurs to me that when I went to get the starter yogurt (Axelrod NF) there wasn't as much of it left as I had thought; somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 cup. Also it wasn't terribly fresh. Next time around, I'll be doing it differently- but I'm not sure which factor to change first! Maybe I should wait till I've tasted it before I worry about that part. And another question - lately I've taken to straining my yogurt. At the rate things are going I could end up having a hell of a lot of whey, which leads me to wonder: anything useful to be done with yogurt whey? Meanwhile - Fat Guy, how was yours?

Of course you did! It's the only sensible thing to do. Just think of it as Reverse Chic. That's pretty good, but believe me, Mahler is way more efficacious. My parents always loved to tell the story of the idyllic vacation they took on Lake Powell with my uncle and his wife. The four of them rented a houseboat and spent several days toodling around at their own pace and oohing and ahhhing at the beauty of the place. One night they had lucked into a perfect little anchorage - quiet isolated cove, shallow water, breathtaking view. No sooner do they settle in for the night than another houseboat chugs in, drops anchor just upwind of them, and starts blaring loud rock music. Uncle attempts polite request to tone it down; no dice, no response. Finally uncle trots below, brings speakers up on deck, aims them to windward. Plays recording of the "Titan" symphony at top volume. Oddly enough, a minute or two later the people in the other boat suddenly decided to look for another anchorage.

I have never done it myself, but I frankly admire those who do. And I have often wished I'd thought to bring wirecutters with me. It isn't - shouldn't be - done capriciously or gratuitously or out of mischief; but desperate times require desperate measures, and a restaurant forfeits certain rights by mistreating its clientele. Courtesy begets courtesy; the converse is also apt to be true. A place where the staff refuses to accommodate a customer by turning down loud music at the customer's request does not exactly inspire respect. And it can hardly be regarded as a "service establishment"! BTW, one of my odder experiences of ambient music (not quite on-topic, strictly speaking, as it wasn't in an eating establishment, but at least we did eat lunch while this was happening!) was on a train in the south of Spain. Anyone else here done this recently? It is a bit disconcerting to spend several hours rolling through the most gloriously beautiful - and unmistakably Mediterranean - countryside while listening to an endless loop of Broadway standards or traditional Irish songs, all in elevator-style arrangements. There are occasional "skips" in the recordings; after a while one becomes adept at predicting when these will occur. Or rather, recur. We found it most entertaining - though possibly not in the manner intended....

Sound recordist friend of mine; always had a small pair of wirecutters in his pocket; was very good at casing a joint and arranging to be seated in ideal spot; a little sleight of hand; a discreet little snip; Bob was your uncle and no one ever twigged.

OK, here as promised are the bones, as it were, of the real Chicken Marengo story. It is many-layered and complex, as truths are apt to be - but I will do my best to condense it. (BTW, if anyone is interested, the complete article, with two recipes, ran in Tin House vol. 2 No. 4, Summer 2001.) The popular version: after the battle Napoleon's chef Dunand scrounged around the countryside, returning with a small chicken, three eggs, four tomatoes, and six crawfish, from which he improvised the incongruous but immortal dish, etc. etc. etc. This story was told with many variations by Dunand himself, and it contains only two fundamental flaws: 1) On the evening of the battle of Marengo, Napoleon in fact dined most sumptuously in company with his officers, having in effect coolly hijacked the supper intended for General Kellermann (the lavish provisions for which had been "voluntarily contributed" to Kellermann's heavy cavalry by a local monastery). When Kellermann finally returned from the field he was less than pleased - but that's another story. 2) Dunand wasn't there. This bit is extremely convoluted and had to be pieced together from multiple confusing sources; finally, however, it does all add up to the conclusion that at the time of the battle of Marengo Dunand was in Russia; he did not enter Napoleon's service until a full year later. There is eyewitness evidence that during the ensuing years Napoleon frequently ate chicken à la provençale for breakfast; and that this eventually became the foundation for the dish we now call Chicken Marengo. After this it gets convoluted and foggy again, but it looks as though the idea for Chicken Marengo was actually born on the eve of the battle of Austerlitz, when Napoleon severely humiliated Dunand by demanding the chicken which had been his "lucky" dinner at Marengo. What Dunand cobbled together - not then but in embroidered hindsight some years later - is the popular story of Chicken Marengo, as spread among his fellow chefs, and as told by him to his buddy Carême in 1830. By that time the recipe had already appeared in print, so Dunand and posterity were pretty much stuck with it. BTW the chronological fallacy that made it seem possible for Dunand to have been present at Marengo was later published by Carême himself... which is how it got perpetuated in the Larousse gastronomique, from whence it has since traveled far and wide. Ironically, it does seem likely that Napoleon ate chicken and crawfish after Marengo - not, however, in the same course. (Note to Adam Balic, the following is what I was talking about earlier re evolution of recipes. Though embarrassingly I no longer remember the context in which I raised it. ) What I find interesting about the subsequent evolution of Chicken Marengo recipes is the degree to which they adhere (or don't) to the original fiction. Dunand's story was carefully crafted for surface plausibility. All the ingredients he described are such as could reasonably have been found in that locale at that time of year. This is why I protested against Julia Child's olives: they don't fit the story. Of course, the brothers at the monastery might have had preserved ones, but Dunand didn't know about that, just as he didn't know that they provided plenty of wine, or presumably he wouldn't have made such a romantic point of having had to use the last dregs of brandy from his hip-flask, and the last stale crusts from his bread ration, to make the sauce. Getting back to the conflict between "truth" and facts, I guess the question becomes - at what point do you draw the line? If the "truth" is a complete fabrication, then how does one best support it - by hewing closely to the factors that make it plausible? or by deciding that if it's an invention anyway then anything goes in one's re-interpretation? It amuses me that Dunand went so far out of his way to make his apocryphal tale fit the circumstances of the time and place, only to have that effort undermined years later by interpreters who purported to swallow his story whole yet simultaneously disproved it with their own supposedly "authentic" additions. So which is more "true," the story or the facts - or the parable of improvisation? I don't claim to know the answer to that one, but I sure do love to chew on the question. [Addendum: in the interests of comparative brevity I've excised all sorts of details - of corroborating documents, private loyalties, personality traits and the like - which constitute explanations and motivating factors; now oy, I'm not sure whether the residue still hangs together logically! but will be happy to clarify if it doesn't.]

yes, but he has to boil his first. Which, given the typical rate of wool shrinkage, must mean he goes through an awful lot of sweaters. [Edit: Waaaah! Fat Guy beat me to it!] Most fortuitously, just last night I started my own yogurt experiment, for the first time since my old Salton set went AWOL about 25 years ago - it isn't looking any too successful thus far, so I was awfully glad to see this thread rise to the surface today. At the moment I have mine in a big Pyrex bowl in the oven (thanks to the well-loved pilot light), but I have a nasty feeling it ain't goin' nowhere, and that I'll be starting again from scratch, armed with the accumulated wisdom found here. I started out from a recipe found on the web a while back (sorry, haven't been able to retrace it - probably not a good sign...). Used Axelrod NF as starter, because I happened to have a bit handy - wasn't sure whether or not to include the whey which had separated in the container, so I didn't; I have a feeling this was a mistake. Scalded the milk, cooled it down to 110, gently stirred in the yogurt (my notes said not to stir much for fear of bruising the cultures - but there's plenty of evidence here to suggest that's nonsense). Covered, left in warm place - top of same stove, which is well protected from drafts. Next morning - no discernible change. Phooey. Based on the fact that the starter yogurt was still lying lumpenly on the bottom, I cleverly deduced that I should indeed have whisked it in. With nothing to lose but time, I did then whisk it in, and then put it in the pilot-lit oven. No idea whether it's too late to make a difference - but time will show, I guess. Gut feeling: the lack of whey is likeliest real culprit. In which case what I did to it today will make no difference whatsoever. I used skim milk, not because I care about the fat level but because I like the tart flavor of non-fat yogurt. But I think I'll try the next batch with maybe 1% - and I can pick up some Brown Cow for starter. Can't decide whether to go ahead and try the dry milk trick as well or to be a little more scientific and wait for the next batch. Well - I shall wait and see what if anything this one does before I commit. Tomorrow is another day....

Aha! A woman after my own heart. Do we detect a recurring theme here? The office of the Surgeon General has determined that Red Velvet Cake on the husband's side may be dangerous to your marriage? I rest my case.

Sounds wonderful - thank you! It isn't quite the one I was looking for. I want to say the beans in mine were cooked in water only - or possibly water with a little olive oil - and that everything else I mentioned before (all raw, except the bacon), including more olive oil, was added later, as they began to cool. So the garlic, sage etc., were warmed enough to infuse and soften the flavors, but not enough to cook them; I distinctly remember the flavor of the little raw sage leaves. In any case, whether I ever manage to reproduce that one or not, I will certainly try yours!

Fried sage leaves - yum! Fresh sage and pork are a match made in heaven. Sometimes when I make a pork roast I make little slashes all over it and stuff the leaves into them. Pork chops and sage leaves just love each other, whether fried or braised or grilled. I occasionally braise pork chops with vinegar - the idea is loosely based on Pierre Franey's version of Poulet au vinaigre, but I think pork holds up better against the assertiveness of the vinegar - and I always put in a lot of fresh sage. There is another dish I used to love - I have lost the recipe (aha! maybe someone here knows it!) though I think I could probably fake it - Tuscan white beans with sage. It's eaten cold or room temperature, and the ingredients are white beans (forget which type - the small navy bean I think), garlic, olive oil, sage, bacon, and I think there were also bits of shallots or scallions or some other small delicate raw oniony thing. Oh oh oh it was good - haven't had it in years, but this is making me want it! The beans were cooked enough that they were supposed to get a little soft and mushy and absorb all the other lovely flavors; it was comforting and exciting at the same time.

It's funny you should say that, as that is an argument I often advance myself - have in fact just advanced it very centrally in another semi-debunking article for the same publication wherein my Marengo story appeared. And as a rule I think it entirely valid; even in this case where the "accepted" version, though a good story, is not a better story than the factual one. This is why I like to put forward the notion that Chicken Marengo is more a concept than a hard and fast recipe; it means rolling with the punches, working with what's available, making lemonade out of lemons and silk purses out of sows' ears. Se non è vero, è ben trovato. Nevertheless, as may sometimes occur, the facts in this case do add something to the whole picture, particularly given how radically different they are from the "accepted" version - in fact, that difference really sort of enhances the outlandishness, the utter bald-faced brashness, of the latter. Rich - you are a great straight man. I'll be glad to tell the story, but I haven't gone over it in a while and I think I'd better bone up on my facts first. Later. (BTW, at one point I was threatened with having to serve CM for 200, fried eggs and all, and my Able Adjutant had figured out a logistical scheme for accomplishing it. Damned if I remember what it was, but I could ask her - seem to remember she was especially proud of her egg-frying strategy.)

:shiver: Now THAT is scary stuff!

Carr's water biscuits would be the closest. Bath biscuits are too rich; matzoh too poor (none of them, however, has the same texture as oyster crackers, which are softer and more friable). Though as several here have said, they don't go into the dish these days - potatoes do. Meself, I agree heartily with the recipe Fat Guy gave (not the Melville one, which sounds almost more like a clam-ified lobscouse), except that I don't do the butter and flour part. Can't remember what he said about herbs, so forgive me if this is repetitive - I've always used a lot of thyme. Don't honestlly know how "authentic" that is, though - it's how my mother taught me, and she may have done it merely because we grew it and loved it and always had a lot of it. Consistent? Me? Forfend. [edited to add paren re texture, and to correct a typo ]