Behind the Recipe -- Jeri Quinzio

Merely the Mock

 

Lately, reading about inaugural celebrations past and present, I was surprised to see that mock turtle soup was served at Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural luncheon.

I would have thought that since Lincoln had just become president, he would have merited the real thing. But no. He had the mock. Or, “merely the mock” as Cole Porter would later put it. I’ve never made or tasted either one, but it made me curious enough to look into the issue of turtle soup.

I discovered that real turtle soup was made with green turtles and was expensive. So, in the mid-18th century, a cheaper version was created. Called mock turtle soup, it was made with a calf’s head rather than a turtle. The gelatinous quality of the calf’s head made the soup approximate the real thing.

 

Mock turtle soup was well enough known that Lewis Carroll made a Mock Turtle a character in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Illustrator John Tenniel drew it with the shell of a turtle and the head, hoofs, and tail of a calf.

Making mock turtle soup was no snap. First, the head had to be cleaned and then simmered in water.  When it was ready, the cook took the head out of the broth, let it cool, and removed the meat. After straining and clarifying the broth, she stirred in seasonings and vegetables, along with the cut-up meat from the head. Then she simmered  the soup.

Everyone made it a bit differently, of course. Onions, peppers, celery, carrots, cabbage, turnips, cinnamon, peppercorns, allspice, turtle beans, sweetbreads, oysters, and various catsups are some of the ingredients that found their way into the soups.

Some cooks thickened their soup with a roux of flour and butter. Some diced the calf’s tongue and added it to the simmering soup. Some recipes suggested stirring in chopped hard-boiled eggs. Recipes often called for meatballs, formed either from the brains or from other meat, to be added to the soup or served along with it. A squeeze of lemon and/or a glass of sherry or madeira finished it off.  In recipes for “Simple Mock-Turtle Soup,” pigs’ or calves’ feet took the place of the head. 

My favorite of the mock turtle soup recipes I’ve read is from Mary Henderson’s 1877 book, Practical Cooking and Dinner Giving. It begins:  “Let some one beside yourself remove the flesh from a calf's head…” My sentiments exactly.

This is the most concise recipe I found. If you don’t have a calf’s head, you can always substitute its feet.

Mock Turtle Soup

Parboil a calf’s head divided, and cut all the meat in small pieces; then break the bones and boil them in some beef broth; fry some shallots in butter, add flour to thicken, and stir it in; skim it  carefully while it boils up, and add a pint of white wine; let it simmer till the meat is perfectly tender, then put in some chives, parsley, basil, salt, cayene, soy, and mushroom catsup to your taste, and boil it for ten minutes; squeeze a little lemon juice into your tureen, pour your soup on it, and serve with force meat balls. – Jennie June’s American Cookery Book, Jane Cunningham Croly, 1870.

Seduced by Salad

 

As much as I like salads, I’ve never thought of them as being particulary sensual.
To me, a salad is light and refreshing, a fitting finish (or beginning) to a meal. It’s not an
aphrosdisiac. I never think of lettuce as lascivious or carrots as carnal.

In the first book on salads, Robert Evelyn’s Acetaria, published at the end of the 17th century, Evelyn defined salad as “a particular Composition of certain Crude and fresh Herbs, such as usually are, or may safely be eaten with some Acetous Juice, Oyl, Salt, &c. to give them a grateful Gust and Vehicle.”

Within a few years, gusty salads were leading to seduction. Whether it was the tang of vinegar, the heat of mustard, or the frisson of frissée, salads became salacious. And extraordinarily popular.

At the time the French, especially, were blazing new culinary trails, leaving old ways of eating behind and turning to lighter, fresher foods. Exotic spices gave way to green herbs. Fresh fruits and vegetables became popular with aristocrats. Simplicity, relatively speaking, was preferred to complexity.

The style of eating was changing, too. Elites took delight in intimate suppers for two or four, preferring them to banquets for dozens. They dined by candlelight in a small, elegant salons furnished with sofas as well as tables and chairs. According to a contemporary account “everything breathed an air of the most exquisite sensual pleasure.”

At these new soupers intimes, the nobles amused themselves by preparing their own food, to a degree. The practice was similar to Marie Antoinette’s play at tending sheep. Servants would see to all the preparations for the meal, and disappear discreetly. Then the nobleman or lady would put the finishing touches on a dish to the delight of the guests. He or she might sauté a slice of partridge, pour oil on the salad greens, or stir liqueurs into a bowl of punch – all by his or her self. When dinner was just for two, mixing the punch or tossing a salad was transformed into a sensuous amusement.

Casanova, famously, enjoyed these intimate dinners. When he and a young nun met for a clandestine dinner at an elegant private apartment in Venice in 1753, they drank Champagne and Burgundy and ate “a choice and delicious supper.” Although Casanova did not record exactly what they ate, he did note that it was “she who dressed the salad; her appetite was equal to mine.” We may assume the appetite he referred to was not limited to the lettuce.

I do not make any claims for its aphrodisiac qualities, but this orange and olive salad is a sunny addition to a wintertime table. When you make it, dismiss the servants and enjoy it with someone special.

Orange and Olive Salad

Two navel oranges
Handful of good (not canned) black or green olives. Kalamata, picholine, Niçoise – your preference
Olive oil
Lemon juice
Salt, pepper
Greens, optional

Peel oranges, preferably with a knife to remove all of the white pith. Then slice thinly crosswise. Arrange on a platter with the olives. Top with the olive oil, a spritz of lemon juice, salt and pepper.

If you want to make it a green salad, toss some mixed greens with oil and lemon juice then top with the oranges and olives and a bit more oil and lemon, salt and pepper.

Serves two.

Bombes Away

 

When a Victorian hostess wanted to end a dinner party with a bang, she served a bombe. An ice cream bombe –  complete with what looked like flames erupting from the top.

Bombes, aka bombs, were ice creams made in special molds in the form of either a round bomb, the kind we see only in cartoons today, or a torpedo, like the ones launched from submarines in old movies.

At the time, confectioners were making all sorts of fanciful ices and ice creams. They sent ice cream chickens to the table in spun sugar nests. They arranged ice cream bananas in wicker-like almond paste baskets and topped ice cream pineapples with real pineapple crowns. And they made bombes.

Most were made with two or three compatible flavors of ice cream layered in the mold. A bombe could be as simple as a layer of strawberry ice with a center of vanilla ice cream or as elaborate as imagination allowed. Spun sugar flames topped the bombes in imitation of the flames that erupt from atop a live bombshell. The bombes were said to have looked very realistic.

Famed mid-19th century chef and author Charles Elme Francatelli was known for his bombes. He often named them for prominent people of his time, including Prime Minister Robert Peel. His Peel bombe had an outside layer, or “rind,” as Francatelli called it, of red currant ice. The center was filled with his Italian cream ice, a flavorful mixture of almond, clove, cinnamon, coriander, orange, candied citrus peels, and Cognac.

By the end of the century, the bombe-making era was fizzling out. The editor of the Encyclopædia of Practical Cookery wrote that it was odd that culinary practitioners were inclined to “introduce the arts of warfare into their peaceful and uneventful occupations.  The Bomb-ice is just one of these remarkable productions, having no more than a very fanciful resemblance to the bomb-shell from which it is designed.” Although the entry gave Francatelli high marks for having popularized the bomb-ices and for his “artistic taste and genius,” it reported that the bombe had become old-fashioned.

The editor of the “Queen” Cookery Books 1899 edition on ices agreed. S. Beaty-Pownall wrote that although bombes were still seen on menus, this “grim reminiscence of war declined in favour after the Crimean campaign.” Experiencing real bombs made ice cream bombes seem less playful. They were still made, but the flaming tops were extinguished. Bombes became nothing more than multi-flavored, molded ice cream desserts.

Today’s bombes are benign. One, currently popular online, is made in a metal mixing bowl and imitates a watermelon rather than an explosive device. Its outer layer is lime sherbet, then comes a thin layer of vanilla, and finally a center of raspberry sherbet with chocolate chips playing the role of watermelon seeds.  

Building a Bombe

To make your own ice cream bombe, just make or buy two or three compatible flavors of ices and ice creams. Let the designated outer flavor soften a bit, then use it to line your mold or a metal mixing bowl. For a neat effect, cover that layer with a smaller bowl to hold the ice cream evenly. Put it in freezer to firm up for about an hour. Then take it out, remove the smaller bowl, and add your next flavor. Again, use a smaller bowl to keep the ice cream layer even. Freeze. Then take out and fill the center with another flavor. You can also sprinkle some nuts or chocolate chips or cookie crumbs between layers.

When you’re ready to serve it, run lukewarm water over the bottom of the bowl. When you feel it begin to loosen, turn it onto a serving platter. Top it with a sauce or a whipped cream frosting if you like.

However, in the interests of peace, I recommend forgoing the spun sugar flames.

The First Straw

Contemporary straw photo courtesy of Stone Straw, Ltd.

During the late 19th century, some American ladies began engaging in truly shocking behavior. They went to ice cream saloons unescorted. Instead of ordering an innocent dish of ice cream, they ordered the latest cocktail -- a  Sherry Cobbler. And they sipped it through a straw.

Of all three acts, the latter was the most risqué activity. At the time, sipping or sucking was considered altogether too sensuous an act to be performed in public. French chef Charles Elme Francatelli called the practice "vulgar" and said it could shock genteel persons. However, he justified it by noting that "the very act of imbibition through a straw prevents the gluttonous absorption of large and baneful quantities of drink."

A cobbler was basically a liquor shaken up with sugar, citrus fruit, and lots of ice, garnished with more fruit or berries, and served with a straw. There were many different cobbler drinks -- whiskey, run, Champagne -- but the Sherry Cobbler was the hands-down favorite. Apparently, it was so good it warranted risking one's reputation. The drink was all the rage in America. Newspaper and magazine articles reported on it, and  it was praised in novels. Recipes appeared in cookbooks as well as bar guides, and nearly all of them called for it to be drunk through a straw. One specified "a straw, or stick of maccaroni." At the time, a straw was usually a hollow reed, occasionally a glass tube. The paper straw was not yet widely available.

England fell for the Sherry Cobbler after Martin Chuzzlewit, the Dickens character, praised it to the skies in the novel named for him. The drink was one of the very few things he warmed to in America. Since the Sherry Cobbler was typically served with lots of ice,  it did wonders for London's nascent ice business.

And it made the straw a success. When Marvin Stone, an American manufacturer of cigarette papers, patented a process to produce waxed paper straws in 1888, his business skyrocketed. Within two years, he was producing more straws than cigarette papers. The company is still in business, producing an array of straws and other products.

The straw became ubiquitous, and it became proper. The popular song lyric, "The prettiest girl I ever saw was sippin' soda through a straw," testifies to the innocence of the practice by the mid-20th century.

Today, unescorted women go everywhere without raising eyebrows, and they sip all sorts of drinks through straws. But not Sherry Cobblers. Why not?

I tried making a Sherry Cobbler using Jerry Thomas's recipe, since he was the most famous American bartender of the 19th century. I made it with an oloroso sherry. Next time, I'll skip the sugar, but it's a very nice drink especially when you sip it through a straw.

Sherry Cobbler

(Use large bar-glass.)
Take 1 table-spoonful of fine white sugar.
1 slice of orange, cut up into quarters.
2 small pieces of pineapple.

Fill the glass nearly full of shaved ice, then fill it up with sherry wine. Shake up, ornament the top with berries in season, and serve with a straw. -- Jerry Thomas' Bartender's Guide, Jerry Thomas, 1862.