Categories
1950-1999 Food & Drink

1950s American Pie

DC Thomson, the Scottish publishing house, holds a huge amount of nostalgia value for me, The Beano being my absolute number one childhood read. I got the comic every week, collected the single character booklets, and dreamed of catapults, minxing, and big piles of mash with sausages sticking out. And I’m never getting rid of my Dennis the Menace and Gnasher fan club badges.

So the new DC Thomson book, Pass it On: Cooking Tips from the 1950s, appeals to both my real nostalgia and the kind of fantasy nostalgia I have about times which pre-date me. Can you feel proper nostalgia about things you didn’t actually live through? Reading so many old books has almost given me false memory syndrome.

The book is a guide to what home cooking used to be – a collection of recipes and tips sent in to The Sunday Post, People’s Journal and The People’s Friend by those women who cooked for their families in the face of culinary challenges we can’t quite imagine today – the food rationing of the Second World War didn’t come to an end until 1954 for some food items, including meat, cheese, butter, preserves, tea and sugar, and frugality was key.

There’s a lovely selection of original recipe pages you can look at here and I decided to have a crack at one of them. My favourite recipe genre (and the staple of recipe books up to the 1950s), invalid cookery, is here along with recipe suggestions for your Government Cheese – the nickname of the mild cheddar which was the only type available until the end of rationing. Mind you, I’m a month into a dairy-free diet on account of my new baby son and his sore bottom, and even Government Cheese is sounding wildly delicious to me at the moment.

The bread omelet sounds good, like a slightly more elaborate eggy bread.

Bread omelet

Then there’s the Carrot Mould, which lives up to the old British stereotype of cooking, boiling carrots into baby food for a whole two hours and then turning them into an unnecessary shape.

Carrot mould

The Gingerbread Upsidedown Delight is definitely one I’m making at some point, the Enid Blyton-style name adding to its appeal.

Gingerbread Upsidedown Delight

But I made the American Pie.

American Pie

There’s been more than 40 years of speculation about what Don McLean meant in his chart-topping song, but I think I can say with confidence that this wasn’t what he was singing about. This one is a bit of a mystery – I mean we know the phrase “As American as apple pie” but there’s nothing mentioned about a pile of macaroni, cold meat, tomatoes and breadcrumbs. This is obviously a way to use up the leftover meat probably from the Sunday roast. I wondered about which meat to use – it could be Spam for full retro effect, but I went for turkey and smoked ham as that sounded at least a little bit American to me.

American Pie

Despite my initial thoughts that this comes from a place where people didn’t quite get macaroni – it should be coated in a sauce surely, not used as a plain unflavoured base – it was actually quite pleasant, a smooth and creamy element to the dish. The whole thing has nothing to hold it together though, and just flops into a pile of ingredients on the plate. It would be better with an egg to hold it together and some cheese on top, but then again, that would probably be an extravagance too far in the age of rationing.

The book is available here and I think it will be going on my Christmas list.

Categories
1900-1949 Food & Drink

Mince on toast, 1935

You may have heard about this week’s light-hearted thing – the concept of mince on toast, alleged by an American site, Eater.com, to be a quintessential British comfort food classic, here – Mince on toast.

It’s not, obviously, although it is a New Zealand thing, apparently.

I mean, it sounds OK, especially with some melted cheese, and anything on toast is pretty British to be honest. As is anything to do with mince. But a classic it’s not, or even an actual meal you planned to make, rather than improvised on the spot in a way that you wouldn’t tell anyone else about. We’ve only just got over Delia’s tinned mince too. Still, though, it sounds old-fashioned and a bit wartime and frugal, so maybe it’s inadvertently just the thing for post-Brexit Britain to adopt. And, luckily, here we are, already provided with a recipe fresh from the good old days.

It’s a recipe for invalids – my favourite genre of historical recipe, as the reader of this blog will know.

Obviously, obviously, no invalid recipe section is complete without at least one nauseating dish. May I present Liver Soup:

And just to make this extra topical, given the new Doctor Who announcement tomorrow (Ben Willbond, Ben Willbond, Ben Willbond), there’s fish with custard too:

And here’s the mince on toast we all know and love. Doesn’t sound too bad, if you don’t actually mince the steak, and replace the toast with a nice baguette like the unrepentant Remoaner that I am.

Of course, the obvious serving suggestion is to surround it with boiled rice. Of course.

Categories
1900-1949 Food & Drink

Lobscouse and Witches, 1936

Today is the day for “Lobscouse and Witches” as I discovered from this magical-sounding 1936 article. The 11th January 1936 being a Saturday, it’s talking about Tuesday 7th January, the day after Twelfth Night. The day when an old-fashioned Northern tradition apparently meant that people ate lobscouse, drank lamb’s wool and set fire to their wheat to scare witches away.

Bath Chronicle, 11th January 1936
Bath Chronicle, 11th January 1936

Living in Liverpool, I am well acquainted with lobscouse. These days it’s simply called scouse, a beef or lamb (or both) stew for which every family had their own recipe. Being an adopted Liverpudlian, I had to create my own, and after a few attempts, this is now my family recipe. I prefer the old-fashioned taste of an oxo cube here.

Scouse
350g each of cubed beef and lamb
2 onions
Squirt of brown sauce
Squirt of tomato ketchup
5 large carrots, chopped
1.5-2 kg King Edward potatoes, in small and larger chunks
Dash of Worcestershire sauce
4 oxo cubes
Water to cover

  • Brown the meat in oil, add the onions and soften slightly.
  • Stir in a good squirt of both ketchup and brown sauce.
  • Add the rest of the vegetables, a dash of Worcestershire sauce, crumble the Oxo cubes on top and add enough water to cover.
  • Simmer for two hours, adding more water if needed. The smaller pieces of potato will have disintegrated to thicken the stew.
  • Serve with pickled red cabbage and bread and butter.
Bowl of Scouse
Bowl of Scouse

Lamb’s Wool is something I’ve never tried before – it’s spiced apple pulp mulled with sugar and ale. I used the recipe from the Oakden recipe archive. The origin of its name is a matter of debate. In the article above, it comes from “Lamb of God”.  But other explanations suggest it comes from either the wooly-looking froth on top of the ale, or as a derivative of the ancient Celtic pagan festival of La mas ubal, meaning ‘Day of the Apple Fruit’.

I used Ghost Ship ale for this, the name appeals to me ever since my investigations into the Ourang Medan. I also made a non-alcoholic version using ginger ale, but you don’t need the extra sugar for that. Together the scouse and the lamb’s wool are quite a combination to keep the winter chill out.

Lamb’s Wool
1.5 Litres of real ale or cider
6 small cooking apples, cored
1 nutmeg freshly grated
1 tsp ground ginger
150g brown sugar

  • Preheat the oven to 120C, core the apples and bake for about an hour on a lightly greased baking tray, until pulpy and the skins come easily away.
  • In a large saucepan add the sugar, cover in a small amount of the ale or cider and heat gently. Stir continuously until the sugar has dissolved. Then add in the ground ginger and grate in the whole of the nutmeg. Stir, and keeping the pan on a gentle simmer, slowly add in all the rest of the ale. Leave for 10 minutes on a gentle heat.
  • Take the baked apples out of the oven to cool slightly for 10 minutes – they should now be soft and pulpy. Scoop out the baked flesh into a bowl, discarding the skin. Then take a fork and mash this apple pulp up, while it is still warm, into a smooth purée with no lumps. Add the apple purée into the ale, mixing it in with a whisk.
  • Let the saucepan continue to warm everything through for thirty minutes, on a very gentle heat, until ready to drink. When warmed through use the whisk again for a couple of minutes (or use a stick blender) to briskly and vigorously froth the drink up and mix everything together. The apple and light froth will float to the surface, and depending on how much you have whisked it, the more it looks like lamb’s wool. Note: to traditionally froth drinks up they were normally poured continuously between two large serving jugs to get air into the drink.
  • Ladle the hot Lambswool into heat-proof mugs or glasses and grate over some nutmeg, or pour the drink into a communal bowl (with several thick pieces of toast in the bottom) to pass around if wassailing.
And a glass of Lamb’s Wool
Categories
1950-1999 Food & Drink

How to Slim after Christmas, 1953

Too soon to think about the post-Christmas diet?

Here’s a diet plan from 1953, taken from William Banting’s “reducing diet” from 90 years earlier. I remember people of my grandparents generation would still sometimes refer to dieting as “banting”.

Dundee Courier, 24th December 1953
Dundee Courier, 24th December 1953

It’s not far removed from current advice, being based on proteins, with little carbohydrate and mainly avoiding sugar. Pleasingly, there seems to be quite a lot of booze involved – I count that you can have up to five drinks a day. You’re allowed two or three glasses of claret, sherry or madeira at lunchtime, and another couple at supper. Maybe it is an ideal post Christmas diet, just eat the leftover turkey, drink the leftover booze and somehow avoid those tins of Roses and, in my case this year, a large batch of Nigella-recipe mince pies with large blobs of thick brandy cream on top.

Still, there’s no point thinking about this until January. As Douglas Adams partly said, time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so, and the week in between Christmas and New Year exists in its own little bubble outside of time and space.

Categories
1900-1949 Adverts Food & Drink

Cadbury’s “99”, 1936

Today’s post began through a fit of annoyance that literally every flavour of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream contains eggs, thereby making a trip to the cinema with my egg-allergic little girl an ice-cream free zone. And it ended with a minor dairy-based historical discovery and an ultimately unfulfilled quest.

So, I was looking up which ice creams contained eggs when I stumbled on the website for The Ice Cream Alliance, and an interesting little section on the wonder that is the Cadbury’s “99”. The “99” being a delicacy that Wikipedia tells me is enjoyed not only in Britain, but also Ireland, South Africa and Australia, and, I need hardly say for British readers, consists of a cone of soft-serve ice-cream, garnished with a specially-sized flake chocolate bar.

I was forced to go to the park and buy one for illustrative purposes at this point.

Yes, it was nice, thank you
Yes, it was very nice, thank you

Here’s the facts, as we know them. Why is a “99” called a “99”? Good question. It’s a Cadbury’s trademark to describe “a scoop or swirl of soft serve ice cream with a Cadbury chocolate flake in it,” yet no one is clear about the original meaning of the name, including, apparently, Cadbury’s.

From www.ice-cream.org
From www.ice-cream.org

What’s that? A tiny historical mystery, you say? I’m on the case!

The Ice Cream Alliance says Cadbury’s is cagey about the origins of the “99”. Wikipedia at least gives some dates, stating that the “99” as we know it now, cone, ice cream and Flake and all, has been served since 1922.

Although, come on, the Screwball isn’t really a “99” in a plastic cone. There’s a crucial ball of bubblegum at the bottom, and definitely sauce and/or sherbet involved.

From Wikipedia
From Wikipedia

 

An aside – red sauce on a “99”, Wikipedia tells me, is called “monkey blood” in some regions, which is exciting. This is my reference point for sauce on an ice-cream though – “I didn’t ask for sauce.” “I didn’t give you sauce.”

Anyway. Both Wikipedia and Cadbury’s own website date the origin of the Flake itself from 1920, when a Cadbury’s employee shrewdly noted how excess chocolate fell off the moulds in a drizzly, thin, flakey layer. Unfortunately I can find no evidence of adverts in any archives until the 1930s and even Cadbury’s website illustrates the invention of the Flake with a 1960s ad.

What I did find, though, was this. Brand new information – to me at least, and also apparently to Wikipedia and the Ice Cream Alliance, seeing as there’s no mention of it anywhere else I’ve seen. From the British Newspaper Archive, a fairly extensive campaign in 1936 advertising the new invention of the “99”, within adverts for Flake.

Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 8th July 1936
Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 8th July 1936

It’s obviously a newish thing in 1936 because the hook line is “Have you tried a 99?” Importantly, though, this 99 is not a 99! It’s an ice cream wafer sandwich with two strips of ice cream and a Flake in the middle. Your confectioner will be happy to provide.

Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 8th July 1936
Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 8th July 1936

Now it seems unlikely to me that in 1922 the “99” came into being, fully formed as we know it today, only to be replaced by something different in 1936, presented as new, and then reverted back at some unspecified point. PLUS, there wasn’t even soft-serve ice cream in the UK until the 1940s, hence this 1936 concoction consisting of ice cream blocks. Depending on who you believe, Maggie Thatcher may or may not have had a hand in developing soft serve for the British market. Which has put me off it a bit.

Still, though, I can’t find mention of this anywhere else, and, you know, maybe Cadbury’s has even forgotten it themselves. I still haven’t got to the bottom of it, but if any readers have any memories of “99” which are different to today, please let me know.

Sussex Agricultural Express, 3rd July 1936
Sussex Agricultural Express, 3rd July 1936
Sussex Agricultural Express, 3rd July 1936
Sussex Agricultural Express, 3rd July 1936
Categories
1900-1949 Food & Drink Victorian

Allergies in the Past

Allergic reactions are on the increase in all parts of the developed world – asthma, hay-fever and food allergies are all more common than they used to be, although no-one has a definitive answer as to why this is. Increased use of antibiotics, the more processed nature of the food we eat, the general changes occurring in our natural environment – these are all put forward as potentially playing their part in making our immune system more sensitive to allergies.

Despite the higher visibility of allergies, such as the new nut-free policies developed in schools, there’s still a sense among some people that this is all a lot of old nonsense, that there weren’t allergies in the old days, and it’s the same thing as people self-diagnosing intolerances to various foodstuffs. As the mother of a little girl with alarming allergies to egg and mustard, people not taking the consequences of exposure to allergens seriously is terrifying. Going out to eat is a minefield – ask most serving staff about which food contains mustard in their menu and I guarantee they will tell you that they don’t have mustard in their food, unless something is specifically described as such – a ham and mustard sandwich, for example. Whereas, if you check their allergy information (if they indeed have it), you’ll find egg and mustard everywhere in the dressings and the flavourings.

This talk of allergies barely existing in the past got me thinking. It may be more common now, but I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t always there, in some way. By chance, I saw a newspaper article in the British Newspaper Archive which mentioned “nettle rash” and I almost passed over it, thinking it referred to an actual rash caused by stinging nettles. But it goes on to clarify that it refers to “some kind of food that disagrees with the sufferer” – so what would be called hives or uticaria now. “Opening medicine” is advised to be given, which I now know is another name for laxatives. Makes sense – it seems like everything could be cured by laxatives if you look at old adverts. But I can see the logic here in that the aim is to expel the offending foodstuff from the body as fast as you can.

The Sunderland Echo, 7th August 1934
The Sunderland Echo, 7th August 1934

“Nettle rash is often very alarming” this article says, and allergic reactions like this are scary to see. “This affection is almost invariably due to mistakes in diet, such as giving a child unripe fruit,” it says, which isn’t a cause of an allergic reaction that I’ve heard before. It sounds like the causes of the reaction were still very misunderstood.

Dundee People's Journal, 7th April 1917
Dundee People’s Journal, 7th April 1917

It is curious how certain articles of diet affect different individuals; food which is freely partaken of by all the members of the family results in a nettle-rash for only one member.” This 1913 article identifies fish and shellfish as one of the possible causes, which is true – both are allergens that need to be listed by law on food ingredients lists now. The reality of living with severe allergies at a time when this wasn’t properly understood or widely known sounds stressful – “Experience is the only guide…..no one can help you, you must look after yourself.”

Coventry Herald, 5th December 1913
Coventry Herald, 5th December 1913

A soothing lotion for the nettle rash here – lead lotion. Terrifying.

Coventry Herald, 5th December 1913
Coventry Herald, 5th December 1913

This 1930 article mixes together food allergy and contact dermatitis resulting from skin contact with various materials. They can be related (I have heard that an allergy to latex can accompany an allergy to kiwi fruit) but not always.

Gloucester Citizen, 8th Juky 1930
Gloucester Citizen, 8th July 1930

This article is a bit strange. It finally gets onto the correct cause – food allergies such as shellfish and strawberries, but only after a moralising digression that also blames indigestion, over-feeding, lack of cleanliness and the taking of drink such as claret cup – “this latter leads many a young girl to drink and ruin. It is so nicely flavoured; so cooling (?) they think, that a mere sip cannot do any harm. In that mere sip they too often sign away their future happiness or their very souls.”  Or it could be strawberries.

Taunton Courier, 24th July 1907
Taunton Courier, 24th July 1907

In the last resort “a complete change of air will effect an immediate cure” this isn’t prescribed much these days, is it? From reading old books, it seems like people were constantly moving to boarding houses on the coast for a change of air to improve their health. If you’re undergoing an allergic reaction, quickly arrange a holiday.

Dundee Evening Telegraph, 3rd April 1930
Dundee Evening Telegraph, 3rd April 1930

This is spot on, and from 1899 too. “Poisoning by eggs” is a “curious personal idiosyncrasy.” This is a good description of egg allergy, which can result in severe symptoms even by the smallest amount consumed, “even when the egg is disguised in other food” and only a tiny amount of food containing egg on the skin can produce swelling. This is what I recognise from my daughter’s egg allergy.

Whitby Gazette, 29th December 1899
Whitby Gazette, 29th December 1899

This article makes clear that anything could potentially be an allergen to an individual person. “There are certain people to whom practically anything is poisonous.”

Framlingham Weekly News, 13th June 1925
Framlingham Weekly News, 13th June 1925

It’s a relief really, reading these articles from another age, and realising that allergies still existed then. It’s a pretty exhausting way to live, checking absolutely every ingredient list on everything, spending a long time going through the allergy folder in a restaurant and even then sometimes suffering a sudden attack which could have been caused by cross-contamination. But what a relief that at least it’s a lot easier now, now the law’s on our side, and there’s more awareness and information available.

Categories
1900-1949 Adverts Food & Drink

Barclay’s Lager, 1926

It’s been a strange kind of summer in a strange kind of year. The approach of September usually gives me a feeling of normality being restored – working for a university I still feel tied to the academic calendar, and September always feels more like new year to me than January ever does. After the uproar of the Brexit result, the weird hiatus while our new Prime Minister promptly went on holiday for five weeks has made the referendum result seem like a strange dream while real life was on hold. With the government reconvening (and why was the referendum decided to coincide with that political period when it feels like no one is in charge?) Brexit’s on the real life agenda again and normality is very much not restored in September this year.

I’ve been having a bit of a holiday from the blog too – a huge queue of scanning materials have been building up and I hope to actually get on with it shortly. In the meantime, here’s an advert for Barclay’s British Lager from 1926. Averse as I currently feel to anything overtly flying the flag for British nationalism, I like this advert.

Hartlepool Mail, 21st May 1926
Hartlepool Mail, 21st May 1926

A seaman’s thirst is quenched by British Lager, Barclay’s being one of the British pioneers in brewing lager. They took advantage of world events – Germany and Austria were the prime source of lager prior to the First World War, but such imports became impossible during the war and Barclay’s set to experimenting with their own brews. They brewed it at 5%, stronger than most beers at the time. After the war they developed a successful export trade in it too – Germany and Austria’s trade being incapacitated and the other big lager producer, the USA, being hobbled by the era of prohibition.

In 1921, the Brewer’s Journal reported on Barclay’s lager in this way (from this link):

“Doubtless they do not imagine that any large trade in this type of beer can at present be looked for from the working classes. The potentiality of trade lies with the middle and upper classes, and with that floating population from the ends of the earth which the Metropolis always embraces.”

Turns out they were wrong about the popularity of lager with the working classes. And the reference to London accepting, “embracing“, people from all “ends of the earth” brings me depressingly back to a time when it feels like the march of history has got a bit lost and is going back on itself, in well-trodden footsteps that lead to nowhere you really want to go.

Categories
1950-1999 Food & Drink

Vintage Recipe – Fricassee of Chicken, 1959

My first creation from 1959’s Perfect Cooking was the mid-century, showy, dinner party-style Fricassee of Chicken.

As I mentioned in my previous post on this book, the best things in there are the delightfully literal line drawings illustrating the ingredients in the recipes (such as an actual fish put in the stocks for fish stock) but not what the actual finished dish looked like. I could have done with a guideline as to how the presentation of this was supposed to work. It’s creamed chicken, surrounded by “a border of mashed potato” and then garnished by peas and fried bread triangles. I have to admit, the double carb-loading appeal of mash and fried bread in the one meal was the main reason for making this.

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This is my serving suggestion attempt, with a piece of chicken hoving into view like a little Nessie. It brings to my mind of one of Fanny Craddock’s creations, although she would probably have dyed the mash green to match the peas. The faffing time spent on producing borders and garnishes means that the sauce had plenty of time to get to work on forming a skin before it got near a plate.

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The verdict? Well, the adults in the house thought it was delicious, but the kids had other ideas. To be fair, it does look very slightly different from the tea they’re usually presented with. The fried bread was a hit, but as far as they were concerned, the chicken could only be eaten with all the creamy sauce wiped off. The mashed potato and peas, infected as they were with the sauce, were no go areas too. I loved the sauce myself, so I have no idea what the kids tastebuds were reacting to.

In short, if you’re hosting a 1950s-themed adult-only dinner party, this is the centrepiece for you. I would make it again in a second, although minus all the faffing with the presentation. Just big dollops of creamy chicken and mash on the plate instead.

Categories
1950-1999 Food & Drink

Perfect Cooking, 1959

I’ve got a new cookery book, and it promises me “Perfect Cooking”, 1959-style.

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I love so many things about old cookbooks, particularly the craziness of the Invalid Cookery sections, but one thing bugs me – there’s no pictures of the food, most of the time. Well, there’s the occasional line drawing in some, and from the 1950s you do start to see those vivid technicolour plates for selected recipes. And, contradicting myself now, thinking about it, I do have the most beautifully illustrated promotional booklet for Lutona cocoa recipes from the 1930s. But generally, my preference is for a nice big picture of every recipe in the book, it adds to the general aesthetic enjoyment of the cooking process.

That is, until now, when I’ve discovered something I like just as much. Quirky little line drawings, depicting something ludicrously literal about the recipe title, like a Pan’s People dance routine on Top of the Pops in 1974. Some of the illustrations are a bit of a wilder riff on the theme, like when that picture of Jocky Wilson was screened behind Dexy’s Midnight Runners on Top of the Pops in 1982. Which I was interested to learn recently, was actually done on purpose, suggested Kevin Rowland for a laugh.

I love the 50s illustration style and the technicolour pics in this book are reserved for some beautiful drawings of special events throughout the year, a wonderful depiction of idealised 1950s life. The Fricassee of Chicken below I have been working on, to be presented in a future post.

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And I would kill to be at this glamorous Halloween party.

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There’s rationing-inspired recipes too, like this one for mock cream.

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Plus um…boiled cucumber?
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And the usual vintage recipes for heads of various sorts, which I’m too squeamish for.
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The line drawings though, these delight my heart, which is always looking for the silly. A rock and rolling rock bun, here – which is pretty up to the minute for 1959. Plus – Batchelors Buttons.
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Preserved ginger, here. I think this is supposed to be a “well-preserved” lady of a certain age.
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Bath buns = a bun in a bath. Obv.
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Sweet egg toasties with a sweet young lady egg in a bonnet.
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Not sure why the vanilla soufflé is a peeking lady with amazing eyes. Maybe because of soufflé being a seductively French word?
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You have to read the ingredients list for this one – the tripe and onion casserole contains dressed tripe, hence a helpfully-signposted piece of tripe in a top hat.
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Chicken croquettes, chicken playing croquet. Standard.
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Sandwiches being advertised on a sandwich board. Clever.
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Right, this has me beat, I’ve googled everything. Why is Shrimp Mousse a clown with a shrimp mousse drum? Is it the shape of the mousse mould? Is it a pun? If anyone can figure it out, please let me know in the comments!
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The best for last – my favourite of them all. An utterly masterful piece of illustration. Fish stock = a fish in the stocks.
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Categories
Food & Drink Victorian

Vintage Recipe – British Champagne, 1855

The EU referendum campaign is hotting up ahead of the vote next week. I am a Remainer, very definitely, with a side order of “Oh crap….I think we’re actually going to leave.”

So here’s my generous offering to the Brexiteers – some appropriate booze for Farage, Gove and our new gurning overlord, Boris Johnson, to get their gruesome mugs around, should the country vote leave next Thursday. British Champagne from 1855, the days of the Empire, and made from gooseberries – appropriately enough for a country that wants to turn itself into an international gooseberry.

Huddersfield Chronicle, 11th August 1855
Huddersfield Chronicle, 11th August 1855

British Champagne

Take gooseberries before they are ripe, crush them in a wooden bowl with a mallet, and to every gallon of fruit put a gallon of water; let it stand two days, stirring it well; squeeze the mixture well with the hands through a hop-sieve, then measure the liquor, and to every gallon put three pounds of load sugar; mix it well in the tub, and let it stand one day; put bottle of the best brandy into the cask, which leave open five or six weeks, taking off the scum as it rises; then close it up, and let it stand one year in the barrel before it is bottled.