Adam Balic

Ha! you beat me to it. Do you make it with or without the lemon? Both, but mostly without (butter, brown sugar, lemon zest as replacement) as the lemons scare the guests and it is difficult to make the individual portion puddings using a whole lemon. Lemon zest? Oh dear. I hadn't considered the problem of individual-sized puds, and I suppose I see the point, but still - seems a sad substitute for the opulent juiciness of the whole lemon harmonizing with the butter and sugar. Individual SP pud - sheesh. Not for me, thanks. Make a whole one and share it around, or don't bother. (I was curious, though, about the version with no lemon at all, because I'd never even imagined such a thing until I stumbled across it in an early 19th-c recipe. I can see why, since lemons would have been so much less common/available, but it didn't seem right for both versions to carry the same name, given how completely different they are.) Well I must confess that the first timeI had the pudding it was in Australia and it was the no lemon version (which is odd given how many backyards have lemon trees). I promise never to have the no lemon version again. C. Anne Wilson - I have only read a few articles of hers and enjoyed her writing style. One article she wrote was about the connection between medieval european cooking, muslim cooking and the crusades. Very interesting, with the only criticism being that it didn't take into account Sicily, Moorish-Spain etc, but this is a small matter.

How far can a book go when it is intended for the intelligent general reader, not written as a doctoral dissertation? It has a 13-page index (in fine print), fifteen pages of notes, a ten-page glossary, and a five-page "select bibliography". Strong opinions? Indeed. I don't agree with all of them, but there's not one which didn't challenge me to think about the subject in a new light. In other words, I like the quality of his mind, and that's the principal thing I demand of an author. I should declare the fact that he's a valued personal friend. Fortunately I'm not an influential critic whose integrity would thus be open to attack. John - my comments were honest critic and not ment to be an attack on your friend, so sorry for any discomfort. I use the book for information on occasion, but find the lack (and there is a lack) deeply frustrating. This may not matter for most readers.

John - this isn't the time or the place to discuss the relative merits of each book, nor am I interested in having such a discussion. While you obviously enjoyed the book a great deal and have given it a plug on a number of occasions, I found it to be valuble, but very frustrating, in particular the lack of detailed references, which I thought was a great fault as Spencer clearly has strong opinions and it would be useful to be able to seperate out his opinions (Saxons could smell better then us modern types) from fact. Philipa Pullar struggled with mental health issues for most of her adult life, as do many people. She died of cancer in the early '80s (I think). Her food book was first published in the 70's, and was re-printed in ~ 2000. Not bad for a book nearly thirty years out of print and I will be curious to see it 'British Food' is re-printed in thirty years time. It would be best for British food if people bought both books .

As I mentioned above, I didn't really enjoy Colin Spencer's "British Food" (it is "British", not "English" isn't it, hence the passing references to Scotland and Wales in the book). I think that the book is a good resource, but found the style to be a little grating and much of the pre-17th century anaylsis to be superficial. The analysis from the 19th century onwards was very good though.

Have just found a book "English Provincial Food" by Elisabeth Aynton for £2 in a junk shop, it is very good. Also "Consuming Passions" by Philippa Pullar (recently re-printed) is excellent (much better IMO then Colin Spencer's "British Food"). RE: Sussex pond pudding - I if you eliminate the fruit does this not bring the filling to pastry ration more into balance for a mini-pud? Just to add to Jack's comments on British food been plainly cooked. It wasn't pre-17th C. and even now some very interesting regional dishes are of the old fashioned more spiced types of dishes. I know that 19th century British food is now the standard by which people judge 'British cuisine', but it would be a shame to miss out on the other styles of cooking that are part of the British heritage, even if some of them now appear more Moroccan then English (eg. Devonshire squab pie, Spiced Beef, Cumberland sweet pie, that chicken stuffed with prune dish with the lemon sauce (can't recall the name)). edit: Chicken Dish = "Hindle Wakes" ("Hen da le Wake", chicken to be eaten after the fair, accourding to E. Aynton).

Ha! you beat me to it. Do you make it with or without the lemon? Both, but mostly without (butter, brown sugar, lemon zest as replacement) as the lemons scare the guests and it is difficult to make the individual portion puddings using a whole lemon.

The use of preserved oranges (sour) or lemons in pre-17th century european savoury dishes is pretty common. In some recipes meat is larded with the preserved citrus peel, but often they are just sliced and added or if fresh fruit was availible the juice was added. Salmon braised with claret (use a rose, not a red wine), orange slices and a little nutmeg is good, I imagine the the preserved fruit would work well too. The are extant Spanish recipes that use the juice of sour oranges with hake.

Smoked fish in Scotland; -Salmon, hot and cold cures although the Irish seem to do the latter better. -Haddock, ditto, hot and cold cures, really great food. -kippered herring ('Kippers') - eel, no eel damn it all. Sussex Pond Pudding. Just excellent really. Proper cured hams (almost non-existant now), especially the dark cures. Game; -Pheasant, Wood pigeon, Partridge (grey and red legged), Grouse (red and once a ptarmigan), Hares (both the brown, introduced by the Romans and the Blue Mountain natives), Snipe and Woodcock. Shetland Native lamb. Apples, all the excellent types that nobody really eats now. Scottish raspberries, so rich and intense in flavour that visitors have commented that they taste as rich as mangos. Devonshire Squab pie (actually a lamb pie/pot roast type thing). Proper Pork pies, not the nasty crap sold in supermarkets. I love them, but for the calories I only treat myself when they are of excellent quality. Squat Lobsters, rare and not commercially fished, but by far the best crustacean I have tasted. Mince pies and Plum pudding.

I thought Simnel cake was for "Mothering Sunday" (Lent)? This year I am going to attempt some greek bread with red dyed eggs baked into it.

Thank you every body for this information. I think that I shall go for the "under" the grill method when I have the flat to myself (no distractions and no witnesses of failure). I will let you know how it turns out when it happens.

Celery leaves are used a lot in Italian (Northern) and if you can get them they are very good (flavour without strings), but if not you can always buy Chinese celery (has a more intense flavour). For those celery haters consider that in the 16th C. when 'modern' celery was developed is replaced a large number of other similar veg. So there are things out there that taste worse then celery.

I don't know. I haven't seen any contempory accounts where they say as such. My feeeling is that things occured a lot more organically then that. With the reducion in the uses of all the other spices (which were not now in vogue, and had lost much of the galen 'medical' value), pepper may have been more popular because it makes food more interesting without dominating in flavour. But I really don't know.

From the same book as above: “Medieval Arabic Stuffing for Fresh Fish" Ingredients: 1 large bunch of parsley, finely chopped, half this amount of finely chopped mint. 2 Tablespoon of ground coriander 1 teaspoon of ground Chinese cinnamon 2 teaspoons of ground sumac 1 Tablespoon of tahini 6 Tablespoons of olive oil 3 cloves of garlic, crushed 100 gms of ground walnuts lemon juice salt. Method: - Mix all ingredients, except lemon juice and salt. Add these to taste. - This is a ‘stuffing’ for fish, but I tend to use it like Moroccan Chermoula.

Pan - (interesting link BTW). I will try to be brief on this thread: Claudius Galenus "Galen" of Pergamum (131-201 AD) reworked a pre-existing theory on the "humors". Basically this has differed in different times and locations, but in priciple it is that there human body has certain innate characteristics the classical greeks worked this into four principles ("Hot", "Dry", "Wet", "Cold"), combinations of which determined a individuals specific characteristics. Galen indicated that the body itself did this itself, but it could be influenced by outside forces, especially food and drink. Basically to keep in good shape, it wasn't the Gym, it was keeping the humors in balance. Obviously, this went in and out of vogue like everything else, but in the late medieval period is was being taken very seriously indeed. From the late 16th C. onwards it declined. One of the ways of tracking this is look at consumption of specific food consumption. Black Pepper was considered to be very Hot, very few people could safely take it in quantiy (mostly old people who are colder by nature). Once Galen thinking was on the decline black pepper consumption increased dramatically. In La Varrenes "The French Cook", which represents the first cookbook on the more modern way of thinking, black pepper was a dominate spice. This was un-thinkable a hundred years previously and infact would have been considered dangerous. Wine is another of those life balancers Obviously we (in the West) are still influenced by some of this type of thinking even now, but it isn't a dominate line of thinking anymore, and the same could also be applied to the 19th C, although they gave it a lot more lip service.

Well I agree with this, but I suspect any level of heat will be seen as a negative for a long time in Haute cuisine, after all Western Haute cuisine is a specific thing, not a contextual situation. If anywhere it will most likely turn up in deserts I would guess. It was pretty much a Roman thing (and earlier) , but there are scattered reference to similar products in Italian literature until the about the 10th C. From the recipes much of it looks similar to the SE-Asian fish sauces, but with more spices. A good approximation could be made by combining fish sauce (especially versions with the chunks of fermented fish still in them) with Wostershire sauce. Medieval Arabic cooking used a similar produce, made from fermented barley (and other ingredients). The food scholar Charles Perry made some and reported that it was essentially the same as soy sauce (although in some of the recipes I have seen it is more a kin to Miso).

In which case it is no longer salt, merely salty. These salty sauces also provide "meatiness" (what is that word, "umi"?) as well as salt. On a side note I am interested in historic cooking, so I would be keen to know of a source ( ) of liquamen, as I was under the impression it had died out by the 10th C?

True, but it was treated in the same way that 60% of the British are nominating themselves as Anglican at this point, not at all in the same way as pre-17th C.

The thing about history is that it isn't a thing, but more like a process. I think there's enough cultural interaction, enough experience with heat in our country, especially through Chinese, Mexican, and Thai food that's enjoyed by all classes, that people are ready for fiery haute cuisine -- at least in moderation and intelligently planned as part of a dish or meal. We just need chefs who make the effort to show what hot haute can be. I think there's been that effort in certain limited circumstances, some of which have already been mentioned, but I'd like to see the top tier restaurants using it more. I'd like to see places like Trotter's and The French Laundry and other New American five star restaurants making use of capsicum. Maybe Trotter's next book shouldn't be "Raw", but rather "Fire". It'd have a wider audience, I bet. I never ment to imply that Western cuisine is lacks 'heat' (obviously this isn't true), if that is the impression I made should clarifiy that point. I agree with you on the strong flavour point (especially on the truffle from, truffles are 'spice'). But none of these ingredients will case you physically pain. That is what distinguishes chili from all other spices and ingredients in the Western pantry. There is an obvious avoidence of pain and if you couple that with the suspicion that the West showed these new ingredients, especially nightshade family members (potato,tomato, eggplant (look at its Italian name for instance)), it isn't difficult to see why chili wasn't accepted into haute cuisine. There are a few very comical accounts of the treatment of chilli from the early 17th C. I agree in principle about the inclusion of chili into european haute cuisine, but as much as I want to I find it very difficult to eat Scotch bonnets, even though I am told that they have a distinctive and pleasant flavour. Yes indeed this is entirely cultural, but at the end of the day, he flavour for me is neurtalised by the pain of the heat and that is not something that can be said of other strong flavours (which I though we had established that the heat from chili is a seperate phemena to the flavour), such as -- truffles, caviar, liver, balsamic and other reductions etc.

mongo - well I think that there is no getting away from history. I think that there is a tendency for people to look at what they are doing now, and even very basic things like what we eat, and see it as all very self evident and conclude from this that what they are eating now is a natural progression from the past and by a strange twist of thinking, conclude as it is a "natural progression", it must be better, logical and more advanced. One only has to see how the Victorians reconsructed the dinosaurs at Crystal Palace to see how this type of thinking can lead you to the wrong conclusions. What is interesting about the introduction of the chilli from the New World, is the timing. Before the 17th C. thinking tended to be dominated by Galen philosophy (the four humours:moist, dry, hot, cold), everything had its place depending where it resided on this layout. Pepper, was considered "hot and dry" and so quite dangerous in large amounts unless you were old etc. At the time where chilli where being introduced this type of think was being replaced by a more modern, rational approach (Black pepper became much more dominant at this point), but I suspect that the chili was treated with much suspicion for a long time due to a hang-over of the old thinking, "Bugger me, that was hot, it can't be good for you". Oh if you give me money I will write your book.

Carlovski - I have no doubt that there are High cuisines that contain heat/spice, but for this thread I have been confining myself to the Western model, for the simple reason that I know little about the other cuisines and any analysis requires some basic understanding of the philosophy of the cuisine. That isn't to say that I think that European Haute is "better", just that it is a particular food philosophy and has to be approached in this individual context. What would be interesting would be if there was an example of a 'High' cuisine with a similar aim to the european model (eg. "highlighting the individual intrinsic flavours of a small number of ingredients"), but included spice and heat withing this cooking tradition. I have only read the Fushia Dunlop book, but does Sichuan cuisine fall into this catagorie?

I think that it is now rare to see any Haute cuisine that has much heat (from what I can tell). Throughout the 19th C. there was a lot of upper-class food (not nessarily 'Haute') that contained large amounts of cayenne, they were even given a name "Deviled", but these dishes were considered an 'appetite' stimulator, rather then being 'Haute'. I wonder if there is any true example of a haute cuisine dish that contains heat (chilli, pepper, mustard, ginger, horseraddish etc) and the heat is there to not as a relish/appetite stimulator.

While it is true that "Capsaicin" in its refined form, has not specific flavour and is more akin to salt in that it imparts a sensory experience, unlike salt it isn't eaten in the pure form. I have read that Scotch bonnet peppers have a diestinct apricot flavour, however, I personally am unable tell due to the 'burn' sensation. "High" cuisine hasn't always rejected the "Burn", infact it was specifically targeted. Before the introduction of the New World Chilli, a variety of pepper (black pepper type, not chilli pepper) known as the "Long Pepper" was used for the burn (it is much hotter then regular black pepper) and in Roman times this type of pepper was the most expensive. While I'm sure there are 'objective' reasons for the lack of spice, some of the reasons are not'objective', but rather cultural. For example, some potted history: Italian high end cuisine up until the early 17th C. used a lot of spice and tended to favour sweetened dishes (eg. spices and sugar are expensive and at least one early cookbook instructs sugar and spice to be added 'depending on the status of the guest'). After this period high end cooking reduced the amount of sugar and spices, but more rustic type cooking (taverns etc) increased they amount of these ingredients. So in a hundred or so years they ingredients suffered a reversal in social status. New world chili has in Western europe have nearly always been seen as lower class item. Part of is social and cultural. What is interesting is if there is an objective reason as well. Modern Haute cuisine is about highlighting the individual intrinsic flavours of a small number of refined ingredients. The types of cuisine in which spices and chilli work well tend to work by a larger number of different componants working together to produce a synergy of flavours. This doesn't mean that these approaches are mutually exclusive, but it certainly means that it is difficult to reconcile the two philosophys. In the case of chilli, the strength of the burn is often to much for the highlighting of the prime ingredient - in a Haute cuisine setting it doesn't add to the expreience, where as a less potent spice, like black pepper, can. However, I still beleive that there is room for experimentation. Lets face facts, the range of chillis availble in the regions were European Haute cuisine developed are very limited. If FG does the chilli and Bresse chicken thing, interperatation of the results will be very different depending on the philosophy used to approach the exercise.

I think that this definition of "flavour" is a question of semantics, however, I think that we can all agree that preception of salt 'flavour' is a rather different process to the perception of say, nutmeg 'flavour'. Infact the perception of the latter is largely offactory (difficult to taste even a curry with a blocked nose), where as you say salt perception is a matter of receptors on the tongue. A solution of pure NaCl in distilled is difficult to give a flavour to profile to, but we will still say that it 'tastes' salty. Also as mammals we need and indeed crave salt if we a prevented from getting it. The same cannot be said of more conventional spices, so therefore salt has to be analysed in a different way to other spices, when we consider its presence in Haute cuisine, where as other spices are absent.

Well actually, you don't have to look back very far to see how ready access to salt was seen as make of refinement etc. Hence all the extremely beautiful Medieval Salt cellers and sayings like "Below the salt" etc. Your social status was determined by you proximity to the Salt celler on a communal table at one point (often these contained other spices as well). Unlike more conventional spices, salt has a no intrinsic flavour and is more of a flavour enhancer, so it didn't suffer the decline in social prestige that other spices went through. As why, well this aspect of social behaviour is only one small part why Haute is haute. People are complex and no doubt have a wide range of reasons from why they may prefer this type of cuisine over more rustic versions. There is also the phenomena of 'reverse snobbery' where people can't accept that Haute is 'better' in some aspects as it is elitist.

Rummaniyya Mukhanththara (from “Pomegranate” and “Thickened”) Adaptation from an original translation from a 14th C. Arabic cookbook by Charles Perry. Ingredients: 3 pounds of Lamb shoulder, cut into two inch pieces 1 teaspoon each of: Chinese cinnamon, dried ginger, powered toasted cumin and powdered rose petals* 2 teaspoons of sugar (un-refined cane or palm would be good) pinch of saffron 3 Tablespoons of Pomegranate molasses** 100 grams of pistachios, ground 2 Tablespoons of finely chopped mint Oil for cooking (un-toasted sesame oil is best) Method: -Put a small quantity of oil in a large pot/ tagine and add meat and spices, gently heat through until spice aromas are released and meat has ‘whitened’. -Add two cups of water (no need to cover meat) and pomegranate molasses. Cook gently on stove top with lid on for two hours or until meat is tender. -Thirty minutes before the end add the ground pistachios and half of the mint. Remove lid and cook until liquid has been reduce to a thick sauce. -Add salt to taste and garnish with remainder of the mint (and pomegranate seeds if you have them). Stew should be sour, with sweetness to balance. *Available from Middle-Eastern grocers ** or extract juice from fresh (sour fruit are best in this case) or dried seeds. If using fresh juice increase to 6 Tablespoons.