by Tom Stobart
Much ovenware is stoneware with a greater porosity and higher resistance to thermal shock than average. Although it is not easily broken, ovenware can rarely be put on top of the naked flame of a gas stove.
[Stoneware – French: grès, potErie de grés German: Steingut Italian: lareggio Spanish: gres]
STRAWBERRY is unique among fruit in having the seeds dotted around on the outside rather than embedded within. Although strawberries are canned and frozen (neither with any great success) and are made into jam, they are above all a fruit for eating fresh: strawberries and cream has always been one of the great treats of the English summer. Because they are both easily damaged and highly perishable, strawberries used not to be sent great distances to market Nowadays, however, British greengrocers sell strawberries not just from southern Europe, which arrive some weeks before the home-grown ones, but from California and South Africa which supply out-of-season strawberries for the luxury market (which too often has to be satisfied by the visual experience rather than the flavour, which can be anything but luxurious).
To avoid damage in picking and to ensure that the fruit appears in perfect condition when it gets to market, the fruit farmers gather their strawberries before they are perfectly ripe, even if they have only to travel for a matter of hours. As always, though, fruit ripened on the plant has incomparably the best flavour. Now that increasing labour costs have persuaded farmers increasingly to invite people to pick their own fruit, strawberries are the ones that most repay the effort, as the farmers let the public go to work on fields of fully ripe fruit which may have gone too far to survive commercial distribution but are at their best for immediate consumption. It makes a fantastic difference if every strawberry in a bowl has been picked at its peak.
Strawberries are members of the rose family, low plants that spread by sending out runners which root at the end and thus form new plants -this makes them very easy to propagate vegetatively. The Wild strawberry of Britain and Europe, Fragario vesca, has small fruit with a fine flavour that is also found in the rather larger cultivated varieties which are known as Alpine strawberries or fraises de bois (at least one sort of which is white rather than red). A second species, the Hautboy or Hautbois strawberry (F. moschata) from central and eastern Europe, is now rarely grown; it has fruit with a musky flavour and without seeds at the stalk end. Both the European species went out of favour because they were not susceptible to much ‘improvement’ by the plant breeders, which meant above all that they could not be persuaded to produce large fruit Alpine strawberries are still grown commercially in Europe, for example in France, where flavour can still be as important as size. The two species have the advantage that they can be raised from seed and that for some reason their fruit is not taken by birds.
Modern strawberry varieties are all derived from North and South American species with seeds sunk in the surface of the fruit rather than sticking out from it. The first American species to arrive in Europe, in the early 17th century, was the Scarlet woodland strawberry (F. virginiono) from the eastern US. A variety of it, Little Scarlet, is still grown for jam-making. The Pine Strawberry (F. chiloensis) from the West Coast of South and North America was brought to Europe in the 18th century; its fruit, which is pink or whitish, is said to taste distinctly of pineapple. The Garden strawberry (F. X ononosso) is a hybrid of these two species, which in nature were separated geographically; it first appeared in France in the early 19th century but was quickly taken up elsewhere. There is now a plethora of varieties in all sizes from medium to gigantic to fit particular local conditions. How good any of them are can be determined only by tasting; appearance seems even less of a guide with strawberries than with any other fruit.
[Strawberry – French: fraise German: Erdbeere Italian: fragola Spanish: fresa, fresón]
STRAWBERRY TOMATO. See physalis fruit
STRAWBERRY TREE. See cranberry.
STRING BEAN. See kidney bean. US term for green bean or French bean.
STUFFING, FORCEMEAT and FILLING. It is unnecessary to try distinguishing exactly between these inexact words. They are all preparations that are put inside something, although forcemeats are occasionally rolled into balls and fried or cooked alongside the main ingredient Stuffings must be suitable; you should not stuff something that has a delicate flavour with a strong stuffing that would overwhelm it, and it is sensible to stuff a fat goose with something absorbent and a dry guinea fowl with something juicy. Some stuffings are intended to flavour and are not expected to be eaten, like the handful of tarragon in the chicken, or an orange in a duck. When foods are stuffed, especially with a raw stuffing, they take longer to cook, which can sometimes be a disadvantage. Stuffings absorb flavour and juices from whatever they are inside, which they do not if they are cooked separately Some dishes – ravioli, cannelloni or crépinettes, for instance – are stuffing done up in parcels. Other stuffings are there because the article concerned was clearly created to be stuffed – squid and sweet peppers are examples. Some made-up stuffed dishes, like cucumbers stuffed with mince and sauced with sour cream, make an economical dish from ingredients which would otherwise be formless, but there are also stuffed foods which are no more than a fantasy or a gimmick. Stuffings are worth some thought and trouble. They are not leftovers or things to be bought ready-made in a packet.
The general rule for the quantity of stuffing is 1 cup per 450 g (1 lb) for birds and about half that amount for fish. A simple stuffing for birds is made from 150 g (6 oz) of fresh breadcrumbs, 100 g (4 oz) of butter and an egg, if binding is necessary Flavourings to be included are onion (parboiled), thyme and grated lemon zest, or sage, fruit, nuts, herbs of many kinds, and celery, but not all together. Always adjust the salt and sourness (with lemon juice) and check carefully by tasting.
Stuffing for Tortelloni
Mix together 250 g (9 oz) ricotta cheese, 50 g (2 oz) cooked spinach, a good grate of nutmeg, 2 eggs, 150 g (5 oz) Parmesan cheese, salt, and a finely-pounded clove of garlic, at your discretion. Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary Roll *pasta out to rather over 1 mm (say about in) thick, cut it in 5-6 cm (2-2½ in) diameter circles or squares, put filling on each piece, fold it over, seal the edge and press the ends together. Boil it for 4-5 minutes in salted water and serve with butter, tomato sauce and grated Parmesan cheese.
Rice Stuffing for Tomatoes
Take 4 beautiful large ripe tomatoes. Cut off a lid, scoop out the middle (keeping the flesh and juice) and sprinkle the insides with salt, pepper and a little olive oil. Put 4 dessertspoons of cooked rice in a bowl and add some chopped parsley and chopped basil, a crushed clove of garlic, a pinch of oregano, several spoons of olive oil and the juice and flesh of the tomato. Mix well and then remove the garlic, which is there to give only a taste. Divide the stuffing among the tomatoes, and replace their tops. Put them in a fireproof dish, standing each tomato on a slice of cooked or raw potato. Sprinkle with oil and cook in a hot oven for 45 minutes. Serve hot or cold as an hors d’oeuvre.
Stuffings for Fish
1) a ½ cup of chopped parsley, a pinch of chopped fresh thyme and 2 or 3 crushed juniper berries mixed with 3 tablespoons olive oil.
Alternatively 2) a cup of chopped sorrel and ½ cup chopped spinach, both raw, a little garlic, ¼ cup breadcrumbs, 4 finely-chopped mushrooms, salt and pepper, mix together and bind with an egg and a couple of tablespoons of cream.
[Stuffing – French: farce German: Füllsel, FüIlung Italian: ripieno Spanish: relleno]
STURGEON. There are over two dozen species of sturgeon, all found in the Northern hemisphere. They live in the sea or in very large lakes, but, like salmon, they swim up the rivers to spawn. Many species are armoured with plates and have a shark like tail. Their weird, pre-historic appearance is not entirely misleading- they have many ancient characteristics and zoologically are classified somewhere between cartilaginous fishes and bony fishes. They are bottom-feeders, with no teeth, and are quite harmless.
Sturgeon are known mainly for
the *caviar they provide, but their swim bladders make the finest *isinglass, and dried sturgeon spine is viziga, which is used in the legendary Russian fish pie, coulibiac. The head of the sturgeon is especially valued in some countries because of the variety of different types of flesh in it, but most species are not much prized for their flesh in the countries where they are common. Sturgeon is a meaty. pink-fleshed fish, very suitable for grilling, but the ones I have eaten have a peculiar taste, perhaps because they have been slurping mud at the bottom of the Caspian. The exception is the small sterlet (Acipenser ruthenus) of the Black and Caspian Seas which goes up the Danube to spawn (or did) and which I have eaten in Budapest and Belgrade. Other species are better after heavy marinating in vinegar or wine to kill the taste of sturgeon.
The Atlantic sturgeon (A sturio), which reaches fish shops on occasion, is found in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, but not in the Black Sea. The sevruga (A stellatus), the osciotre (A guldenstädtii), and the giant belgua (Huso huso) are found from the Black Sea through the Caspian to the Sea of Azov – the osciotre as far as Lake Baikal. The North American species A. rubicundus of the Great Lakes is (or was) important. Smoked sturgeon, as made in Turkey, is considered a great delicacy which, with smoked sword fish, is sometimes held to be the equal of smoked salmon (but I feel that no-one understands smoking as do northern Europeans). Like smoked salmon, it must be cut thin and along the side.
[Sturgeon – French: esturgeon German: Stör Italian: storione Spanish: esturión]
SUCCORY. See chicory.
SUCROSE. See sugar.
SUET is the hard fat from around the kidneys of beef or mutton, beef being better flavoured and more usually used in cooking. Suet was formerly more important as an ingredient than it is today, especially in Britain and the US. Such famous old fare as suet pudding, steak and kidney pudding, suet dumplings, spotted dick and jam roll all depend on it. Today, most people buy ready-prepared suet in packets and would not know how to start from scratch if they suddenly needed it in a country where the packets are not available (which, in fact, is most countries), but fresh suet has the best taste.
Take the fat from around beef kidneys, and with the fingers free it from as much connective tissue as possible. Dust the suet liberally with part of the flour that has been weighed to be used in the pastry and chop it with a sharp knife, dusting on more flour to prevent the knife sticking to the suet when it seems necessary. Continue chopping until you judge it fine enough to make pastry. Once freed from the membranes, suet will keep for weeks in the refrigerator.
[Suet – French: graisse de rognon German: Nierenfett Italian: grasso di bue Spanish: sebo, sain]
SUGAR normally means sucrose (C12H22O11), the sugar of sugar cane and sugar beet. More generally, sugars are carbohydrates made by green plants from carbon dioxide and water, using the energy of sunlight. In the process, carbon dioxide is removed from the air and oxygen returned to it. When we use sugars in our bodies, we reverse the process, turning carbohydrate to carbon dioxide and water, and using the energy that is released. We take in oxygen and put out carbon dioxide. There are three main grades of carbohydrate – in ascending order of complexity:
1) the simple sugars, the monosaccharides, such as *glucose, *fructose and *galactose.
2) the more complex sugars, the disaccharides, like sucrose (cane or beet sugar), *maltose (malt sugar) and *lactose (milk sugar), with molecules that are two molecules of simple sugars joined together.
3) the most complex carbohydrates, the polysaccharides, like *starch, cellulose (of plant cell walls) and glycogen (animal starch as stored in the liver), which are many molecules of simpler sugars joined together.
Plants commonly store food in the form of starch grains, which are virtually insoluble in the watery cell fluid, but some store it as sugar. They also produce quantities of sugars (but not of starch) in ripe fruits, and sugar flavours the nectar of flowers. Both nectar in flowers and the sweetness of ripe fruits are means by which plants bribe animals to assist them, respectively in reproducing and spreading their seeds.
Sugars are all sweet but not equally so. They may be compared by giving sucrose a mark of 100, when others on the scale are as follows:
fructose 173
sucrose 100
glucose 74
maltose 32
lactose 16
Looking at these, one may well wonder if the making up of babies’ bottle milk formulae from dried cow’s milk with the sugar content increased with sucrose instead of lactose is not training modern man to a fattening sweet tooth.
The earliest sweeteners were honey, sweet fruit and syrups concentrated from fruit – an example is the *dibs made in the Lebanon. *Maple syrup and maple sugar were being made by the American Indians long before settlers arrived from Europe, and probably palm sugar, which is also made by boiling down sap, was made before cane sugar, as this involved squeezing out the juice, a slightly more advanced technology. Today, highly purified sucrose extracted from either sugar cane or sugar beet is the almost universal sweetener.
Sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum) is a huge grass which grows higher than a man’s head and has a thick, solid stem that contains as much as 10-15% of sugar. There are varieties for chewing, but their taste is a flat sweetness that is not relieved by any balancing acidity. The plant is a native of tropical Asia and needs a hot climate. Legend suggests that the Polynesians were the first to use sugar cane as a source of sweetness. However, it was certainly known in India at a very early date, as the word sugar derives from Sanskrit. In 510 BC, the Persians noted sugar in use in the Indus Valley, and during Alexander the Great’s invasion, the Greeks also learned about it. It was still crude brown sugar, of the type of *jaggery, and nothing at all like the refined white sugar of today. Later, sugar cane was taken to Persia, where the first refineries were set up in the 7th century AD by the Arabs who, being chemists, made technological improvements, such as the addition of alkali. Sugar was by then used in medicine to preserve it and to disguise the taste of drugs. It was also the Arabs who first introduced sugar to Europe, and sugar cane was grown in some warm areas including Cyprus, Sicily and Andalusia, although it does not really thrive in a Mediterranean climate. It was taken to Madeira around 1420. However, by the end of the 15th century Venice had become the sugar-trading centre of Europe; most of the sugar was brought from the Orient, and it was vastly expensive. One of the first references to it in Britain is to a cargo of 100,000 lb which arrived in London in 1519, and which the Venetians exchanged for wool.
Columbus took canes to America from the Canary Islands during his second voyage in 1493.They were first planted at his headquarters on the island of San Domingo in the Caribbean, where he reported the canes grew faster than anywhere else in the world. Soon they were taken to other Caribbean islands and to the mainland, for example to Brazil. The planters who grew the ‘white gold’ became vastly rich. By the early 18th century, the West Indies was the main source of supply and it was a prime reason for the slave trade. The first refinery in England had been built in 1544, but sugar was still very costly. In the 18th century, when coffee and tea drinking became the vogue, the demand for sugar increased sharply. In 1700, the whole of Britain used a mere 10,000 tons, but by the end of the century consumption had grown to 150,000 tons per annum. An even more spectacular increase came after 1874, when Gladstone removed the tax which had previously kept sugar in the luxury class. By 1885, the yearly consumption had grown to over 1,000,000 tons. Today, Britain uses 2,300,000 tons a year. Of course, there has been an increase in population in the interim, but the quantity consumed shows that refined sugar is a major element in many people’s diets, to the tune of roughly 1 kg (about 2 lb) per person per week
Sugar from sugar beet (Beta vulgaris var. cicla) came as a direct result of the British blockade of Europe during the Napoleonic wars. In 1747, a German chemist, Andreas Marggraf found up to 6.2% of sugar in certain varieties of beet, but early efforts to exploit the discovery w
ere a commercial failure. lt was not until 1811, when Napoleon ordered an investment to be made in the process, that much progress was made. Later, the new crop was officially encouraged in Europe and North America. By 1880, beet had replaced cane as a source of sugar in a number of countries. Britain, however, still obtained most of its sugar from the West Indian colonies. Two World Wars, though, encouraged even the British to be as self-sufficient in sugar as possible. Today, the growing of beet, which has been improved to contain 15 to 20% of sugar, is still spreading; beet is even being grown in the north of India, a country associated with the origins of sugar cane production. At the moment, 40% of the world’s sugar comes from beet. Refined sugar is 99% sucrose; it is not possible to tell by taste whether it is from beet or cane, but sugar beet molasses is not nice and edible like cane molasses. It is a raw material for industry (e.g. in the making of*monosodium glutamate) and an animal foodstuff. There is thus no brown sugar from beet, unless it has been made artificially.
Primitive methods of sugar production are still to be seen in sugar producing countries. In India, for instance, the lovely smell of sugar in the making still pervades villages in the cold weather. The cane is passed between two large cog wheels turned by oxen, and the juice is boiled down in wide, open pans over a fire composed of the dross from the cane crushing. Lime is thrown in to neutralize the acids, and the surface is skimmed. Later, the dark brown, richly smelling, sticky jaggery is scraped from the pans. (Boiled with butter, jaggery makes just about the best toffee in the world.)
In the large factories, the extraction process, though sophisticated, is similar. A boiled mass of sugar crystals and sticky molasses is obtained which is called massecuite and is essentially the same as jaggery. But then the mixture is put into a centrifuge and the molasses is spun out. The residue is crude brown sugar, which is sticky, but less so than jaggery. Raw sugar sounds delicious, but, as imported in bulk, it is likely to be full of trash, soil, dirt, bacteria and moulds and even creatures called sugar lice (Carpoglyphus anonymus or Acarus sacchari). In the refineries, it is softened with warm syrup, centrifuged, strained, treated with lime and carbon dioxide, and decolourized with bone charcoal. Finally, the clear syrup is boiled under reduced pressure until the introduction of a small number of ‘seed’ crystals causes crystallization. Though refined, it is still a mixture of crystals and syrup and has to be centrifuged again and dried in granulators before it is ready to be graded by sieving.