Although he never says this, I believe that he intended it—not so much the finished book as the project itself—as a gift to his wife, Felicity (or Liccy, as she was called). The two of them worked on the book together, and it is, as its title suggests, a celebration of friendship and marriage through the recollection of shared pleasures at the table, pleasures that in their family only began with eating and drinking. Early on in its pages, he unabashedly confesses:
We are all pigs, but we are, I hope, discerning pigs who care with some passion about fine cooking. No lunch is ever eaten without a discussion or a criticism or an accolade.34
Dahl was an exceedingly complicated person, and, if you prod around a little between the lines of this quote, you can catch some resonances of this. “Treats!” was one of his favorite exclamations, and his role was that of both impresario and final arbiter of the feast. The cooking he left to hirelings, who, it is obvious, sooner or later found all that discussing and criticizing of their efforts too much to take. Even a stream of accolades can wear you down, especially since Dahl’s interest in his meals was not restricted to the dining room. He often stood right beside them while they worked, watching and asking questions.
Consequently, cooks came and went at Gipsy House, but that doesn’t mean that they necessarily left in a huff. Few cooks have the experience of working for a patron whose curiosity about them, their cooking methods, and their recipes is as lively and perceptive as his appetite. Most (if not all) of them—their personalities, as well as their recipes—are woven into the story here, which gives the impression that some personal connection lingers, however chary these women had become of remaining under the thumb of a demanding old man so completely at ease in having others attend to his comfort that he had no inhibitions about trailing around after them as they did so.
As we are about to see, Dahl’s self-centeredness, and the almost regal panache with which he wielded it, play an important part in our story. But first I have to admit to a small deceit. Although born in Wales of Norwegian parents, Dahl was entirely British in sensibility, and so he never once mentions the wordcookie in his narrative; what he writes, instead, is “biscuit”—as in “the best biscuits in the world.”
Of course, thisis the usual substitute when British culinary terms are made American—“aubergine” to “eggplant,” “sippit” to “crouton,” “liquidizer” to “blender.” But things go awry when it is then assumed that “mince”equals “hamburger,” or that “biscuit” equals “cookie.” The substance may be the same, but the gustatory, the cultural, weight is not.
The wordbiscuit in British English means both cracker and cookie, and this points us to a serious difference in connotation. The British feel about their “bikkies”—whether sweet or savory—much the same way we Americans do about crackers. We can get quite worked up over them—as revealed in a recent brouhaha between Mainers and Nabisco over Pilot crackers—but we don’t feel thathomemade crackers are by definition best. Even so, despite our national fondness for Oreos and Chips Ahoy, when it comes to cookies, we absolutely do.35
However, the biscuit about which Dahl writes here has the peculiar quality of being at once a biscuitand a cookie, which is to say that it magically transcends, or at least blurs, the distinction between store-bought and homemade. The reason I chose to misquote Dahl was not to add a false whet to our tale but to make clear from the outset what was going on. The claim may have been made by a Brit about something that in every way resembles a biscuit, but these are biscuits as worthy as any home-baked brownies or pecan crescents or lemon icebox crumbles to the title of—this time no quotation marks—The Best Cookies in the World.
Holland, as it happens, is a country full of bookshops designed especially for children—containing only children’s books, yes, but also child-sized chairs, tables, bookshelves, even low-ceilinged rooms that only children can enter. Because he loved such places, Dahl agreed to hold book signings in them, something he rarely did outside of Britain. And it was at such an event in the Dutch town of Arnhem that he first encountered the cookie.
As usual, by the time Dahl arrived kids were already lined up around the block, clutching their copies ofSjakie en de Chocoladefa-briek, and this was just the start. Down the street, Albert Hagdorn, the owner-baker of a small pastry shop at 14 Grote Oord, was watching this endless line of children snake past. He took pity on the madly scribbling author and sent a clerk over with
a small box of his own special biscuits. While my right hand kept signing, my left hand idly opened the box and fished out one. It was flat and thin and oval, and crystals of sugar were embedded in the top of it. I took a nibble. I took another nibble. I savoured it slowly. I took a big bite and chewed it. The taste and the texture were unbelievable. This, I told myself, is the best biscuit I’ve ever eaten in my life. I ate another and another, and each one I ate only strengthened my opinion. They were simply marvellous…. The lady who owned the bookshop was standing beside me.
“They’re wonderful,” I said.
“Ah, but they are famous, those biscuits,” she said. “They are known all over Holland as theArnhemse Meisjes. The proprietor makes them himself.”
Naturally, any cookie with a claim to being the best in the world is going to taste good, even very good, but there must be something else going for it besides that. The cookie also has to havecharacter. Character presents itself in cookies in many different ways, but the kind that appeals most to me might best be described as “exuding confidence in its own goodness.” That is what drew me in as I read the passage: the way this cookie’s self-confidence proved such an equal match to Dahl’s own.
This was good, because his own description of it—flat, thin, and oval, with crystals of sugar embedded in the top of it—hardly signaled anything special. It is not a cookie that, in the American manner, wraps its arm around your tongue and becomes its instant best buddy. Yet theseArnhemse Meisjes —“Arnhem Misses” or, as we shall simply call them, “Arnhems”—managed to seize the attention of a preoccupied writer in the midst of a crowd of children and make him—or at least his very critical palate—as swoony as a teenager in love.
Now we are about to see why Dahl’s personality is as important to this story as his palate. People who expect others to take care of them often also possess the power to induce even complete strangers to do just that. So, when he prevailed on the bookstore owner to go see if she could persuade Hagdorn to part with his famous recipe, she did not come to her senses—as she would have in the normal course of events—the moment she stepped out the door, quite sanely deciding—rather than risk a scornful snub—to take a walk around the block and return to say thatMijnheer Hagdorn was sincerely sorry, but this was a proprietary recipe that wasnever to be revealed toanyone.
Instead, dazzled by that flash from Dahl’s high-beam charm, she went straight to Hagdorn’s shop and inveigled the secret right out of him. To get some sense of the magnitude of this accomplishment, you need only know that when we sent our own two intrepid investigators to Arnhem (see page 213), they discovered that no one but Hagdorn’s successors at the same shop possesses the secret ofArnhemse Meisjes and that the few recipes for them that appear in local cookbooks aren’t even close to the mark. As far as the people who worked at Hagdorn were concerned, their recipe still had the status of a state secret.
Last, in true Roald Dahl style, there had to be an amazingly improbable stroke of luck. If Roald and Liccy had cooked for themselves, these precious instructions, written out in a foreign language, would most likely have been lost in a drawer. Instead, they had a cook, and, this one time, she was a Dutch cook—able to decipher Hagdorn’s terse notations and then cast them into a workable recipe, which duly appears at the end of Dahl’s story. It was at this point that, after giving that recipe a curious but quick glance, I closed the book, put it on the shelf, and left it there for five years. Dahl had persuaded me that this was a great cookie—had I chanced to pass through Arnhem, I would have headed str
aight to Hagdorn’s. But I rarely make cookies these days, and no baking project fills me with greater foreboding than to try to replicate a proprietary cookie from a recipe.
Except, except … I just couldn’t get them out of my mind. Dahl’s story had made its impression, certainly, but there was this little burr that had caught hold of me and wouldn’t brush off. It was the smallest thing: Arnhems are leavened with yeast, not baking powder; and in this household it is Matt who bakes with chemical leavenings and I who bake with yeast. That scant teaspoon of yeast had claimed me and wouldn’t let me go. So, finally, this winter, I gave in. I pulled Matt’s vintage Kitchen Aid electric mixer out of storage (it was the first time I had ever used one) and took downMemories with Food at Gipsy House.
What I discovered is that great-grandfather Hagdorn had created a buttery, unsweetened dough that was plastic enough to be rolled out almost to the thinness of egg noodle dough and unsticky enough to be rolled out on sugar crystals instead of flour. What this bakes into is the quintessential sugar cookie: buttery, extremely thin and crisp, the coating of sugar crystals adding crunch on top and underneath—where they have completely melted during the long, slow baking into a delicious caramel crust.
They are at once so simple that my version was as like the originals I was sent from Arnhem as to make no difference and so sophisticated that they are like no other cookie: the first time you taste them, your mouth is more astonished than it is delighted. The buttery, unsweetened body of the cookie reaches your tastebuds before the rock-sugar crystals melt on your tongue to provide the completing sweetness, a syncopated beat that tweaks your expectations, and gives the unadorned tastes of butter and sugar an exciting complexity that never stops surprising you, no matter how many Arnhems you eat. They make your mouth happy, but they also make it think.
ARNHEM COOKIES
[makes 1 pound of cookies (i.e., a lot)]
Although Arnhems are in most ways a pleasure to make (and will inspire in the experienced cookie maker all sorts of ideas), mixing the dough requires a powerful, stand-mounted electric mixer: don’t even think of using a handheld one or—for that matter—trying to make this dough by hand. (We suspect that a sturdy food processor set with a plastic kneading blade could manage this dough, but we haven’t tested that hypothesis.) However, Matt’s trusty old Kitchen Aid took it in its stride. Also: Please read through the recipe carefully before attempting to make these cookies; some forethought is required, as the cookie “the best cookies in the world“dough should be prepared several hours before you plan to bake the cookies.
1½ cups (7.5 ounces) all-purpose flour
½ cup plus 1 tablespoon (4.5 ounces) whole milk (see note)
teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
of a standard .6-ounce cube of fresh yeast or 1 scant teaspoon of dry yeast
teaspoon salt
1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into 8 cubes
about 1 cup crushed rock sugar or sugar crystals (see note)
a heavy-duty electric mixer fitted with a dough paddle
Combine the flour, milk, lemon juice, yeast (crumbling it into the mixture, if fresh), and salt into the bowl of the mixer or processor. Turn the machine on high. As soon as the contents of the bowl are well mixed, add the first cube of butter. Beat this into the mixture for 1 minute, then add the next cube, beating this into the mixture for 1 minute. Continue in the same way until all the butter has been amalgamated. The dough will be soft and elastic to the touch. Use a spatula or dough scraper to form it into a ball. Place it on a plate, cover it with a bowl, and set it in the refrigerator until cool, or about 2 hours. If you wish, you may leave it overnight.
When ready to make the cookies, preheat the oven to 275—F and line 2 standard cookie sheets with parchment paper (see note). Sprinkle the work surface on which you plan to roll out the dough with a coating of sugar crystals. Uncover the dough and, with a sharp kitchen knife, divide it in half. Form each half into a round ball.
Coat the first ball of dough thickly with sugar crystals and transfer it to the sugared working surface. There, use a rolling pin to gently roll it out as thinly as possible, pausing frequently to sprinkle it and the counter with more sugar crystals. Also, while this is still possible, periodically turn the dough over so that more sugar crystals can be sprinkled on the bottom surface. The thinner and more evenly the dough is rolled, the better (and more authentic) the cookies; it should be almost as thin as homemade egg-noodle dough.
If you wish, use a cookie cutter to cut the dough into ovals, the traditional shape. Otherwise, use a pizza cutter or sharp utility knife to cut them into rectangles, roughly 1 inch by 2 inches. Set the formed cookies onto one of the parchment-lined cookie pans and place this into the preheated oven. The cookies should be baked until their tops are caramel-colored and their bottoms a crisp brown. Dahl’s time is 30 to 45 minutes; we used insulated cookie pans, and our baking time was closer to an hour. While these bake, roll out and form the second batch of cookies in the same way.
Remove the baked cookies from the oven and—taking care with the hot pan—slide the parchment paper and cookies onto a wire cooling rack. Remove them from the paper as soon as they are cool enough to handle. They keep well for at least a week in an airtight container—but are best eaten within the first 2 or 3 days. (If your cookies have puffed up and have a chewy rather than crisp texture, they weren’t rolled thin enough. They’ll be good, but you won’t think them contenders for the world’s best cookies.)
Cook’s Notes.Amount of Milk: The exact quantity will depend on the type of flour you use. If your mixer struggles with the dough, dribble in more milk.
Sugar Crystals: Dahl writes that his own Arnhems were not quite as good as the real thing. This may be because his recipe substitutes crushed sugar cubes for the Dutchkandij suiker, amber crystals better known in this country as coffee sugar crystals. We used Billington’s amber crystal sugar, which is the ideal size—like fine gravel. But any amber coffee crystals will work well—larger ones should be crushed down to size with a rolling pin.36
Parchment Paper: Don’t substitute the new Teflon baking mats for parchment paper; these don’t work nearly as well when making these cookies.
ON THE TRAIL OF ARNHEMSE MEISJES
Andrew Blank and Judy Landis
Searching out famous cookies is a tough and thankless job. But someone has to do it, so we selflessly stepped forward to volunteer. This meant heading off to Arnhem to see if the bakery Roald Dahl describes—Hagdorn, at 14 Grote Oord—was still in business and, if so, to sample their wares ourselves.Arnhemse Meisjes37 (or, if you like, Arnhem Girls), while well known in Holland, are a proprietary commodity likeHaagse Hopjes (coffee candies), not a regional home-baking tradition. You’re as likely to find them in a Dutch cookbook as you would be to find a recipe for Pepperidge Farm’s Milano cookies in an American one.
Grote Oord lies in Arnhem’s “old town,” which is tucked into a bend of the Rhine and has been made a car-free pedestrian zone. World War II was not kind to Arnhem, and even in this quarter much rebuilding has taken place since. Where the old buildings have survived you see two or three stories, the top two half-timbered with white plaster, the lower level modernized into a shopfront of glass and brushed aluminum. And gaps have been plugged with entirely new buildings.
However, the streets meander pleasantly and are narrow enough to feel cozy. Just past the wonderfully ornate post office is Grote Oord, a street with a typical jumble of old and new. The eye is drawn to a café selling crisp waffles and ice cream through a sliding window. Next to it is a small pastry shop. The discreet hand-painted sign above the door saysHAGDORN . With a start we realize that we’re here.
The place is tiny. In the attractive display window, not more than five feet wide, is an assortment ofArnhemse Meisjes, the originals in clear plastic bags tied with dull gold ribbons or in metal cookie boxes decorated with Dutch scenes. There are also a newer variety, made of puff paste, and—for the loc
als who have had their fill of both varieties—there are some regular cakes and tarts.
The interior is likewise very small and rather dim, thanks to its old-fashioned dark woodwork (the decor has been left unaltered since the 1920s). There is a glass bakery case filled withMeisjes and some chocolates and cakes; a freezer case with frozen bavarois and little cocktail snacks; a scale; a cash register; and just enough room left over for a few customers to stand. The kitchen is in the back.
Happily, there is no hype of any kind at Hagdorn, beyond the proud and simple statement that theirs are theenige echte, the one and only, Arnhem Girls. This is entirely consistent with the lack of neon around the sign over the door and so completely uncommercial that it wins our hearts. The ladies behind the counter are used to pilgrims coming from all over for theirMeisjes. They are friendly but businesslike: you wait your turn, state your business, pay for your goods, and leave.
However, we did manage to coax out a little information as to what goes into the cookies (which was fortunate, since there’s no ingredient list on the package).Meisjes, they admitted, are made with yeast, not chemical leaveners, and do contain some lemon, but they would not divulge whether this was juice or zest. “The recipe is our little secret,” they said, firmly putting a stop to our questions. “If you want to know what’s in them you should eat a few.” And that was it … except for the little brochure that comes with each package of Arnhem Girls, which tells the story of how these cookies were created. It reads in part:
Great grandfather Hagdorn became chief baker at the Van Zalinge Bakery on Grote Oord, a street in the heart of Arnhem, where formerly public assizes were held. As were most master bakers, old Hagdorn was a businessman as well as an artist. He experimented eagerly with all manner of pastries, looking for something “fine on the tongue” and “attractive to the eye,” something that might do well at fancy dinners and parties. On a certain day in 1829 he produced a cookie in the form of a miniature shoe sole from a raised yeast dough. It was a crispy, full-flavoredkoekje, generously sprinkled with sugar.
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