The Old Foodie

Here is a late Victorian era version, this one is from Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery (London, circa 1870), but the same recipe is in a number of books of the time. Eggs, Devilled. Cut four hard-boiled eggs into halves, remove the yolks without breaking the whites; mix the yolks with a tea-spoonful of anchovy sauce, a little cayenne pepper and salt, and fill the white-cups with it; set them to stand, by cutting off the pointed tip, on a dish, surround them with small cress and finely cut lettuce. Time, fifteen minutes to boil eggs. And one from "The Gentle Art of Cookery" by Mrs CF Leyel and Miss Olga Hartley (London, 1925) Devilled Eggs Eggs, two tablespoons of Worcester sauce, one dessertspoonful of French mustard, one ounce of butter, thick brown gravy, salt and cayenned pepper. Boil the eggs for eight minutes; peel them, cut them in half, and remove the yolks. Make a paste of the yolks, cayenne and salt, Cut a tiny piece off the bottom of each half white to make it stand up, and full each one with the paste. Pour over them a sauce made of the gravy, French mustard, and Worcester sauce. Serve very hot and sprinkle them with chopped parsley. - although this one is hardly party finger-food, what with gravy on it an' all!

If not rose - lavendar, absolutely. Or perhaps something like star anise or a blend of sweet spices like cinnamon and nutmeg (and a little lemon)

I use it in my home-made breakfast granola mix - gives it a lovely sweet crunch, and smells divine while it is drying and baking in the oven.

In the thick of the paranoia we must remember that people get sick in our own countries from the food - it is not just a problem in "foreign" places. People can die from the hemorrhagic form of E.coli - dodgy hamburgers for example; botulism kills only a few, but it kills, hepatitis B is not nice either; salmonella and campylobacter occur everywhere. Common-sense, use of eyes, sense of smell, graduated exposure if you can. By far the commonest serious health hazard while travelling is motor-vehicle accidents, and the second most likely is one of the things that would get you at home anyway such as heart problems. In any case, as another poster has said - if you get sick, you get well again. Most of "us" - i.e travellers financially well enough off to be able to travel are by definition well-nourished and basically healthy to start with, so more able to withstand illness. And have travel insurance or sufficient wherewithall to pay for decent medical care if it is available. Travelling with extreme caution and paranoia is hardly worthwhile I would think - surely some sense of adventure is what it is about? otherwise why not stay home?

Yes, dont you hate the flavour of red cabbage with yoghurt (when you were expecting blackberries) See- we do need that competition, someone might have recognised it and warned you.

I'd like to second this. Or you could end up with an 18 lb block of ice that used to be a turkey three years ago sitting at the bottom. Don't ask how I know. Marcia. ← Just ask me what a top for one's wedding cake looks like after almost 20 years! ← Maybe we could all post photos of the lumpy frozen bits lurking at the bottom of our freezers, and everyone could try to identify them, thus saving us the anxiety of thawing them out and finding something we then have to deal with.

I love Joe Pastry . He gives lots of really practical advice, with scientific explanations for how things happen, he debunks myths, and has a sense of humour. A recent week's topic has been on sourdough starters, lots of good stuff there.

How could anyone not want to rush out and buy lemons to make hard lemonade, after a promo like that! In return, to keep those children from wanting the grown up version, here are a couple of recipes for fruit cordial which can be diluted down to taste. I haven't made either of these in many, many years - which you can tell as we have used metric measurements here for decades! Orange Cordial 4 large oranges, juice squeezed and rind shredded or grated. 2 lb sugar 2 1/2 pints boiling water 1 oz. citric acid Mix the juice, rind, sugar and citric acid. Stir occasionally until the sugar dissolves. When cool, strain and bottle. Dilute to taste. Lemon Cordial 4 lemons, juice squeezed 2 lb sugar 1 1/4 pints boiling water 1 oz tartaric acid Make as above. Dilute to taste. Edited to add: Three consecutive posts on the same topic. I seriously need to get my thoughts organised before I start writing. I dare not add my apricots in amaretto recipe now, but after a suitable interval, will do so if anyone wants it.

My understanding is that the best way is to attempt to adapt slowly to the local bugs by being "cautiously adventurous" with the food at first. Picking obviously risky things like warm food sitting out at ambient temperatue is asking for trouble, but apparently also is attempting to be super-cautious eg only eating in "good" hotels (where the assumption that food hygiene standards behind the scenes may not be correct anyway) - because this way your system does not get chance to adapt, so when the inevitable happens and you do inadvertently eat something - Delhi Belly or Montezuma's revenge strikes you. I've always eaten street food - but been reasonably sensible about the choices especially initially, and never (touch lots of wood here!) had any problems. There are various tricks of the trade too about local water - sanitising tablets, drops of iodine, drops of bleach etc, but as most enteric bacteria responsible for DB and MR cannot abide a sugary environment (because the sugar is all gone from your food before the residue reaches their natural environment, which is the bowel) - you can make a passably safe drink by adding sugar or cordial to about normal soft-drink strength, and keeping it at room temperature.

Can on be free enough to celebrate the birth of Jesus on the Fourth of July? wouldn't that always fall on December 25? Methinks that The Old Foodie probably is so conscientious that she makes gifts well in advance of the actual date ... ← The Old Foodie THINKS and PLANS making gifts well in advance, but usually ends up in a last minute scramble! This year I am determined to make the Limoncello for my SIL, so I must get organised early!

These sound great - similar to what I would call Honeycomb, but I think the recipe I have made in the distant past had Golden Syrup in it, not corn syrup. I will definitely try this. I am confused about a lot of things myself, but I'm pretty sure Christmas is in our summer and your winter ..... but dont quote me on that .... It can be so hot here in Queensland that a lot of people have a "Christmas in July" weekend, just to be able to enjoy "traditional" (for the Northern hemisphere that is) food. At real Christmas we are more likely to eat lots of seafood and salad. Still .... If you want Limoncello for Christmas gifts, you have to start early.

At least a label collection stores easily (unless you collect on your lunch pail or forehead I suppose) - I once read a lengthy article about a man whose passion in life was collecting yoghurt containers. He had had to have a room in his house completely lined with shelves to hold them all. To him, they were things of great beauty - and he made it sound like he had a history of modern packaging design through the ages, not a mere collection of plastic containers. I dont remember if they were arranged by colour, flavour, country of origin etc.

I'd love the cherry liqueur recipe - and what is "hard lemonade"? is it a sort of cordial that you dilute with water? As for the sourdough comment, I can appreciate that - after a lot of years of trying, there are some people I just dont do hampers for, it is a waste of effort, although I hate to admit it. [My MIL makes the BEST lemon curd (= lemon butter) but we dont let her get away with it only at Christmas - she has to make it regularly! Sometimes she makes it into passionfruit butter, which is even better]

I had a recipe for a gingerbread mix - I had forgotten it (eGullet is wonderful for my memory) ... wonder if I can find it ...?

It was the Limoncello thread that got me going on this one. I like to make food gifts for friends and family at Chrismas (and other excuses) and things that can be prepared well ahead are a bonus, because everything gets frenetic enough closer to the date. My new son-in-law loves everything lemony, and limoncello in particular (and it will certainly keep better than lemon pie, his other main favourite!), so I was delighted to find the limoncello thread. I often do liqueur fruits such as dried apricots in amaretto, and there is a recipe for lime slices in (I think) curacao that I mean to try this year. I've made selections of dry mixes and rubs, and done them up with other stuff in hampers too. I've even made a Christmas version of my home made granola, with red dried cranberries and green pistachios to fit the theme, and put it in pretty jars. What do you all make? Either prepare in advance or last minute (because even with the best planning, last minute things happen)?

First, I love books - but for research, some electronic searchability is very efficient. Best is to have both.

Ah! but that's my whole point. Eating vegetables as VEGETABLES then I want them al-dente, but overcooked vegetables in stock - when pureed - are SOUP, which is not meant to be al-dente.

As I cannot get through the day without copious quanities of tea, I must join in this discussion. Should we be pedantic in this thread, and distinguish between "real" tea (i.e from the bush Camellia sinensis) and "tisanes" or the multitude of herbal, fruit and other drinks? Most serious tea-lovers dont consider tisanes to be tea. As for myself, I havent found a tea or tisane I havent liked, so the pedantry is simply to add another dimension to the discussion.

I've never bought pectin in my life , and I regularly make strawberry jam for which I am moderately famous around here (modest little cough here ...) I add the juice of a lemon to the batch - it seems to do the trick, and does not obviously add to the flavour, so is better than making apple-and-strawberry jam. I dont understand this thing of re-boiling jam in a water bath after it is cooked and jarred. Sounds flagrantly neurotic to me. And will reduce the flavour (less cooking = more flavour) Any bugs that can survive a high sugar environment DO NOT harm humans. A bit of jam mould - should it happen - can be scraped off if you dont want to waste the jam. No-one ever got even slightly sick from jam mould. It is unaesthetic though. Jam (with a lot of sugar) is a very different thing from something like beans, which can be dangerous if not done properly. I sterilise jars by putting them in a cold oven, switching it to 120 Celsius (usually after running them through the dishwasher, which is probably hot enough to do the job anyway), and when it has been at that temp for 10 mins it is OK. Fill the hot jars with hot jam (I use one cup of sugar for every cup of cooked fruit, for every jam I make - and strawberries only take moments to soften) - invert the lids if you wish (I dont usually bother as one always seems to leak and make a mess). If you are a novice at preserving, jam is a good place to start because it is so safe. Take the pan off the heat just BEFORE you think it is cooked, as it continues to "cook" from retained heat for quite a while. Good luck. Let us know how it turns out!

Its not an economic thing for me - I seem to spend a lot of money on food - but I hate throwing out flavour - I would have pureed the mushy veges in all that lovely liquid and used it as soup, or the basis for a soup.

Having made sausage gravy, I can second this opinion. Confidential to The Old Foodie: In South Philadelphia, "gravy" is a thick red substance made from tomatoes and served over pasta. ← I am now thoroughly confused. I think I'm just going to have to take a trip "over there" and find out for myself. Janet

Catching up with this thread made me remember that a few years ago I transcribed Edward Kidders "Receipts of Pastry and cookery for the use of his scholars", which is circa 1720-40. It was done from the scanned pages of the student manuscript copy at U.Penn. It has been languishing on my hard drive, although I always intended to make it available to anyone studying it or just interested. I have now given it its own home at http://www.kidderereceiptsofpastry.blogspot.com/

Done. My first foray into Recipe Gullet. There is some good stuff there! [why am I surprised???]

I had something very like this in Alsace, France - in Strasbourg. I think the restaurant was called Chez Yvonne. It was a couple of years ago. It was fantastic.

Hello Susan - I love words too, and I think your definitions of retro and classic are absolutely right. There is a definite "temporary" sense about "retro" - a sense that such things are interesting or curious, and representative of an era but not enduring. I really cant comment on the current state of British food - I essentially left England when I was 16 and my family migrated here, and I dont think a couple of brief trips back count. If they have more classics there, it would simply represent a longer history I would think. On tupac's blog there has been a discussion of chicken-fried steak - that seems to be a classic American dish, in some states anyway. Perhaps one of you "over there" might list some other dishes that you consider to be American classics? [i think I should explain "over there". When US servicemen were stationed in Australia - particularly in Brisbane - during WW II, they were very popular with Australian girls. Aussie men - disgruntled with the competition - used to grumble that the US soldiers were "over-paid, over-sexed, and over here". It was before my time I hasten to add, but it is a good story, Yes?]