Cookbooks – How Many Do You Own? (Part 2)

[Adam Balic]

Some recent books:

"De Observatione Ciborum / On the Observance of Foods" by Anthimus (late Roman/Byzantine authors observations of Northern European cooking.

“The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened” (1669)

"The Whole Body of Cookery Dissected" by William Rabisha (1682)

“ACTERIA: A Discourse of Sallets” by John Evelyn (1699)

“Willian Verrall’s Cookery Book: Master of the White Hart Inn, Lewes (1759)

“The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie” (1841-1897)

“The Dinner Question or How to dine well and Econimically” by Tabitha Tickletooth (Charles Selby). (mid-19th C)

Edited March 3, 2004 by Adam Balic (log)

[Alex]

Bargain Books to the rescue!

Desserts by Pierre Hermé, by Dorie Greenspan (hardcover)

Pasta, by Julia Della Croce

[maggiethecat]

58, 414.

Welcome to eGullet, and to this thread, balmagowry. A couple of short answers to some of your questions:

1)Yes, books about food count.

2)Mags and periodicals don't.

3)I think I did an average of poster to books, way upthread; I'll try to update it soon.

I absolutely love Madame Maigret; Courtine's recipes are spot-on.

And although I always counsel folks to refrain from cookbook envy, I must admit, Dr. Balic, that I am ill with jealousy reading the list of your new acquisitions. Gnashing is happening here.

[hannahcooks]

I've been away from eGullet for a bit. Since I last posted, I've acquired:

-The Minimalist Cooks at Home

-Crazy for Casseroles

-San Francisco Encore

-River Road Recipes

-The Cook's Canon

-The Texas Cookbook: From Barbeque to Banquet-- An Informal View of Dining and Entertaining the Texas Way (which still hasn't actually arrived- darned Amazon)

and I rejoined The Good Cook, so I'm also expecting

-The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen

-Bistro Cooking At Home

-Glorious French Food

-America's Best Chefs Cook With Jeremiah Tower.

Phew!

[maggiethecat]

Phew! 58,424.

Phew indeed, hannah! (I cook from the Bittman a lot.)

[clothier]

this won't add anything to the total, but it's an interesting story (i know, you'll be the judge of that). We were visiting my in-laws, and got hungry, run to the store, make do with what they have, pot-and-pan-wise, and I need to check a recipe for I think it was cream puffs (with ice cream and Sanders Hot fudge). I ask my mother in law if she has a copy of "Joy". Nope. Well, say I , what do you have in the way of cookbooks?

"I don't have any"

Excuse me, says I.

"I don't have any"

After my wife revives me, I call my mom, get the facts, and we finish dinner.

Next time a gift giving holiday comes around, we buy my mom-in-law "Joy".

What does she do? Takes it back and exchanges it for a bunch of books with Fabio on the cover.

[Adam Balic]

And although I always counsel folks to refrain from cookbook envy, I must admit, Dr. Balic, that I am ill with jealousy reading the list of your new acquisitions. Gnashing is happening here.

Well I needed a few more to go with:

"The Accomplisht Cook" by Robert May (1684)

"Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book" (early late 16th/early 17th century)

"Mrs MacIver's Cookery" (1763)

Meg Dodds cook book (1829)

Medieval Arabic Cooking

Often they are cheap on the net or sometimes you get lucky in secondhand places.

[balmagowry]

58, 414.

Welcome to eGullet, and to this thread, balmagowry. A couple of short answers to some of your questions:

1)Yes, books about food count.

2)Mags and periodicals don't.

3)I think I did an average of poster to books, way upthread; I'll try to update it soon.

Thank you kindly!

I have been gradually working my way through some older threads and articles, BTW (the sort of thing designed to make one wish one had known and joined a whole lot sooner), and have just become an ardent admirer of your writing on PMS and similarly cyclical matters. Several items under that heading are about to become required reading in my, er, circle; so don't be too surprised if you find yourself fielding a sudden influx of praise for pieces and posts long-forgotten.

I absolutely love Madame Maigret; Courtine's recipes are spot-on.

I'm embarrassed to say that I haven't ever gotten around to reading Simenon - a really horrifying confession for someone who is both a francophone and an O'Brianite. Oh well (contorts impossibly to pat self on back) - I won't be the first person to launch into someone's oeuvre by way of the cookbook it has inspired. I've known Mme. M by reputation for many years and long desired her closer aquaintance; it was just a matter of the right copy coming along at the right time.

And although I always counsel folks to refrain from cookbook envy, I must admit, Dr. Balic, that I am ill with jealousy reading the list of your new acquisitions.  Gnashing is happening here.

Second the motion - though they don't sound all that recent . Seriously, though, as is my usual practice I own several of the above in facsimile reprints*, and love them dearly, Sir Kenelme Digby and Lady Clark of T being particular favorites. But I am very jealous of that Anthimus. To my lasting disappointment, even the Academy of Medicine doesn't have him.

We need a green smiley to denote severe envy.

*Sour grapes? Making a virtue of necessity? No, I think as a rule I really would rather own working copies than collectible ones, just as I'd rather buy an older car than a brand new one. The fact that I can't afford either new cars or old cookbooks is not that big a factor, I think. (Fact is, I can't see myself ever wanting a new car - too impractical.) Not that I wouldn't love to own original editions of some of these culinary marvels; not that I'm above enjoying the sensual rewards of such ownership, not to mention the thrill of reverence. But there's no point in owning them for their resale value, because I'd never part with them; and a book that is too fragile to be opened and consulted freely and frequently is nothing if not frustrating. I'm reminded of a favorite line from Katherine Mansfield: "Why have a baby at all if you have to keep it in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?" Sorry, where is this diatribe going? Not OT, really - I think the point is, what is it that makes people collect cookbooks (or yes, anything else, but let's not go there). Why do we want to own the ones we own and not others? What are the characteristics that make a particular book, or type of book, lust-worthy? In my case most of the newer productions - unless they reflect a historical/philosophical/cultural perspective - don't appeal all that much; not that I don't enjoy them, but I don't feel the need to make them my own. (Why? Am I being reasonable about the limits of my storage capacity and intellectual ditto? Sheesh, I hope not. No, I think it's only because in my own kitchen I tend either to stick to old favorites or to invent new stuff of my own that may be inspired by some new thing I've read but will rarely hew close to it. I'm not much cop at following recipes exactly; in cooking as in posting I'm too prone to following tangents of my own. ) Marvelous old books, obscure pamphlets, the direct window into the thinking and workings of cooks from another time - ah, those I simply can't resist. But thrilled though I may be to own an original, I won't be happy unless I also have a facsimile or a modern reprint or even a microfilm - something I can handle and use without that constant fear that I might damage or defile it. Not that I'm hard on my books. I just have a heallthy respect for Murphy's Law.

[balmagowry]

Well I needed a few more to go with:

"The Accomplisht Cook" by Robert May (1684)

"Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book" (early late 16th/early 17th century)

"Mrs MacIver's Cookery" (1763)

Meg Dodds cook book (1829)

Medieval Arabic Cooking

Often they are cheap on the net or sometimes you get lucky in secondhand places.

Damn, now I feel my protested-too-much principles wavering. Where's that green smiley? Again, I have Dods in modern edition and May in reprint. But... grrrr. Hang on a sec, though. I own (and adore) a copy of Fettiplace too, but there is no "original" edition of that - not, I mean, from the time of Fettiplace herself. Hillary Spurling discovered the MS in (don't quote me, I'm too rushed to run upstairs and double-check the date) the 1960s, if memory serves, and before that it wasn't a book, as such, just a notebook stored in a family attic. It's like the Martha Washington cookery book, of which I own two completely different 20th-century interpretations, because there were no previous published versions.

Come clean, Adam! How many of these marvelous "period" acquisitions are actually modern reworkings and reprints?

(Not to worry, we still will all be envious of your collection.)

[Adam Balic]

Did I mention "originals"?

Only Meg Dodds and MacIver are originals (plus a Mrs Marshall's other recipes), both purchased for £10 in junk shops. The Dodds is an amazing book, much, much more deserving then Beeton.

Anthimus has been released by Prospect Books (along with many other facsimile and re-print editions). Many Medieval texts are availble on the net.

I love my Robert May.

Oh, and I have a re-print of the first English translation of La Varrene's 'French Cook'.

I buy the books to use and because I am interested in this period (16-18th C), and what people ate and how they appoach food, as this tells you a great deal about them. Having an idea of what Shakespeare, Pepys and Johnson ate (or at least may have eaten) makes their writing on other subjects more tangible. Who couldn't love Pepys after reading of him taking the time to protect his Parmesan cheese while the Great Fire of London bore down on his home?

Edited March 3, 2004 by Adam Balic (log)

[balmagowry]

Did I mention "originals"?

No - no, you didn't, and indeed I had noticed that. But I do seem to remember you, somewhere up-thread, referring to the "oldest" cookbook in your collection as being 271 years old; thus exciting a certain amount of openly-expressed reverence for its antiquity which I don't believe you debunked.

Only Meg Dodds and MacIver are originals (plus a Mrs Marshall's other recipes), both purchased for £10 in junk shops. The Dodds is an amazing book, much, much more deserving then Beeton.

Amazing, yes, and a marvelous source and a wonderful read - but more deserving? I'd hesitate to call it that - not to mention that it's hardly fair when you consider that Mrs. Beeton was an actual person (and one whose unprecedented achievement is made the more extraordinary by her having died at 26!) whereas Meg Dods was a fictitious one, and her book in essence a form of historical fiction. That doesn't make it any less valuable or delicious (though oh! how I wish that even the modern edition were indexed in a more practical fashion), but I think it does make the comparison one of apples and oranges. Not to mention that the two are 40 eventful years apart, and that they reflect very very different periods and mores. I love them both, and wouldn't want to be without either one.

Anthimus has been released by Prospect Books (along with many other facsimile and re-print editions).

Aha! Should have known. Yes, I've long considered Prospect a personal benefactor. But I'm a bit out of touch, and didn't realize they'd got so far afield as to do Anthimus. Looks like I'll be buying at least one more book in the near future....

Many Medieval texts are availble on the net.

And bless the net for it. I have quite a few of those downloaded but didn't include them in my tally. It's a nice question, to go along with the other discussions of criteria. Should a free download of such count as part of one's collection? If so, why? If not, why not? Discuss. (No, never mind, don't discuss.) Given that the overall tally was inspired by physical size one would assume not; OTOH, I've printed a couple of them for easier reference and they reside in imposing binders, which certainly take up as much space as any other oversized book.

I buy the books to use and because I am interested in this period  (16-18th C), and what people ate and how they appoach food, as this tells you a great deal about them. Having an idea of what Shakespeare, Pepys and Johnson ate (or at least may have eaten) makes their writing on other subjects more tangible. Who couldn't love Pepys after reading of him taking the time to protect his Parmesan cheese while the Great Fire of London bore down on his home?

Could not agree more! And to take that notion to the next level, in a lot of cases one can only fully appreciate what they ate if one knows how it was made and procured. Meg Dods gives a poetic description of the virtues of raised pies that is exciting enough to begin with, but once you've actually spent most of a day raising one you come away with a humbling understanding of just how and why it constitutes "a larder in itself." It's enough to change one's perspective on life.

Equally thrilling is the relationship between those discoveries and their illustrations in nursery rhymes and folklore. The plum in Little Jack Horner's Christmas Pie is probably my favorite example of that, given what the nature of the plum says about the way the pie was actually constructed; a close second in the food-related department is the identity of Little Miss Muffett.

What's not to love?

In my earlier digression from a digression I probably should have clarified what I meant about buying these books for use: I rarely (if ever) coook directly from them, but I use them constantly for research into just such questions. Most of them show signs of what I call the Chrysanthemum Effect; a taboo instilled in my early years forbids me from actually writing in any of them, but they all bristle with little post-it notes, some color-coded and some annotated, but most confusingly random, each marking some wonderful bit that I will undoubtedly want to refer to again though I probably will never be able to track it down from amongst its neighbors when I really need it. Old cookbooks are my dictionary, my encyclopedia, my window into history and belief, recurring theme and myth. And they prove that everything old really is new again: look at cuisine in the renaissance and cuisine in the early 19th century and it becomes obvious that it's only a matter of time before we're due for another round of neo-clacissism or neo-something. Hell, if verjuice is coming back into fashion, can omentum be far behind?

Edited March 3, 2004 by balmagowry (log)

[DRColby]

Never counted our cookbooks and related texts (there is sepage from gardening and novels). Would SWAG it at about 1,000. I base that on shelf space. Six shelves, two deep.

Here's how the math behind that works:

We used to exhange houses with people with similar interests. One of our exhangers was a bachelor in Santa Barabra who lived to cook and claimed to have 4,000 cookbooks. When we arrived I surveyed two sets of metal industrial shelves in his basement full of (I suppose) 4,000 volumes.

The guy was also suppose to have some abalone for me in one of four freezers in the place. After opening one freezer, andgetting a peek at the permanent mess in a beautiful kitchen, my wife decided we would eat out the rest of the trip. The man was very picky, though. His last girlfriend, who tried to tidy his kitchen, was sent packing out the door.

I guess my favorite cookbooks would the Time-Life series that Olney edited. I never use them but after reading his bio I became currious about all the work this project required. My most used would be Beard's Art of American Cookery which is going on its secon re-bind.

Dave

[Adam Balic]

Did I mention "originals"?

No - no, you didn't, and indeed I had noticed that. But I do seem to remember you, somewhere up-thread, referring to the "oldest" cookbook in your collection as being 271 years old; thus exciting a certain amount of openly-expressed reverence for its antiquity which I don't believe you debunked.

271? Well if I said that then I lied, the MacIver is the oldest and it is only ~240 years old.

Only Meg Dodds and MacIver are originals (plus a Mrs Marshall's other recipes), both purchased for £10 in junk shops. The Dodds is an amazing book, much, much more deserving then Beeton.

Amazing, yes, and a marvelous source and a wonderful read - but more deserving? I'd hesitate to call it that - not to mention that it's hardly fair when you consider that Mrs. Beeton was an actual person (and one whose unprecedented achievement is made the more extraordinary by her having died at 26!) whereas Meg Dods was a fictitious one, and her book in essence a form of historical fiction. That doesn't make it any less valuable or delicious (though oh! how I wish that even the modern edition were indexed in a more practical fashion), but I think it does make the comparison one of apples and oranges. Not to mention that the two are 40 eventful years apart, and that they reflect very very different periods and mores. I love them both, and wouldn't want to be without either one.

Yes, but Beeton only had a hand in the first edition (not bad if plain) or so, the later versions (which is what 99% of people actually used) by Ward & Lock were Beetonless and in some cases plain nasty (endless stock pots etc). Meg Dods was fictitious figure (still trying to work out who the exact author and if Scott made direct contributions), as were many of the other 'characters', but the food was real enough. On the British Cuisine thread some of the discussion forcussed on where it all went pear shaped, foodwise in Britian, I personally blame some of this on process of 'Industrial Beetonisation' and can imagine an infinely better British food world were it was the fictitious figure of Meg Dods who was made into a British Domestic Food Goddess, and not poor Isabella.

As you can imagine, I am privately much annoyed that out of the hugh number of British cook books, it is Beeton that is most often refered to by food writers and food celeb people. Bah to that I say.

What is interesting about reading these books is that food, historically speaking, is like people, very complicated that is. As much as people talk about food development in a linear, post-Darwinian, reductionist way, when you read the books, that comes across as a load of old tosh. One only has to compare Fettiplace, May and Digby to see how diverse people were in their eating habits. MacIver one hundred years later was closer to May then to contempory writers down south in many ways.

What is also very curious is how the old model of balancing the different elements (humours even) of an individual dish to produce a synergy of flavours etc, that was replaced by the more 'natralistic' focus on enhancing the flavour of one or few elements in a dish, has now become the norm for contempory food in Britian. Why May et al. ate spiced stews, Mr/Mrs/Miss Average Brit now prefers to eat a curry. Is this a result of the British public finally throwing of the shackles of Frenchified German cooking or is it simply the last retreat of the average eater when a prime rib roast, a leg of sweet lamb or even decent chicken has become expensive items for a niche market?

Edited March 4, 2004 by Adam Balic (log)

[balmagowry]

Did I mention "originals"?

No - no, you didn't, and indeed I had noticed that. But I do seem to remember you, somewhere up-thread, referring to the "oldest" cookbook in your collection as being 271 years old; thus exciting a certain amount of openly-expressed reverence for its antiquity which I don't believe you debunked.

271? Well if I said that then I lied, the MacIver is the oldest and it is only ~240 years old.

Tsk. There, see? I knew you weren't to be trusted. (Actually, it's probably my memory that isn't to be trusted - I didn't bother to scan the thread and verify the number. Sorry!)

Yes, but Beeton only had a hand in the first edition (not bad if plain) or so, the later versions (which is what 99% of people actually used) by Ward & Lock were Beetonless and in some cases plain nasty (endless stock pots etc).

Gad, shows you what happens when you indulge in tunnel vision; I wasn't even thinking of anything beyond the original 1861 edition (or facsimile reprint thereof), to which my remarks apply (and of course I stand by them). I've always steered clear of the subsequent editions, and... simply forgot that in that as in most things I occupy a tiny minority. :sigh: IAC, it troubles me to see the subsequent outrages that were perpetuated in her name laid at her door; she herself, poor corpse, had nothing to do with them. And I doubt she'd have approved any of them.

As to the "not bad if plain" remark - again I think you have to take it in context and to consider the other virtues and innovations of the production, especially given its target audience. Compare its wealth of detail and explanation, its organized plan and layout, its informative essays on fish and fowl (so what if they were lifted verbatim from one of Sam Beeton's other serials), to Francatelli's Plain Shilling Cookery for the Working Classes or Soyer's comparable work of the same period. Sure - Beeton is not the most enthralling reading today or even necessarily the best source for the inspired cookery of her time; sure, her name has been taken in vain and cheapened accordingly since then; sure, as a culino-literary personality she isn't a patch on Meg or even on real people of the same period, like Eliza Acton - but I don't think any of that takes away from her achievement or her character.

Sorry about the rant - can you tell I've been reading Beeton biographies lately? I keep wanting to paraphrase - was it Viktor Borge? - on Mozart: when Isabella Beeton was my age she had been dead for 20 years!

Meg Dods was fictitious figure (still trying to work out who the exact author and if Scott made direct contributions), as were many of the other 'characters', but the food was real enough.

That's for sure; and the recipes themselves are certainly top-hole. And I love the way she prides herself on all the French bits (take that, Hannah Glasse!). I thought the authorship question had been resolved, though. I seem to remember that the actual author was one verifiable Christine Johnstone; as for Scott's share, yes that's still uncertain but I sort of gathered that his chief contribution was the invention of Meg herself, along with the Cleikum Club and its denizens. (I can certainly see him writing the dialogue and scenarios, can't you? and having a merry time of it.)

On the British Cuisine thread some of the discussion forcussed on where it all went pear shaped, foodwise in Britian, I personally blame some of this on process of 'Industrial Beetonisation' and can imagine an infinely better British food world were it was the fictitious figure of Meg Dods who was made into a British Domestic Food Goddess, and not poor Isabella.

I suspect you are entirely right about this; but again, it is hardly fair to make such a metaphysical speculation without considering the other factors of the time. Isabella, producing her book some 36 years after Meg's, was responding to a demand generated in part by other industrial phenomena which predated it. As well blame the whole damn Industrial Revolution on her! Not to argue for a moment with your pear-shaped premise, I still think that putting it all on that one pair of slim shoulders is a bit over the top. Beeton was an effect, rather than a cause, of some of the mediocre values of the Victorian age. The results are still deplorable; but an eager bourgeois public and a responsive if predatory commercial operation (don't get me started about Ward Locke's exploitation and destruction of Sam Beeton!) are responsible for that. Was the Great British Public, mid-19th-century, of a calibre to appreciate and accept the marvel that was Meg? Apparently not. Or the Scott imprimatur would surely have been enough to secure her rightful place for posterity.

I'm sorry to go on so long and (probably) so redundantly, but the structure of the original Beeton, the exactness of measurements and the primers on ingredients and the estimates of costs, was so obviously and so reassuringly the answer to a tremendous need on the part of a public newly awakened to such things. In a lot of ways it's the Joy of Cooking of its time: not the most exciting source, not always entirely accurate, but a generally reliable and sympathetic fallback for a wide range of basics, in a world where young housewives badly needed such because few of them were learning it at their mothers' (or anyone else's) knees.

As you can imagine, I am privately much annoyed that out of the hugh number of British cook books, it is Beeton that is most often refered to by food writers and food celeb people. Bah to that I say.

No argument. None.

[Reluctantly snipped here: the whole bit about food being complicated like people; snipped because it's too enthralling a subject, and if you think I'm going on interminably now, I assure you that's nothing to what I could do on that topic. But Restraint 'R' Me. For now, anyway.]

What is also very curious is how the old model of balancing the different elements (humours even) of an individual dish to produce a synergy of flavours etc, that was replaced by the more 'natralistic' focus on enhancing the flavour of one or few elements in a dish, has now become the norm for contempory food in Britian. Why May et al. ate spiced stews, Mr/Mrs/Miss Average Brit now prefers to eat a curry. Is this a result of the British public finally throwing of the shackles of Frenchified German cooking or is it simply the last retreat of the average eater when a prime rib roast, a leg of sweet lamb or even decent chicken has become expensive items for a niche market?

Neither, I suspect. (Uh-oh, we're touching on another of my hobby horses....) I think that from the 14th century to the 19th, the significance of the humors/elements model stayed in sync with the relationship between food and medicine. That is to say, as the latter became an art/science in & of itself, and gradually became distinct from the culinary art/science, the humors and elements went with it and fell on the health side, rather than the taste side, of the divide. Meanwhile, back in the culinary department, the more subjective concept of flavor was undergoing a natural evolution of its own. (N.B. none of this restricted to English cooking - it's equally true if not more so in French and Italian. German I can't speak to, but odds are it isn't dissimilar.)

What I find fascinating in this progression is that, if you take a really broad look at French (and to a lesser degree English) writings on that subject from one century to the next, each one seems to decry the previous period's mish-mosh-of-flavors fashions and to pride itself on "inventing" the concept of having each dish taste recognizably of itself and of its main ingredient (or indeed, in extreme cases, of even having a main ingredient). Yet the recipes associated with such writings all appear, to the modern eye and palate, to be absolutely incomprehensible mish-moshes themselves!

Of course, what's actually happening is a gradual and subtle evolution. No matter how overwrought and indistinguishable the mixtures in Carême's recipes may appear (I'm thinking of the Boston Culinary Friends' experiment in which Barbara Wheaton reported that all the dishes, disappointingly, tasted pretty much the same; compare this to Voltaire's similarly plaintive remarks in the 17th century!), they are at least a great deal less so than those of his predecessors; those of his successors, in turn, continue that progression... until gradually the statement actually becomes true. In the 18th century, English cooks complained vigorously about the over-the-top qualities of French cooking while at the same time quietly adopting many of them. During the 19th century, oddly, those French shackles were doing as much to refine and simplify English cooking as they were to complicate and obfuscate. Go figure.

But all this applies to high-falutin' big-city cuisine. Meanwhile, back on the farm, things don't change much; cooking still bases itself on common sense and fresh local ingredients, hewing pretty close to the cut-off-the-joint-and-two-veg model.

At what point and why the urban and rural models converged and homogenized and then re-branched along different social dividing lines - OK, on this my notions are much more vague, partly because it gets out of my period (i.e., dangerously close to my own lifetime, about which I've thought relatively little). There's an obvious historical logic to it, but one which (fortunately) I at least haven't explored in detail. But I think the point I'm driving at, in my incredibly long-winded way, is this: by the time the pendulum of your Average Brit family starts swinging from the straightforward joint back toward curry and its ilk, it's for completely different reasons. Where the spiced stews of May's time are prompted - or justified - by the laws of the balance of humors/elements, the curries of today are a collectively acquired taste. They came into play by way of empire, and they stayed there because people got used to eating them and learned to like them. Go back to the origins of curries and you get right back into eastern variations on the humors/elements business. But that has nothing to do with why the Average Brit eats them today. Today it's a matter of palate rather than health.

(Ironically, today we have the science of nutrition and the pseudo-science of fashionable diet schemes taking us right back toward the convergence of food and health that was a hallmark of medieval and renaissance cuisine. But... oy, gevalt - stop me, someone, before I digress again! :whew - someone mercifully Gets The Hook:)

Edited March 4, 2004 by balmagowry (log)

[maggiethecat]

  I guess my favorite cookbooks  would the Time-Life series that Olney edited.  I never use them but  after reading his bio I became currious about all the work this project required.  My most used would be Beard's Art of American Cookery which is going on its secon re-bind.

Dave

55,429.

Adam and balma: I'm going to have to pull out my Mrs. Beeton. Great discussion.

DRColby: The Time-Life series is a personal favorite of mine, and has a cultish following among some of us at eGullet. But please, oh please: cook from them! The recipes are first-rate, well tested and still "modern."

[Dahomechef]

Another newbie here. Fascinating discussion. After skimming this prodigious thread, went and counted: 47 in the kitchen, 5 on the nightstand, and about 75 in boxes, total of 127. Humble, but they're mine.

Recent favorites: RLB's "The Bread Bible" and, just purchased in order to participate in another EG thread, "Baking With Julia."

Joel

[maggiethecat]

55,556.

Welcome, dahomechef! I got the RLB around Christmas, and I've learned a ton, including not to be nervous because the batter for the fabulous focaccia seems way too liquid.

[balmagowry]

Adam and balma: I'm going to have to pull out my Mrs. Beeton.  Great discussion.

:sheepishly scuffs toes on floor:

Thanks, Maggie! I was sure you were going to kick us off to some other thread for getting OT. Just... can't... seem... to... help... it....

Oh well, at least it's not entirely unrelated.

(BTW, Kelly bio of Carême has arrived, as has the first of the eBay haul. But I think they got tallied when I ordered them.)

DRColby: The Time-Life series is a personal favorite of mine, and has a cultish following among some of us at eHullet.  But please, oh please: cook from them!  The recipes are first-rate, well tested and still "modern."

Not to mention marvelously and beguilingly written, in many cases, by superb writers. The perfect combination. I do occasionally get frustrated by the slight discrepancies as to which recipes appear in the big books and which in the accompanying recipe books (and Murphy's Law dictates that it's always the one thing you want that isn't where you want it). But that's a minor quibble in the face of the overall high quality.

(Where do I go to sign up for the cult? Crackpots of the world, unite and... cook!)

[Adam Balic]

balmagowry - while we are slightly off topic (well we are discussing cook books after all) I shall refrain from Beeton v Dods, other to say that I have not Beeton problem pre-1862 and that pontentially there is a PhD in comparing Ward & Locke's relationship with the Beetons and the modern marketing of certain food celebs.

But Humours and Curry is a worthy subject. If one were to pick a date and individual as a culinary historical marker, La Varrene and 1650 are good to go for the begining of 'Modern Cooking' (note: gross over simplification alert). One quickly notes that although the effects were similar in France and England, the circumstances were rather different. Also, one notes that in many English individuals, while there was a rejection of spiceries etc, they keep the voguish obsession with the Galenoid humours. Furthermore, one sees the adoption of the modern cooking philosophy before practical matters such as improvement of the animal types that were been eaten or stoves. I suspect that in these matters people, as ever, where somewhat blind. What things actually taste like is much less important then what people think they taste like.

If I went to Digby's for dinner I would skip the mains (unless it was pye) and go straight for dessert (beef boiled for two days does not appeal). The point (!) being that that this new food was inpractical in many ways, but it was what fashionable people wanted or thought they wanted. The same was true for May et al. obviously, his food was just as 'fashionable' in its own time. Humours etc are just the window dressing for justifiaction of the fashionable. Same with curries and accquired palate etc.

What is often mis-remembed is that 'curries' are modern. Sure there are 19th C. curries and mention of cury in the 1500's, but these are nto really related to the current British . No real direct linagages for instance. Most curries of are terrible in a delicious type of way. Bad quality pre-cooked chicken/lamb dipped in one of half a dozen standardised sauces. Taste? Palate? Obviously, but fashionable and serving a purpose in its own way as well. Exactly like May's and Varenne's coking in there own turn.

The 350 year dominance of the 'prime ingredient' is over, now is the begining of the return of the 'balanced elements'. The 'Curry' is just the for-runner.

[John Whiting]

I keep wanting to paraphrase - was it Viktor Borge? - on Mozart: when Isabella Beeton was my age she had been dead for 20 years!

It was Tom Lehrer: "When Mozart was my age he'd been dead for three years."

I prefer to think of Verdi. When he was my age, he was just warming up.

[balmagowry]

balmagowry - while we are slightly off topic (well we are discussing cook books after all) I shall refrain from Beeton v Dods, other to say that I have not Beeton problem pre-1862 and that pontentially there is a PhD in comparing Ward & Locke's relationship with the Beetons and the modern marketing of certain food celebs.

Yes, well, that's been the fun thing about this argument all along - we never actually did disagree, especially as to the relative intrinsic and entertainment merits of Dods and Beeton. (Might have been a bit different if I'd bought the full half-hour....)

But Humours and Curry is a worthy subject. If one were to pick a date and individual as a culinary historical marker, La Varrene and 1650 are good to go for the begining of 'Modern Cooking' (note: gross over simplification alert). One quickly notes that although the effects were similar in France and England, the circumstances were rather different. Also, one notes that in many English individuals, while there was a rejection of spiceries etc, they keep the voguish obsession with the Galenoid humours. Furthermore, one sees the adoption of the modern cooking philosophy before practical matters such as improvement of the animal types that were been eaten or stoves. I suspect that in these matters people, as ever, where somewhat blind. What things actually taste like is much less important then what people think they taste like.

Oooh, metaphysics and philosophy and stuff. I like it. I like it a lot. Oddly enough, just minutes ago I was expounding, in a different venue and context, on the modest and utterly unpretentious question, "what is truth?" - suggesting that what people believe (consciously or otherwise) is often more deeply true, or at any rate far more important to the course of history, than the plain unvarnished facts which either underlie or belie the belief. Why indeed should this not be the case with people's palates as well? To look at one really obvious example, there's the previous mention of acquired tastes. Some tastes take a lot of acquiring. Do I really love coffee? or did I just talk myself into loving it because it would have been uncool, when I first thought to demonstrate my grown-up-ness by drinking it, to admit honestly that it seemed to me foully bitter? And if I do now love it as much as I claim to, at what point did that stop being pretense and pretension and start being absolute cross-my-heart truth? And how hard did I have to push myself to make it so? I don't know the answer to this, but I do know it applies to an awful lot of flavor questions, most of them certainly a lot more subtle than this example. And you are certainly spot-on with the social snobbery involved, the peer pressure element (tobacco, anyone?), the... uh-oh, I just realized that might not be quite what you meant. Damn. Oh well, it's still an interesting phenomenon, she insisted lamely.

What is often mis-remembed is that 'curries' are modern. Sure there are 19th C. curries and mention of cury in the 1500's, but these are nto really related to the current British . No real direct linagages for instance. Most curries of are terrible in a delicious type of way. Bad quality pre-cooked chicken/lamb dipped in one of half a dozen standardised sauces. Taste? Palate? Obviously, but fashionable and serving a purpose in its own way as well. Exactly like May's and Varenne's coking in there own turn.

True. OK, then I wasn't far off-base above after all. There is also another point to consider, which is that the term "curry" covers such a very broad multitude of sins - er, meanings. Even if you stipulate "authentic" (ha!). In the same London you can find both the gawdawful terrible-delicious glop you describe and also some perfectly serious and excellent faithful imports - and linguistically they are all lumped under that same heading of "curry." So it's probably important, in discussing a national propensity toward curry-eating, to specify which forme of cury is in play. I guess what I was trying to get at was simply that though what we now call "curry" may bear practically no resemblance to the "curry" we first encountered or even to the curries of the Raj (my favorite example of curry bastardization being the 1730 Charles Carter version, so smothered in butter that it's a wonder one can taste anything else), still in the mind of the curry eater it bodies forth that sequence of events from an ancestral past in which some intrepid soul tasted a foreign dish, liked it (or was politic enough to pretend to like it!), and forthwith took it unto his bosom and that of his compatriots.

I still contend that whether they like it or just think they like it, the British adopters of curry gave nary a thought to its humor balance, 'cos it was "furrin" and exotic and that humor business was oh, just so last century.

The 350 year dominance of the 'prime ingredient' is over, now is the begining of the return of the 'balanced elements'. The 'Curry' is just the for-runner.

And WE are leading the revolution!

Huzzah!

Fly the Banner of Homogeneity from the battlements!

An Apocalyptic Horseman to every Element!

Down with the Main Ingredient Usurper!

Up the humor-balanced masses!

Bow, bow, ye lower middle classes!

Let the--

:suddenly collapses in an ecstasy of over-enthusiasm

and is bundled unceremoniously onto her shield,

still mumbling unintelligibly and frothing at the mouth,

and hurriedly carried off the field by embarrassed eGulletarians:

[balmagowry]

I keep wanting to paraphrase - was it Viktor Borge? - on Mozart: when Isabella Beeton was my age she had been dead for 20 years!

It was Tom Lehrer: "When Mozart was my age he'd been dead for three years."

Really? How passing strange. I love Lehrer but am not all that intimately familiar with hiw work; what an unlikely thing for me to quote.

Hmmmm, now you've got me suspicious - not that I doubt you but that in my mind's ear I can so clearly hear Borge saying it, now that I know it's someone else's. I wonder....

I prefer to think of Verdi. When he was my age, he was just warming up.

Yes, but there's always the risk of taking it too many steps farther. "So hat Joachim gekratzt." "Yes, but you should have heard how wonderfully he played 20 years ago."

[balmagowry]

I keep wanting to paraphrase - was it Viktor Borge? - on Mozart: when Isabella Beeton was my age she had been dead for 20 years!

It was Tom Lehrer: "When Mozart was my age he'd been dead for three years."

Really? How passing strange. I love Lehrer but am not all that intimately familiar with hiw work; what an unlikely thing for me to quote.

Hmmmm, now you've got me suspicious - not that I doubt you but that in my mind's ear I can so clearly hear Borge saying it, now that I know it's someone else's. I wonder...

"It is a sobering thought," as Lehrer said in preface to the Mozart remark, how very, very many people have borrowed it, and for how many purposes. Borge doesn't seem to be among them, though. Go figure.

Then again, there's always (ooh, ooh, watch me mis-attribute this one too) Benchley's "I don't know which Mozart you're talking about...."

[balmagowry]

(BTW, Kelly bio of Carême has arrived, as has the first of the eBay haul. But I think they got tallied when I ordered them.)

If I had any shame at all, I'd let someone else get a post in edgewise here. At least I have the grace to suggest I oughta be ashamed. But I can't help it - I have to crow about the latest eccentric acquisition! Just a little.... (It has quite distracted me from the Kelly, which I owe it to myself - and several other people - to read toot-sweet.)

The "first of the eBay haul" is in fact the Pictorial Review Standard Cook Book, sub-titled "A Guide for Every Bride." I must first showcase my ignorance by wondering why Pictorial, since there's nary a picture in it - except a few line drawings toward the end, in the section on Sewing Patterns... yes, it's that kind of book. (OK, OK, I do know why Pictorial, that being the name of the publisher, but I still think it's amusing.) It's the 1932 edition of a book that first came out in 1931, and the first thing to enthral me upon opening it are two reassuring announcements; one an affidavit to the effect that all of the recipes have been tested under home conditions in "an actual kitchen" (whew!); the other a comforting assurance that "The Cover of this Pictorial Review Book is WASHABLE," that you can safely wash it with a damp cloth and soap, and it will come out "as fresh and clean as when you took it from its wrapper."

I'm in love.

I lied, though. Those announcements weren't really the first thing to be seen or to enthral. That distinction belongs to the two small newspaper clippings carefully cut out and glued onto the first endpaper. "Molasses Egg Nog Makes Good PickUp," reads the headline on one. Yeah, I'll bet.

At the back, starting 1/4" below the end of the index, several pages solidly covered with similar clippings, though many are longer and not all are recipes. But every one of them has something to grab me. Curiously, about half of them are in German, many of those in Altschrift. I'm having a little trouble deciphering some of those because the paper is so old and in places so smudged; I can already tell, though, that it's going to be worth the effort, because quite a few of them are lists of pithy little aphorisms with headings like (roughly) "Things to think about."

The reason I say "curiously" is that the one clipping that indicates a date (from what might by the look of it have been the New York Times) is a column of "New Year's Resolutions for the American Housewife" that begins:

For 1942 we American Homemakers resolve:

- To keep up family morale by keeping up meal and home standards.

- To plan meals for steadier nerves, using more liver, kidneys, whole grain cereals and breads, fish, veal, lamb and pork.

A recipe for Bread Pudding begins:

Bread puddings have been made for years, but not all of them have been good bread puddings...

Then there's an earnest article about the benefits of offal, euphemised not even as "variety meats" but as "meat sundries."

The joy!

But enough of this gloating. I must get back to work. First, though... I'm off to wash the cover with a damp cloth and soap.

Edited March 5, 2004 by balmagowry (log)

[FireWire]

Because I attend Univeristy, I can only really afford to carry one cook book around with me.

I take "How to Cook Everything" with me back and forth across the country.