Choice Cuts

by Mark Kurlansky

  —from The Art of Eating Well, 1891,

  translated from the Italian by Kyle M. Phillips III

  GALEN ON TRUFFLES

  These should be classified among the roots or bulbs, since they have no pronounced quality. Chefs use them as a vehicle for seasonings, just as they do with all the other foods that are called flavourless, harmless and watery in taste. What all these foods have in common is that the nutrition they distribute to the body holds no particular power, but is rather cold, whilst in terms of thickness—of whatever sort is present in what has been eaten—it is thicker from truffles, but moister and thinner from large gourds, and in proportion from the other foods.

  —from On the Powers of Foods, A.D. 180,

  translated from the Latin by Mark Grant

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Loving Fat

  Zola and Lu Wenfu distrusted fat people, and Balzac, Brillat-Savarin, and Grimod were suspicious of the thin. But my skepticism is only aroused by people of any girth who claim that they do not like fat. We all love fat. It is what makes a dish—makes it “fat.” A friend in Budapest recently told me of a luncheon she attended. That great fat-loving society is now trying to eat more modern, lighter, healthier, and for lunch, a group of friends made vegetable sandwiches on whole-grain bread. But first they spread the bread with goose fat. When my friend expressed surprise, she was told in an offhand way, “Well, you have to give the sandwich some flavor.”

  —M.K.

  ANTHIMUS ON BACON

  At this point I will explain how bacon may be eaten to the best effect, for there is no way that I can pass over this Frankish delicacy. If it has been simply roasted in the same way as a joint of meat, the fat drains into the fire and the bacon becomes dry, and whoever eats it is harmed and is not benefitted; it also produces bad humours and causes indigestion. But if bacon that has been boiled and cooled is eaten, it is more beneficial, regulating constipated bowels and being well digested. But it should be boiled well; and if of course it is from a ham, it should be cooked more. None of the rind should be eaten, because it is not digested. Bacon fat which is poured over some foods and vegetables when oil is not available is not harmful. But frying brings absolutely no benefit.

  —from On the Observance of Foods, sixth century A.D.,

  translated from the Latin by Mark Grant

  NEWFIES ON SCRUNCHIONS

  Scrunchion is a Newfoundland word for the fatback of pork cut into cubes and then fried. In Newfoundland and Labrador, scrunchions and also the cooked-off fat are used in everything from fish, to chowder, to biscuits, to cakes. Traveling farther south, down the Canadian Maritime coast and that of New England, the use of scrunchions diminishes. But historically they are part of cooking in this entire area.

  The same is true of cod tongues, a food of cod-fishing communities. They are not actually tongues but the gelatinous white meat from the throat of the fish.

  —M.K.

  Carefully wash fresh cod tongues and dry in a paper towel. Allow seven or eight per person. Put 1½ cups flour, 1 teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon pepper together in a plastic bag. Put tongues in and shake them until evenly floured. Cut up ½ pound salt pork and fry until golden brown. Remove pork cubes and fry tongues until golden brown on both sides.

  Served with mashed potatoes and green peas.

  —Recipe from Margaret Freake of Joe Batt’s Arm, collected by

  the family of Rev. Ivan F. Jesperson, from Fat-Back & Molasses:

  A Collection of Favourite Old Recipes from Newfoundland and Labrador, 1974

  PLATINA ON OLIVE OIL

  The order of courses now demands that a plan be offered for preparing and cooking dishes. Since almost all are mixed foods, one must speak first about certain simple ingredients for this category and first about the olive and olive oil. There are several kinds of olives: the preserving kind, the pausia, the long olive, the oblong olive, which is best preserved of all olives, as Varro says, the Salentine and the Spanish. The preserving kind are larger and best to eat, as are now the Bolognese and Picene. Bitter ones should be split on both sides with a small knife and soaked for a while in cold water until the bitterness goes away with the fat. When they have been put in a large jar or wooden container covered with water, with salt and fennel, and when they are cooked down, they will last a long time. They are eaten with fish and roasted meats so as either to dispel squeamishness or induce appetite. The olive is difficult to digest, of little nutriment, and generates crass and sticky humors. Eaten outside the regular meal, it represses vapors to the head.

  Oil is more easily made from the other kinds of olives, as is customary for some with an olive press, or with a mill, which is more useful, or with a special oil press, which is more difficult. The olives are put in baskets, put under presses, and pressed until nothing more than dry pulp appears. That part of the oil which comes first is more pleasant to eat if it is not from olives which are rotting or overripe or too warm. Pliny calls this omphacinum, for the Greeks call an unripe olive omphax. This sort of oil tends toward coldness and dryness.

  You can keep olives green to make oil whenever you wish in this way: immerse in honey olives which have been picked from the tree and take them out whenever you want as if they were recently plucked from the tree. From these you may make fresh oil if you wish. But what is pressed from ripe olives, even if it is fattier or heavier in odor, is nevertheless considered more useful than oil from unripe olives because of its temperate qualities, for it tends toward heat and dampness. Oil spread with salt can be rescued from too much fattiness, and this is done better if the scum is taken from the bottom of the jar, for all dregs of oil and wine move toward the bottom, as toward the top of honey. Hence oil is better at the top because it likes vapors, wine is better in the middle, and honey is best at the bottom, far from all dregs.

  The property of oil is to warm the body. Since this was known, when Hannibal was about to lead his lines against the Romans at the Trebia in the dead of winter, he smeared the bodies of the soldiers with oil for smoothness and strength, and won. Oil helps wonderfully against cold. Drunk on an empty stomach, it either kills worms or drives them from the stomach. It is considered an antidote, especially against poison, for drunk with warm water it brings up the poison with vomit. There are even several kinds of simulated olive oil, which are being passed over deliberately because they contribute nothing to our discussion.

  —from On Right Pleasure and Good Health, 1465,

  translated from the Latin by Mary Ella Milham

  MARION HARRIS NEIL TELLS THE STORY OF CRISCO

  In 1912, in an age when “science” was the magic word for all that was new and exciting, even in food, at a time when industry was revolutionizing American food with its packaged products, and when many of the dried cereals and soft drinks that are household names today were launched, the Procter & Gamble Company of Cincinnati, famed for its Ivory soap, claimed to have invented something to revolutionize American life. It was hydrogenated vegetable shortening, solid vegetable fat, and they called it Crisco.

  The goal was to get Americans to give up pork fat, scrunchions, and lard, and instead to use Crisco. Crisco was advertised as a way to get children to eat more fat. Calories was a newly disseminated idea and the belief was that children needed them in order to grow. And there was nothing with a greater concentration of calories than fat. Children should eat as much fat as possible, it was pointed out in The Story of Crisco, the 1913 book produced by Procter & Gamble to promote the new fat. It argued that girls in particular were a problem because they exhibited a tendency to reject fat. The booklet said, “It therefore is necessary that the fat which supplies their growing bodies with energy should be in the purest and most inviting form and should be one that their digestions welcome, rather than repel.” And what could be more inviting than a can of white grease?

  —M.K.

  Brief, Interesting Facts

  Crisco is being used in an increasing number of the better class hotels, cl
ubs, restaurants, dining cars, ocean liners.

  Crisco has been demonstrated and explained upon the Chautauqua platform by Domestic Science experts, these lectures being a part of the regular course.

  Domestic Science teachers recommend Crisco to their pupils and use it in their classes and lecture demonstrations. Many High Schools having Domestic Science departments use Crisco.

  Crisco has taken the place of butter and lard in a number of hospitals, where purity and digestibility are of vital importance.

  Crisco is Kosher. Rabbi Margolies of New York, said that the Hebrew Race had been waiting 4,000 years for Crisco. It conforms to the strict Dietary Laws of the Jews. It is what is known in the Hebrew language as a “parava,” or neutral fat. Crisco can be used with both “milchig” and “fleichig” (milk and flesh) foods. Special Kosher packages, bearing the seals of Rabbi Margolies of New York, and Rabbi Lifsitz of Cincinnati, are sold the Jewish trade. But all Crisco is Kosher and all of the same purity.

  Campers find Crisco helpful in many ways. Hot climates have little effect upon its wholesomeness.

  Baked Shad

  1 shad weighing 4 lbs.

  ¼ lb. mushrooms

  ½ cupful Crisco

  2 tablespoonfuls chopped parsley

  2 tablespoonfuls chopped chives

  1 cupful breadcrumbs

  1 egg

  Salt and white pepper

  Salt pork

  1 cupful cream

  1 teaspoonful cornstarch

  Clean, wipe and dry the shad. Melt Crisco, add breadcrumbs, chopped mushrooms, parsley, chives, egg well beaten, salt and pepper. Stuff fish with this forcemeat, then lay it in a greased pan, put thin strips of salt pork over it and bake in hot oven for forty minutes. Lay the fish on a hot platter. Pour cream into baking pan, add cornstarch and stir till boiling. Serve with the fish.

  —from The Story of Crisco, 1913

  FANNIE MERRITT FARMER ON BUTTER

  COMPOSITION.

  Fat, 93%.

  Water, 5.34%.

  Mineral matter, .95%.

  Casein, .71%.

  Pratt Institute.

  Butter of commerce is made from cream of cow’s milk. The quality depends upon the breed of cow, manner of, and care in feeding. Milk from Jersey and Guernsey cows yields the largest amount of butter.

  Butter should be kept in a cool place, and well covered, otherwise it is liable to become rancid; this is due to the albuminous constituents of the milk, acting as a ferment, setting free the fatty acids. First-quality butter should be used; this does not include pat butter or fancy grades. Poor butter has not been as thoroughly worked during manufacture, consequently more casein remains; therefore it is more apt to become rancid. Fresh butter spoils quickly; salt acts as a preservative. Butter which has become rancid by too long keeping may be greatly improved by melting, heating, and quickly chilling with ice-water. The butter will rise to the top, and may be easily removed.

  Where butter cannot be afforded, there are several products on the market which have the same chemical composition as butter, and are equally wholesome. Examples: Butterine and oleomargarine.

  Buttermilk is liquid remaining after butter “has come.” When taken fresh, it makes a wholesome beverage.

  —from Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, 1896

  LUDWIG BEMELMANS ON THE BUTTERMACHINE

  There are two Doyles here—one a sergeant, the other a lieutenant. The sergeant is efficient and thin; the lieutenant is fat, with the face of an old lady and little eyes that easily turn hard with offense. He always looks past my face when he speaks to me. The soldiers have invented a very right and beautiful name for him—his trousers have given them this idea—they call him “Satchel Ass.” A “satchel” is a portmanteau and “ass” is a donkey but in this case it is the Army word for derrière—it fits well. When he walks, it looks as if this portmanteau were constantly opened and closed, and when he sits down it flows over the chair. When he has been around, they do not say, “Lieutenant Doyle was here”; they say, “Doyle was here.” Question: “Which one?” Answer: “Satchel Ass Doyle.”

  Lieutenant Doyle is the glee-club leader and mess officer. He complains all day long about the flies, looks into the ice machine and the ice-boxes, and his pet is the buttermachine. He looks at it twice a day with affection. He bought it himself and he shows all the other officers or some friends of his that come visiting how it works. “That’s a great little piece of machinery there,” he says to them.

  The buttermachine has been here ten days. Before that we cut the butter with a small square frame over which a row of thin sharp wires were stretched, making about sixteen squares. These wires run from left to right and up and down. One man and a tub of water with ice is all that is needed to cut all the butter for the men, the patients and even the officers’ mess; and all this takes is at the most ten minutes.

  Now we have to first rinse the buttermachine with hot water, fill it with ice, then trim the blocks of butter, because as they are they do not fit the round cylinder inside the ice. The cylinder is long and round; the blocks of butter are square and short. One and a half of them, after they are trimmed, fit into the machine. When they are in there, a tight cover is attached, the heavy lid clamped down, and then the work begins.

  A man has to stand in front of the machine and work a little lever from left to right and back again to the left; and every time these two motions are completed, one little square of butter falls out of the machine.

  I have told Lieutenant Doyle that it is a waste of time, that the butter was cut in ten minutes before and now it takes two hours to do it, and twice a day; it is ridiculuous. But he says, “That buttermachine is all right.”

  I have detailed Mulvey, who is the laziest of the K.P.s, to this work, and he is now in the dining room and sings his awful song in there and makes these little butterpieces. Mulvey soon finds out that, with making a little fuss, he can stretch his work so that he has nothing else to do, and when Lieutenant Doyle comes in and sees him cleaning the machine very carefully, he stops and smiles and he tells me, “Mulvey is a good man.” But I will fix that.

  We have one mess table that has a broken leg. After midday meal, when the dishes are washed, would be a good time to do this, but then there are too many people and I think such things should always be done alone with no one around for confusion when somebody asks questions later on.

  Sunday is the best day; then all is very quiet, everyone is out. On the next Sunday, when I am not invited out until late in the evening, I move the table with the broken leg over to the door and change it for the one on which the buttermachine sits. This one has good legs. There is a corner of the table which meets the door when it is opened—soldiers rush into rooms—and on that corner is the machine. It is very heavy, about one hundred and fifty pounds.

  After this is arranged, I go up to my quarters. There was a crash as soon as I got up there, but I dressed and left, because it was time to meet Doris’s car.

  The next day when I am back in the mess hall, the cook says, “Somebody busted the buttermachine. Lieutenant Doyle is wild and wants to see everybody who works here.”

  The best thing is to go right over to headquarters and look surprised and make a face that asks, “Who could have done this? Let me think.”

  Mulvey is there already answering questions. The buttermachine is also there, but I am afraid that it can be repaired; one of the pig-iron legs is broken off, and the machinery under the cylinder, where the lever goes back and forth and the butter comes out, seems mangled, but it looks good otherwise.

  Lieutenant Doyle has no suspicions; he points at the machine and says, “What do you think of that?” but he asks no more. Mulvey has told him when he saw the machine last and another man how he found it. Whoever opened the door and broke it is not to be determined because he would not report himself and no one has seen anybody else.

  All questions and answers are filled out on a long printed statement which the Army iss
ues for all things that break or are lost or worn out. Mulvey is back washing dishes and we cut the butter the old way for some weeks. Then Lieutenant Doyle comes and takes Mulvey away from the dishwashing. He comes back with a small table with very strong legs. Lieutenant Doyle has picked out a corner where to put it; near this corner are no doors. Outside is a truck, with a new buttermachine.

  —from La Bonne Table, 1964

  WILLIAM VERRALL’S VERY FAT PEAS

  William Verrall managed the White Hart Inn in Lewes, Sussex, England. The inn was a center of political activity for the Duke of Newcastle, whose French cook, St. Clouet, profoundly influenced Verrall’s cooking. Whether this recipe is French or English, surely no one has ever gotten more fat into a plate of peas, considering that cream is unchurned butter.

  —M.K.

  Pease with Cream

  Des petits pois a la creme

  Let your pease be very young, put them into a stewpan with a bit of bacon with some cloves stuck in, pour in a ladle of broth, a bunch of onions and parsley, pepper, and a little salt if it is required, stew them gently until almost dry, take out the bacon and herbs, and put about a gill of cream, a bit of butter and flour mixt, let it go gently on about ten minutes, squeeze in the juice of lemon or orange, and dish them up very hot. Sometimes I have Mr. Clouet put in a bit of fine sugar, and in the English way of stewing pease I have never seen it done without.

  —from The Cookery Book, 1759

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Bearing Fruit