09-04-2004, 03:36 AM
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Good King Henry and other 'odd' herbs
The message
from (Nick Maclaren) contains these words:
In article ,
Jaques d'Alltrades writes:
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| I presume that a lot of the poorer people used thes cookery books.
| Elizabeth Craig certainly didn't talk down to 'her public', and on a
| quick glance through I have found two recipes which are still commonly
| used in the Highlands, and no doubt I shall find more.
They did, and I didn't say that there was no overlap. You can do
a fairly good test, however, by looking for things like soup, stew
and colcannon (bubble and squeak to you foreigners - I am going
all Cornish :-) ).
We used to make bubble and squeak with leftover greens and potato, and
other stuff got bunged in too - meat scraps, swede and other root veg,
and sometimes, the previous day's gravy was re-heated to top it.
Our (proper) gravy was often used with stock as a basis for 'Mother's
Dustbin Soup'.
In particular, using significant quantities of meat or named cuts,
cooking all ingredients for the dish (rather than using leftovers)
etc. means that the recipes are NOT a description but an example.
I lived (briefly) in Cornwall in the early 1950s, and it was (and
is) a very deprived area.
Elizabeth Craig has a section on using up leftover chicken, and a
chapter on other leftover meats. Recipes include Beef croquettes;
Creamed ham on toast; Farmhouse curry; Ham (or any other meat) toasts;
Jellied meats; Lamb steaks.
| I didn't say that such descriptions didn't exist, whereas I would
| say the same for any date before (say) 1750.
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| Well, I would guess that the information is there somewhere, but
| no-one has thought it worth searching for, collecting, collating and
| publishing.
I based my statement, not just on my own limited experience, but
on the experience of people who have tried doing precisely that,
sometimes as a proper research project. Your guess is wrong.
Whether there is more information to be found is unknown, but it
assuredly the case that quite a few people have looked pretty
hard and failed to find anything significant.
I would venture to suggest that they were looking in the wrong places
then. I'm not going to wade through The canterbury Tales, but I wouldn't
mind betting......
--
Rusty
Open the creaking gate to make a horrid.squeak, then lower the foobar.
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/
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