Is There a Nutmeg in the House? (41 page)

Assurances of modern cookery books and of several people I know that a perfectly good Burnt Cream can be produced with the aid of an ordinary domestic gas or electric grill are made presumably in good faith but perhaps without first-hand experience of the dish as it should be. Twice in recent months I have eaten it in restaurants. On neither occasion did it come within a hammer’s throw of being the semi-liquid cream, calm, undisturbed and covered with the brittle caramel which together made up the potent charm of the dish as I remember it from my early youth in a household wherein dwelled a cook who must have been a dab hand with a salamander, for several of her party puddings were variations on Burnt Cream. Sometimes the caramel concealed an ice, once and most memorably, a frozen gooseberry fool.

My own experience of making crème brûlée by burning the sugar under a gas or electric grill is that the former works well perhaps once out of ten tries and the latter once out of seven. Neither seems quite high enough a percentage for a dish so expensive and of which so much is expected. What happens is that either the sugar, subjected to too prolonged a heating, runs down into the cream, ruining it with toffeeish gobs, or else the caramel blackens, turns to stickjaw, or is otherwise quite unlike Miss Jenkinson’s ‘light brown ice’ and the ‘glass-plate’ so graphically described by Elizabeth Raffald in her
Experienced English Housekeeper
of 1769.

Compiled from an unpublished article and a
Spectator
article of 23 August 1963

In Pescod Time… I went to gather Strawberries

Speaking for myself, I seldom have enough strawberries to do adventurous dishes with them. Strawberry sorbets, fools and ices are so delicious that it seems unnecessary to look further, but so many people now go on pick-it-yourself fruit expeditions that I think the following collection of old, unusual and beautiful strawberry recipes will be of interest, at any rate to those who don’t feel like consigning the whole load they’ve so painstakingly gathered straight to the deep freeze.

My title, by the way, comes from a poem called
The Sheep-heards slumber
published in
England’s Helicon
in 1600, over the name of Ignotus, said to have been a pseudonym used by Sir Walter Raleigh. That may well be wishful thinking, but at least the tenuous connection makes it appropriate that I should start with Sir Walter’s recipe for strawberry cordial.

A CORDIAL WATER OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH

Take a Gallon of Strawberries, and put them into a pint of
Aqua vitae
, let them stand so for four or five days, strain them gently out, and sweeten the water as you please with fine Sugar; or else with perfume.

A Queen’s Delight: or, The Art of Preserving, Conserving and Candying; As also A right Knowledge of making Perfumes, and Distilling the most Excellent Waters. Never before Published
. Printed by R. Wood for Nath. Brooks, at the Angel in Cornhill, 1658.

Notes

Sir Walter Raleigh’s strawberry cordial is a recipe worth following up, although 4.5 litres (8 pints) of strawberries to 600 ml (1 pint) of spirit does seem rather a lot. I tried it one year, using vodka and allowing 600 ml (1 pint) to 1 kg (2 lb) of fruit. After two or three days of steeping the strawberries had given all their colour and scent to the vodka. Having strained them out, it was necessary to filter the vodka, using a coffee paper filter and a glass jug. The
filtering was a very slow process, but the result was good, although I think I was wrong in not adding any sugar. A little would have been an improvement.

I think we can accept that the receipt for the cordial really did come from Raleigh, or at any rate that it could have done so. We know that during his imprisonment in the Tower Sir Walter had access to a still and other apparatus necessary for the concoction of cordial spirits, that he availed himself of this welcome diversion and that he communicated the receipts and the ‘virtues’ of various of his inventions to companions who were with him in the Tower.
1
The ‘virtues’ of cordials were regarded as medical rather than as purely stimulant. Spirit of strawberries for example was ‘excellent good to purifie and cleanse the blood; it preserveth from, and also cureth the yellow Jaundies, and deoppilateth the obstruction of the Spleen; it keepeth the body in a sweet temperateness, and refresheth the spirits. The dose is a spoonful at a time when need requireth any of those helps for the aforesaid diseases.’
2

References

1
.
Home Life under the Stuarts 1603–1649
. Elizabeth Godfrey, London 1925. p. 231.
A Choice Manual, or Rare Secrets in Physick and Chirurgery: Collected and practised by the Right Honourable the Countess of Kent, late deceased
. Nineteenth edition 1687. (First published 1653) Opp. p. 190.

2
.
A Choice Manual
, p. 195.

COMPOSTA DI FRAGOLE AL LATTE DI MANDORLE

Compote of strawberries with almond milk

I adapted the recipe for this lovely dish from one given in a book published in Turin in 1846, when that city was still the royal capital of the House of Savoy.

For 500 g (1 lb) of strawberries, make the almond milk with 200 g (7 oz) of shelled almonds – preferably bought in their skins-3 or 4 bitter almonds (or about 4 drops of pure extract of almonds) 200 ml (7 fl oz) of water. Sugar.

Blanch the almonds, slip them out of their skins, put them to steep in cold water for a couple of hours. Pound them to a paste, adding a few drops of water, or rosewater if you have it, to prevent the almonds oiling. Mix very thoroughly with the water. (The blender can be used for these operations.)

The mixture now has to be wrung twice through a finely woven cloth. This isn’t really as daunting as it sounds, but it does take a little time. What should – and does – eventually emerge is a smooth white milk. The residue of almonds is kept for some other dish. Almonds are far too expensive to waste. (A saving can be made – a saving of time too – by simply stirring a couple of tablespoons of very finely ground almonds into 300 ml (10 fl oz) of thin cream. Leave an hour or two and strain.)

Hull the strawberries. Arrange them in a glass or white china compote dish or bowl, (or, perhaps easier to serve, individual goblets or bowls), strew them with sugar. Just before serving – on no account in advance – pour the almond milk over and round the fruit.

Francesco Chapusot.
La Cucina sana, economica ed elegante, secondo le stagioni
. Torino 1846.

Notes

Chapusot was a former head chef to the English ambassador to the Court of Savoy. In spite of his French surname he seems to have been a true Piedmontese by birth, although Piedmont and particularly its capital are close enough to France to seem in some respects very Frenchified. Chapusot’s work, published in four slender volumes, each one giving recipes and menus for one season of the year – the strawberry and almond milk compote appears in the Spring volume – represents a school of cooking which is indeed rather franco-italian, although in an unusually delicate way. The ambassadorial style is also unexpectedly restrained, the illustrations of decorative and decorated dishes light and curiously graceful, the menus quite simple for the period. One of them, in which the strawberry and almond milk compote figures, is quoted below. All in all, Chapusot seems to have fulfilled the promise in his title of ‘healthy, economical and elegant cooking according to the season’.

The strawberry and almond milk dish figures in a menu for a
pranzo di cacciatore
, a shooting lunch. The other dishes, in the order given, are fried spring chickens with small onions, cold roast beef, timbale of tunny fish, asparagus in salad, and scrambled eggs with ham. Not entirely a cold picnic, so presumably the lunch was to take place in a hunting lodge, with somebody to fry the chickens and make the scrambled eggs, a dish for which few chefs
would think it necessary or worthwhile to give a recipe. Chapusot does.

CRÈME DE FRAISES

‘Take about one half-setier (250 g/8 oz) of hulled strawberries, washed and drained, which you pound in a mortar, boil three half-setiers (750 ml/1¼ pints) of cream with a half-setier (250 ml/8 fl oz) of milk and some sugar, let them boil and reduce by half, leave to cook a little and put in your strawberries, so mix them together; dilute also a piece of rennet the size of a coffee bean and put it to the cream when it is no more than tepid, at once pass all through a tammy and turn it into a compotier which may be put straight upon the coals without breaking, so put your compotier upon a few hot coals, cover it with a cover and some hot coals on the top; when it has set you are to put it in a cool place or on ice until you serve it.

[Menon]
La Cuisinière Bourgeoise de l’office
etc. Nouvelle Edition. p. 381. A Bruxelles chez François Foppens, Imprimeur-Libraire, 1781. (First published 1745).

Note

I find this strawberry cream or rather strawberry junket a recipe of great interest, foreshadowing as it does the fruit-flavoured yogurts so commercially successful today. It is also a most unusual recipe for the period. But the technique of warming the cream with heat below and above is one we have lost with the disappearance of charcoal and coal burning stoves, and consequently of the utensils with special covers upon which hot coals were placed. It was this top heat which was so important to the successful cooking of a great many creams, open flans, custards and so on. The oven doesn’t replace the old
tourtière
, or
testo
as it was called in Italy. So having put the rennet to the tepid strawberry cream I would simply transfer it to a warm place and leave it, as for any other junket, until set. Then into the refrigerator.

TO MAKE SNOW CREAM

Take a large deep dish, strew the bottom with fine sugar beat to powder; then fill it with strawberries; take some sprigs of rosemary, stick a large one in the middle, and several roundabout to resemble a tree; then take 1.2 litres (2 pints) of the thickest cream you can get, and the whites of eight or ten eggs; then whisk it up for half an hour, till you have made the froth very strong; let it stand ten minutes, and with a proper thing take off the froth, throw it over your tree and cover your dish well with it; If you do it well, it makes a grand pile in a dessert.

The Court and Country Confectioner: or the Housekeepers Guide:
a new edition. By Mr. Borella, now head confectioner to the Spanish Ambassador in England. London. 1772.

Notes

Mr Borella’s charming snow cream is a survival from the seventeenth century, when rosemary sprigs were frequently used in the manner he describes.

Petits Propos Culinaires
, No 5, May 1980

SEVILLE ORANGE CREAM

2 Seville oranges, 300 ml (½ pint) double cream, yolks of 4 eggs, 4 tablespoons caster sugar, 2 tablespoons of Grand Marnier.

Pare the orange rind very thinly, boil it for 10 minutes, strain, and pound it to a paste. Add the Grand Marnier, the juice of the oranges, the sugar and the egg yolks, and beat for 10 minutes. Very gradually add the boiling cream and beat until cold. Pour into cups or wine glasses, and serve with a biscuit. Enough for 4.

Those who possess an electric blender will find it works beautifully for this recipe, both for reducing the peel to paste and for blending the other ingredients.

Entertaining with Grand Marnier
booklet, n.d.

APRICOT MOUSSE WITH GRAND MARNIER

250 g (½ lb) dried apricots, 90 g (3 oz) sugar, the whites of 4 or 5 eggs, 2 tablespoons Grand Marnier.

Soak the apricots overnight, put them in a pan with the water and simmer until tender. Drain off the liquid, sieve the apricots. Add the sugar and the Grand Marnier. When the purée is quite cool, fold in the very stiffly beaten egg whites, turn rapidly into a soufflé dish, which should be completely filled. Put the dish in a pan of water, and steam on top of the stove for about 3 5 minutes. Now transfer the mousse, still in its pan of water, to a very slow oven (150°C/300°F/gas mark 2) for another 20 minutes, until the top is pale golden and firm to the touch.

Can be eaten hot or cold, but if the latter, then turn off the oven, but leave the mousse at the bottom, or in the plate drawer, to cool gradually. If exposed at once to the cold air it will collapse.

Entertaining with Grand Marnier
booklet, n.d.

SPICED PRUNES

To make this excellent and useful dessert it is essential to use whole spices. Ground ones won’t do at all.

For 500 g (1 lb) of large prunes the spices needed are: two 5-cm (2-in) pieces of cinnamon or cassia bark, 2 level teaspoons of coriander seeds, 2 blades of mace, 4 whole cloves.

Put the prunes and spices in a bowl or earthenware casserole. Just cover them with cold water. Leave overnight. Next day cook the prunes, in an uncovered casserole, in a low oven or over very moderate direct heat until they are swollen but not mushy. About half the cooking water will have evaporated. Take out the fruit and remove the stones.

Heat up the remaining juice with the spices, until it is slightly syrupy. Pour it through a strainer over the prunes.

To be eaten cold, with cream or yogurt, or with the cabbage dish on
page 79
.

Notes

1. 1. Cassia is a variant of cinnamon. The two are very easily distinguished. Cinnamon quills are long, smooth and curled, cassia bark is rough and comes in large chips. Although often held to be inferior to cinnamon there are those – among them some Pakistani cooks – who consider cassia the better of the two. It is indeed cassia bark which appears to be most often used in tan-doori restaurant cooking, at any rate in London. Confusion arises however because Pakistani spice sellers and cooks insist that cassia bark
   is
   cinnamon.
   
2. 2. Mace is the beautiful orange lacy covering of the nutmeg. When dried it turns pale tawny in colour and is very hard. It is marketed in broken pieces called blades. These give out a wonderful aroma when cooking. Unfortunately, most people buy mace in powder form and so have no notion whatever of its true character. In this dish of spiced prunes there is no substitute for whole mace.
   
3. 3. An alternative way of using spiced prunes is to leave them in the turned-out oven after they are cooked. By the time the oven is cold, the prunes have soaked up nearly all the juice. They are fat and swollen. Serve them just as they are, without stoning them, as an after-dinner sweetmeat.