As if by instinct, good cooks seem to know how to make everything turn out right. Their bread and cakes always rise, their sauces never curdle. But as well as hours and hours of practice, the best cooks rely on the advice handed down by previous generations.
The oldest known recipes were inscribed on stone tablets in Mesopotamia in about 1700 BC. The only cookbook known from the classical world is that of Apicius from the 1st century AD, but the publishing of practical advice for home cooks really began in 1747 with The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by the English author Hannah Glasse. The baton was taken up in Britain by Eliza Acton in her Modern Cookery for Private Families of 1845 and Isabella Beeton, whose Beeton’s Book of Household Management of 1861 remains a classic. But the American cook Fannie Merritt Farmer was determined to leave nothing to chance. As principal, she created The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook in 1896, with recipes measured accurately to the level teaspoon, tablespoon and cup.
Technology has transformed the kitchen since the days of the kitchen range but however food is prepared, it is never more true than in cookery that attention to detail and practice make perfect.
TO SAVE SEPARATED MAYONNAISE, ADD ANOTHER EGG
The 19th-century American perfectionist Fannie Merritt Farmer offered this sound advice, as have many good cooks before and since, although hot water is also recommended by some.
Mayonnaise, a fine emulsion of egg yolks and oil, is made by adding oil drop by drop to yolks mixed with some salt, while beating vigorously and continuously. What happens as you mix is that the oil is broken into smaller and smaller droplets, which eventually stabilize into a rich, thick mixture. Adding the oil too fast, or insufficient beating, are usually what makes the mixture separate out, so that pools of oil form, making the mixture look curdled. Keeping cool is, in every sense, critical to the process (and the sanity of the cook), because it makes everything more stable.
“Smooth consistency,” says Miss Farmer, “may be restored by taking the yolk of another egg and adding curdled mixture to it.” And she adds, “It is desirable to have bowl containing mixture placed in a larger bowl of crushed ice, to which a small quantity of water has been added.”
Victorian cooks, who used mayonnaise to dress the salads then served for supper as main courses, rather than side dishes, dreaded having to make mayonnaise in hot weather, especially when it was thundery. For colored mayonnaise, traditional additions were lobster coral for red, spinach or parsley for green.
The theory behind this age-old advice is that washing mushrooms makes them soggy, but since they are already 90 percent water, a little more is not likely to make much difference.
Irish folklore maintains that if you see a button mushroom you should pluck it, as it will not grow any more once it has been looked at.
The preparation method, therefore, is the cook’s prerogative, although the tenacity with which pieces of dirt cling to the cups often makes washing the only practical cleaning method. Careful brushing is also effective. Peeling today’s cultivated mushrooms is almost always unnecessary, but may improve large field mushrooms that have been gathered from the wild. For fine dishes the stalks of mushrooms are best removed, and the frugal cook will keep them for flavoring stocks or stews.
Most of the mushrooms we cook and eat today are cultivated – and have been since the 17th century, when the French discovered how to “sow” the underground filaments or mycelia from which the mushrooms grew in beds of asses’ dung.
Mushrooms were traditionally stewed with butter and served under roast poultry or, in the 19th century, presented stuffed as an entrée. As a savory – a dish eaten at the end of an English dinner during the 19th and early 20th centuries – mushrooms on toast was a popular choice.
Mushrooms have not always been appreciated or trusted. John Gerard, in his Herbal of 1633, declared: “Most of them do suffocate and strangle the eater,” while Nicholas Culpeper believed that “inwardly they are unwholesome, and unfit for the strongest constitutions.”
Long and low is the cook’s guide for guaranteeing tender meat in stews and casseroles. If the pot is allowed to boil hard the meat will become stringy because the muscle fibers of which meat is composed shrink quickly, making them tough.
The stew has long been favored by both busy and cost-conscious cooks. It can be left to simmer untended on a low heat, and can make even the most economical cuts palatable. As the meat cooks, the tough collagen – the tissue that holds the bundles of muscle fibers together – is broken down into succulent gelatin. At the same time, the fat in the meat melts, deliciously infusing any pulses, potatoes or root vegetables added to the pot with its flavor.
For a fish stew, such as the flavoursome Mediterranean bouillabaisse, gentle heat is needed not for tenderizing the ingredients but to make sure that the fish does not disintegrate into the cooking liquid.
Stews have their origins in the tradition of cooking over an open fire, the particular ingredients depending on local agriculture and climate. In an Irish stew, neck of mutton or kid are the key ingredients, plus potatoes, onions and a little water. No carrots, barley, leeks or other ingredients should, purists argue, be added, and when the stew is cooked all the liquid should have been absorbed by the potatoes, converting them into a thick, creamy mash.
The casserole is named for the pot in which it is cooked; this was originally a French copper cooking pot, often ostentatiously displayed on the wall to advertise the wealth of its owner rather than being used on the stove.
HEAT A LEMON BEFORE YOU SQUEEZE IT
An old cook’s tip made even easier if you have a microwave and just as effective for limes, too. Just 30 seconds on “high” will soften the fruit’s internal membranes. Five minutes in a warm oven works equally well.
Lemon juice is one of the cook’s essential ingredients, for everything from a marinade to tenderize meat to a flavoring for a cake, so it makes sense to get every last drop of juice from the fruit. As well as applying gentle heat, another good way to help release maximum juice from a lemon or lime is to roll it backwards and forwards on a work surface a few times before squeezing it.
Be positive: when life deals you lemons, make lemonade.
Old-fashioned mechanical lemon squeezers come in two basic designs: the hand-held wooden “reamer” and the glass pyramid molded in a dish to catch the juice with protrusions to trap any pips and pulp. One ingenious 1930s device for extracting just a few drops of juice consisted of a perforated aluminium tube that was pushed into the lemon before the fruit was gently squeezed.
Lemons were an expensive rarity until the 16th century, when the Italians began growing them in quantity and the Spanish planted the first lemon groves in California. Even when this rich lemon cheesecake recipe was written in the 1740s, in the Compleat Housewife of Williamsburg, Virginia, lemons would still have been a luxury: “Take two large lemons, grate off the peel of both and squeeze out the juice of one; add it to half a pound of fine sugar; twelve yolks of eggs, eight egg whites well beaten; then melt half a pound of butter in four or five spoonfuls of cream; then stir it all together, and set it over the fire, stirring ’til it be pretty thick…when ’tis cold, fill your patty-pans little more than half full; put a fine paste very thin at the bottom…half a hour, with a quick oven, will bake them.”
ALWAYS PEEL ONIONS UNDER WATER
Immersion is good for two reasons. For large onions, cold water can stop them making you cry. For small pickling onions or shallots, boiling water loosens stubborn skins and eases peeling.
Peeling onions makes your eyes stream because they give off the volatile substances pyruvic acid and allicin (called lachrymators) when their tissues are cut. When these meet the fluid in the eye they create a weak – but stinging – solution. Under cold running water, the lachrymators have the chance of dissolving before they can get to the eyes.
Keeping cut onions in the house has long been said to be unlucky because it was believed that the cut surface would absorb impurities from the air and “breed distempers.”
For slicing and chopping, however, there is no alternative to bearing the pain, but it may help to cool onions in the refrigerator before you cut them; this makes the lachrymators a little less volatile. Also if you have contact lenses, wear them while preparing onions and you’ll cry a lot less. Or look out for “Supasweet” onions, bred to have a much lower pyruvic acid content than regular types.
The fiery chemical components of onions are quickly and easily subdued by cooking. When heated, the volatile odors are dissipated; some are converted, for our pleasure, into sugar, others into chemicals more than 50 times sweeter. It is this sweetness that makes the tear-jerking preparation of a French onion stew worthwhile, and onions so indispensable.
A cut onion was also said to have curative powers. When placed in a room with a sick child it would, some believed, “draw the complaint to itself.” The onion was then summarily burned.
Not only savory foods but sweet ones, such as cakes and pastries, need salt. The cook’s essential for flavor has also been used for millennia as a food preservative.
No kitchen is complete without salt, simple sodium chloride, the white, crystalline chemical that comes from seawater, which is also mined worldwide. As well as improving the taste of every savory dish, a pinch of salt added to the flour in a cake or sweet pastry mixture improves the balance of flavors. When added to acid fruits such as pineapple and grapefruit, it even enhances their sweetness.
The world’s best known salted foods include salt cod, the fiel amigo (faithful friend) of the Portuguese, sauerkraut, bacon and salami.
Adjust the seasoning before you serve a dish but remember that many people are now deliberately lowering their sodium intake for health reasons. If in doubt, undersalt the dish and let guests add extra at the table. Don’t forget that saltiness changes with temperature. A perfectly salted hot leek and potato soup will seem tasteless and bland when chilled as a vichyssoise.
Sea salt is the kind most prized by connoisseurs, especially when made by evaporating seawater in the sun. Ordinary table salt is treated with small amounts of magnesium carbonate to keep it flowing freely. It may also be iodized – that is, have the mineral iodine added as a health benefit.
Preserving food with salt goes back to the Egyptian practice of salting fish in the 3rd millennium BC and became the norm in Iron Age Britain. It works by drawing out water, in which microbes flourish, and by killing any that do survive. By the Middle Ages, salt fish was Britain’s standard fare. After salting, fish were also dried and smoked to become “red herrings,” which would keep undecayed for a whole year.
A SOUFFLÉ COOKED TOO FAST WILL BE FULL OF HOLES
The art of the hot soufflé comes down to confident mixing, careful cooking and immediate serving. When it succeeds, few dishes are more spectacular or delicious.
The scientific secret behind the soufflé lies in the creation of a foam of stiffly beaten egg whites that is folded into sauce made from butter, flour and the egg yolks. When this mixture is heated two things happen. The air trapped in the egg white foam expands and the proteins in the egg change from liquid to solid – they set. In the perfect soufflé the setting point and the moment of maximum foam expansion coincide.
The cheese soufflé is the classic savory version; hot chocolate, lemon and fruit are the sweet equivalents. However, a cold soufflé, set with gelatin, is more like a mousse.
If the oven is too hot the egg will set too quickly, creating a solid soufflé full of holes. If it is too cold the center will not set properly and be too liquid. The ideal oven setting is 350°F/180°C/ Gas mark 4. To prevent it cooking too quickly, place the dish in a pan of hot water to come about halfway up the side before putting it in the oven.
Resist, above all, the temptation to open the oven door while the soufflé is cooking. A rush of cold air will prevent the air in the mixture from expanding properly. Equally, a soufflé left standing once out of the oven will quickly begin to collapse as the air inside cools and contracts.
The word soufflé comes from the French word meaning “puffed up” and the dish is indeed a French concoction of the late 18th century. It was served as a savory at the end of a dinner or as a light luncheon, but was also considered an ideal – and safe – dish for an invalid.
Of all the foods whose flavor is enhanced by salt, porridge comes to the top. But how much salt to add is a matter of taste. Purists insist on their morning booster being a savory dish, not one sweetened with sugar, honey or even fresh fruit.
Although porridge is a general word for any “mush” made with cereals such as oats or oatmeal, barley, rye, hominy or even polenta, it is the Scots who claim the dish – made with oats – as their own, and regard salt as a key ingredient. No self-respecting Scot, it is said, will allow any other addition but milk or cream. Sugar is strictly for children.
Before the introduction of “instant oats,” porridge making was a ritual that demanded the use of a special stirrer known as a spurtle or “porridge stick.” Water was put on to boil, oatmeal sprinkled in with the left hand and the porridge stirred with the right. In this, it is said, “consists the art of porridge making, as on it being well done depends the absence of lumps or knots… Boil 10 minutes, then add salt and boil 10 minutes longer. It is best not to put the salt in till the end of 10 minutes as it has a tendency to harden the meal and prevent its fully expanding.”
By tradition, Highland Scots would set porridge in a mould – which was often a sideboard drawer – and cut it into chunks, when cold, to take out with them for sustenance throughout the day.
Porridge is sustaining because oats have a low glycemic index. This means that they are digested slowly, keeping blood sugar levels steady over a long period and making them an ideal food for diabetics and athletes taking part in endurance exercise. And because they contain soluble fiber, oats can help lower your cholesterol level.
STOP AVOCADOS GOING BROWN WITH LEMON JUICE
Not just avocados. The lemon juice trick – or lime juice if you prefer – works just as effectively on apples, pears and bananas. The secret lies in the acid that these citrus fruits contain.
Cutting an avocado sets to work the enzyme polyphenol oxidase, which in the presence of oxygen in the air creates brown compounds in the flesh. The citric acid in lemon juice slows the action of the enzyme to a snail’s pace. The acetic acid in an oil and vinegar dressing has a similar effect, as does ascorbic acid or vitamin C, first isolated in 1925 by a Hungarian biochemist Albert Szent-Györgyi, who perceptively noticed that the juice of a fruit that does not brown in air can delay the discoloration of one that does.
An avocado will never ripen until after it has been picked or becomes a windfall. A biochemical inhibitor in the tree is thought to prevent the ripening process.
The avocado or avocado pear (Persea americana) is unique among fruits for its high fat content of up to 30 percent, which has earned it the nickname “poor man’s butter.” And although avocados contain up to 400 calories per fruit, the fat is the “good” monounsaturated sort that is thought to help lower blood cholesterol levels.
In subtropical America, archaeologists have traced avocado cultivation back more than 7,000 years. All today’s fruits are descended from three original races: the purple, smooth-skinned Mexican; the rough-skinned Guatemalan; and the large, smooth West Indian.
On first tasting an avocado in 1672 in Jamaica, the royal physician W. Hughes declared it to be “one of the most rare and pleasant fruits of the island. It nourisheth and strengtheneth the body.”
FOR PASTRY: COOL WHILE MAKING, HOT WHILE BAKING
This is undoubtedly the key to success with everyday shortcrust or “plain” pastry, and for flaky and puff pastry. The exceptions are fancy pastries such as choux and the hot water crust used for authentic pork and game pies.
In making shortcrust pastry, coolness is vital to prevent sticky gluten in the flour from developing and to keep the particles of fat (lard, butter or a mixture of the two) from becoming liquid and thus a less effective barrier between the grains of flour. To keep everything as cool as possible, use chilled fat, cut it into the flour with a knife, then rub it in with the fingertips. Quickly stir in chilled water with a knife, and finish the mixture using the fingers of one hand until it just leaves the sides of the bowl. Half an hour’s rest in the refrigerator, followed by rolling of the dough with a marble or glass rolling pin on a cool worktop, are the other essentials for avoiding heat.
Large Victorian kitchens had separate pastry rooms with cool marble tops, which were a boon to cooks in the summer months.
In a hot oven (200°C/400°F/Gas mark 6) the particles of fat or shortening melt but, because they have kept the flour grains separate, long strands of gluten are prevented from forming. Quick, high-temperature cooking also keeps the starch grains in the flour stiff, making the pastry crisp. This, combined with the expansion of air trapped in the mixture and the release of steam as the water in the mixture evaporates, gives the pastry its lightness.
Puff pastry is made by folding pastry in layers, with butter added between each. Coolness is essential during its preparation, but the finished dough, composed of up to 240 layers, needs very high heat (420°F/220°C/ Gas mark 7) to expand the air trapped in the layers.
WHEN MAKING TEA, ADD ONE FOR THE POT
Grandmother’s dictum results in a good strong brew, but today tea is a matter of taste. However you make it, “a nice cup of tea” has undoubted health benefits, being rich in antioxidants, substances that can help reduce the risk of heart disease.
While tea bags are hard to beat for convenience, the pure taste of a high quality tea can be appreciated only by using leaf tea in a pot. When you pour boiling water on to a black tea (very hot, not boiling, is best for green tea), it releases a variety of substances, including caffeine, essential oils, polyphenols and the tannins that give tea its astringent effect.
According to Chinese legend, in the year 2737 BC the Emperor Shen Nung was resting under a tea tree when the wind blew some leaves into some water he was heating. The resulting drink so refreshed and revitalized him that tea drinking was “invented.”
While some people insist that tea’s flavor is best (and good manners best satisfied) when tea is put in the cup first, others maintain that it is only possibly to get the strength exactly right if it is added after the milk. The British, who began drinking tea in the 1650s (the merchant Thomas Garraway first sold it at his London store in 1658) were probably the first to add milk, to help soften tea’s bitter tannins. Putting the milk in first may have helped to prevent fine Chinese porcelain tea bowls from cracking.
The Chinese adapted their stoneware wine ewers to serve as teapots, but teapot design did not really take off until the Dutch began importing tea in the late 16th century. Even then, it took until the 1670s for Dutch potters to master the art of making heatproof vessels.
STOP MILK BOILING OVER: GREASE THE TOP OF THE PAN WITH BUTTER
Or, even easier, add a large, clean marble, but the failsafe solution is to use a heavy pan on a low to moderate heat and to stir and keep watch over the milk as it warms up. The other advantage of a heavy pan is that it prevents heated milk sticking and burning.
Hot milk can boil over in a second, but if caught at the instant when the froth is just rising it makes the perfect addition to hot chocolate. The grease trick works because it helps to prevent the foam from rising up the pan, but only temporarily. The marble acts as an in-built stirrer, but it, too, is fallible. Frothing milk with a jet of steam – which is what the steamer nozzle on an espresso coffee machine achieves – is an ideal solution, and prevents unpalatable skin forming. When using a pan, stirring the milk helps, although stirring in a skin once it has formed merely spreads the unappetizing bits through the rest of the milk.
A nonstick pan won’t stop milk boiling over but will make cleaning easier. Teflon, originally produced in the USA by the DuPont company in 1938, was first used to coat pans in 1955 by the Frenchman Marc Grégoire.
In the days before every home had a refrigerator, boiling or scalding milk before it was drunk was a vital precaution against infection, especially in hot weather and for the sick. Fannie Merritt Farmer recommended scalding it in a double boiler until the milk around the edge has “a bead-like appearance.”
ALWAYS ADD VINEGAR TO THE WATER WHEN YOU POACH AN EGG
For the inexperienced cook, this is a sensible precaution to help the egg white seal quickly. Too much vinegar can mar the flavor if the eggs are to be eaten plain, but will be disguised by a sauce.
Making perfectly poached eggs is a culinary art worth mastering. Start with a deep frying pan filled with 3 inches (7.5 cm) of water with, if you wish, 1–2 tablespoons of mild vinegar added. When the water has reached a rolling boil, crack an egg into a part of the water that is bubbling hard so that it spins around in the vortex. (If you are nervous, break the egg into a saucer first, then slide it into the water.) Add more eggs in the same way, then lower the heat to get the gentlest of simmers. In about four minutes the whites should be set and the yolks still runny. Lift out the cooked eggs with a slotted spoon and drain them. Trim away any untidy white around the edges before serving.
Eggs Benedict – an English muffin topped with grilled Canadian bacon (not cold ham), poached eggs, hollandaise sauce and (for sheer luxury) a slice of truffle, has been an American favorite for decades. There are various versions of its origin. One is that Mrs. LeGrand Benedict devised it, in conjunction with the chef at New York’s Delmonico’s Restaurant, in the 1860s. Another is that in 1894 it was ordered by Lemuel Benedict, a Wall Street broker, when suffering from a hangover.
Poaching works well for any food, such as delicate fish or fruit, that needs gentle cooking. The word comes from the French pocher, meaning pocket, and refers specifically to the pocket of liquid yolk within the set white of a poached egg.
EAT OYSTERS ONLY WHEN THERE’S AN “R” IN THE MONTH
A catchy way of warning against the possibility of food poisoning from oysters, mussels and other crustaceans in the warmest months (in the northern hemisphere) of May to August, none of which includes a letter “r.” Oysters are now bred and farmed to reduce the risk of infection all year.
Oysters feed on microscopic algae that can become infected with bacteria, and these multiply rapidly in warm seawater. Of these, Vibrio parahaemolyticus is the most common, causing stomach pains and sickness, but most deadly is V. vulnificus, which can bring on septicemia. What’s more, eating one bad oyster can sensitize you indefinitely to them all.
Oysters were so abundant in England in the early 19th century that they were regarded as poor people’s food. Sam Weller, in Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers, declares that “poverty and oysters always seem to go together.”
A “good” oyster should always be tightly closed when you buy it and should open when it is cooked. If it is to be eaten raw, an oyster must be scrubbed clean then prized open with an oyster knife. Cooks would traditionally keep live oysters in the kitchen for a few days and feed them with oatmeal to fatten them and make them more luscious. The smallest of them were saved for eating raw, larger ones cooked and added to steak pies or turkey stuffing, made into patties or dipped in batter and fried.
The reputation of oysters as an aphrodisiac (the famed 18th-century Italian lover Casanova is said to have eaten 40 a day) may be justified by their mineral content as well as their looks and texture. They are rich in zinc, a substance essential to sperm production.
YOU CAN’T MAKE BREAD IN A COLD KITCHEN
Unless, that is, you are making unleavened bread or soda bread, which needs no yeast. Warmth is essential to the “magic” of bread making; it allows the live yeast cells to multiply and, as they do so, produce the carbon dioxide gas that makes the mixture rise.
Yeast (Saccharoymyces cerevisiae) is a single-celled fungus that is fussy about warmth. Below 70°F (21°C) its cells reproduce only very slowly. Above about 130°F (56°C) they die. The temperature at which they grow fastest and most steadily is just above human body temperature, at 100°F (38°C). Candida yeast, which produces the lactic acid that gives sourdough bread its characteristic flavor, needs a similar temperature.
The yeast used in bread making is the same live species (though today it is a different variety) as that used for making beer. The ancient Egyptians combined their breweries and bakehouses, using the waste or “barm” from beer making to raise their bread. Women were responsible for both brewing and baking.
The seemingly miraculous properties of yeast led to its medieval name of “goddisgoode” – because it was said to have come from “the great grace of God.”
Cooling bread is as important to perfection as cooking, because it ensures that water migrates to the crust and does not make the crumb doughy and leathery. Mrs. Beeton advises strongly against eating newly cooked bread. “It should,” she says, “be carefully shunned by everybody who has the slightest respect for that much-injured individual – the Stomach.”
STEPS IN BREAD MAKING THE MRS. BEETON WAY
The domestic guru used 1 ounce (25 g) fresh German (compressed) yeast for every 3½ pounds (1.6 kg) flour. Today easy-to-use, powdered yeast makes an excellent substitute.
1. Mix yeast with 1/4 pint (450 ml) of warm milk-and-water and mix until “smooth as cream.”
2. Put the flour in a bowl with a pinch of salt and make a well in the middle. Pour in the yeast mixture and stir to make a “thick batter in which there must be no lumps.”
3. Sprinkle plenty of flour on top and cover with a thick, clean cloth. “Set it where the air is warm” but not “upon the kitchen fender, for it will be too much heated there” until bubbles break through the flour.
4. Pour in a further ½ pint (300 ml) warm milk-and-water. Throw on plenty of flour, then knead well “with the knuckles of both hands” until the mixture is smooth. It is ready when it “does not stick to the hands when touched.”
5. Leave to rise again, for 3/4 hour. When it has risen and is beginning to crack, quickly cut into shapes and bake at once in a hot oven.
DON’T OPEN THE OVEN DOOR WHILE A CAKE IS COOKING
Especially important for sponge cakes, which like soufflés won’t rise properly if subjected to a blast of cold air. For a perfect result the oven needs to be heated to the correct temperature before the cake is put inside.
A “true” sponge cake rises because the air whisked into it expands in the heat of the oven. Classic whisked fatless sponges are the Savoy, in which egg yolks are first beaten with sugar, and the egg whites then beaten until stiff and folded in separately, and the Génoise, in which whole eggs are used. For both, flour is folded in at the end of mixing.
In a creamed sponge, such as a Victoria sponge or sandwich, butter and caster sugar are creamed together until soft and fluffy, then eggs, flour and baking powder added. When heated, the flour produces pockets of carbon dioxide in the mixture. Both this gas and the expanded, heated air beaten into the cake will contract quickly if the oven door is opened and cold air rushes in.
Until the gas cooker made its entry into kitchens from the 1890s cooks were at the mercy of the range, which although it had ventilators to help control the fierceness and heat of the fire was hit and miss for cake making. The manufacturers of gas cookers were quick to produce recipe books to accompany their stoves; the 1930s Parkinson Cookery Book boasts that “cakes carefully prepared and put into a controlled oven heated to the correct temperature and given the right time cannot be failures.”
For making a Victoria sponge, the classic proportions are the “weight of two eggs” for each of the main ingredients. Since an egg weighs about 2 ounces (50 g), the mixture needs 4 ounces (100 g) each of sugar, butter and flour.
TO STOP PASTA STICKING, ADD A SPOONFUL OF OIL TO THE COOKING WATER
This can be a wise precaution for fresh pasta, which tends to be stickier than the dried variety, but it is a method that is heartily despised by both Italians and professional cooks.
No pasta is likely to stick if it is cooked in plenty of salted water. For cooking allow, as a rule of thumb, 7 pints (3 liters) of water and a tablespoon of salt for 1 pound (450 g) of dried pasta, with an extra 13/4 pints (1 liter) for every additional 8 ounces (225 g). Plunging the pasta into this generous amount of boiling water allows it to come quickly back to the boil, helps the pieces to stay separate and gives it enough room to swell up.
It is said that spaghetti is ready to eat when it will stick in place if thrown at the wall, but more conventionally it should be timed to be al dente or with bite. (The expression literally means “to the tooth.”) This may take up to 12 minutes for dried pasta but only three, or less, for fresh.
Marco Polo, who arrived in Venice from his travels to the East in 1298, did not introduce pasta to Italy. The evidence: a “basketful of macaroni” listed in the estate of one Ponzio Bastone in 1279. That this was obviously dried, not fresh pasta, proves, say food historians, that pasta making already had a long tradition in Italy. In fact pasta was probably “invented” independently by both the ancient Chinese and the Etruscans in about the 4th century BC.
Macaroni was almost certainly the first pasta enjoyed in the West. Macaroni cheese, still the ultimate comfort food, featured in British recipe books from the Middle Ages onwards. And although Spanish settlers had brought pasta to America, Thomas Jefferson was so delighted by the macaroni that he ate in Paris in the 1780s that he brought two crates back home with him.
The song by Edward Bangs, first printed in England in 1778 and in America in 1794 (though possibly sung by British troops in the Anglo-French conflict of 1755–63) is testament to the popularity of pasta.
Yankee Doodle came to town
Riding on a pony
Stuck a feather in his cap
And called it Macaroni.
PASTA VARIETIES
Of the dozens of different pasta shapes, some have wonderfully descriptive names that relate to their shapes:
Capelli d’angelo – angel hair or little hairs – is the thinnest kind of spaghetti.
Capelletti – small hats – stuffed pasta twisted into shapes like three-cornered hats.
Farfalle – resembling butterflies.
Lingune di passero – sparrows’ tongues – a kind of thin, oval spaghetti.
Maltagliati – badly cut – long narrow diamond or triangular shapes.
Orecchiette – little ears – shaped as their name describes.
Vermicelli – small worms – thin spaghetti, not as thin as angel hair.
TEST AN EGG FOR FRESHNESS BY PUTTING IT IN WATER
In cold water, a fresh egg will sink and lie level on the bottom of the bowl; a stale one – in which gas has accumulated – will float. This surefire test was first recorded by the English cook Hannah Glasse, the first “celebrity chef,” in 1750.
A less reliable test is to hold the egg up to a bright light. The shell is almost transparent and it will be possible to distinguish the yolk and the white. A stale egg is more translucent at the ends than in the middle, while in a fresh egg the reverse is true.
Even a fresh egg can harbor Salmonella bacteria. To avoid the risk of infection, which can be dangerous to the young, the pregnant, the elderly and infirm, never eat eggs raw, and always cook them until the yolk is set.
The key to these simple tests is that an egg begins to change as soon as it leaves the hen’s body because it continues to “breathe,” releasing carbon dioxide gas. Gradually, the white and yolk change, too. The white becomes thinner and the membrane or sac around the yolk weakens, making it more difficult for the cook to separate white and yolk without the yolk breaking. Eventually the egg rots, producing smelly hydrogen sulphide from the yolk.
Eggs have been used to celebrate Easter since the 12th century, when they were cooked in water with cochineal added: the red color symbolized the blood of Christ. But long before this the ancient Greeks gave each other gifts of painted eggs to celebrate the arrival of spring.
WHISK EGG WHITES IN A COPPER BOWL
For a stable foam that can be whisked stiff and will not collapse, there is nothing to surpass a copper bowl. But a clean, dry container, whatever it is made of, is essential to a good result.
One of the problems of beating egg whites stiff, particularly for making meringues, is that if over-beaten they separate out into a nasty mess of lumps and liquid. What cooks of the past discovered by trial and error has now been proved in the laboratory: a reaction between conalbumin (one of the proteins in the white) and the copper prevents the foam from separating and imparts a creamy yellow color quite different from the snowy white of a foam whisked in a glass, stainless steel or ceramic bowl.
The first egg whisks were bunches of birch twigs, used in the 16th century to make ‘snows’ of beaten egg whites and cream, the forerunners of meringues.
Pure egg white is essential to a good result. Just a drop of yolk can reduce the volume of beaten egg white by over 60 percent; particles of oil or grease can have a less drastic effect. Salt makes whites hard to whip and decreases their stability. If you have a copper bowl, keep it spotless. Rub off any green patches of potentially harmful copper oxide with a mixture of salt and lemon juice, then wash and dry it thoroughly before use.
Dropping egg white into water (all of it, or a few drops from an egg pricked with a pin) and interpreting the shape created is an old method of divination. Gypsies are reported to have “seen” everything from ships to churches and coffins using this method.
IF THE SOUP IS TOO SALTY, ADD SUGAR
The trick, which works especially well for tomato soup, is also effective for gravy. The addition of sugar seems to neutralize the taste of the salt, possibly because these two basic flavors are sensed on different parts of the tongue.
Another good tip is to put a sliced potato into salty soup, then remove and discard it before serving; the vegetable will absorb a lot of the excess salt. Adding milk can help, too, but only if the soup already has milk or cream as one of its ingredients.
Soup is one of the oldest foods and for centuries was either bread soaked in broth or broth poured over bread. Only from the 1800s was it served without the bread or “sops.” Soups made from game animals and birds were staples in the diet of early North American pioneers. In 1837 Miss Leslie, in her Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches, advised: “Be careful to proportion the amount of water to the amount of meat. Somewhat less than a quart to a pound of meat is a good rule for common soups. Rich soups, intended for company, may have a still smaller allowance for water.”
OTHER GOOD ADVICE FROM SOUP MAKERS OF THE PAST
A good stock makes a good soup.
Don’t flavor a soup like a sauce.
If stock for soup is fatty, heat it, then strain it through a muslin cloth that has been wrung out in cold water. The fat will solidify on the cloth.
Clarify a soup by adding crushed eggshells to the hot liquid, then skimming them off.
When eating soup, etiquette demands – says Judith Martin, America’s Miss Manners – that it “should always be kept flowing in the opposite direction from one’s lap. The soup spoon should be filled from its far side and the soup poured gently into the mouth with its near side.”
TEAR LETTUCE, DON’T CHOP IT
Chopping lettuce, believe many cooks, imparts an undesirable “flavor of the knife,” and quickly makes salads go limp and brown. But it is often the only way to deal satisfactorily with the ubiquitous “Icebergs” eaten by the billions each year.
Tearing lettuce is said to damage it less because it divides the leaf along the natural boundaries between the cells. In fact, left only to the air, lettuce will not (unlike basil leaves) brown quickly, however prepared, but the test comes when you add the dressing. An oil-only dressing will stick to the leaf and ooze into any breaks in its outer layer or cuticle, creating a browning reaction. Vinegar, by contrast (as with lemon juice on avocado, see “Stop Avocados Going Brown with Lemon Juice” on page 103) will stop or effectively delay the same chemical effect.
In the 17th century the French candied lettuce hearts with sugar to make the confection known as gorge d’ange or angel’s throat.
Lettuce (Lactuca sativa) is named for the milky sap that is exuded from its stems and leaves. In ancient times this was associated with fertility, and the Egyptian god Min possessed a sacred bull who was fed on lettuce to maximize his potency. In the Middle Ages, however, eating lettuce was widely thought to cause sterility.
The Greek physician Hippocrates extolled the healing virtues of lettuce (though he may have been referring to wild “loose” lettuce, L. serriola), but it was first widely cultivated in Europe in the Roman period. In the early days of the Empire, lettuce salad was served at the end of a meal to help induce sleep. Later it became favored as an appetizer, to stimulate the palate.
The sedative qualities of lettuce are well known and quoted by many authors, including Beatrix Potter in the opening to her much loved children’s book The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies: “It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is ‘soporific.’ I have never felt sleepy after eating lettuces; but then I am not a rabbit.”
THE SHORTER THE FIBERS, THE TENDERER THE FLESH
A handy rule for judging the quality of the butcher’s meat, although not the only important factor. The cut is critical as is, for beef especially, the length of time the meat has been hung.
Meat is muscle, made of bundles of long, thin fibers, which are supported by sheets of connective tissue containing collagen. Age and exercise toughen muscle fibers – by increasing the number of fibers in every muscle bundle – but with age also comes the deposition of fat, the “marbling” that melts in cooking and adds to meat’s succulence. Animal anatomy is also significant. The muscles of the forequarters, which the animal uses more, are generally tougher and more packed with collagen than those of the rump or those near the spine and under the backbone.
Cuts such as steaks combine the advantages of being from the rump of the animal and having short fibers. Slicing meat across the grain – as in a T-bone steak or meat sliced for a stroganoff or a Chinese stir fry – helps to create short fibers that, although probably already tender, are extremely easy to chew.
Tenderness also depends on an animal’s health. A well-fed creature will have plump muscle fibers packed with the carbohydrate glycogen. In the carcass this is converted into lactic acid, which tenderizes the flesh by breaking down the protein in the muscle fibers and also helps to prevent it from being infected with bacteria.
With hanging, enzymes are released which add both acidity and tenderness to the meat. You can judge a well-hung piece of beef by its deep – not bright – red color. Beef can safely be hung for up to six or even eight weeks, although today’s commercial pressures make three weeks the norm.
In the 1940s two young entrepreneurs paid a small sum to a Californian restaurateur for his “magic formula” – a substance for tenderizing cheap cuts of meat. So began the widescale sale of meat tenderizers based on the papaya enzyme, although for centuries before this the people of South and Central America had been improving their meat by wrapping it in papaya leaves.
DON’T STORE BANANAS IN THE FRIDGE
Because they are averse to cold. If you must refrigerate bananas, wrap them in newspaper to keep them insulated. Their skins may turn black but they should be prevented from going mushy inside.
If you want to eat or cook with bananas ripened to your taste it is best to buy them green and allow them to ripen slowly. Supermarket bananas are picked completely green and allowed to ripen somewhat during shipment. As they mature the starch in the flesh turns increasingly to the sugar glucose, which helps to alter the texture of the fruit.
When bananas are fully ripe – as you need them for mashing into a banana bread or cake mixture – the skin is deep yellow, flecked with brown spots. As they ripen they give off ethylene gas, which can help other fruit – even green tomatoes – to ripen as well. An avocado put in a lidded box with a banana should ripen overnight.
“Yes We Have No Bananas” became a popular wartime song in the food shortage days of the 1940s, although it had been written by Frank Silver and Irving Cohn long before, in 1923.
The banana’s name betrays its history. It comes from a West African word, banema, originating from Guinea – from where the Portuguese took the fruit to the Canaries in 1402. From there banana roots arrived in America in 1516, courtesy of a Spanish missionary destined to become the Bishop of Panama.
PRICK SAUSAGE SKINS TO STOP THEM BURSTING
Pricking is a useful precaution if sausages are not the highest quality, and for any sausages to be cooked at high temperatures, but it allows the juices to leak from good sausages, reducing their succulence.
The more water there is in a sausage the more likely it is to burst when cooked. Sausages earned their nickname of “bangers” when, during the 1940s, they were so packed with water that they were likely to explode when heated. Modern sausage makers recommend no pricking and slow frying or cooking under a moderate grill to stop the skins bursting. An old method of toughening sausage skins or casings – made from animal intestines or, as Fannie Farmer called them, “prepared entrails” – was to dip the sausages in boiling water before they were cooked.
The expression ‘not a sausage’, which when first coined meant lack of money, relates back to cockney rhyming slang in which bangers and mash equal cash.
Many culinary regions have characteristic types of sausage that relate closely to the climate. So it is no accident that dried sausages that keep well, such as salami and chorizo, came first from warm countries such as Italy and Spain. The Frankfurter is named for Frankfurt am Main, but “hot dog” entered the vocabulary when, in 1906, the American cartoonist Tad Dorgan first depicted a sausage dog (a dachshund) served up in a bun.
A quintessentially English sausage dish is toad-in-the-hole, made from sausages baked in batter. Described by Mrs. Beeton as “homely but savory” (she used steak and kidney, not sausage), it was first made in the 18th century.
AFTER MELON, WINE IS A FELON
Not only melon, but any sweet food, can ruin the taste of a wine. The rule for choosing wine to accompany sweet dishes is that it should be sweeter than the food.
This advice, and the mantras “dry before sweet” and “light before full,” make melon a difficult ingredient to pair with wine at the start of a meal. But, if you match it with a savory accompaniment such as Parma ham, a fruity German or New Zealand white wine would be a good choice.
Dessert wines have returned to favor, especially for home entertaining, and are the perfect match for sweet food. French Sauternes, not to be confused with the sugary Spanish or Californian “Sauterne” gulped by the gallon by students in the 1960s (it was the only wine affordable and available), has a luscious intensity and is appropriate to serve with desserts such as strawberries and cream. Or choose an Australian Muscat or a Tokay, which will go well with even the sweetest chocolate mousse. In the grand houses and restaurants of 1890s America, champagne would often be served throughout a meal “with no other adjunct but bottled waters.” But as the social adviser Constance Cary Harrison also remarked, “How infinitely more welcome to the habitual diner-out is a glass of good claret than indifferent champagne!”
MORE WINE ADVICE
Apart from desserts, there are some other tricky tastes that need careful wine selection:
Acid foods like lemon – “acid with acid,” such as a dry Graves, high in tartaric acid.
Asparagus – Sauvignon Blanc.
Curries – A dry, aromatic Pinot Gris (or just drink lager).
Artichokes – Forget wine. The chemical cynarin that artichokes contain will make any wine nastily metallic on the palate.
150 Hors d’oeuvre Recipes by “Pin” Baglioni of the Embassy Club, published in 1934, includes a “special” first course in which cantaloupe melon flesh is diced and served (in the scooped-out melon halves) with a sauce made from a mixture of curry powder, ginger, port, kirsch, whipped cream, apricot purée and sugar!
SERVE WHITE WINE WITH FISH, RED wine WITH MEAT
A helpful guide, not an unbreakable golden rule. The secret of success in matching wine with food is to think of the wine as another ingredient.
Following this logic, it makes perfect sense to enjoy an acid wine such as a Sauvignon, Reisling or Muscadet with fish in the same way that you would squeeze lemon over it. Similarly, a rich, full-bodied wine such as a Shiraz or Merlot is an excellent accompaniment to beef or game, while the acidity of a Cabernet Sauvignon makes it a perfect foil for rich roast pork.
If red is your preferred color, but fish your food, it is best to avoid wines high in tannins such as vintage Burgundies. But there are many good, light acidic reds to choose from, including young Riojas, Chiantis and Valpolicellas. For a white that will complement a meat dish, body is required, and you will get it from wines such as Pinot Gris, Chardonnay and Semillon.
Some 800 years ago the School of Salerno in Italy defined the qualities of the perfect wine as five Fs: Fortia, formosa, et fragrantia, frigida, frisca, which translates as: “Strength, beauty, and fragrance, coolness, freshness.”
ADD FRESH HERBS AT THE END OF COOKING, DRIED AT THE BEGINNING
An assured route to good flavor, but not advice to apply slavishly. For dishes such as casseroles a bouquet garni – fresh parsley, rosemary and thyme added at the beginning – is needed for depth and subtlety of taste.
Like rosemary and thyme, bay and sage have sturdy leaves that will impart flavor throughout the cooking of a dish. Herbs with more tender foliage, including fresh coriander, chives, dill, fennel, basil, mint and tarragon, are best kept until shortly before the end of cooking for their flavor to be fully appreciated (as is fresh parsley if you want its flavor to be dominant, as in parsley sauce) because when cooked for more than a few minutes their taste goes flat.
Equally, none of these delicate herbs holds its aroma well when dried, although they freeze well (ice cube trays make excellent containers). Or try making good quantities of garden mint into sauce or jelly, and turn basil into your own pesto, which will keep for at least a month in the refrigerator.
The specific aromatic notes of herbs – created from a whole spectrum of chemicals that are released when the leaves are crushed or heated – make them perfect partners for certain ingredients: mint or rosemary with lamb; fennel or dill with fish; bay with ham; sage with pork; tarragon with eggs. Fresh coriander comes into its own in chilli-based Thai curries.
ADD LEMON TO STRAWBERRY JAM TO MAKE IT SET
If you’re having real trouble, you also need to add pectin, the carbohydrate – which strawberries have too little of – that makes jams and jellies set. Lemon juice helps the setting process by drawing out all the pectin that is available from the fruit.
The essential process of jam making is simple: boil the fruit with its own weight in sugar until, when a small amount is dabbed on to a cold plate, it cools to a firm consistency. While fruits like plums, currants and gooseberries contain plenty of natural pectin so jams made with them set with ease, strawberries and all but the most acid raspberries are notorious for their reluctance to set. Try boiling unpeeled lemon slices and using the resulting liquid (which contains pectin from the fruit pith) or, to ensure success, use natural pectin, which is available ready-prepared in powder or liquid form, or mixed into special preserving sugar.
Jams are relative newcomers to the kitchen cupboard, being first recorded in the 1730s, some 200 years after solid marmalades and fruit cheeses were originally made. Because they needed so much sugar to ensure a set and good keeping qualities, jams remained a luxury. As Mrs. Beeton observed: “The expense of preserving them [fruits] with sugar is a serious objection; for, except the sugar is used in considerable quantities, the success is very uncertain.”
The expression “jam tomorrow,” meaning a pleasant thing that remains a dream, comes from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, written in 1871. The White Queen offers Alice, in recompense for being her maid, twopence a week and jam every other day. Unfortunately for Alice, the deal is “Jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day.”