Juicy and acid, the fruit is used in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines for making pickles, e.g. the Malay sunti; in curries; and for stewing as a vegetable. In Indonesia it is caramelized with sugar to make a sweetmeat known as manisan (something sweet). The sour flavour which it imparts to a dish is well liked in the region. Dried slices of the fruit are available in the markets, and the fruit can be bought in candied form in the Philippines.
Julia Morton (1987) observes that in Costa Rica the uncooked fruits are made into a relish and served with rice and beans.
Towards the end of the 18th century the bilimbi was carried from Timor to Jamaica, and was planted throughout mainland C. America, as well as in Cuba and Trinidad. It is also grown extensively in Zanzibar.
Platycodon grandiflorus, a foodstuff used extensively in Korea, where it is known as toraji and is one of the vegetables associated with the first full moon of the year. It makes a delicious vegetable side dish, prepared with spices, vinegar, and SOY SAUCE. The roots have to be carefully prepared to rid them of their bitter taste. Fresh root must be parboiled and repeatedly rinsed. Dried root must be soaked and washed several times. Either way, the root is usually cut into strips, which will have a distinctive, but mild flavour. Pickled toraji is also available.
In Japan, the dried root is included in the medical herb mixture used to flavour o-toso, the MIRIN-based liqueur drunk at New Year.
see CAPSICUM.
a name which translates into English as White Russia, is a vast flat country with many large rivers, lying between RUSSIA, LATVIA, LITHUANIA, POLAND, and the UKRAINE. A Russian author, Pokhlebkin (1984), comments:
There is some difficulty in establishing exactly what constitutes traditional Byelorussian cooking, because of the continuous social and religious upheavals the region has undergone.
The peasants of Byelorussia belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church; the petty gentry were mainly Unitarian; the nobility, chiefly Polish or Lithuanian in origin, were exclusively Roman Catholic. The cooking traditions of the ruling classes resembled the Polish and German cuisines, while the small-town artisans and merchants were influenced by Jewish cooking, after the seventeenth century when the Jews began to settle there en masse. Only the peasants maintained the real traditions of the Slavic tribes from which they descended.
Given the geographical position of the country and the habits of its neighbours, it is no surprise to find that potatoes loom large in the diet (mealy ones are preferred) and that there are lots of DUMPLINGS (kletski), both savoury and sweet; that there are RYE BREADS; that BARLEY and OATS are used; and that there is much emphasis on dairy foods.
Unusual items typical of Belorussia include:
one of the best-known Italian cheeses, was not made until the 20th century. In his survey of 451 Italian cheeses, Di Corato (1977) dates it precisely to 1906, at Melzo in the north of Italy, and gives credit for its invention to Egidio Galbani. The name was not bestowed in allusion to the beauty of the northern Italian landscape, as some authors have it, but was taken from the title of a book, well known at the time, by the Abbot Stoppani.
The inspiration for Bel Paese was French. The process by which it is made closely resembles that used to produce PORT SALUT and Saint-Paulin: whole milk, and surface-ripening for a relatively short time. Like the French cheeses, Bel Paese has a semi-soft but elastic texture, with a flavour which is mild when the cheese is young and more pronounced after it has been kept for a while. It is sold in small wheel shapes, weighing about 2 kg (4.5 lb) and with a characteristic wrapping which features the head of the Abbot Stoppini and a map of Italy. (The Bel Paese made in the USA has what seems to be the same wrapping, but inspection reveals that the map on it is of the Americas.)
This is a fairly rich cheese, with a fat content of 45–50%. Italians find that it goes particularly well with pears.
a Japanese term applied to the small items of food which go into packed lunch or picnic boxes, and to the box itself. The box can vary from utterly simple to very grand, and the contents likewise—but they are always elegantly arranged and they always include rice. This is almost always non-glutinous rice (uruchi mai). For special occasions, glutinous rice (mochigome) is used and always steamed. With the addition of little red azuki beans it is called seki-han (red rice) and could appear as bento.
Of course there is more to a bento than the rice, and the accompaniments (called o-kazu in Japanese) are many and various. Pickles are a must and so is fish, usually grilled, but there may be some small pieces of meat and certainly a salad of cooked vegetables such as spinach, BURDOCK, or COLTSFOOT. Shredded raw cabbage and a twist of cold spaghetti are quite common, as is mashed potato and hard-boiled egg. Slices of rolled omelette, kamaboko (see FISH PASTES), and boiled pumpkin are also popular.
Expensive bentos will have plenty of prawns and expensive fish, salmon, for example, or fried oysters. Cheap bentos will have mackerel and lots of fried foods—potato croquettes, slices of pork fried in a coating of egg and breadcrumbs, or squid done the same way.
Finally, there is usually a small piece of fruit—a wedge of apple, a small piece of watermelon, or a few grapes.
Perhaps the best-known kind of bento is the ekiben sold at all major railway stations, each station having its own distinct bento featuring local specialities. The station bento for Hiroshima is shaped like a wooden rice paddle (a famous local product) and contains oysters (also a famous local product) set on top of Chirashi sushi, a kind of seasoned rice decorated with a variety of colourful things such as green peas, shredded pink ginger, shredded omelette, slices of SHIITAKE mushrooms (cooked), a sprinkling of powdered green seaweed, with a slice of lemon for the oysters. The pickles are wedged into the handle of the rice-paddle box and are also a local speciality (Hiroshima nazuke).
a speciality of ORKNEY AND SHETLAND, is made from a special variety of BARLEY which thrives in those northern islands and has been used for many centuries as the basis for local BANNOCKS and PORRIDGE and similar preparations.
Catherine Brown (1996) explains that this special northern variety of barley is known as ‘bigg’ or ‘bere’ (pronounced ‘bare’ in the north) and has four ear rows rather than the usual six, ‘yielding a lower amount per acre but producing a grain of remarkable flavour. Between 12 and 15 tons are grown in Orkney each year, and every Orkney baker makes a daily supply of the bere bannock—a 15 cm (6″) round, 1–2.5 cm (0.5–1″) thick, flat, girdle-baked, soft scone.’ Characteristic of these bere bannocks are the grey-brown colour and robust earthy tang. They were originally made, before raising agents were developed in the 19th century, in the form of ‘a very thin soft chapati-type pancake, like a modern potato scone’.
The crofters for whom bere bannocks were taken for granted as daily fare in the past would have been surprised to learn that at the end of the millennium bere meal would be classified as one of the cherished traditional foods of the European Community, thus part of the European culinary heritage.
the name for herbs of the genus Monarda, especially M. fistulosa, in the MINT family. These are indigenous to Mexico and N. America. Some are used as flavouring herbs, additions for salads, or pot-herbs.
M. fistulosa var menthifolia, known as oregano de la sierra, provides in the south-west of the USA a flavour akin to that of true OREGANO.
M. didyma is also known as Oswego tea, indicating its former use in making a beverage, or as bee-balm (but see also BALM).
There is no connection with the bergamot orange (Citrus bergamia), except for the coincidence that M. citriodora, lemon bergamot, has a citrus aroma. Bergamot oil (used to flavour what is known as Earl Grey tea) comes from the orange, not the herbs. The bergamot orange is not edible and is grown only for its fragrant oil, although its peel is sometimes candied. It is grown (almost exclusively) in the Italian province of Calabria.
a French sweet made from boiled sugar, striped with pulled sugar. These sweets are made all over France, but the best known are from Carpentras, where berlingots in their current form (shaped like HUMBUGS, although an official definition describes them as being ‘of indefinable shape’) have been manufactured since the mid-19th century. Flavourings include mint (most commonly), coffee, aniseed, and many sorts of fruit essence. It is the stripes of pulled sugar which seem to distinguish the berlingots de Carpentras from those made elsewhere, for example at Nantes (which city may have a better claim to be the place of origin of the berlingot, which was already known in the Nantais version in the 18th century).
is a name commonly applied to various small fruits. There is a difference between everyday usage and the botanical definition. A typical version of the latter is: ‘a many-seeded inferior pulp fruit, the seeds of which are, when mature, scattered through the pulp.’ This definition includes the BILBERRY, CRANBERRY, CURRANT, GOOSEBERRY, and GRAPE. But it also includes unexpected items: CUCUMBER, BANANA, DATE, PAPAYA; APPLE, PEAR (both pomes); and the citrus fruits ORANGE and LEMON, and it excludes a number of fruits commonly referred to as berries. Thus the HUCKLEBERRY is not a berry but a drupe (a fruit with a stone or stones, hard casings around the seeds). The BLACKBERRY and RASPBERRY are strictly ‘etaerios of druplets’, clusters of little fruits with stones. MULBERRY is a composite fruit called ‘sorosis’, as is the PINEAPPLE. The STRAWBERRY is a ‘false’ fruit, being the swollen receptacle which bears an ‘etaerio of achenes’, i.e. the pips which are the true fruits of the plant.
Fortunately, the NSOED also allows a commonsense definition: ‘Any small globular or ovate juicy fruit not having a stone.’ In Old English, berrie used to refer chiefly to the grape. Etymologically it is difficult to unravel the word and the limits of its application. Various derivations have been proposed, some leading back to Sanskrit words. One possibility, not the one most favoured by lexicographers, is that the word is of Celtic origin, and means ‘red’, comparing it with Middle Irish ‘basc’, which also means red.
The notion of a classification based on colour, ‘red’ being wide enough to include the orange-through-to-black colour range found in berries, tallies with a recurrent theme in Graeco-Romano mythology, where the colour of the berry in question is explained as being the result of blood spillage: the blackberry is from the blood of the Titans; the raspberry is stained red with the blood of the nymph Ida. (And the mulberry is black from the blood of Pyramus and Thisbe, the ill-fated lovers in the ill-fated play acted by Bottom and his cronies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.)
a principal product of the CHICKPEA. Because the chickpea is known in S. India as Bengal GRAM, besan flour is also known as gram flour or Bengal gram flour. Whichever name is used, it is a basic ingredient in Indian cookery. It is made by milling very finely what is called channa (or channa dal), the small Indian chickpea, husked and split. Its protein content is very high, its texture fine, and its colour pale yellow.
Besan flour mixed with water provides batter coatings for FRITTERS such as PAKORA. It is used for various savoury noodles, and plays a part in certain sweetmeats. Among these are bundia (or boondi, bonde), tiny confections made from a sweetened batter incorporating besan flour (or other pulse meal) dribbled through a perforated ladle into hot oil. The mixture forms pea-sized balls which are coated in syrup.
Besan flour is also an ingredient of dumplings and for thickening and emulsifying curries. Stobart (1980) points out that cooks in western countries, where besan flour is virtually unknown, will find it a highly effective thickener.
a Moroccan pigeon pie made on special occasions and often very large. The name is generally derived from the Spanish pastel, ‘pie’. It is the Moors’ adaptation of the large medieval European pie, using their own variety of layered pastry.
This pie is made in a large dish lined with half a dozen thicknesses of a pastry similar to FILO, called WARQA. Above this comes a layer of sugar, cinnamon, and browned almonds; then a creamy mixture of eggs and stock; more sheets of pastry; small pieces of meat from as many pigeons as required, previously cooked; more of the egg and stock mixture; and a crust of several more sheets of pastry, the top one cut in a decorative pattern, glazed with egg, and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon.
a popular stimulant in the Indian subcontinent and SE Asia, is the fruit of the areca palm, Areca catechu, which grows wild in Sumatra and the Philippines and is cultivated in other regions. The nut, which may also be called areca nut, contains a stimulating alkaloid (arecoline) and tannins which give it a pleasantly astringent taste.
The usual way of consuming betel nut is in the form of ‘pan’. The nuts are gathered either green or ripe, according to taste. Green nuts are shelled, boiled to mellow the flavour, and sun dried. Ripe nuts are simply dried. The nuts are then crushed with lime and catechu, a scarlet and astringent extract made by boiling chips of wood from the areca palm. The mixture is wrapped in a betel leaf, which comes from a different tree, Piper betle, to make small packages. Elaborate equipment may be used for the various stages of preparation, and the provision of betel nut for guests used to be an important element in hospitality. All this is now on the decline.
Packages of pan are chewed, not swallowed. The effect is mildly stimulating. Pan sweetens the breath but stains the saliva bright red and eventually blackens the teeth. It is thus easy to see who has been using it.
Indians believe that pan aids the digestion. No claim has been made for it as a source of nutrients.
The so-called betel leaf, mentioned above, is used as an edible wrapping for morsels of food in SE Asian countries, e.g. Thailand.
(or Brown Betty) a N. American baked pudding, consisting of alternating layers of sugared and spiced fruit and buttered breadcrumbs. A little fruit juice is used to moisten the whole, and it is baked until browned and crisp on top. Although various other fruits can be used, Apple brown Betty is the favourite. The name seems to have first appeared in print in 1864, when an article in the Yale Literary Magazine listed it (in quotation marks, implying that it was not then a fully established term) with tea, coffee, and pies as things to be given up during ‘training’. That author gave brown in lower case and Betty in upper case; and, in default of evidence to the contrary, it seems best to go along with the view that Betty is here a proper name.
(Sodium bicarbonate, NaHCO3) has been used in cookery for so long that, despite its chemical label, it has largely escaped the growing opposition to ‘chemical’ additives. It is an alkali which reacts with acid by effervescing—producing carbon dioxide. It is therefore a leavening agent in baking, if used in conjunction with, say, tartaric acid (see CREAM OF TARTAR) or lemon juice. See BAKING POWDER and LEAVEN.
The alkaline properties of bicarbonate of soda can also be used to soften the skins of beans and other pulses. And a pinch added to the cooking water makes cabbage and other green vegetables greener, by its effect on the pigment chlorophyll. However, it also induces limpness (by breaking down hemicelluloses) and the loss of vitamins B1 and C; and the practice, which dates back to classical Rome and used to be recommended in Britain and N. America, has largely died out. McGee (1984) provides a detailed explanation and cites a forthright injunction from Tabitha Tickletooth (1860):
Never, under any circumstances, unless you wish entirely to destroy all flavour, and reduce your peas to pulp, boil them with soda. This favourite atrocity of the English kitchen cannot be too strongly condemned.
See also COLOUR AND COOKING.
the name given, for the obvious reason, to fish of the genus Priacanthus. Of the several species found in SE Asian waters, P. tayenus may be taken as typical: up to 30 cm (12″) long, abundant (at Hong Kong, for example), but not highly esteemed. Chan (1968) writes:
The rather unpleasant brilliant crimson-red colour, the tough skin with firm and rough scales, and the unusually large eyes are probably the cause of its unpopularity. However, it is of excellent edible quality. It can be roasted, baked or steamed. When it is ready for the table, the skin is very easily peeled off, and the flesh is extremely palatable.
The name ‘big-eye’ is sometimes applied to other sorts of large-eyed fish, usually in adjectival form, as in ‘big-eyed scad’.
Antidesma bunius, a tree native to SE Asia, where it is occasionally cultivated, and N. Australia, is also known as ‘Chinese laurel’, ‘salamander tree’, or ‘currant tree’.
The tree bears long clusters containing as many as 30 or 40 berries, each of which is up to 2 cm (0.75″) in diameter. These clusters are very colourful, because the berries ripen unevenly; white, yellowish-green, and red ones are to be seen in the same cluster as ripe purple ones. Even ripe fruits are rather too acid for eating raw, but their high pectin content makes them excellent for making jam and so forth. The whole cluster may be picked, even when all the berries are not yet ripe, for this purpose. The berries may also be used in a sauce suitable for fish.
The genus includes numerous other species which are put to similar uses. A. ghaesembilla, the blackcurrant tree, is a species with a wider distribution, including tropical Africa.
the fruit of a group of low scrubby plants in the genus Vaccinium, especially V. myrtillus, which typically bear dark bluish-purple berries with a characteristic bloom on their smooth skins. They are distinct from the CRANBERRY and BLUEBERRY, although they belong to the same genus and the name WHORTLEBERRY is sometimes applied to both.
Other names in use in Britain are whinberry, because the plant grows among whins (a Scots term for gorse); and blaeberry, ‘blae’ being a north country and Scots word for blue.
Bilberries are sparsely distributed on the plants, and picking a large quantity is tiring work. They are good to eat raw, being less acid than cranberries, but are also often made into pies, tarts, jams, preserves, and sauces.
In Ireland, Lammas Sunday (the last of July or the first of August) is also known as Fraughan, Blaeberry, or Bilberry Sunday. Marking the beginning of the harvest, this was an occasion when bilberries were gathered and festivities took place. In County Down there has been since prehistoric times a cairn where the ‘blaeberries’ were picked and put into little rush baskets made there and then; a procedure which accompanied courting, as suggested by the saying that ‘many a lad met his wife on Blaeberry Sunday’. Girls might make a Fraughan Sunday cake to present to their fancy.
In N. America bilberries may also be called whortleberries, as noted above, and less aptly ‘huckleberries’, a name better reserved for the true HUCKLEBERRY, whose structure is different. The bilberries of N. America are plants of the far north, characteristic of Labrador, the mountainous parts of New England, and the Lake Superior region. They are generally less good than the BLUEBERRY.
The term ‘bog bilberry’ is applied to more than one species, but especially to V. uliginosum, whose berries are of inferior quality.
a name given to the various species of large fish which have their upper jaws prolonged into a pointed rostrum, snout, or ‘bill’, which may be either round in section or, in the case of the ‘sword’ of the swordfish, flat. The purpose of the bill seems to be to stun the smaller fish on which billfish prey.
Billfish, in general, provide excellent flesh, usually paler than that of tuna and with good keeping quality. In many regions they constitute a major resource for so-called ‘big game fishing’. Commercially, they are of greatest importance to the Japanese, whose share of the world catch, in terms of both fishing and consumption, is over two-thirds.
Billfish fall into four groups, treated under MARLIN, SAILFISH, spearfish (see MARLIN), and SWORDFISH. For a catalogue of all the species see Nakamura (1985).
a dried, or dried and smoked, meat of southern Africa which exists in two principal forms.
Biltong made from beef is formed by taking a good piece of muscle 45–60 cm (18–24″) long and 15 cm (6″) in diameter, with no tendon and just a little fat, and trimming it into an elongated oval shape. It is then rubbed with salt, pepper, coriander seed, and fennel seed, moistened with vinegar; left to marinate for a few days, then hung up to be wind dried, and finally hung in the chimney to be smoked. Leipoldt (1976) writes: ‘the result should be a dark-coloured, firm, elongated piece of dried meat, which cuts easily and when sliced is a tender garnet-red segment, surrounded by a thin, more darkly covered integument that need never be pared off before eating. Its taste is deliciously spicy.’
The same author explains that game biltong ‘as made in the field’ is markedly different. It is game meat cut into thin strips, rubbed with salt and perhaps crushed coriander seed, and sun dried until very hard. Bits are cut off and chewed by those with strong teeth; or it is pounded or grated to provide something which even the dentally disadvantaged can manage. Powdered game biltong spread on bread and butter is recommended. ZEBRA is said to make the finest biltong of all, but almost any game animal can be used.
a sugar obtained by boiling down the sap of the sweet/black birch tree, Betula lenta, and other species in the genus.
Birch sugar is considerably less sweet than maple sugar (see MAPLE SYRUP) and the sap from which it comes is not available until about a month after the maple sap is running. Medsger (1972) notes that the inner bark of the black birch has a sweet, spicy WINTERGREEN flavour and was generally eaten by boys. He further notes:
It is claimed that in 1861, after the Battle of Carricks Ford, the edible bark of Black Birch probably saved the lives of hundreds of Garnett’s Confederate soldiers during their retreat over the mountains to Monterey, Virginia. For a number of years after that, the route the soldiers took could be traced by the peeled birch trees.
the eponymous ingredient of Chinese bird’s nest soup is an expensive delicacy. The nests belong to a species of swiftlet, Collocalia whiteheadi, which is found in the Philippines and New Guinea. Patricia Arroyo Staub (1982) has explained that
The gathering of these nests is a formidable task of the intrepid souls who scale cliffs and mountains. Contrary to popular belief, the bird’s nests are not found in the faces of cliffs but in caves. Hence the gathering involves work in the nooks and crannies of caves which are dark and slippery. This makes it a rare and highly prized delicacy which is most precious to a Chinese food gourmet and which has become popular among Filipinos …. However, due to its ability to swell in boiling water, very small amounts are needed to make soup.
In making their nests, the birds cement a scaffolding of tiny twigs together with a sticky substance which has been variously identified as coming from regurgitated seaweed, such as AGAR-AGAR, or as being simply the birds’ own saliva. Since it is the sticky substance which is finally absorbed by the persons eating the bird’s nest soup, it seems to be an open question whether they are consuming a plant food or an animal food. Several authorities have referred apologetically to this area of doubt, but have pointed out that the high cost of a bird’s nest of the right sort has tended to rule out any analytical research.
a term of Persian origin meaning ‘fried’, refers to a spicy dish of layered meat and rice. In a relatively elaborate form with garnish which could include silver leaf (see GOLD AND SILVER LEAF), this is a feature of MOGHUL CUISINE. It is essential to use basmati rice and to flavour the dish with SAFFRON.
the fruit of the tree Rollinia mucosa (probably = R. deliciosa, although some botanists distinguish two species), which has an extensive natural range in Latin America, from N. Argentina to S. Mexico and including the Caribbean islands. It is cultivated in some places, e.g. in the vicinity of Iquito (Peru). In Brazil it is often grown in domestic yards or gardens, but plays little part in commerce. It is better known in the north and north-east, notably Belém dó Pará, than elsewhere.
The fruit is 7–10 cm (3–5″) long and has a creamy-yellow skin. The white or cream-coloured flesh is sweet, juicy, and of a good flavour, making the biriba one of the finest of the annonaceous fruits of tropical America.
is a word which covers a vast range of flour-based items, generally small in size, thin, and short or crisp in texture. A more precise definition is difficult, as Garrett (c.1898) discovered; he concluded that a crisp or brittle texture was the only shared characteristic and that ‘Pastrycooks and confectioners, both British and foreign, appear to have mutually agreed to retain this feature as the only one necessary to distinguish a tribe of kinds which differ from each other in almost every other particular’. However, he had reckoned without N. America, where ‘biscuit’ means a soft, thick SCONE-type product, and the words COOKIE and CRACKER are used for items similar to English biscuits. (In modern Britain the application of the word ‘biscuit’ to breads which are soft and fresh has survived on Guernsey, and in the north-east of Scotland, where ‘soft biscuits’ are flat buns made from bread dough kneaded with butter and sugar. This is possibly the origin of the N. American habit of referring to scones as biscuits.)
Apart from considerations of size and texture, a biscuit is also defined to a certain extent by usage. Biscuits rarely form part of a formal meal except when cheese is served. They are mostly eaten as snacks and served as offerings of hospitality, together with drinks. They may be sweet or savoury, are simple to make in quantity, and keep well when stored.
The name ‘biscuit’ is derived from the Latin panis biscoctus, ‘bread twice cooked’. This name was applied to such products as RUSKS, made from plain dough baked in a loaf, cooled, sliced, and then dried in gentle heat to give a crisp, dry product which kept well. Double cooking was also used for SHIP’S BISCUIT, a durable staple food made from stiff flour and water dough for sailors on long voyages and armies on campaign. The Italians produced this type of panis biscoctus commercially in the Middle Ages. The English equivalent was a hard and unattractive food. Froissart in his Chronicles (about 1400) writes enviously of Scottish soldiers who carried bags of oatmeal and made themselves delicious fresh OATCAKES instead wherever they camped.
Other methods not requiring an oven were devised for producing crisp products from flour and water; one was to cook the mixture in a thin layer on a heated plate to make a WAFER. These were popular in the Middle Ages and, in various forms, still are. The method of deep frying is even more ancient. The Romans made thin sweet biscuits in this way; one of the few recipes of APICIUS to deal with this branch of cookery describes how a thick paste of fine wheat flour was boiled and spread out on a plate. When cooled and hardened it was cut up and fried until crisp, then served with honey and pepper. This biscuit is made of a mixture similar to the Roman pasta known as lagani (see LASAGNE), whose name may have passed down (possibly via the Arabic lauzinaj) to the medieval LOZENGE, for which a thin sheet of dough made from flour, water, sugar, and spices was cut into pieces and fried.
The boiling and frying technique remained in use in the Middle Ages for making cracknels, which were small, crisp, sweet biscuits. They continued to be made well into the 19th century (and bequeathed their name to a sort of brittle toffee filling for chocolates). The simnel was another medieval product, which was boiled first and then baked. It was thicker than a cracknel, and resembled a sweet bread. In the 17th century the original simnel died out and the name was transferred to SIMNEL CAKE.
Sweetened, spiced mixtures of the GINGERBREAD and HONEY CAKE type have been popular in Europe for centuries. Over the years, thinner versions such as British ginger biscuits and German LEBKUCHEN developed.
Another special category of rich sweet biscuit popular since the late Middle Ages is that of confections aerated with foamed egg whites, in which the flour is partly or wholly replaced with ground nuts (see NUT BISCUITS; MACAROON; etc.).
The discovery that beaten egg was an effective aerating agent gave rise to several types of biscuit (usually spelt ‘bisket’) popular in the 17th and 18th centuries. Foamed egg white, or whole egg, and sugar were mixed with fine flour and baked in small thin rounds or fingers, or baked in a roll, sliced, sugared, and dried like a rusk. These progenitors of modern MERINGUES and of sponge biscuits (see BOUDOIR BISCUITS) passed under many names, but towards the end of the 17th century the recipes had become codified. ‘Italian’ biscuit, based on egg whites alone, was an early form of meringue. SAVOY biscuit, which originated in France sometime early in the 17th century, appeared in English recipe collections in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. It was made from whisked eggs and sugar, mixed with flour. A number of other ‘biscuits’ based on similar ingredients but mixed in a slightly different order also appeared: Lisbon biscuits, Naples biscuits, and Spanish biscuits, given in 18th-century cookery books, were all of this type. ‘Common biscuit’ was an egg, sugar, and flour biscuit flavoured with a spice such as coriander, rosewater, or sack.
Another popular 17th- and 18th-century biscuit was the JUMBLE, or knot, made from a light mixture of eggs, sugar, and flour and rosewater or aniseed.
A new French croquant (crunchy) biscuit reached Britain around 1600. It was based on flour, sugar, and egg whites. Several kinds of very light egg white biscuits made of a mixture similar to that of croquant are of long standing in Europe. These include the various thin biscuits such as the French TUILE, curved into a tile shape while still soft after cooking.
Flat, pastry-type products, baked only once, were known in the 16th century as ‘short cakes’. They were made of rich shortcrust pastry with added eggs, leavened with a little yeast but kept thin. (Yeast always presented a problem in biscuit-making, since it was likely to give an uneven rise. ‘Docking’—pricking holes in the rounds—was one method of dealing with this. Many modern biscuit varieties still have these holes.) In the north of England short cake mixtures were pressed into moulds to make funeral biscuits (see FUNERAL FOOD) which were given to the mourners at a burial. Both short and croquant mixtures—as well as puff pastry—were used for making flat biscuits to be eaten by themselves, and as a base for mixtures of dried fruit and other sweet things. Biscuits based on mixtures in which butter and sugar were creamed together probably developed during the 18th century.
In Britain the relative importance of the basic biscuit mixtures changed greatly during the following two centuries. That of RUSKS diminished, and fried biscuits died out (although in parts of Europe, the Middle East, and India frying continues to be an important method for cooking biscuit batters). Spiced biscuits remained popular and were influenced by shortened mixtures. NUT BISCUITS, always a select delicacy, became a specialized branch of biscuit-making, verging on sugar confectionery. Sponge finger biscuits continued to be made after the larger sponge cake became a separate variety in the 18th century.
Enriched ‘short cakes’ became much more important, developing into many regional English biscuit specialities such as Derbyshire wakes cakes (flavoured with currants, caraway seeds, and lemon zest), Goosnargh cakes (from Lancashire, flavoured with caraway), SHREWSBURY CAKES (flavoured with cinnamon), and all biscuits based on a short pastry mixture such as modern SHORTBREAD and digestive biscuits. Rich short butter-based doughs are also specialities of C. and N. Europe.
Cheese-flavoured biscuits have their origins in medieval cheese tarts and pastries; but the totally plain, unsweetened biscuit for eating with cheese did not come into use until the 18th century. An early British plain biscuit was the Bath Oliver (see BISCUIT VARIETIES). Plain biscuits also developed into fancy salted crackers, ‘cocktail biscuits’ for nibbling at drinks parties.
In France, because sailors used so many biscuits, the great seaport of Nantes became associated with biscuit production, especially in the 19th century. Famous biscuits made here include petit beurré; paille d’or, a very fragile biscuit, enclosing raspberry jelly between two wafers; and the round beurré nantais.
During the 19th century supplies of cheap sugar and flour, plus chemical raising agents such as BICARBONATE OF SODA, led to the development of many sweet biscuit recipes. In Britain several entrepreneurs laid the foundations of the modern biscuit industry. The firms of Carrs, Huntley & Palmer, and Crawfords were all established by 1850. Since the mid-19th century the range of commercially baked biscuits based on creamed and pastry type mixtures has expanded to meet demand, and accounts for the majority of biscuits sold under brand names in Britain today. Chocolate-coated biscuits, however, only became a lucrative business after the Second World War.
See also BISCUIT VARIETIES, and in addition: BANKETBAKKERIJ; BEATEN BISCUITS; BOUDOIR BISCUITS; BRANDY SNAPS; COOKIE; CRACKER; GINGER BISCUITS; GINGERBREAD; HONEY CAKE; JUMBLES; LEBKUCHEN; MACAROON; NUT BISCUITS; OATCAKE; PAXIMADIA; RUSK; SAVOY; SHIP’S BISCUIT; SHORTBREAD; SPONGE CAKE; SPRINGERLE; TUILE; WAFER; WATER BISCUITS; some of which have already been signposted above in particular contexts.
both home baked and factory made, are so numerous that no one has ever catalogued them all, worldwide. The entry for BISCUIT provides signposts to entries for many kinds. The present entry provides a further selection.
Abernethy biscuit, a plain, semi-sweet Scottish biscuit, sometimes flavoured with caraway seed. Named after Dr John Abernethy (1764–1831), a Scot who became chief surgeon to St Bartholomew’s Hospital. He used to take lunch at a baker’s shop, where he ate ordinary ‘captain’s biscuits’. After he suggested the addition of sugar and caraway, the baker gave the new biscuit his patron’s name; see Marian McNeill (1929).
Afghan, a New Zealand biscuit made from a creamed mixture with the addition of cornflakes, and flavoured with cocoa. These biscuits have no obvious connection with Afghanistan, but serve to illustrate the fact that wherever British colonists plant their feet, as in New Zealand, biscuits spring up around them and may be given whimsical names.
Anzac, a New Zealand biscuit made with butter, golden syrup, rolled oats, and coconut, named after the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) which fought at Gallipoli in 1915.
Bath Oliver, a flat biscuit with a hard, crisp texture, made from flour, butter, yeast, and milk. The biscuits are ‘docked’—pricked all over before cooking—which prevents them from rising and blistering too much. The original biscuits were created by Dr W. Oliver of Bath around 1750. The town was a fashionable health resort and this biscuit was introduced as a diet item. It is now popular with cheese. True Bath Olivers have an imprint of Dr Oliver in the middle of the biscuit.
Bourbon, a British commercially made sweet biscuit which has no known connection with the French royal family. It is a crisp sandwich biscuit of rectangular finger shape, composed of two chocolate-flavoured biscuits with a stiff chocolate paste filling.
Captain’s biscuit, an old-fashioned British biscuit, commercially made and once popular as a plain biscuit for eating with cheese, but now rare. ‘Thin captains’ and ‘thick captains’ were made from flour and water, with a small quantity of butter and eggs, and the mixture kneaded together very thoroughly. After baking the captains were set in a dry, warm place to dry out.
Charcoal biscuit, eaten in the 19th and early 20th centuries as an antidote to flatulence and other stomach troubles. It was based on ordinary flour mixed with powdered willow charcoal, made into plain dough with a little butter, sugar, and eggs.
Cigarette russe, a thin sweet biscuit popular in France. It is made from a soft, creamed dough, which spreads out very thin in the oven. While still soft after baking, the biscuits are rolled into cylinders. See also TUILE; BRANDYSNAPS.
Digestive, the British name for a popular commercial biscuit. It is of the pastry dough type, made from coarse brown flour. It is thick, fairly crisp, but also crumbly and, being only moderately sweet, goes well with hard English cheese. The biscuit has no particularly digestive properties and is banned from sale under that name in the USA. Alternative names are ‘wheatmeal’ and ‘sweetmeal’. Recipes for home-made digestives generally include oatmeal to give the required texture.
Doigt de Zénobie (Zénobie’s finger), the common French name for a sweet, crumbly, finger-shaped Middle Eastern biscuit made from semolina and butter, raised with yeast, sprinkled with cinnamon, and saturated with warmed honey.
Garibaldi, a popular British biscuit named after the famous Italian patriot, but almost certainly unknown to him. It is a sweet, rather chewy biscuit containing currants, and is known colloquially as ‘squashed-fly biscuit’, from the appearance of the currants.
Langue de chat (cat’s tongue), a thin, flat, French biscuit, named for its elongated oval shape. It is made from a beaten mixture of sugar, cream, flour, and egg white.
Maria, the most popular of Spanish biscuits, accounting for nearly half the biscuits eaten in Spain. It was invented in England by the firm of Peek Frean in 1875, to mark the wedding of the Grand Duchess Maria of Austria to the Duke of Edinburgh. The crisp, thin round, stamped ‘Maria’, was an immediate success, but, although Marias were first produced in large quantities in Spain around the turn of the century, it was not until after the Civil War that they became an integral part of Spanish culture. They are dunked in milk, coffee, or tea. There are now numerous versions, all with a delicate design and ‘Maria’ stamped on top.
Miroir, a French product composed of an outer ring of almond paste with a mixture of sugar, butter, and eggs in the middle. When baked the biscuit has a flat centre and a raised lumpy outer edge, reminiscent of a mirror in a frame.
Oreillette (little ear), a French carnival biscuit, sweet and deep fried. Several other types of fried biscuit are called ‘ears’, from the way they curve and fold during cooking, for example the Middle Eastern hojuelos de Haman (Haman’s ears) and Afghan goash-e-feel (elephant’s ears).
Petit beurré, a famous French biscuit which has been made at Nantes since the 1880s. It was invented by Louis Lefèvre-Utile, so is known by the initials LU and may be called p’tit lu. Tradition requires that one eats the four projecting corners first; these are darker than the main body of the biscuit.
Polvorone, a Spanish and Mexican biscuit made from a simple pastry dough based on lard and mixed without liquid. They are flavoured with nuts or spiced with cinnamon, and rolled in icing sugar after baking. The biscuits are small, thick, dry, and apt to crumble; they come individually wrapped in fringed tissue paper.
Sablé (sandy), a French sweet biscuit made from a rich pastry mixture bound with egg, variously flavoured. The name refers to the texture; there is a place called Sablé, where production of sablés de Sablé has taken place since the 1920s, but the sablés of Normandy, which date back to the 19th century, came first.
Snickerdoodle, a biscuit made from a creamed mixture enlivened with nutmeg, nuts, and raisins. It is a speciality of the Pennsylvanian Dutch, a community with many sweet biscuit and cookie recipes.
Tostada, the second most popular biscuit in Spain, a close rival to the Maria (see above) and not unlike it, but rectangular in shape.
Vanillekipferl (vanilla crescent), popular in Germany and C. Europe, especially as a Christmas speciality. It is made from a rich pastry-type dough containing almonds and flavoured with vanilla or lemon peel.
the name applied to two species of large animal in the family Bovidae, whose fate, broadly speaking, has been to be eaten up already and thus no longer available:
The name ‘Indian bison’ is sometimes applied to the gaur, Bos gaurus, a huge and vigorous wild animal whose range extended from the Indian subcontinent to Malaysia but which is now far less common than it used to be. It is essentially a hill animal and is said to thrive best in the hills of Assam. The seladang of Malaysia is a race of gaur.
See also BUFFALO; WATER-BUFFALO.
is now a rich soup of creamy consistency, especially of crayfish or lobster. An earlier use, for soups of game birds, has fallen into desuetude. Wine and/or cognac often enter into the recipes.
The bisque (in early English usage ‘bisk’), together with the OLIO, PUPTON, and TERRINE, was one of the grandes entrées of French court cookery elaborated by LA VARENNE and Massialot. It was a composite stew or pottage made on a very grand scale, involving many different sorts of meat or fish and trimmings, and a rich sauce. The Accomplisht Cook of Robert MAY (1685) illustrates the wider use of the term in his time. He gives two recipes for Bisk of Carp, both involving many ingredients and having plenty of solid matter in them. And his Bisk of Eggs sounds even more surprising to modern ears.
Polygonum bistorta, is a KNOTWEED. A knotweed is so called because its roots are knotted or twisted; bistort means twice twisted.
Bistort, the best-known European member of a populous genus, is found from Britain to Siberia and bears attractive pink flower spikes in the summer. It is sometimes called patience-dock or passion-dock, the former name by confusion with the latter and the latter because associated by Christians with the Passion and eaten at Passiontide.
In the same family, Polygonaceae, there is another plant, Rumex patientia, which is the plant with the strongest claim to the name patience-dock; see DOCK. It too is associated with Easter, perhaps because of an understandable confusion between patience and Passion.
Under yet another name, Easter mangiant, bistort leaves are an important ingredient in a traditional Easter dish of Cumbria, Herb pudding. Geoffrey Grigson (1955) explains ‘Easter mangiant’ as a corruption of Easter-mangeant, mangeant being French for ‘eating’ or ‘fare’, and he unravels the origins of the even more puzzling name ‘Easter ledger’, found in the Lake District. Here he realized that an old name for bistort (cf. William Turner’s Herbal of 1538) was astrologia—hence Easter ledger. Astrologia comes from aristolochia clematis, a plant which was an ancient antidote to demons and poisons, and a charm plant for successful conception and birth. The Grete Herball of 1526 says that bistort ‘hath vertue … to cause to retayne and conceyve’.
As further evidence of the superstition that bistort enhanced fertility, Grigson points to the unicorn tapestry in the Cloisters in New York, probably woven for the marriage of Francis I of France in 1514. The wounded unicorn recovers from its wounds amid obvious symbols of fertility:
Symbol in part of the consummation of the marriage, the unicorn is tethered by a gold chain to the pomegranate tree of fertility. Against its flank, and below its hind legs are depicted two of the plants of desire, the Early Purple Orchis and the aptly named Lords-and-Ladies (Arum maculatum); and touching a white foreleg is—Polygonum bistorta, the plant of virtue in retaining and conceiving.
The Herb pudding referred to above is made from bistort and other herbs, barley, and hard-boiled egg, to be eaten with veal and bacon. In the 1930s this pudding was still being boiled in a cloth, with the added barley, then turned out and served with butter and raw egg. Another version of the same thing, now perhaps the better known, is DOCK PUDDING, a springtime hasty green pudding whose principal ingredient is bistort.
Jennifer Stead (1995a) has fully explored this complex of topics, and the history and distribution of these puddings in various parts of England. One conclusion of her essay is that the puddings probably had a pre-Christian origin.
a term which dates back only to the late 19th century in French and to the early 20th century in English, is elastic in its meaning but always refers to an establishment where one can have something to eat, as well as drinks. Such an establishment would normally be small, and its menu would be likely to include simple dishes, perhaps of rustic character and not expensive.
If it is correct that the word comes from a Russian one meaning ‘quickly!’, this would fit in with the general idea that one can eat quickly at a bistro. However, the concept of simple inexpensive food served in a French atmosphere has wide appeal, and as a result the use of the term, whether as a description of eating places or of food, had, towards the end of the 20th century, begun to be annexed by more pretentious premises.
Solanum aethiopicum, also spelled bitterberry (one word), are a small orange/red pea-sized relation of the AUBERGINE which are eaten in Africa as a vegetable by the wealthy but more often used to season steamed PLANTAIN or beans, sometimes mixed with sesame seeds or peanuts. They are very bitter and not the same thing as the Asian pea-sized aubergine, Solanum torvum, less bitter and often eaten raw.
Bitter berries are sometimes known as the ‘tomato of the Jews of Constantinople’, the Ladinos, expelled to Constantinople from Spain about 1500, whose ancestors had been expelled from Timbuktu in about AD 1400. These ‘berries’ are initially green, turning orange or red as they ripen, seldom more than 2 cm (1″) in diameter. They are widely cultivated throughout most of tropical Africa. The Buganda people of Uganda celebrate the birth of twins by serving plantain and bitterberry sauce to the parents. It is thought to help milk production.
(or bitter cucumber) Momordica charantia, neither a true gourd nor a cucumber, although a member of the same CUCURBIT family as both. Another English name, balsam pear, is even less fitting. Names in India and the Philippines are, respectively, karela and ampalaya.
The plant is thought to be a native of India, but has been grown elsewhere for a long time and its use in SE Asia goes back a considerable way.
The knobbly fruit has a bitter taste, akin to that of a fresh, i.e. unpickled, GHERKIN. It is used as a vegetable in various tropical regions, including most SE Asian countries. It varies considerably in size (from 2.5 to 25 cm/1 to 10″) and also in colour. Indonesians cultivate it as a garden vegetable and recognize numerous forms, including a large whitish one and smaller green ones.
In India the fruits are cooked in curry dishes; or sliced and fried; or stuffed with GRAM and onion and fried; or, notably in Kerala, sliced, salted, and dried for use in the rainy season.
When bitter gourds are fried and curried in Sri Lanka, the curry may incorporate coconut milk, Maldive fish, and GORAKA.
In the Philippines the vegetable is well known; ampalaya leaves are consumed almost as much as ampalaya fruits.
A close relation, M. balsamina, sometimes referred to as the balsam apple, is pickled in India when young and green, and cooked in curry dishes and stews when ripe and red. The fruit is smaller than that of M. charantia.
(of the Jews) are the bitter plants which form part of the food at the Feast of the PASSOVER, symbolizing the bitter times which the Jews endured in Egypt. The festive Seder (Passover) table includes a plate of at least one of these bitter herbs, known collectively as maror. Those commonly used (the choice varies) are LETTUCE (often romaine lettuce, although some Jews think that endive is meant), CELERY, CHICORY, cress, and grated HORSERADISH.
a name given to Vernonia amygdalina, an African shrub, and some other plants of the same genus. The leaves are used in W. and S. Africa as a pot-herb or for seasoning. Cultivation, practised on a small scale, had produced plants whose leaves are less bitter than those gathered from the wild.
These leaves are readily available in Nigerian markets, either fresh or dried.
Botaurus stellaris, a marsh bird of Europe and Asia, which belongs to the same family as the HERON. The bittern is a large bird (average total length 75 cm/30″) and was prized as food in Britain in the 16th century. The flavour has been compared to that of hare.
The bittern makes migratory journeys from the temperate regions of Europe and Asia to India and Africa. It has close relations in N. America, S. Africa, and Australasia.
a category of marine MOLLUSCS distinguished by having two hinged shells. These can be tightly closed in most species, which can therefore survive for an appreciable time after being removed from the water: examples are the OYSTER and the MUSSEL.
Bivalves which lack this ability, and cannot therefore be kept alive for long after being taken, include the RAZOR CLAM and SOFT-SHELLED CLAM. These should not really be called clams at all, since they cannot ‘clam up’; see CLAMS.
Of the bivalves which are cultured, the oyster and mussel are by far the most important. Culture of the latter has been so far developed that it is now, in terms of consumption, the most popular bivalve. Bivalves collectively constitute a major food resource and have the advantage over their companion categories in the mollusc world, the gastropods (single shells) and the CEPHALOPODS, that they are less apt to arouse feelings of distaste or revulsion. They also benefit from having in their ranks such undisputed delicacies as the oyster and SCALLOP.
(originally blaad, also spelled blah and bla) a special bread of Waterford in Ireland. It is a type of ordinary batch bread dough made into small round pieces, bigger and lighter than a bap, very soft, about 3.5 cm (1.5″) high and 10 cm (4″) in diameter, the top dusted with flour and therefore white.
Waterford bakers believe that the blaa was introduced by Huguenots who came to Waterford from France in the late 17th or early 18th century and set up an industrial area called New Geneva. It is thought locally that the blaa derived from the CROISSANT they brought with them (although this cannot have been a croissant like those now sold in France). An eccentric poem on the subject includes the following:
But the real delicacy are Blaas, fresh from the oven, Smothered in butter, you’d ate half a dozen … You can fill them with ham or a slice of red lead, In the summer you could try some dillisk instead.
In present practice at Waterford they are eaten with butter for breakfast, a mid-morning snack, or lunch. A filling of dillisk (DULSE) may still be used; also popular are blaa butties—blaa with chips or a filling of luncheon sausage.
(also spelled blachan), the Malay and most common name for a SE Asian fermented shrimp paste, which is called terasi or trasi in Indonesia, kapi in Thailand, and bagoong in the Philippines. What is called balichǎo in Macao is more or less the same thing. A form of blacang is also found in Burma and Sri Lanka.
This has a somewhat different flavour from the FISH PASTES of the region but plays the same sort of role in cookery. Blacang is always cooked. It may be crushed or ground and mixed with other spices and flavourings into a paste which is then fried; or it may be fried or grilled by itself before being combined with other spices.
a term which may refer either (a) to a kind of HARICOT BEAN, namely the Mexican black beans which are widely eaten in Latin America and give their name to black bean soup, or (b) in the sense treated here, to black SOYA BEANS, fermented and preserved by salting.
The latter, known as chi to the Chinese, have been an important relish in their cuisine since the Han dynasty (beginning in the 2nd century BC). Yan-Kit So (1992) remarks on this, noting that the evidence is supplied by inscriptions discovered in 1972 on bamboo slips in a Han tomb in Hunan province. She also explains that:
Black beans are also made from cooked soy beans which, halfway through their hydrolytic decomposition, are dried at a very high temperature and become darkened as a result of oxidation.
The agricultural writer Jia Sixie (c.AD 540) was the first author to explain how these black beans are prepared, in a work which had the engaging title ‘Essential Skills for the Daily Life of the People’ (Qimin Yaoshu).
Since the soya bean commonly occurs in a black form, as well as in other colours such as light brown, it is natural to think that it is this black form which is fermented. However, it is not necessarily so. Beans lighter in colour may be used and will darken as a result of the fermentation.
Fermented black beans are prepared in many regional varieties. In most processes the raw beans are salted and allowed to soften under the influence of their own enzymes at a high temperature; enzyme action also darkens the colour. Some varieties are made by a wet pickling process using brine, vinegar, or wine. The end product, which is always salted, may be had in cans or dry packs and keeps well.
Fermented black beans have a strong flavour, but the black bean sauce prepared from them is delicate.
is a name which usually refers to the common European blackberry, Rubus fruticosus, also known as bramble; but it is also a collective name for a large group of fruits in the same genus which grow throughout the cooler parts of the world, particularly in upland and northern regions.
There are said to be over 2,000 varieties of blackberry, counting both the frequent and naturally occurring hybrids and the cultivars.
The genus Rubus also includes RASPBERRIES. The untrained eye cannot always distinguish between a blackberry and a raspberry, since the shapes and sizes of the fruit, leaves, and thorns vary, and there are both red blackberries and black raspberries. However, when a blackberry is picked, it comes off the plant with its receptacle, the solid centre to which the druplets (the round, juicy parts) are attached. When a raspberry is picked, the cluster of druplets comes away from the receptacle, which remains as a hard, white cone on the stem. A good blackberry has druplets which are large in relation to the hard part.
Blackberries are more highly esteemed in Britain and N. Europe than in other European countries. During their season they are commonly gathered and eaten fresh, as they keep for only a short time; or they may be used in desserts such as the British blackberry and apple pie. They are sometimes preserved by bottling but lose much of their evanescent flavour. They make an excellent jelly but a somewhat pippy jam. Tea made from blackberry leaves is a traditional cure for indigestion and is believed to purify the blood.
In Britain it used to be considered unlucky to pick blackberries after a certain date, sometimes Michaelmas (29 September) but with regional variants, as in Warwickshire, 12 October, the day of the traditional ‘Mop’ or hiring fair. Later than this, the devil was believed to have stamped or spat on the berries.
In Scandinavia, elsewhere in N. Europe, and Asia blackberries and DEWBERRIES are common but there are also species peculiar to the far north. These include the juicy, flavourful, red Arctic bramble, R. arcticus; but the most famous is the golden CLOUDBERRY, R. chamaemorus.
In W. and C. Asia blackberries grow as far south as Iran and are also common in the Himalayas. One Himalayan species, R. procerus, bears large thimble-shaped berries and is sometimes called Himalayan Giant; it is now found growing wild in the USA. The wild black berries of the Far East are more usually black raspberries than blackberries. In New Zealand, European blackberries introduced by white settlers are common.
Blackberries in the USA are highly diverse. The indigenous species vary across regions, and have also been interbred with imported varieties. They include the Oregon evergreen or cutleaf blackberry, R. laciniatus, originally from Europe (thought to have arrived in Oregon via the South Sea islands, whither someone from England had taken it), whose leaves are separated into ‘fingers’. American Indians used both berries and leaves in the same way as Europeans, but also preserved them for the winter by drying them. Dried berries of all kinds were often pounded with dried meat and fat to make PEMMICAN.
There is much cultivation of blackberries (and of the related dewberry) in the USA. Native species developed for cultivation are erect woody plants rather than trailing brambles; they include R. allegheniensis and R. argutus (tall or highbush blackberry), often interbred with imported strains.
Blackberries and raspberries are often crossed to give varieties such as the loganberry and tayberry (see RASPBERRY).
Turdus merula, a familiar European songbird, which ranges from the southern parts of Norway and Sweden down to the Mediterranean.
The English nursery rhyme about four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie might suggest that large blackbird pies were once common fare; but since ‘when the pie was open’d, the birds began to sing,’ the allusion must be to the medieval conceits known as SUBTLETIES, which often featured such surprises. However, blackbirds were eaten in the Middle Ages and the 17th century and even later (see, for example, a recipe for Blackbird pie given by Mrs BEETON, 1861). In a few regions of continental Europe blackbirds are still used in pies or to make terrines.
as its alternative name Scotch bun indicates, is a Scottish institution, a festive cake eaten at Hogmanay. Originally this cake belonged to Twelfth Night but moved to the secular festival of New Year when religious reformers banned Christmas as a festival.
Although the ‘bun’ has a long and puzzling history, the name ‘black bun’ only came into use in the early part of the 20th century. The recipe for it which was given by Meg Dods (1826) was entitled Scotch Christmas Bun. This was originally made with bread dough enriched with spices, dried fruit, eggs, and brandy and then wrapped in a plain casing of bread dough. Meg Dods said that it was made by all the leading bakers in Edinburgh in the weeks before Christmas and exported in sizes up to 16 lb (8 kg) to other parts of the United Kingdom.
Back in the 18th century the same thing or something very like it appeared as ‘plum cake’. The ‘bun’ term may have been introduced to avoid confusion with the meaning which the Scots had for ‘cake’ as a hard biscuit, as in oat ‘cakes’.
By the late 19th and early 20th centuries it had become so intensely spicy and fruity that the bread dough was abandoned, very little flour was added to the spice and fruit mixture, and the whole mixture was wrapped in short pastry crust. At this stage the bun could almost be described as an English CHRISTMAS PUDDING in a crust. The filling had become so dark as to deserve the epithet ‘black’. It seems to have been after the author R. L. Stevenson described it as ‘a black substance inimical to life’ that the name ‘black bun’ came into use.
The composition of the filling has varied over the centuries. All Scottish bakers who make the bun have their own spice mix, and flavours range from strong peppery versions to milder cinnamon-flavoured ones. Black treacle is a modern addition which did not appear in early recipes, and this of course enhances the blackness.
Size and shape also vary. A black bun may be circular or loaf shaped. In many households there is a strong tradition of serving the bun with Scotch whisky; but the bun may of course be found in households where Scotch whisky is never consumed.
is a name which can either indicate a rare, dark, variety of true CUMIN or (more commonly) a spice consisting of the seeds of Nigella sativa, native to the Levant.
In spite of being called black cumin, the latter does not resemble cumin in taste; nor is it botanically related. (It is, however, closely related to love-in-the-mist, N. damascena, whose seeds are also used as a condiment.)
Nigella sativa is sometimes cultivated on a small scale in N. India, but is mainly collected from wild plants in forests. The seeds are small, dull black, roughly wedge shaped, and pungent. They are used in India, including in the spice mixture PANCH PHORON, and also in the Middle East where they give a distinctive flavour to products such as cheese (e.g. the so-called ‘naboulsi’ cheese and haloumi). Black cumin is also sprinkled on bread and used for flavouring vinegar and pickles etc. much as true cumin is.
The name most used in India seems to be kalonji/kalaunji. The Arabic name habba sauda means ‘black seed’, but the alternative name habbat al-baraka means ‘seed of grace’, which suggests that at one time it had religious significance.
It is not unusual to find nigella seeds labelled ‘black onion seeds’, reflecting a common misconception. A further source of confusion is that they are sometimes called ‘black caraway’.
Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte in German, a baroque confection of layers of chocolate cake, interspersed with whipped cream and stoned, cooked, sweetened sour cherries. The cake layers are often sprinkled with kirsch, and the whole is covered with whipped cream and decorated with chocolate curls.
This confection is not one which has a long history. It has been suggested that it was created in the 1930s in Berlin, but firm evidence is elusive. What is certain is that in the last decades of the 20th century it made a triumphant entry into the dessert course of restaurants in Britain (and no doubt elsewhere) and reigned for a time as ‘top favourite’. This is no doubt due to the fact that, properly made, it is delicious.
Tetrao tetrix, also known as black game or blackcock (the male, the female being grey hen), a European game bird, male specimens of which have an average total length of about 50 cm (21″). Its range extends from N. Europe to NE Asia. Males are blue-black in colour, females brown.
The reputation of the black grouse as a table bird is good. It can be roasted, perhaps with thin rashers of bacon and vine leaves clothing it, or fillets can be taken and cooked in a suitable sauce.
a verb which for the gardener means to earth up (e.g. stalks of celery) and thus keep white, and which for the cook means to immerse briefly in boiling water.
The blanching carried out in the kitchen may whiten, as when pieces of rabbit are blanched prior to being cooked, but it more commonly serves other purposes. Fruits and nuts may be blanched to permit peeling them. If vegetables or herbs are blanched before they are frozen, this deactivates enzymes and ‘sets’ their colour. And vegetables to be cooked in the French manner are first blanched, so that their colour will be preserved (after which they are ‘refreshed’ in cold water and subsequently heated in butter). Blanching lasts for a shorter or longer time according to what is being blanched and for what purpose; but it never lasts long.
an Anglicization of the French blanc manger (white food), now means a sweet, jellied dessert made from milk and cornflour, to which flavour and colour are often added. The addition of colour to something whose name indicates that it is white is not and never has been perceived as a problem or paradox in Britain. Until recently, an observer at any children’s party was likely to hear requests such as: ‘May I have some more of the pink blancmange please?’ In France, however, blancmanger is typically white and is made with gelatin and almond milk.
The ancestor of the homely modern dish was honoured on medieval and Renaissance menus all over W. Europe. The 14th- and 15th-century English blancmangers were made of shredded chicken breast, sugar, rice, and either ground almonds or almond milk, but there were many variations on the idea on the Continent; furthermore, there was a whole family of related dishes. Professor Constance Hieatt (1995) has described the fundamental difficulties, perplexities, and traps strewn in the way of any culinary detective attempting to clarify the history of so widespread and popular a dish.
It has long been speculated that it derives from the Middle East, whence both rice and almonds were imported. One of the most widespread dishes in medieval Arab cuisine was isfîdhabâj (a Persian name which also means ‘white food’), and the recipe translated by Arberry (1939) is lamb stewed with almond milk. However, Perry (1989) points out that this happens to be the only isfîdhabâj recipe in Arab culinary literature containing almond milk; the others show little or no resemblance to the European dish. It seems likely that blancmanger does reflect eastern influence, but the exact source and path are obscure.
Ayto (1993) draws attention to the two recipes given by PLATINA (1475), one of which he, Platina, says plainly comes from APICIUS. The surviving manuscripts of Apicius do not include this recipe, however, and Maestro Martino, from whom Platina avowedly took the recipe, does not mention the connection himself. So, while it is possible that the Romans made a dish called cibaria alba (although the name would imply coarse food such as that supplied for slaves) the question remains uncertain.
Although modern people are always surprised to learn of a sweet made from chicken breast, this was common in medieval Arab cuisine, where chicken was sometimes literally candied. The concept survives in the contemporary Turkish rice and chicken dessert Tavuk gögsü kazandibi, whether this is an idea picked up from the Arab sources or conceivably a version of blancmanger.
a French and to some extent international culinary term indicating a dish of white meat (veal, poultry, also lamb) served in a WHITE SAUCE which masks it. The meat is usually cooked in a fond blanc (‘white’, i.e. uncoloured, stock) which is then used as the basis of the sauce.
The Old French blanchet came into English as blanket, i.e. white woollen cloth, but this has nothing to do with blanquette, even if everything ultimately derives from blanc. In the English kitchen you find, for example, ‘pig in a blanket’, where the blanket is of batter.
Alburnus alburnus, a small European freshwater fish which is not widely eaten but is used in one famous speciality of Burgundy, friture de Saône. Its French name is ablette.
Fritures, mixed fried dishes, date back to the Middle Ages, and the emphasis was always on fish. Medieval household accounts in Burgundy contain mentions of petits poissons, a term which evidently included not only bleak but also small LOACH and BARBS.
Eating a dish of these fish, fried, was formerly associated with the end of the harvest. In modern times the tradition is maintained in small restaurants on the banks of the Saône. The small bleak (about 9 cm/3.5″ long and weighing 5–10 g/about 0.25 oz) are preferred because when fried their skins are agreeably crisp and crunchy, while the inside remains succulent.
meaning blue, an element in the name of many of the various French blue cheeses. One of the best known is bleu d’Auvergne, a rich, sharp cheese made from whole milk, but there are numerous others; Rance (1989) describes 46 bleus. Bleu de Bresse and bleu des causses (mentioned under ROQUEFORT) are two of them. Bleu du Haut-Jura comprises bleu de Gex and bleu de Septmoncel, names which seem to have become largely interchangeable; but see Rance on the interesting history and special qualities of bleu de Gex.
There is no connection between these cheeses and the fish cookery technique called AU BLEU.
a corruption of ‘blue hat’, which is a good name for a bluish-lilac edible mushroom which is common in Europe and the USA. There are two main species, the wood blewit, Lepista nuda, and the field blewit, L. saeva.
The wood blewit has a cap measuring up to 12 cm (4″) across, growing on a relatively short stem. Cap, gills, and stem are all likely to be bluish-lilac. The field blewit is almost as large, but its cap tends to be pale grey or brown, the gills pale grey, and the stem greyish with just a blue or lilac tinge.
Blewits are found in the autumn, one kind in woods and the other in fields, often growing in large ‘fairy rings’. They will also thrive on lawn mowings or discarded straw. The flavour is fresh, rather like that of new potatoes, and the texture delicate. The wood blewit is generally preferred to the field blewit, but both are highly esteemed.
In Britain the blewits are more familiar in the Midlands than elsewhere. Dorothy Hartley (1954), who says that they have remained popular wherever French people settled, believed that they are best stewed. Having given a recipe for cooking them in milk with onion and a sage leaf, as one would cook reed tripe, and serving the result with its sauce in a well of mashed potato, she remarks that: ‘The likeness to a very delicate dish of tripe and onions is curious, both in texture and flavour…’ Roux-Saget and Delplanque (1985) comment that appreciation of the blewit in France varies from region to region, that specimens growing at high altitudes are peppery, and that those growing under oak trees are best.
in Russian, is the plural of the word blin, which denotes a small PANCAKE. The same is correct in English, but in colloquial English, as in this entry, blini can serve as both singular and plural.
A blini is about 10 cm (4″) in diameter, and only a few millimetres thick. Blini, to be authentic, should be made from a batter of BUCKWHEAT flour leavened with yeast, and further lightened with beaten egg white and whipped cream. Special little cast-iron pans, each one the right size and shape to cook a single blini, are made in sets of six. These fit into a holder and can be used in the oven or on top of the stove. The finished pancakes are eaten hot with butter, herring, smoked fish, chopped egg, or—best known in the West—caviar and sour cream.
Many observers remark that the traditional blini recipes make crumbly, strongly flavoured pancakes. Lighter blini have evolved using mixtures of wheat and buckwheat flour, with or without the yeast. French influence, important in Russian cuisine during the 19th century, may have encouraged these developments.
Blini are important to Russian eating habits, and have a history which stretches back to the Middle Ages. Lesley Chamberlain (1983) says that the name is derived from mlin, meaning something ground (i.e. flour or meal generally). She gives their place in the sequence of foods at a main meal:
In a full Russian obed, blini are served after the cold zakuski. They may be followed by consommé, then pies and then the main meat course. For all this you would need a gargantuan appetite…
Blini were especially important during the Maslenitsa (or ‘butter festival’), the week leading up to Lent, as a treat eaten twice a day by everyone; street vendors did a roaring trade, and cooks who could make good blini were in heavy demand. The old Russians had other occasions for eating blini. Three times a year the middle and lower classes held prayers for the dead, after which they had a ceremonial meal of blini. At funerals blini, boiled wheat (cf VARENO ZHITO), and vodka were consumed beside the grave, and a small offering of each poured into the grave in a completely pre-Christian manner.
Pancakes similar to blini, nalesniki and rakuszki, are known in Poland; and buckwheat is used in pancake batters in SE Europe. Since the late 19th century, blini and buckwheat pancakes generally have become popular in NW Europe and the USA.
Blintz (blintze), a name derived from the Russian blin, is an egg batter pancake of JEWISH COOKERY. A blintz may be either sweet or savoury: with cinnamon sugar and sour cream; or filled with lox (smoked salmon), cottage cheese, chives, etc.
of all the component parts of an animal the one which is most apt to engender the kinds of emotion which underlie, or accompany, food taboos. Yet in many cultures it is highly esteemed as food and free of inhibitions.
In the past, and even to some extent in present times, blood has been a staple food of nomadic tribes (Berbers, Mongols, etc.), for whom it is a renewable resource; they draw it from living animals (horses, cattle, camels), then staunch the wound. In some instances the blood was drunk just as it came from the animals. In others it was mixed with milk before being drunk. In yet others, it was cooked before consumption. Reference is often made to the Masai of E. Africa, who obtain blood from their cattle by firing an arrow, at close range, into a vein in the neck of the live animal. The wound is plugged after the desired amount has been extracted. The bleeding of horses was also a common practice of early trappers and explorers in the days of the settlement of America. If the blood was not consumed in liquid form, it was preserved with salt, cut into squares and reserved for eating during times of scarcity. This enjoyment of blood was indeed common among pastoral societies. English observers noted ‘the cutting of cattle for blood to be eaten in jellified form or mixed with butter and salt and made into puddings’ as universal among the Irish of the 17th century, for example, while hunter-gatherers such as the Arrernte of C. Australia would drink the blood of the KANGAROO before butchering the animal.
In a wide-ranging essay, Birgit Siesby (1980) draws attention to a striking contrast between attitudes which have their origin in the Middle East and those of the Nordic peoples. All concerned seem to have started from the premiss that blood is the very soul of the animal, but opposite conclusions were drawn. In the Middle East, Jews banned the eating of blood and so did early Christians and Islam. The Nordic peoples on the other hand did not find it proper to waste the souls of animals, but thought on the contrary that by drinking the blood they might partake of the strength and qualities of the slain beasts. The introduction of Christianity did not make the Nordic peoples give up their traditional blood dishes (black soup, black pudding, paltbread—a kind of black rye bread made with blood, dark beer, and spices).
It should not be thought, however, that Nordic attitudes to blood were free of superstition. Bringéus (in Arnott, 1975) describes a strange and ritual dialogue which took place between people involved in boiling blood sausages; ritual smackings of the sausages (with sexual incantations); special blessings; and the practice of placing the spleen of the slaughtered pig in the kettle with the sausages as ‘sausage saviour’.
Siesby also goes into the nutritional aspects, demolishing (in part by citing interesting experiments with Swedish policemen) the myth which gained currency in the 1920s that the iron in animal blood could not be absorbed by the human body. On the contrary, it is the best available source of iron.
Blood is used as a thickener in stews such as a CIVET and in dishes like jugged HARE or LAMPREYS stewed in their own blood. The Vietnamese, among other peoples of SE Asia, have a great liking for (duck) blood soup (turkey in Laos): a worry due to the transmission of avian flu. For other current main uses of blood, see BLOOD SAUSAGES; also DRISHEEN (Ireland) and DINUGUAN (the Philippines).
sausages filled with blood, with cereal or other vegetable matter to absorb this, and fat. The most familiar type is the black pudding or boudin noir, English and French terms for much the same thing. It is a pudding in the old sense of something enclosed in a sausage skin.
The black pudding is probably the most ancient of sausages or puddings. Some would claim this distinction for the HAGGIS, but the earliest mention in literature is of something tending more towards black pudding, at least in its filling. Book 18 of Homer’s Odyssey, around 1000 BC, refers to a stomach filled with blood and fat and roasted over a fire.
The reason for the great antiquity of such dishes is clear enough. When a pig is killed it is bled, and a large amount of blood becomes available. This has a very short keeping time if not preserved. Putting it into one of the vessels which the entrails of animals conveniently furnish, along with other OFFAL with a limited keeping time, is an obvious solution.
The oldest detailed recipe for black pudding, in the compilation attributed to APICIUS (material of the first few centuries AD), calls for lengths of intestine, rather than a stomach, as the container. It is a rich recipe with no cereal, but chopped hard-boiled egg yolks, pine kernels, onions, and leeks. Common black puddings of the time were probably made with cereal.
In medieval Europe it was not unusual for even relatively poor families to own a pig, which was slaughtered in the autumn. Black puddings were therefore made everywhere. They always included fat and onions, but not invariably cereal. An English recipe of the 15th century is for a black pudding made with the blood and fat of a porpoise with oatmeal, spiced with pepper and ginger. It was boiled, then lightly grilled. This was a dish for nobles.
Black puddings have remained popular in many European countries and regions. In Britain they are now eaten mainly in the Midlands and the north, often flavoured with PENNYROYAL as well as other herbs and spices. The cereal filling is generally oatmeal (see OATS). Continental European versions contain little or no cereal, and rely mainly on chopped onion to absorb the blood.
The blood used is generally, but not always, pig’s blood; see DRISHEEN for an exception. The taste of blood is unassertive, like that of liver, so all blood puddings depend on additional flavourings for their particular character.
The French boudin noir is made from pig’s blood and fat, chopped onion, and cream, and is seasoned with salt, pepper, and mixed spices. There are many local variations, containing herbs and brandy (boudin de Lyon), apples (boudin noir alsacien), spinach (boudin de Poitou aux épinards), etc. In Auvergne milk is used; in Brittany calf’s blood is added to the pig’s blood. In the north of France and Belgium, very rich boudins containing large amounts of cream, lard or butter, and sometimes eggs, are made. Boudin noir de Paris, also called boudin à l’oignon, is one of the only two boudins on the list of 14 in the official French Code de la Charcuterie to contain cooked onion. Boudin à la flamande has currants and raisins. The term boudin noir à l’anglaise is used for a black pudding with cereal, which is made in France as well as England.
The principal French boudin competition is held every year at Mortagne-au-Perche in Normandy, attracting hundreds of entries from all over Europe. The category for boudins made with cereal has several times been won by British entries.
Allied to the boudin but of a different composition is a product of the Pays de la Loire, named gogue or cogne. This is a sort of sausage in which green vegetables (chard, spinach, parsley) are dominant, with some meat and also, in a relatively small quantity and in order to bind the mixture, some pork blood. The mixture is encased in a pig bladder or a large intestine.
There are several kinds of Spanish black pudding, or morcilla. The most renowned comes from Asturia, where it is made from the local black pig, and forms part of the regional speciality Fabada, a bean stew with mixed meats. An Andalusian morcilla includes almonds, pimentos, and parsley. The Italian black pudding, sanguinaccio, is a large type of blood sausage bound in a net.
Germany has some unusual types of Blutwurst verging on a conventional SAUSAGE. The normal, plain type is often smoked. Swedish blood sausage is made with rye meal and raisins. Hungarian kishka, ring-shaped and dark in colour, are also made elsewhere in E. Europe and in the USA. They use ground rice to absorb the blood, contain some meat, and are highly seasoned.
In the USA black puddings are not generally popular, but are eaten by some ethnic groups. There is a W. Indian black pudding made with sweet potato or rice and with pumpkin, and spiced with chilli peppers.
All blood puddings are cooked as soon as they are made, and either eaten at once or allowed to dry. They have a limited keeping time of a few weeks. When required, they may be heated through in boiling water, or slashed and grilled, fried in slices, simply sliced and eaten cold, or used in various made dishes.
WHITE PUDDING (boudin blanc) is a different product: no blood.
(or pufferfish), the English names for numerous species of fish in the families Lagocephalidae and Tetraodontidae (but for the latter see also TRIGGERFISH). All have hugely inflatable stomachs, and powerful beaks which can bite through a crab shell or a fishing line. Many are edible, subject to the stringent precautions which apply to some of them, especially the Japanese FUGU, which is the best known. Others which are eaten include Sphoeroides maculatus, found in W. Atlantic waters as far north as Long Island, also known as northern swellfish and marketed as ‘sea squab’. Zachary (1969) provides fuller advice than other authors on how to prepare and cook this delicacy.
the small bluish fruits of various scrubby (‘low-bush’) and bushy (‘high-bush’) plants of the genus Vaccinium. The most important N. American species are named below. In C. and N. Europe, the corresponding species is V. myrtillus, but this is preferably called BILBERRY.
Wild blueberries are found wherever suitable conditions (acid soil and enough moisture at all seasons) exist, as far north as the limits of human habitation. Most commercially cultivated blueberries are grown in N. America, especially New Jersey, Michigan, Indiana, N. Carolina, Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia; but cultivation also takes place in parts of W. Europe and has been started in New Zealand.
The blueberry is the most recent example of a fruit plant taken from the wild and brought into commercial cultivation, a development which began in New Jersey in 1920. The cultivars then introduced served as the basis of a new agricultural industry which put to good use acid, boggy soils which had previously been thought worthless for cultivation. The cultivated varieties of blueberry are mostly hybrids of three native American species, the high-bush V. corymbosum, the ‘rabbit-eye’ V. ashei, and the low-bush V. angustifolium. The fruits of cultivated varieties are far removed from wild blueberries and may be four times as big. The selection and breeding of commercial varieties has been aimed not only at size but also at a pleasing combination of acidity and sweetness.
Although the name blueberry is now standard for the commercially produced fruit, there has been much confusion in popular nomenclature in the past. New England colonists called the berries hurtleberries (=whortleberries), and later huckleberries and no doubt bilberries too. For the approved use of other common names applying to fruits of the genus Vaccinium, the whole of which is pervaded by confusion, see BILBERRY, CRANBERRY, HUCKLEBERRY, WHORTLEBERRY.
Facciola (1990) provides an excellent conspectus of all these species. He observes that V. corymbosum var pallidum, the Blue Ridge blueberry, has the reputation of being superior to all other blueberries. He also lists V. floribundum, the Colombian blueberry, known locally as mortiño; this is an example of a good blueberry from somewhere other than N. America and Europe.
Wild blueberries were used extensively by the Indians of N. America. Besides eating them fresh, they dried them in the sun, to be used later like currants in puddings, cakes, and PEMMICAN; a practice ‘decidedly worth imitating, the berries drying readily in a week or ten days and being immune to decay’ (Fernald and Kinsey, 1943). They pounded the dried berries with parched meal or used them as a flavouring for meat and in soups.
The use of blueberries as fresh or stewed fruit, and in such American dishes as blueberry pie and blueberry muffins, or with ice cream, is well known. They make an excellent jelly and are prized for this purpose in France (and also for jams, tarts, and cakes).
owe their flavour and appearance to a blue mould, usually Penicillium roqueforti or P. glaucum. Some of the finest blue cheeses, such as Roquefort, continued until recent times to be of ‘natural’ formation in the sense that they picked up their special moulds from their surroundings; but virtually all blue cheeses are now deliberately inoculated with the chosen mould, so that their development is fully under control. In the larger and harder blue cheeses, the mould is encouraged to penetrate throughout by stabbing the cheese with copper needles which carry mould spores to the interior. Even the hardest blue cheeses have a fairly open-textured curd which allows mould to grow between the granules, giving a marbled appearance to a slice of the cheese.
The characteristic flavour of blue cheese is largely due to the action of the lipase enzymes produced by the mould. These break down fats in the cheese to yield fatty acids, especially butyric acid; methyl ketones; alcohols; esters; and other compounds.
See also BLEU; BLUE VINNEY; GORGONZOLA; ROQUEFORT; STILTON.
Callinectes sapidus, the most famous American crab, has a natural range which extends down the eastern seaboard from Delaware Bay to Florida and beyond, but is mainly caught in the Chesapeake Bay area. It has been introduced into the E. Mediterranean and is now part of the marine fauna there.
Adults are large, up to more than 12 cm (5″) in width. However, at the annual National Hard Crab Derby, held at Crisfield in Maryland, the champion crab-pickers manage to ‘pick’ (remove all the meat from) a whole crab in about 40 seconds.
These are handsome crabs, and their scientific name is suitably honorific. Callinectes means ‘beautiful swimmer’ and sapidus means ‘tasty’. Warner (1976), whose admirable book has all the information one could desire about the blue crab and ways of catching it and the people who live by catching or dressing it, remarks that it was Dr Mary J. Rathbun who gave it its specific name and that, although in her long career at the Smithsonian Institution she identified and described 998 new species of crab, this was the only instance in which she alluded to culinary quality.
The marketing of soft-shell crabs is a major part of the industry in Chesapeake Bay. (The other place where it is practised extensively is Venice, the species used there being the common European crab.) For a general account of the periodic shedding of their ‘shells’ by crustaceans, see CRUSTACEANS.
The blue crab is very soft indeed when it has shed, and will normally take refuge in some relatively safe nook for a day or so while its new shell becomes reasonably hard. It is not feasible to catch the crabs while they are soft. They have to be caught in advance and kept in special floats until they shed. These floats are patrolled frequently so that crabs which have shed can be culled at once.
A crab which is just about ready to shed is called a ‘comer’ or ‘peeler’. The condition can be recognized by the appearance of a red line along the edge of the ‘paddlers’ at the rear of the crab. During the actual process of shedding, the crab is a ‘buster’, ‘peeler’ (again), or ‘shedder’. At the moment of emergence from the old shell, it is a ‘soft crab’ in the full sense of the term. Soon afterwards, as a slight hardening becomes apparent, it is termed a ‘paper shell’. Further hardening turns it into a ‘buckram’ or ‘buckler’. At this stage the new shell is still flexible, but the crab is no longer soft enough to be treated as a soft-shell crab, and its muscles are thin and watery. Within 24 hours or so of shedding, the new shell will be hard and the crab can resume a normal life.
There is a further complication in all this. The female must mate with a male immediately after her own shedding. When she is almost ready, a male will pick her up, clasping her beneath him, and carry her to a suitable spot. She then sheds and mating takes place. Crabbers are pleased if they catch a couple on this amorous journey, since they gain simultaneously a hard male and a female shedder.
Soft-shell crabs have to be conveyed to market with extreme rapidity if they are to be sold fresh. Many are frozen in the soft state, which permits marketing them in distant places. They are suitable for frying, preferably in clarified butter, or grilling.
The genus Callinectes is represented in other parts of the world. For example, there is C. latimanus, the blue-legged swimming crab of W. Africa, which is a large species (carapace up to 30 cm/12″ across) living in the muddy bottoms of lagoons. Its meat is of fine quality and the Ewe people regard it as the king of crabs.
Pomatomus saltator, a prime example of a fish which has a very wide distribution, yet is thought of in certain places as being purely local. For anglers on the eastern seaboard of the USA, the ‘blues’ are ‘theirs’. In Turkey, one will meet people who suppose that the beloved lüfer, as they call it, is not to be found except in the region of the Bosporus. Yet this species is found in many parts of the world, in temperate and semi-tropical seas. It is the ‘elft’ of SE Africa and is well known in Australian waters as ‘tailor’.
Bluefish, which may reach a length of 1.2 m/4′, are among the most voracious of fish. Swimming in groups, they ruthlessly attack shoals of smaller fish, often killing far more than they can eat. Jordan and Evermann (1902) describe this vividly:
they move along like a pack of hungry wolves, destroying everything before them. Their trail is marked by fragments of fish and by the stain of blood in the sea, as, when the fish is too large to be swallowed entire, the hinder portion will be bitten off and the anterior part allowed to float or sink. It has even been maintained that such is the gluttony of this fish, that when the stomach becomes full the contents are disgorged and then again filled!
Bluefish are, moreover, said to be cannibals, which may help to explain why the fish in a shoal are all of the same size; if some were larger they would eat the smaller ones.
The shoals move in accordance with changes in water temperature. Fishing progresses up the eastern seaboard of the USA from spring to summer to autumn. The annual migrations of bluefish through the Bosporus give rise to corresponding seasonal fisheries there.
Helicolenus dactylopterus, a fish of the family Scorpaenidae (see SCORPION FISH) and thus related to, but inferior to, the rascasse and the REDFISH. Maximum length 45 cm (18″); red above and rosy below; the mouth and pharynx blue. A fish of moderately deep waters, known on both sides of the N. Atlantic and in the W. Mediterranean.
(or vinny) is or was a highly esteemed blue cheese made by an accidental mould infection of Dorset cheese (a notably hard skimmed-milk cheese).
The name ‘vinney’ comes from an Old English word meaning ‘mould’. There are various picturesque tales about how the mould in question came from old boots or saddles etc. and it may well be true that maturing was sometimes done in harness rooms. However, it seems to have been a chancy business; and without the mould Dorset cheese has little attraction. These factors and difficulties arising from controls on milk marketing and cheese-making in the mid-20th century were enough to account for blue vinney’s virtual disappearance in the latter part of the century. However, some is still made.
the common English name for an edible mushroom, Amanita rubescens, abundant in woods throughout the temperate regions of Europe and N. America in late summer and autumn. Those who gather and cook it are rewarded by a good flavour and pleasant texture. But it should not be eaten raw; and it must be positively identified, since it could be confused with other, harmful members of the genus Amanita, namely the panther cap (sometimes called ‘false blusher’) and the FLY AGARIC, both of which may be found growing with it in woodlands.
The true blusher is up to 13 cm (5″) tall and 10 cm (4″) across the cap. This is brown, speckled with fragments of the typical Amanita veil unless these have been washed off by rain. The stem is strong, up to 2.5 cm (1″) thick, and bears the usual Amanita volva (basal sheath) and ring. The latter is clearly marked with close-spaced lines where it has pressed against the gills of the immature cap. The rings of the panther cap and fly agaric lack these lines. The other feature which distinguishes the blusher from either of its dangerous relatives is its ‘blush’. If any part of it is bruised or cut it stains red.
Blushers are not to be eaten raw. It is best to simmer them in water, then discard the water and continue the cooking by pan-frying or grilling. Blushers will add a touch of piquancy to a dish of milder mushrooms.
(sometimes spelled bobalink), Dolichonyx oryzivorus, a small N. American bird which migrates southwards and fattens on wild rice, after which it becomes a prized table delicacy. They are commonly offered in the markets, in this condition, as reed or rice birds, being called bobolinks only when alive and further north, in the summer. All this is explained by de Voe (1866), who said that in his time they had many admirers among epicures when they were at their best, in the autumn.
a dish which has been popular in SOUTHERN AFRICA for centuries. Typically, it is a CURRY-type dish baked in the oven, containing finely minced meat with a blend of sweet/sour ingredients and topped with an egg and milk sauce. It reflects the influence of spices from the Dutch East Indies, used by the Cape Malays, but often incorporates local ingredients such as apricots, almonds, etc. A version with yellow rice and raisins is well known, but there are innumerable variations, including fish boboties.
Helen Saberi
the product of a discontinued custom, practised since medieval times, of preserving fresh butter in bogs. It is associated with Iceland, India, Ireland, Morocco, and Scandinavia (Evans, 1957).
In Ireland many examples have been found in bogs whilst turf-cutting. These finds, of various weights, had been wrapped in cloth and packed into wooden boxes or baskets. In some cases the butter was flavoured with wild garlic. It is believed that the butter was placed in bogs not only for preservation purposes but possibly also to develop a desired rancid flavour. It has also been suggested that the butter was a votive offering to the fairies (see FAIRY FOOD). Evans believes that the custom continued in Ireland until at least the 19th century.
Regina Sexton
(or sweet gale) Myrica gale, a shrub which grows in boggy places in most of the cooler parts of the northern hemisphere. It is smaller than and unrelated to the true MYRTLE.
The leaves and small, winged fruits yield an agreeably aromatic wax, which smells rather like bay. The leaves were used to make a tea in both China and Wales; but a more general use in Europe was to make gale beer, to which they were added in place of hops. The fruits have also been used in France, Sweden, and N. England to flavour soups and meat dishes. Fernald and Kinsey (1943) say: ‘The nutlets of Sweet Gale have been used in France … as an aromatic spice, having a delicious fragrance suggestive of sage.’ But it was more usual to soak them in hot water to release the wax, which was made into scented candles. So another name for these plants is candleberry.
a verb which indicates one of the fundamental cooking operations, familiar in every kitchen. Water, at sea level, boils at 100 °C (212 °F). That is not a coincidence. The centigrade scale was established by defining the freezing point of water as 0° and its boiling point, when it turns to steam, as 100°.
Nor is it a coincidence that the point at which water boils is easily recognized. When water turns to steam, the process is heralded by some bubbles coming to the surface and is accompanied, when in full swing, by rapid bubbling. So, cooks have no problem with an instruction such as ‘bring to the boil’. Even from the far side of the kitchen one can tell when this has been achieved.
This ease of recognition is a considerable convenience, and, taken in conjunction with the ready availability of water as a cooking medium, would go a long way towards explaining the popularity of boiling as a cookery technique. But there is still a fundamental question to be answered: what is it about this precise temperature which makes it suitable for cooking a wide range of comestibles? Might not 5° less or more, or even greater variations, be better?
On one level, the last question can be answered in the affirmative. It is frequently better to poach something, at a temperature just below boiling point; or to cook at a higher temperature. Since water turns to steam at 100 °C, the latter option requires using a different cooking medium (e.g. oil) or changing the water to a solution (e.g. of sugar in water, which will reach a far higher temperature) or altering the boiling point of the water by resorting to PRESSURE COOKING.
On another level, one could answer the question differently, pointing out that most foods consist mainly of water (the proportion is often more than 90%), and that it is therefore unsurprising that ‘bringing to the boil’ is an efficient way of cooking; it takes the main constituent of the foodstuff to as high a temperature as it can normally reach.
Vigorous, rapid boiling of water (or other liquid with the same characteristics) does not produce a higher temperature, but simply causes more commotion in the pot (normally pointless) and increases the rate at which water evaporates (useful if one is reducing the liquid). The point is brought out in this quotation from ACCUM (drawing on Count RUMFORD and thus uniting in one passage two of the greatest writers on the science of cookery):
Count Rumford has taken much pains to impress on the minds of those who exercise the culinary art, the following simple but practical, important fact, namely; that when water begins only to be agitated by the heat of the fire, it is incapable of being made hotter, and that the violent ebullition is nothing more than an unprofitable dissipation of the water, in the form of steam … it is not by the bubbling up, or violent boiling, as it is called, that culinary operations are expedited.
When the cooking medium is something other than water, the situation is different; then there may well be situations in which vigorous boiling is required. See BOUILLABAISSE for one, the point there being to create an emulsion of the water and oil. JAM recipes often call for rapid boiling at the end of the process, this being designed to promote evaporation and, by increasing the proportion of sugar in the sugar solution, to allow the jam to reach the relatively high temperature which will ensure a good set. Other examples could be given.
Finally, an interesting point from Tabitha Tickletooth in a book called The Dinner Question (1860). This extraordinary author, whose massive and matriarchal image on the cover of the book is generally supposed to represent the real male author in drag, holds forth on many topics, including potato cookery. Having established the need to choose the appropriate variety of potato for the dish being prepared, Tabitha goes on to give a cooking tip of importance. It is reproduced here with its explanatory footnote.
When [the potatoes] have boiled five minutes, pour off the hot water and replace it with cold* and half a tablespoonful of salt.
*The reason for this innovation on the general practice is, that the heart of the potato being peculiarly hard, the outside, in the ordinary course, is done long before it is softened. By chilling its exterior with cold water, the heat of the first boiling strikes to the centre of the vegetable, and as its force gradually increases when the water boils again, by the time the outside has recovered from its chilling, the equilibrium is restored, and the whole potato is evenly done.
a general term indicating CONFECTIONERY made by the process of SUGAR BOILING. The name is used especially with reference to hard, glassy ‘high boiled’ sweets such as DROPS, which are actually highly concentrated sugar solutions.
TOFFEE, FUDGE, HUMBUGS, BULLSEYES, and various items of PULLED CANDY, such as ROCK, also count as boiled sweets. Small drops in different colours, plus striped balls and lengths of cut rock, are often sold as a mixture. Sweets made by sugar boiling are especially popular in W. Europe and N. America.
a name applied to two plant products which some would classify as spices but which are valued for their foam-making ability rather than for any aromatic quality.
The first of these, and the one which has prior claim to the name bois de Panama, is the dried inner bark of Quillaja saponaria, an American tree. It is clear from Seigneurie (1898) that this dried bark was an article of commerce at the end of the 19th century, and that it had a food use. If it is brought to the boil in plenty of water and then left to simmer for a couple of hours, or until the volume of water has been greatly reduced; and if the result is strained and left to cool, and then whisked, it becomes foamy and brilliant white. A warm sugar syrup can then be incorporated in this foam, producing a white elastic mousse with excellent keeping qualities. This mousse is called naatiffe (spelled in various ways, e.g. natef) and is used in the Middle East—especially Egypt and the Lebanon—to accompany sweetmeats such as KARABIJ (finger-shaped pistachio nut pastries). The naatiffe has a faintly bitter-sweet (almondy, say some) taste and plays a role more or less comparable with that of whipped cream in western countries.
The second product is the dried root of Saponaria officinalis, the herb known as soapwort. This grows in the Middle East as well as in many other places. It is quite unrelated to the tree described in the preceding paragraph but happens to share with it the ability to create foam. This is because of the presence of certain saponins, which also make it possible to manufacture shampoos from either the bark of the tree or the root of the herb.
A further coincidence is that the dried bark and dried root are similar in appearance. It seems clear (see Helen J. Saberi et al., 1994) that confectioners in the Middle East see little difference, for their practical purposes, between the two; and that the name bois de Panama, sounding more exotic and attractive than soapwort, came to be the preferred name for both. The fact that usage of naatiffe was particularly strong in the Lebanon and Syria, where French was spoken, no doubt had an influence.
Helen J. Saberi et al. (1994) and other correspondents of the journal PPC, in which they were recording their research, drew attention to further ramifications, notably that plants of the genus Gypsophila can also be used to produce a white foam, used e.g. in Turkey in the confection of one type of HALVA.
(or boletus) a general name for a large group of edible fungi which includes the genus Boletus. The most highly esteemed members of this genus are described under CEP, a name properly applied to them alone, although often used more loosely (but not current in the USA, where every species in the group is a ‘boletus’ or ‘bolete’).
As explained under MUSHROOM, there is a fundamental difference between an AGARIC and a bolete, immediately apparent to anyone looking under their caps. An agaric, such as the common field mushroom, has gills in the form of fine, radiating ‘plates’. A bolete has instead a mass of tubes, looking rather like foam rubber. The tubes terminate in pores, which may be very fine or quite coarse. (The group of POLYPORES also has these tubes, but is distinguished from the boletus group by other features.)
Boletes (boletus mushrooms) were all grouped by early mycologists in the single genus Boletus. Now, although this genus remains the chief one in the group, a number of others are recognized, including Boletinus, Leccinum, Suillus, and Gyroporus. The common name bolete (or boletus, as some have it, despite the difficulty of then providing a plural form) is, however, normally applied to all of them. Boletes are found in most parts of the world, including China, Japan, SE Asia, Australia, and Africa, as well as Europe and N. America.
Many boletes besides the ceps are worth eating, but their stems tend to become infested with insects or maggots and often have to be discarded. The same applies to older specimens whose tubes have become soggy. Some Boletus spp are harmful: see the warning at the end of this entry. Others are excessively bitter or peppery, or edible but of no gastronomic interest.
Good species include the following (E indicates European, NA North American, AS Asian, and AU Australian):
Of the several edible species in the genus Leccinum, the best known is perhaps L. aurantiacum, sometimes called orange-cap boletus. It grows near aspen trees or pines, has a large, rusty red cap, and a stout, white stem covered with what look like particles of soot but are really tiny tufts of dark hair. German, Rotkappe or Kapuziner. Recommended (E, NA).
The genus Suillus includes S. luteus, known as numeiguchi in Japan, bolet jaune or nonette in France, Butterpilz in Germany, and smörsopp in Sweden, where it is highly esteemed. Its chestnut or sepia cap has a glutinous surface, earning it the English name ‘slippery Jack’, and it is found in coniferous woods (E, NA, AU). The same applies to S. granulatus, the granulated boletus, a species whose flesh is pale yellow (E, NA, AU).
There are other edible species in this genus, all with glutinous caps and all growing in association with conifers. S. grevillei (formerly Boletus elegans) is always found with larch trees; so it is the bolet du mélèze in France and the larch bolete in England and N. America. S. pictus, known as painted bolete, is common wherever the white pine grows in the USA.
In the genus Gyroporus there is one exceptionally fine mushroom: G. cyanescens (E, NA), indigotier in France, because its pores stain blue readily; indeed their surface can be ‘written on’ with any sharp instrument. The French mycogastronomist Ramain (1979) counted it the best of all the boletus family, including the ceps.
Any edible boletus can be prepared like a cep. Peeling is necessary for the slippery Jack tribe, whose viscous caps do need it, but not otherwise. The spongy texture of the cap makes these mushrooms less suitable than others for use in salads, and it is better to cook them, taking full advantage of their juiciness.
Some French authorities, mindful that the flesh of Leccinum aurantiacum turns black if cooked in the ordinary way, recommend coating thick slices with beaten egg and breadcrumbs and pan-frying them in this protective cover; a technique which can be applied to other species.
Warning. It is advisable to be very sure of the identification of any species which has red pores under the cap. It could be one of several, such as Boletus luridus, which are poisonous when raw and can cause gastric upsets even when cooked. Or it could be a species which is poisonous in any circumstances, e.g. B. satanas, the devil’s boletus, happily rare. On the other hand, the delicious B. erythropus has red pores.
This inland country was once part of the Inca Empire; see INCA FOOD. It was then called Alto Peru and, true to that name, is high in the Altiplano that stretches east from the border lake Titicaca, and even higher in the true Andes beyond, before swooping down to a moist and barely explored jungle in the Oriente region. If the staple crop of the Altiplano is the POTATO, then the COCA bush might seem the most important in the high mountains, for the leaves counteract altitude sickness, and the jungle will supply the full gamut of tropical produce, from CASSAVA to SWEET POTATO and COCONUT.
The Indian culture that resulted in the ruined city of Tiahuanaco was overlaid by the Inca, in turn giving way to the Spanish. Two Indian languages, Aymará and Quechua (the Inca tongue), are still current, Europeans accounting for only 17% of the population, and mestizos for another 30%. The cooking of Bolivia reflects this strong Indian element, and the relative barrenness of the country. Once local circumstances have been taken into account, however, there is much in common between the high regions of Bolivia and the cooking found in other Andean countries such as PERU and ECUADOR. All love the spice of CHILLI peppers, rely on stews and substantial vegetable dishes rather than roasts, and often colour their foods with ANNATTO.
The potato is in its heartland here. Western visitors have written of potato shows at La Paz where up to 89 separate named varieties have been displayed (though there may be as many as 300 in existence), but most particular are the frost-resistant white and purple varieties which are used for the manufacture of CHUÑO, the freeze-dried potato that provides food for the whole year, whether as a simply sauced day-to-day staple, for example with accompaniment of hot peppers or cheese, or as an ingredient of a more complex chupe (stew). Other potatoes, such as the yellow-fleshed S. andigenum so popular in Peru, are also grown in milder ground.
MAIZE does not grow well at Bolivian altitudes, but around Lake Titicaca, QUINOA provides a cereal staple, though maize has by now entered the national repertoire in such dishes as Pastel del choclo. These three staples, potato, quinoa, and maize, have all been used to make alcoholic drinks of varying potency. The Bolivian national liquor, however, is singani, made from muscat grapes—in like manner to, but better than, the pisco of Peru and Chile.
Bolivians share with Peruvians an affection for cuy (GUINEA PIG), especially useful as they are unable to rely on a coastal region for fish, or a pampa that would support large meat animals. They have used the llama for transport, as well as for milk or meat. RABBIT is another small meat animal that has found favour—the dish Conejo estirado is so called because the animal is stretched to make it more tender. The freshwater fish of the two great lakes Titicaca and Poopù are certainly eaten, travellers reporting them excellent fried.
a N. Italian dish of various boiled meats; the name means literally ‘boiled mixed’. The mixture of meats varies according to the region but, as Anna del Conte (1987) explains, ‘should include beef, veal, chicken, tongue, cotechino (sausage) and half a calf’s head’. The meats are cooked in boiling water at different times according to how long they take to cook.
A bollito misto is accompanied by various sauces, the most common one being salsa verde (a piquant parsley sauce), although salsa rossa (a tomato sauce) is also popular. The dish is usually made for a large number of people, at least 12, and in restaurants it is often wheeled around on a special trolley with separate compartments keeping the meat hot in its stock and carved specially for each person; this prevents the meats from drying out. Del Conte asserts that the best bollito misto is to be had in Piedmont, but people in Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna might well disagree.
the French word for bomb, refers also to a kind of rich, frozen dessert. It is properly bombe glacée as a culinary term but commonly occurs as just plain bombe (now accepted as an English word), with or without an epithet to indicate the flavouring or other aspect of it. The principal constituent is a bombe mixture, which is typically made with egg yolks, sugar, whipped cream, and water. ICE CREAM of various kinds is used in addition, being placed in the mould so as to surround the bombe mixture or be interleaved with it, always with the aim of producing an attractive pattern when the finished dish is served and cut open.
The name bombe reflects the fact that the moulds originally used for this confection were more or less spherical, as were bombs such as assassins would hurl in past times. The shape of the moulds subsequently evolved into forms such as those advertised by Mrs Marshall (1894), notably a section of a cone.
For another frozen dessert of the same family, see PARFAIT.
a French term often used for any small SWEET or CANDY. It has entered many other languages, becoming bombom in Spanish, and bombom in Portuguese. It was adopted into English around the end of the 18th century and, according to Ayto (1993), ‘probably reached its heyday as a more delicate alternative to the foursquare sweet [see also SWEETIES] in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, when bonbonnières (small decorated boxes for holding sweets) graced fashionable sideboards and tables’.
The general use of the word bonbon in French to refer to a sweetmeat or ‘goody’ is recorded as early as the beginning of the 17th century. Originally a child’s term for a FRIANDISE, or sweet delicacy, it now refers, ‘broadly speaking, to a multitude of sugar based products flavoured with fruits and essences, in a variety of shapes, made by confectioners; and the term bonbon de chocolat is also in use for items with chocolate centres’. The explanation is from the fine encyclopedia of épicerie by Seigneurie (1898).
In France, as elsewhere, bonbons and sweets have been given as gifts at festivals. In 18th-century France, this custom became a fine art, with small highly decorated boxes called bonbonnières or drageoirs, which were made of precious materials and given as presents and tokens of regard.
Jarrin (1827), a confectioner working in London, observes of bonbons that:
There is great demand for these articles in France, particularly on New Year’s day; and the various envelopes in which they are put up, display the usual ingenuity of this gay and versatile people: fables, historical subjects, songs, enigmas, jeux des mots, and various little gallantries, are all inscribed upon the papers in which the bon-bons are inclosed, and which the gentlemen present to the females of their acquaintance.
According to Gunter (1830), eponymous founder of the famous London confectioners, bonbons were composed ‘of syrup boiled to a blow, essenced, and formed in moulds of lead. They may be tinted with liquid colouring.’ Flavourings such as rose, cinnamon, orange flower, lemon, bergamot, or vanilla are quoted; alternatively, liqueurs could be used.
Twentieth-century bonbons and sweets made in France include numerous skilfully marketed regional specialities, traditional or modern, unobtainable anywhere else. These are often based on local produce, and divide roughly into four categories: sweetmeats made from fruits; nut-based confectionery; chocolates; and traditional boiled sugar items.
Fruit confections include pâtes de fruits (FRUIT PASTES) made in many parts of France, particularly the Auvergne; and fruits confits, whole CANDIED FRUITS such as apricots or pears. These are a speciality of the city of Apt, but are also manufactured throughout Provence and in the Auvergne. Other fruit-based confections may depend upon the cultivation of a particular fruit in a small area. In this category are pruneaux d’Agen (see PRUNE), and cotignac d’Orléans, a clear paste made from quinces (see QUINCE PRESERVES).
Nut-based confectionery includes the famous NOUGAT de Montelimar, and other Provençal nougats, turrons, and nut BRITTLES; and MARRONS GLACÉS. PRALINES are another nut-based speciality, referring in this sense to confections made from nuts covered in an irregular sugar coating.
The manufacture of CHOCOLATE in France was, historically, associated with the port of Bayonne in the south-west, although other towns now practise this. Confectioners throughout France offer their own chocolates, the shapes and fillings of which are limited only by their imagination.
A number of boiled sugar specialities have evolved in France. DRAGÉES or SUGAR ALMONDS have been made in Verdun for at least seven centuries. Centres for dragées are also made from many regional specialities such as liqueurs or fruit pastes; spices are sometimes used, for example in anis de Flavigny.
BARLEY SUGAR, sucre d’orge, is made in various localities, particularly spa towns such as Vichy. Other boiled sugar sweets which are well known are: bergamottes de Nancy (flavoured with bergamot oil); bêtises de Cambrai (flavoured with mint and caramelized sugar); and BERLINGOTS. Boiled sugar is also used to make outer casings for sweets filled with pastes made from local fruits or nuts.
French boiled sugar specialities of the toffee type are called, collectively, CARAMELS. Caramels are specialities of N. and W. France; as in Britain, many different flavourings are used with them. Well-known varieties are niniche de Bordeaux and negus de Nevers.
PASTILLES, which in France means little sweets of hard, perfumed sugar, are made in many areas. They are scented with different essences, and may be shaped as fruits or flowers, or simply made in little drop shapes. These were the 19th-century bonbons which filled the New Year’s gifts mentioned by Jarrin. Some have therapeutic value, such as the ‘digestive’ pastilles of Vichy, or the ‘throat’ pastilles, made with honey, at Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire.
Other traditional bonbons are violettes de Toulouse (CANDIED VIOLETS); and candied ANGELICA, a speciality of Niort and the Poitou. Reglisse, LIQUORICE, is made in the south-east, particularly in the Marseilles area; and CACHOUS, also based on liquorice, are made in Toulouse.
Laura Mason
except insofar as it contains BONE MARROW, is of little use to the cook save for making stock for soups. It may, however, be of indirect use; it is often said that meat cooked on the bone has more flavour than meat without the bone.
Experiments carried out by Papin (1681) with his ‘New Digester or Engine for Softning Bones’ (see PRESSURE COOKING), and repeated by Davidson (1988a), show that bones cooked under pressure for sufficiently long will disintegrate, yielding both marrowfat and a pulp which can be used for thickening sauces and kindred purposes. In this way bones can be eaten. They are rich in calcium.
This applies to bones of animals and birds. Those of fish, although they too can be used to produce stock for soups, are different in that they have no marrow. Indeed, in many languages there is a different word for fish bones, no doubt because the small ones are perceived as a nuisance; those who have not taken the trouble to learn how to separate the flesh of a fish from all its bones, large or small, often find themselves greatly inconvenienced by the latter.
the unpromising name of Albula vulpes, a fish of the HERRING family, related to the TARPON and the LADYFISH; it is itself sometimes called ladyfish. The French name banane and Portuguese and Malay names with the same meaning, allude to its ‘underslung’ shape.
The bonefish, which is found worldwide in tropical waters, has a maximum length of 90 cm (35″). It has elusive habits (whence the scientific name, which means ‘white fox’) and is highly regarded as a game fish but not often seen in the markets. It has too many bones for convenience at table, but is otherwise good to eat.
Anglers esteem the fish because of the desperate and vigorous way in which it fights for its life when hooked. Fishing for it is a favourite sport in Hawaii, where many are killed, compared with what seems to be a zero rate of fatalities among the much bigger human gladiators who pit themselves against it.
the soft, nutritious substance found in the internal cavities of animal bones, especially the shin bones of oxen and calves. The French term is moelle.
The spinal marrow of oxen and calves is sometimes known as ‘ox pith’. Pieces of it, or of the same thing from sheep, are commonly called amourettes in French. Since BSE, spinal marrow is not available in Britain.
Medieval and early modern European recipes make clear how generally marrow was valued on its own (a dish of marrow bones accompanied an array of thirteen other beef dishes laid out as the first course of a magnificent dinner in Barbados described by Richard Ligon in 1657), and as an enrichment to stews, ragouts, and, especially, tarts and pies both sweet and savoury, the most famous early modern English example being Tart de moy (so called after the French moelle). When marrow was served on its own, it was roasted and presented in its bone from which it would be removed with a special silver marrow scoop.
Dorothy Hartley (1954) provides charming drawings which show how marrow bones were baked in Georgian times, with a small paste crust sealing the cut end, and how they were boiled if the marrow was to be served on hot buttered toast. In the time of Queen Victoria, marrow was considered to be a man’s food and ‘unladylike’, although Queen Victoria herself apparently ate marrow toast for tea every day, ‘certainly not correct diet for her plump Majesty’.
Sheila Hutchins, writing in 1971, mentioned that baked marrow bones were ‘still served hot in a napkin at City dinners and a few old-fashioned public houses’ in London. More remarkably, she gave two recipes for marrow pudding, one of which was the family pudding of Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn. This was still, when Sheila Hutchins interviewed him, being ‘served regularly with hot jam sauce at his table and at that of the dowager Lady Watkin Williams-Wynn’ (at the age of 95). The preferred jam was raspberry. In the wider world, marrow is still an essential for beefsteaks à la bordelaise and a proper risotto alla milanese. Spinal cord is popular in Cantonese cookery, as is marrow soup in Korea. Various stews of veal or beef shin, such as osso buco in Italy and bulalo in the Philippines, are the more enjoyable for the marrow left in the bone. It has latterly been experiencing a revival in restaurant, if not domestic cookery (Bilson, 2004; Henderson, 1997).
Sarda sarda, a fish of the scombrid (MACKEREL and TUNA) family which occurs on both sides of the S. and N. Atlantic, as far north as Cape Cod in the west and the south coast of Britain in the east; throughout the Mediterranean; and in the Black Sea, whence it migrates south at the end of the year, returning in the spring. The name is also used in connection with other species, e.g. the striped or oceanic bonito (see SKIPJACK).
The back of the bonito is steel blue with dark blue slanting stripes; its sides and belly silvery. Its maximum length is 90 cm (3′), although it is never as big as this in European waters.
These are shoaling fish and vigorous predators, with the habit of leaping out of the water when in pursuit of prey such as herring and squid.
There are similar species, mostly slightly bigger, in the Indo-Pacific region. S. orientalis, the oriental bonito, has a range right across the Indo-Pacific. S. chiliensis is present on much of the western coasts of both N. and S. America. Both these are of commercial importance.
The compact and light-coloured flesh of the bonito, which is excellent, is often canned. Spaniards (and Turks) are among the greatest connoisseurs of and enthusiasts for this fish. Note, however, that bonito on a menu in the north of Spain could well be bonito del norte, the ALBACORE.
Borago officinalis, an annual or biennial plant common in the Mediterranean region and as far north as C. Europe and Britain, has pretty blue flowers, hairy leaves with a mild cucumber flavour, stalks which may be cooked as a vegetable, and a reputation for enlivening those who eat it.
Borage leaves, and often the flowers too, are added to various drinks, but for the sake of the flavour rather than in response to testimonials such as the following. Burton, the famous 17th-century authority on the Anatomy of Melancholy (1st edn 1621) named borage as a good plant ‘to purge the veins of melancholy’. Gerard (1633) wrote: ‘Those of our time use the flowers in sallads, to exhilarate and make the minde glad.’ c (1699) declared that borage would ‘revive the Hypochondriac and chear the hard Student’.
Whatever it does for human beings, the plant certainly has a strong attraction for bees; hence another English name, bee-bread.
When they are small and young, the leaves are a good addition to salads. Larger leaves, whose prickly hairs are a nuisance, can be cooked as a vegetable, as they are, for example, in parts of Catalonia and in Liguria. Borage abounds in Liguria and is put to other uses there, such as stuffing for pasta. Stalks cooked as a vegetable are popular in some of these Mediterranean regions, but perhaps even more so in Galicia.
one of the important sauces incorporating sauce ESPAGNOLE. There are three stages in making it. First, thin slices of streaky salt pork with diced carrot and chopped onion are sweated in a pan. Then red or white Bordeaux wine (if white is used the sauce is called Bonnefoy), shallots, peppercorns, and other ingredients are added and the whole greatly reduced. The sauce espagnole and stock are then added, brought to the boil, strained, returned to the pan, and slowly reduced again. This sauce goes well with roast meat and in Cèpes à la bordelaise (see CEP).
a distinctive family of Near Eastern pastries, eaten both during meals and as snacks. The wrapper may be plain bread dough but rich layered pastry is more characteristic, either FILO or rough puff paste, made by the familiar sequence of buttering, folding, and rolling. The filling is usually savoury, of meat or cheese, but sweet versions have been made throughout the pastry’s recorded history. Originally, börek was cooked on the saj, the flat sheet of iron used by the nomadic Turks; now the cooking method may be frying or baking (although the Kalmuk Mongols boil their deviant büreg).
One form of börek, the Tunisian brik, has evolved into what might be regarded as a separate species, such is the importance of Brik à l’œuf (described under TUNISIA).
Börek came to occupy such a high place in the Turco-Iranian cuisine of W. Asia that it was even considered a rival to PILAF. The rise of börek is reflected in a curious poem by the 14th-century Persian poet Bushaq-i Atʾima, describing an imaginary battle between börek and pilaf, which are personified as two rival monarchs.
Bushaq’s mention is one of the earliest, two others occurring in 14th-century Turco-Arabic glossaries. Among the Turkish languages, the word börek is found only in those of Turkey and its immediate neighbours in the Crimea, the Caucasus, and Turkmenistan, and this fact suggests that börek was indigenous to that area.
Not only the point of origin of börek within its present range but also the question of its relationship with similar items elsewhere (Indian SAMOSA, Afghan sambosa and BOULANEE, Iraqi sambusak, etc.) has been the subject of debate. Ayla Algar (1991) treats the matter at length. She also observes that in later centuries popular consumption of börek in Turkey soared to such great heights that at one time there were 4,000 börek shops in Istanbul, compared to just 1,000 bakeries.
Natural historians who are looking for the point of origin for a species of plant often look for the region of greatest diversity, and there are good grounds for maintaining that this is likely to be where the plant originated. Adapting this approach to the history of börek, Ayla Algar has this interesting passage, quoted because of its value as an example of how this natural history approach can be used in the culinary matters:
Börek remains central to the popular cuisine of Anatolia, and it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that Anatolia feeds itself primarily on different varieties of dough! …
The broad and lasting popularity of börek would be impossible without the great diversity that is concealed by the uniform name of this food. There is great variety in the techniques of preparing and layering the doughs, in the fillings that are used, in the shapes that are given to the final product, and in the methods of cooking that are used; some of these variations are regional in nature.
No doubt other cuisines have had roughly comparable dishes—the spring rolls of the Chinese, the lumpia of the Malays and Indonesians, the sanbusa of the Iranians (now surviving only in India in the form of samosa). But no other cuisine can boast of a whole family of dishes akin to börek, an Ottoman legacy found not only in Turkey but also in the Balkans and North Africa. Even the Russian pirog (more familiar in its diminutive form, pirozhki) may be derived from börek, according to the Finnish scholar Georg Ramstedt.
a BEETROOT soup which can be served either hot or cold. It is essentially a dish of E. Europe, this region being taken to include RUSSIA, LITHUANIA, POLAND (where the name is barszcz) and, most important, the UKRAINE. Ukrainians count it as their national soup and firmly believe that it originated there. They are almost certainly right, especially if (as suggested under BÖREK) one can properly apply to such questions the principle followed by botanists: that the place where the largest number of natural variations is recorded is probably the place of origin of a species. There are more kinds of borshch in the Ukraine than anywhere else; these include the versions of Kiev, Poltava, Odessa, and L’vov.
Borshch, which is also counted as a speciality of Ashkenazi JEWISH COOKERY, can be made with a wide range of vegetables. However, the essential ingredient is beetroot, giving the soup its characteristic red colour. Sour cream is usually added on top, just before serving.
The stock used can be beef (meat or bones or both), pork, chicken, goose or, in a vegetarian version, mushroom. Rassol, the liquid in which beetroot is preserved, adds more flavour to the soup, as does KVASS, if used. Spicy sausages or chopped ham are optional additions, as are dumplings. A common and important accompaniment consists of pirozhki (see PIROG).
The traditional fast-day variant was based on mushroom stock and included in its range of vegetables the young green leaves from spring beetroot (the actual beets being omitted).
See also CHłODNIK.
Philip and Helen Saberi
independent since 1992, is a well-wooded, predominantly mountainous country with many fertile plains and a small outlet on the Adriatic.
During the four centuries of Turkish occupation most of the Slavs in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina embraced the Muslim faith. Their descendants account for about a third of the present population, the remainder being mainly Serbs and Croats.
The republic boasts modern, large-scale agriculture with maize as the chief cereal, and intensive rearing of cattle, pigs, and sheep. Orchards are numerous with plums as the major fruit crop.
Bosnian Muslims have never been enthusiastic observers of the law of Islam which prohibits the drinking of alcohol, and practically never gave up drinking wine and their beloved šljivovica (plum brandy). Indeed, the favourite pastime, even now, is the evening gathering called akšamluk (from Turkish akşamlatmak, to entertain for the night), where men would engage in friendly conversation, enlivened with many glasses of the native brandy and sustained by multifarious MEZZE dishes.
The tradition of good restaurant food in Bosnia dates back to the second half of the 15th century (c.1462) when the first inn with a cook was recorded. A list of nearly 200 dishes which were served at the end of the 19th century in the eating houses in Sarajevo was given by the Bosnian Ali efendi Numanagić in a newspaper published in 1939. However, by the beginning of the 20th century many of these dishes had disappeared from Bosnian restaurant menus.
Bosnians and Herzegovinians like to taste their way through a menu, and it is an old restaurant practice to serve small amounts of six or more different, but complementary, dishes arranged side by side on a plate. For example, Baščaršikski sahan (high-street platter) could consist of one skewer of šiš ćevap, a stuffed onion, green pepper, and tomato, a few fried tiny meatballs, and stuffed vine or cabbage leaves which are called sarma in Bosnia, or japrak in Herzegovina; the juices from the various saucepans are then mixed together, poured over the food, and the whole dish garnished with a few tablespoons of YOGHURT.
Maria Kaneva-Johnson
Lagenaria siceraria, is also called calabash or white-flowered gourd, by way of distinguishing it from the yellow-flowered Cucurbita spp. It is generally regarded as a native of Africa, but has been cultivated in Asia and America since prehistoric times.
Archaeological evidence from the Peruvian highlands shows that the bottle gourd was there in the period 13000–11000 BC. There are numerous other reports from the Peruvian coast and Mexico of its presence somewhat later, 7000–4000 BC.
That it reached America in this very distant past is certain; but how it did is a question which has prompted lively debates. It has been shown that the gourd’s hard shell is sufficiently water resistant to float across the ocean from Africa, and that the seeds inside will remain viable longer than such a crossing requires. But gourd seeds would not germinate if cast up on a beach; human intervention would be required.
Heiser (1979) has summed up well the alternative sets of difficulties. On the one hand, is it to be supposed that when a bottle gourd floated across the Atlantic, probably to Brazil, nearly 15 millennia ago, there was an agriculturist waiting who realized its worth and knew what to do? Or, on the other, is it plausible to suppose that pre-Columbian contacts across the S. Atlantic (generally conceded to have taken place, but without agreement on how and when) happened quite so long ago and provided for the carriage of these gourds or at least the transmission of knowledge about them? Other gourds present like problems, but the bottle gourd is the archetypal enigma of its kind.
In its wild form the bottle gourd is bitter and more or less inedible, and even recent works sometimes refer to it as of negligible use in the kitchen. However, selection and cultivation have transformed it into a sweet and valued foodstuff. One could even say ‘a range of foodstuffs’, for the bottle gourd now takes many forms. Besides the dozen or more important cultivars of L. siceraria itself, there are two separate varieties: L. siceraria ‘Clavata’ and L. siceraria ‘Longissima’, of which the former is used especially for kampyo (see below), while the latter is exceptionally thin and long (120 cm/48″ or more) and has alternative common names such as cucuzzi and New Guinea bean.
Collectively, this group of vegetables offers wide scope in cookery. As Facciola (1990) points out, the young vegetables may be eaten boiled, steamed, fried, pickled, added to soups and curries, or made into fritters.
The same author and others describe a product which the Japanese make. This is kampyo, ribbon-like strips of the dried peeled pulp of the fruit. When seasoned with SOY SAUCE, these form a common ingredient of rolled SUSHI, and of certain Buddhist ceremonial dishes. The strips, which are sometimes called ‘dried gourd shavings’, are reconstituted in lightly salted water before use, e.g. in tying foods into little packages, rolls, or bundles. If such packages are simmered, these ties become soft and transparent and can be eaten with the food they enclose.
In China the bottle gourd is stir-fried and eaten with chicken or shredded pork, sliced onion, and ‘cloud ear’ black fungus (see WOOD EAR). In India it is enjoyed with curries but is also steamed and given for medicinal purposes.
When fully mature the bottle gourd ceases to be suitable for eating. Like its wild predecessor it is hard and woody and its greatest use reverts to being a bottle or container for both liquid and dry materials—or being made into other objects such as a musical instrument or a ladle. In Afghanistan, for example, the larger fruits are made into water-holders for hookahs (Aitchison, 1890); and Heiser (1979) gives a memorable account of the range of penis sheaths made from these gourds in (especially) New Guinea.
a rare but very dangerous form of food poisoning caused by a toxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. This organism is widespread in the environment, for example in river mud. It is anaerobic—that is, it functions only in the absence of oxygen—and will not grow in an acid medium; but it can survive unfavourable conditions by forming spores. These withstand high temperatures and can persist in cooked meat (the name botulism is derived from the Latin botulus, a sausage, because of incidents involving such foods) and non-acid canned vegetables, if these have not been prepared properly. To kill all spores food must be heated to 121 °C (250 °F) for three minutes, which is possible only in a pressure cooker or a commercial AUTOCLAVE.
Even this may not be sufficient if the organism has had time to produce its toxin, which has been described as the most poisonous substance known; 1 gram (0.035 oz) could kill between 100,000 and 10 million people, depending on how it is administered. Albert (1987) states:
Botulism is not a common disease. Outbreaks mostly follow consumption of a consignment of canned seafood, such as tuna, where every can in a faulty batch is likely to be infected. The second commonest source of infection seems to be home-preserved peas and beans, insufficiently heat-processed.
the French word for mouthful, refers to a small VOL-AU-VENT. A petite bouchée (a very small shell for cocktail snacks) is smaller still.
are in effect the same as sponge biscuits or sponge fingers, ladyfingers (N. America) and SAVOY biscuits (an older term). They are long, finger-shaped, crisp sponge biscuits based on whisked egg and sugar mixtures with a crystallized sugar topping. In France they are also called biscuits à la cuiller.
Helen J. Saberi (1995a) has investigated the history and significance of the unusual name ‘boudoir biscuits’. Although boudoir entered the English language from French long ago and its application to these biscuits could therefore have arisen in England, it seems clear that the French were the first to use the name. Boudoir comes from the French verb bouder, to pout, and normally refers to a woman’s private room where she would receive only her intimate friends—who could pout and nibble sponge fingers as much as they wished in this cloistered environment.
What is surprising about the adoption of the name in England is that the English had previously been eating these biscuits in a completely different environment, at funerals. Thus at one bound, early in the 20th century, the biscuits leaped from the funeral parlour to the boudoir. The new name stuck, presumably because it excited the imagination of Englishwomen, and remained prevalent for most of the 20th century. It is often embossed on the bottom of the biscuits.
the best known of a large number of Mediterranean fish soup/stew dishes, which include the Greek Kakavía and the Catalan Suquet, is associated particularly with Marseilles. An essay by Davidson (1988b) deals with its history and the technique for making it, prefaced by this account of its distinguishing characteristics:
On the history, it is widely supposed that the dish had a primitive origin: fishermen sitting on the beach after the day’s fishing and preparing for themselves, with a few staples which they had brought along, a one-pot supper which would use up the least saleable items in their catch. There is no reason to doubt this, but a study of written sources shows that when the dish was brought into the world of restaurants and cookery books it was rather different.
The earliest recipe which is clearly relevant was given by Jourdain Le Cointe in his La Cuisine de Santé (1790). It was not headed Bouillabaisse but Matellotte du Poisson. It portrayed fishermen disembarking on a river bank where their wives would light a clear fire and bring to the boil in a small cauldron a mixture of many of the ingredients of a 20th-century bouillabaisse (but with the olive oil as an optional item), into which little fish from the nets would go. The first recipe to appear under the name Bouillabaisse (precisely, Bouillabaisse à la Marseillaise) was given in Le Cuisinier Durand (1830) and advised using expensive SEA BASS and SPINY LOBSTER; it had thus moved away from the primitive scene on the shore or the river bank. Soon afterwards, in 1839, Le Cuisinier méridionale had a recipe with a similar title, advocating a mixture of sea fish and freshwater fish; indeed, the anonymous author of the book listed eight of each category, again including sea bass and spiny lobster.
The work already cited considers four principal explanations of the origin of the word ‘bouillabaisse’ and opts for that favoured by Littré in his great dictionary of 1883: that the expression should be interpreted as bouillon abaissé, literally ‘broth lowered’, i.e. the level of the broth is lowered by evaporation during cooking—or, as we would say, it is ‘reduced’. On the question whether and why rapid boiling is necessary, and what various authors mean when they say that this achieves ‘amalgamation of the oil, water and wine’, clues provided by Harold McGee (1984) and conclusive experiments in the kitchen of Philip and Mary Hyman, recorded by Davidson, led to the explanation that an EMULSION is being formed.
Incidentally, Davidson had criticized two American ladies whose cookery book included a recipe for a bouillabaisse which was based on two cans of soup (one of tomato and one of pea) and included no fish, no herbs, and no olive oil. It has emerged, however, that a partial exoneration of these supposed miscreants is in order. In two of the best-known traditional Provençal cookery books there are recipes for ‘bouillabaisse’ which contain no fish. The term must be allowed to have more elasticity than might be supposed.
are savoury pastries made in Afghanistan, to be served either crisp and hot, straight from the frying pan, or cold. The dough (plain, unleavened, made with just flour, salt, and water) is rolled out thinly like FILO pastry into rounds which are folded over into half-moon shapes after the stuffing has been put in. The typical stuffing is of gandana (see LEEK), but mashed potato can be used. The pastries are shallow fried and seem to have no exact equivalent outside Afghanistan; they differ from the families of BÖREK, SAMOSA, etc. in not using layered pastry and by virtue of their special filling.
Helen Saberi
a French term which came into the English language in the mid-19th century, means the little bundle of herbs which is cooked with various dishes to impart flavour to them. This little bundle began to figure in French cookery in the 17th century, as part of the move away from highly spiced medieval dishes to the more subtle (and less expensive) flavours which herbs could provide. However, even in 1656 Pierre de Lune thought it necessary to explain to his readers what a bouquet garni was (according to him, a strip of bacon, chives, thyme, cloves, chervil, parsley).
The popularity of the bouquet garni increased during the 18th century and ever since then it has been an important item in the French kitchen. The standard bouquet garni is now a bundle of thyme, bay leaf, and parsley; composition is variable and cooks have their own preferences.
In England and in other countries too, bunches of herbs have been used since medieval times, but the convenience of a single phrase to indicate them was missing until the French one spread abroad.
the French, and most widely used, name for a product consisting of the eggs of GREY MULLET, removed in their intact membrane, salted, pressed, dried in the sun, and covered with a protective coat of wax. The name comes from post-classical Greek oiotarikhon, literally ‘egg pickle’, by way of Coptic, Arabic (batarikh), and Italian (bottarga). Wall-paintings show that something like boutargue was already known to ancient Egypt, but its name in Egyptian is unknown. Its current popularity in Tunisia is witness that knowledge of boutargue was spread around the Mediterranean by Arabs in medieval times.
Boutargue, now an expensive delicacy (which is often described as a speciality of Martigues in Provence and spelled poutargue), is thinly sliced for consumption. It can then be served as is or on toast, in any case with a simple dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, and pepper. See also TARAMOSALATA.
an Irish variation of potato bread made of grated raw potato, mashed potato, and flour. The name is probably an Anglicization of the Gaelic bacús, a term used to describe an oven or baking implement such as a GRIDDLE or pan.
Boxty bread has a particular association with a number of midland and northern counties, especially Cavan, Tyrone, Fermanagh, and Derry.
Boxty PANCAKES and boxty DUMPLINGS are also prepared and the consumption of such was held to augment a girl’s marriage prospects:
Boxty on the griddle,
Boxty on the pan,
if you don’t eat your boxty,
You’ll never get a man!
Traditionally boxty was prepared as part of the Hallowe’en (31 October) and New Year’s Day festive fare. It was also eaten throughout the year and often replaced bread at the midday meal or evening supper. A more substantial form of boxty consisting of milk, salt, and potatoes was known as ‘dippity’. Another variant dish called ‘stampy’ was made in the same fashion as boxty bread but prepared with the new season potatoes and often enlivened with cream, sugar, and caraway seeds. In the south-west regions the end of the potato harvest was marked with a ‘Stampy Party’ when the harvest workers and helpers were treated with copious amounts of stampy bread.
Regina Sexton
a term which applies to various fungi which grow directly out of, for example, tree trunks, rather than on stems, which they lack completely or have only in a rudimentary form. Typically they form dense ranks of shelflike (bracket-like) protuberances. See SULPHUR SHELF and BEEFSTEAK FUNGUS for the best-known edible examples; and POLYPORES for some others.
Almost all the fungi in this group live by eating wood. On the debit side they are the principal source of damage to timber; but on the credit side they can claim to be vital to the well-being of forests and woods—which would clog up completely if these fungi were not present to devour fallen logs and branches etc. The very few which are counted as edible provide a means for human beings to eat wood at one remove.
especially those of calf and lamb, have been accounted a delicacy, valued mainly for their creamy texture. They can be poached in a COURT BOUILLON, or braised, or made into FRITTERS. Poached brains in brown butter with CAPERS are a popular dish in France, and something similar is well liked in Italy.
In the 1990s marketing and consumption of calf’s (or cow’s) brains, together with some other organs, ceased in W. Europe because of fear that human beings might be affected by BSE (bovine spongiform encephalitis—see BEEF).
Generally, brains are a very rich food, of which a little goes a long way. In regions like N. America, where attitudes to OFFAL (variety meats) tend to be negative, the brains of slaughtered animals would be likely to finish up with members of immigrant ethnic groups. However, in most countries they are marketed and eaten without any inhibitions. See, for an example of enthusiasm, the remarks about rats’ brains served by early Chinese settlers in California under RAT.
The brains of game birds such as WOODCOCK and SNIPE are greedily sucked from their heads after roasting (these birds never being drawn or decapitated).
a verb and also, less often, a noun, indicating a method of cooking with a small amount of liquid in a closed vessel. Some vegetables are braised, but the technique is used mainly for meat dishes. Braised oxtail is a well-known example in England.
The term, derived from the French braiser, first came into use in English in the mid-18th century. Few other languages have a term with the same meaning; for example, there is no Italian or Spanish equivalent. See, however, KORMA for a Middle Eastern and W. Asian equivalent. And French, the richest language in this respect, has two other terms, à l’étouffée and à l’étuvée, which are virtual equivalents for ‘braised’.
The term pot-roast has almost the same meaning as braise, although the technique has a different origin, best explained by quoting the Irish author Florence Irwin (1949), who deserved, if anyone did, the title of her own book The Cookin’ Woman:
Even 30 years ago there were a few ranges in farmhouses. These and also the cottages had hearth fires or open grates in their kitchens. All roasting was done in a pot-oven. These ovens were pots with flat bottoms standing on three legs. The lids were depressed. Sometimes they were suspended over the peat fire on the crook and on the lid red turn (peat) embers were placed. When there was a hearth fire, some embers were taken to the side of the main fire, the pot placed over these on the hearth, and embers placed on top, thus having both upper and under heat.
In this pot the fowls were roasted, also joints of beef. When basting had to be done the lid and embers were removed and replaced when the meat had had due attention.
Although pot roasting has gone on for a long time, Mariani (1994) observes that the term first appeared in print in 1881.
the husks which are removed when grain is milled to produce flour. The husks usually have a part of the endosperm adhering to them; the more the better in terms of the value of the bran. Because it contains a significant amount of FIBRE, bran is considered to be a useful dietary supplement for people who would otherwise not be ingesting enough fibre.
Bran is used in preparing certain kinds of pickle.
a French culinary term which occurs almost exclusively in the name of one SALT COD dish: Brandade de morue, made by vigorously beating milk and olive oil into the previously poached fish to make a thick white purée. The dish is a speciality of the land-locked city of Nîmes in the Languedoc province of France and the first published recipe is to be found in a cookbook published by a chef from Nîmes, the Cuisinier Durand, in 1830. It had begun to be prominent in Paris at the beginning of the 19th century. According to GRIMOD DE LA REYNIÈRE (1805) a Parisian restaurateur made his fortune from serving Brandade de merluche (salted and dried hake). Although Grimod describes this dish as being laced with garlic, and many modern recipes still consider garlic to be characteristic of brandade, Durand’s recipe notes: ‘one may add a little garlic to this preparation, if one is not afraid of it, but it is not essential.’ Similarly, people who labour under the misapprehension that potato should be included can be referred to a late 19th-century author who explained that this was not used in the south of France, although further north, where olive oil was less popular, potato was used in order to prevent the flavour of the dish being too strong, and to make it more digestible. Recent authorities have speculated that changes such as these, which have been made outside the south of France in order to make the famous dish more accessible, are now being reflected, if only to a slight extent, in the procedures followed in the south of France itself. If so, this would be an interesting example of how an ‘internationalized’ version of a dish may eventually begin to compete with (and potentially oust) the authentic version in the region of origin.
Philip and Mary Hyman
crisp, lacy baked items which stand on the frontier between BISCUITS, WAFERS, and sugar CONFECTIONERY. They are made from butter, sugar, and GOLDEN SYRUP, mixed with flour, and flavoured with ginger, brandy (sometimes), and lemon juice. Teaspoonfuls of the mixture are dropped on to trays and baked gently. During baking the mixture spreads into a thin sheet; this is lifted off the tray with a spatula while warm, and rolled round a wooden spoon handle to give a hollow cylinder. When cold, it may be filled with whipped cream.
On the question whether brandy is or is not used (which seems to make no difference to the flavour) the delightfully ponderous comments by Garrett (c.1898) are relevant:
These delights of our youth were probably originally made with a Brandy flavouring as one of their ingredients; but with that lack of discriminative taste peculiar to uneducated palates, the presence of the Brandy flavour was not sufficiently appreciated to render its presence essential to the success of the manufacture; hence, as the ‘snaps’ could be made cheaper without Brandy, and yielded more sweets for the same money, the spiritous prefix became but a name.
Brandy snaps are traditional English ‘fairings’, treats to buy at the fair, and are sometimes sold flat rather than rolled. Black treacle was used in earlier versions.
a word which dates back to early medieval times, originally referred to premises where beer was made, but acquired by extension in the mid-19th century the meaning of a place where beer was served, and then, more recently, of a ‘cafe-restaurant’ where beer would certainly be available but in which the serving of meals might be the dominant activity. A brasserie alsacienne is a common feature of French cities, Alsace being the home of famous beers.
A brasserie can be and often is quite modest, although large and relatively pretentious examples can be found. Drawing a line between a brasserie and a BISTRO is no easy matter.
the generic name of the highly diverse and complex group of vegetables typified by the CABBAGE. The genus also includes KALE; BRUSSELS SPROUTS; CAULIFLOWER; BROCCOLI and CALABRESE; KOHLRABI; CHINESE CABBAGE; CHINESE KALE; numerous types of MUSTARD and MUSTARD GREENS; RAPE; SWEDE AND RUTABAGA; and TURNIP.
The name of the genus is derived from a Celtic word for cabbage, bresic, which corresponds to the Latinized brassica and has since, by frequent usage, become an English word too.
a moulded, jellied cold meat preparation, usually made from a pig’s HEAD, but also sometimes from a sheep or ox head or, in some parts of Britain, rabbit. The meat is lightly cured in brine, then boiled until it can be trimmed and boned. The essential feature of brawn is that it is made of gelatinous meat, such as is furnished by a head, so that when the meat is cooked the rich broth extracted from it can be boiled down to make the jelly in which the coarsely chopped meat is set. Brawn is usually moulded in a cylindrical shape, like a cheese; hence the American name ‘head cheese’ and the French fromage de tête.
In medieval Britain brawn was made from WILD BOAR, then abundant. Indeed, the term had originally meant the flesh of wild boar. Brawn, in the narrower sense which the word acquired, was valued for its fatty rich quality, and was eaten at Christmas, a tradition which persisted to modern times. In those days it was not made into a moulded jelly, but was kept in a pot, covered with a pickling liquor of ale, VERJUICE, and salt, from which it was taken out to serve. It was often made into a rich POTTAGE or sliced and served in a thick, sweet wine sauce. By the 14th century it had acquired its traditional accompaniment of a mild mustard sauce.
By the 16th century the British wild boar had become rare, and pigs, specially fattened on whey, were used instead. In the 17th century, when the POTTING of meats was newly fashionable, brawn became a potted preparation, baked in wine in its pot, then drained and filled up with butter. From the 18th century on it assumed its modern form of a jellied product.
Early brawns were heavily spiced, but the plainer tastes of the 18th century reduced the amount of flavouring, and nowadays only a small amount of sage or other herbs, and perhaps a little lemon juice, are usual.
French fromage de tête often has its surface decorated by applying vegetables cut into shapes to the mould before the meat is put in. Brawns are also popular in Sweden and the Baltic countries.
In Italy the term coppa cotta is applied to brawn; this is not the same as coppa crudo (see COPPA).
is the largest and most populous Portuguese-speaking country in the world; indeed in all Latin America more people speak Portuguese than Spanish. Unlike the conquistadores further north, colonists did not have to cope with an advanced Amerindian culture, but the impact of the climate and existing foodways and food resources was still profound. Hence CASSAVA was of fundamental importance, as were native varieties of BEANS, PINEAPPLE and other tropical fruits, and the use of spices like the MELEGUETA PEPPER (malagueta in Brazil), not to mention cooking methods like foods wrapped in leaves once exemplified in the dish Moqueca, though this is now more often a stew.
The Portuguese first settled the north-east of the country, with their capital Salvador in Bahia province. Along this coast they established sugar cane plantations, and brought African slaves, principally from W. Africa (notably Guinea) and Sudan, to work them. More than 3,500,000 negroes were settled in Brazil before the slave trade ceased in 1853. Their food preferences changed the accent of Bahian cuisine. Dende oil (giving its characteristic orange colour, see PALM OIL), the extensive use of COCONUT, and vegetables such as OKRA and PLANTAINS are all African imports, which extended to whole recipes, such as Vatapá, a purée/sauce containing dried shrimp, peanuts, palm oil, and coconut milk which is said to have originated with the Yoruba of W. Nigeria. Caruru, a fish dish which uses okra, onion, dried shrimp, melegueta pepper, dende oil, and green vegetables, does not have coconut milk but does call for cashew nuts. Molho de Nagô (Nagô sauce), made from dried shrimp, lemon juice, okra, and melegueta peppers, is named after a part of Brazil but specifically recalls the Yoruba tribe which was said to have brought it with them.
African influence was reinforced by most cooks in the province being drawn from the slave population. There has been an interesting example of syncretism between the Roman Catholic religion and the traditional beliefs and customs of the black slaves and their descendants, especially apparent in Bahia. The Yoruba tribe in Africa, who are said to have the highest rate of twin births in the world, celebrate twins in music, sculpture, and also food. In Brazil they are honoured with a feast of Caruru (see above) which takes place on the feast day of the twin Roman Catholic saints Cosmas and Damian. And offerings are also made to a female figure who seems to be a hybrid between the Virgin Mary and an African female ‘goddess’.
The complex lines that go towards Bahian cookery are completed by the Portuguese contribution of materials such as SALT COD, dried shrimp, olives, wine, almonds, garlic, and onions as well as basic cookery processes—for example the refogado (the Portuguese equivalent of a SOFFRITTO).
Other notable dishes from the northern region, substantial ones which are suitable for special occasions, are Xinxim de galinha where chicken is cooked with dried shrimp, peanuts, and palm oil; and Efó, fresh and dried shrimp with greens (for instance mustard leaves). Cassava meal (Farinha) is ever present on the table in the form of lightly toasted meal, in a gourd or wooden bowl, to be sprinkled over most dishes. Farinha is often eaten as an accompaniment in the form of farofa, with the meal toasted in butter to produce the consistency of loose toasted breadcrumbs, or it may be mixed with boiling water.
Beans and legumes are equally important as a bulk food, and as accompaniments to meat or fish. Acarajé are FRITTERS, a popular street food, made from dried black-eyed peas that have been skinned and ground, then mixed with dried shrimp and fried in dende oil. They are served with a sauce of shrimp, melegueta pepper, and ginger. And beans are central to Feijoada, the national dish, sharing the support of a bewildering array of mixed fresh and preserved meats with rice.
The south of the country was developed later than Bahia and the northerly coast. COFFEE was the cash crop, starting round São Paulo in the 1830s, and it was European immigration rather than the slave trade that marked the character of the country. The cuisine of SE Brazil (São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais) is at once more cosmopolitan and has more direct links with its Portuguese original—though that itself was already a multifaceted cuisine, drawing on Arab inspiration, exemplified in a dish like Cuzcuz paulista, where COUSCOUS is replaced by cornmeal, and layers of chicken and vegetables are packed with the meal into a hemispherical steamer and turned out moulded for presentation at table. Several nationalities, not least Germans and Italians, flocked to the industrial region that grew around São Paulo, and the mines in the back-country, and contributed their own skills in cheese-making and preserved meats.
Beef is reared in the region nearest Uruguay and on the central plateau of Mato Grosso. Here, the grill is called the churrasco, restaurants churrascarias, and the cowboys gauchos as in Argentina. Their diet of grilled meats, cassava, and mate (as they spell MATÉ) is much like that of W. H. Hudson’s Uruguayans (see URUGUAY).
Fresh meat has always been important to the Brazilian diet, but preserved meat has relatively more importance in the dry north-east region. Beef is eaten. Sun-dried beef is called carne sêca or charque (see JERKY). Pork fat is in very general use.
Minas Gerais, the region between Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Bahia, is famous as the source of the best cooks in Brazil, and of some of the best Brazilian food. The Feijão of the region is among the best of the numerous Brazilian dishes based on beans (and originally reflecting the W. African love of beans) and is eaten all over the country.
Sweet dishes are plentiful, and many of them remind the consumer of Portugal—just as do the fios de ovos (egg threads, now used also as a garnish for turkey etc.) that delight the most skilled Brazilian cooks. Egg-based custards (among which Quindim, which incorporates coconut, is the most popular) and confections of Brazilian fruits and BRAZIL NUTS are prominent. So are sweet preparations based on TAPIOCA. And almost ubiquitous in popular restaurants is Romeu e Julieta, a piece of GUAVA paste with fresh cheese, echoing the combination of quince paste and cheese in Spain and Portugal.
borne by the tree Bertholletia excelsa, are among the finest of all nuts, and commercially the most important of the many kinds which grow in S. America. Yet they are hardly cultivated at all. No one has managed to grow the tree on a commercial scale outside Brazil; while in Brazil, although there are a few plantations, the bulk of the crop comes from wild trees, harvested by local people using unsophisticated methods.
The tree is enormous, up to 50 m (150′) tall and with a crown as much as 30 m (100′) in diameter. It grows in the dense jungle of the Amazon basin and, like most tall jungle trees, has branches only near the top. For practical purposes it is unclimbable, and the nuts are harvested by waiting for the fruit which contains them to ripen and fall to the ground. The fruit is round and large, about the size of a coconut. It weighs up to 2 kg (4.5 lb) and has a thick, woody shell. Inside are the nuts, arranged like the segments of an orange, and each having its own woody covering. There are one or two dozen in each fruit. When the fruit is ripe they come loose from their fibrous attachments and rattle about inside. Brazilians call the nuts castanhas (chestnuts) and the gatherers castanheiros. Other names are ‘Para nuts’, because much of the crop comes to market through the state of Para, and ‘cream nuts’ because of the flavour.
The outer shell of the fruit is called ourico, and can be used to make cups or ornaments or as fuel. Despite its hardness, it can be gnawed through, after it has fallen to the ground, by rodents such as the AGOUTI. Howes (1948) tells us that:
It is now known that these animals, after eating a few nuts, are prone to bury the remainder in selected spots in much the same way as squirrels do in other countries. No doubt some of these nuts are later missed or forgotten by their ‘owners’ and so germinate and grow into trees. It is thus that these small animals are of service in propagating and disseminating one of the largest and most useful trees of the forest.
The fall of an ourico is a dangerous event, since it is large, heavy, and hard and drops from a great height. When one hits damp ground it embeds itself to some depth. A castanheiro who is hit on the head by one may well be killed. So no one goes near the trees on windy or rainy days, and when the castanheiros do go they often wear broad wooden hats as protection. Their time is divided between finding and gathering ouricos on safe days, and preparing them on dangerous ones. The ouricos are opened with a few heavy blows of a machete and the nuts tipped into running water. This not only washes them, but also separates bad nuts, which usually float while the sound ones sink.
Brazil nuts are sold both shelled and unshelled. Shelling is often done at primitive factories, sometimes using nothing more complicated than a hand-operated lever and piston arrangement resembling a gigantic garlic press. Larger works have roller crackers. The nuts are expensive to transport in the shell, and are among the most difficult of nuts to crack with domestic nutcrackers, so the trend is towards marketing them ready shelled. However, shelled nuts quickly become rancid, so they must be dispatched and sold quickly.
Brazil nuts have a high oil content, up to 65% (as well as up to 20% protein). This oiliness is shown in their unusually tender texture and rich, mild flavour. Medium-sized and large nuts are sold for eating fresh. Small ones are in strong demand by the confectionery industry.
A small amount of oil is made from the nuts for local use as a high-quality salad oil. This resembles almond oil in composition, and has a pleasant, nutty flavour.
The related SAPUCAYA NUT is considered by some to be even better than the Brazil.
the fundamental food in many parts of the world, so much so that the word ‘bread’ is often equivalent to ‘food’, and by extension, in 20th-century English vernacular, to ‘money’. Christians who recite the Lord’s Prayer ask for their ‘daily bread’, and Anglo-Saxons called their lords hlafward (loaf guardian) and their ladies hlaefdige (loaf kneader). But bread is by no means the universal staple; in parts of Asia there is a corresponding equivalence between ‘rice’ and ‘food’.
Bread’s place in the scheme of human survival has ensured its role in religion, magic, and custom. Hence the breaking and blessing of bread that is central to meal-taking in Orthodox Jewish custom; the extension of this rite to the Christian Eucharist; the loading onto bread of countless superstitions and customary rituals, from the hanging of a loaf in the house on Good Friday to ward off evil spirits, the cutting of a cross on loaves ‘to let the Devil out’, to eating buns marked with a cross at Easter (but the cross has symbolism older than Christianity, and cutting a loaf this way may reflect other customs, such as sun or fire worship, fertility rites, or the ritual division of a loaf into portions).
Bread is a deceptively simple foodstuff that required technological progress in various fields: an agriculture capable of raising gluten-rich cereals; a technique for converting grain into flour, i.e. milling; a method of imparting lightness to a dough by way of leavening; a means of cooking more complex than a flat stone on a fire. Until these were in place, societies had to be satisfied with GRUELS and POTTAGES, or at best some form of PANCAKE or WAFER.
It is no chance that bread is the staple of Europe, W. Asia, and the Near East. The cereals which grow naturally in these regions include those whose composition—including especially GLUTEN—is such that they can form a cohesive loaf. The best in this respect is WHEAT and its predecessors emmer, spelt, and einkorn, which contain the most gluten, followed by RYE and BARLEY. (Others such as MILLET and OATS, though lacking GLUTEN, can still be pushed together into dense cakes. In contrast, RICE, the staple of E. Asia, is unsuited to bread-making.)
It is commonly believed that the domestication of the predecessors of wheat began in the region of Anatolia, Iran, and Syria before 7000 BC, and that this represented the start of settled agriculture and the development of cereal crops and, in consequence, bread.
The flour which is needed for bread-making has to be produced by some sort of grinding. Use of a pestle and mortar is the most primitive means, but normally produces a coarse grind which is more suited to porridges and gruels than bread. The next step up is to organize two stones to grind against each other. The saddle quern, beloved of archaeologists, provides the first example.
As explained in the entry on FLOUR, this domestic device led to others, the harnessing of water power in classical Rome, and the adoption of wind power from about AD 1000. However, the principle remained the same and the grinding had to be followed by sieving or bolting, until the 19th century when something quite new emerged: the efficient, fast roller mill, first tried in Hungary in the 1820s, perfected in Switzerland in 1834, and then quickly adopted all over Europe and America. Its multiple steel rollers not only ground the grain, but also separated the various fractions (bran, germ, endosperm) without the need for bolting. For the first time, truly white flour was available at a low price.
The third essential for a risen loaf was a gas-forming agent or LEAVEN. The discovery of this has been credited to the Egyptians. It was probably by accident when a batch of dough became infected by the wild yeast spores which float in the air everywhere. If, for reasons of economy, the apparently spoilt, rotten dough was baked anyway, it would have been realized that the bread was lighter and had a special, good flavour. Later came the discovery that a piece of leavened dough could be kept to spread the infection to the next batch. Egyptian leavened and unleavened bread of various shapes and sizes has been found, preserved by the dry desert sand. An inscription of the 20th dynasty lists 30 different kinds of bread. From 2000 BC or earlier there were professional bakers.
When the Israelites fled from Egypt in the Exodus they left their leaven behind. (In contrast, the more provident prospectors of the American west carried their cultures with them; hence San Francisco sourdoughs.) The Israelites thereafter had to exist on unleavened bread (Exodus 12: 34–9). This was the origin of the Passover bread MATZO. But unleavened bread continued in use in many societies. The Romans, especially old-fashioned ones in the early days of the Empire, felt that it was traditional, correct, and healthy, the newfangled leavened doughs being an import from luxurious Greece.
Ultimately, the Romans did borrow the use of ale-barm or brewers’ YEAST (Saccharomyces cerevisiae, used to make beer and wine, now replaced by varieties of distillers’ yeast), from subjected Germanic tribes. This was a means of leavening also known to Celts in Spain. If the original Egyptian leaven was a combination of spontaneous lactic fermentation of flour and water with assistance perhaps from soured milk and further reinforcement from the spores of wild, airborne yeast, brewers’ yeast induced an alcoholic fermentation, and was more predictable. The breads of some societies have relied mainly on lactic fermentation—which is the base of the whole family of sourdoughs—while others, especially the British Isles, have long depended on straight alcoholic fermentations using brewers’ yeast. An inhibiting factor in the adoption of brewers’ yeast was its availability: it could not survive extremes of heat, and not all communities had alcohol on the bubble week in, week out. There are countless recipes in English recipe books for making a barm, indication that it was not always to be found.
The first breads would have been cooked on flat stones heated directly in the fire. The bakestone remained the preferred method of cooking flat or unleavened breads in many cultures, from Mexico to Scotland, and is still in use. However, a natural step to take was to cover the bakestone with an inverted pot to contain the heat, and then to turn this makeshift arrangement into a domed, igloo-shaped or beehive, oven. A free-standing structure of this sort, with its own source of heat, merely replicates on a larger scale the principle of the stone and pot. Early examples have been found in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Balkans.
The conventional account of the development of these ovens has them first appearing in Egypt. However, archaeologists working in the Balkans have unearthed models of near-conical (igloo-shaped) clay bread ovens dating from the middle of the 5th millennium BC, and a site in Bulgaria has yielded a clay model of a loaf carbon-dated to c.5100 BC. The pattern of finds would indicate that these ovens were not known south of Macedonia—in Crete, for instance, there are none dating from before c.1500 BC—and the loaf model is of leavened bread, not an unleavened disc. These facts hint at the possibility that bread was first developed in C. Asia and came to the Mediterranean by both a southern (Mesopotamian and Egyptian) and a northern (Balkan) route.
The beehive oven is heated by burning a fire on its floor. When the fire has heated the structure, it is raked out and the risen dough put in its place. The doorway is sealed, and the bread cooks in a falling heat radiating from every surface, the oven space capturing and recycling any moisture that evaporates from the loaves. (See also TANDOOR for a somewhat similar oven of the Near East and Asia.)
The technical development of ovens did not quicken pace until the 18th century when improvements in design allowed the more efficient retention, or even introduction, of moisture—hence the crackling thin crusts of Viennese and, eventually, Parisian loaves—and led to methods of remote heating rather than burning fuel on the oven sole. This facilitated more continuous production, as the oven did not have to be prepared and cleaned between each firing, and permitted ovens of greater size: more usually with a flat arched roof than a dome.
During the 19th century, there were many experiments in conveying heat, just as other materials than brick, clay, or stone, particularly steel, were tried for the oven’s construction. Superheated steam, pipes filled with oil, oil burners, gas jets, and, latterly, electricity replaced wood and coal. Equally, there have been many improvements in the delivery of bread to the oven itself over the deft manipulation of a loaf on a baker’s peel. The fullest expression of this is the travelling oven, where the goods to be baked moved through a heated space, going in cold and emerging fully baked.
Although ovens can be built any size, there are advantages of time and function in having them fairly large. The same may be said of mills. Hence bread-baking has often been a communal activity to avoid duplication of expensive resources. Grain is ground at the village mill, often in Europe in the hands of the political master; dough is baked in a communal oven, owned either by the lord or the community, or in the hands of a tradesman who gains his living therefrom. In feudal Europe, bread seemed a gastronomic expression of the social order. In modern France and Switzerland, there are still examples of communal ovens, though few now work. In Greece and the Near East, the village baker cooked bread fashioned in the homes of his customers, as well as baking joints of meat after the first heat had gone off, just as did his professional equivalents in societies where ovens were at a premium. In Quebec, too, the oven was a community venture.
Small hand mills have always been used among pioneer societies, or in scattered settlements, and small ovens were built, for instance in the fireplaces of farmhouses, especially where they were isolated from near neighbours. There was a trade in the construction of small earthenware ‘cloam’ ovens from 17th-century N. Devon potteries, exported to colonists in N. America as well as remote farms of SW England. Otherwise, the mass of people had to wait for the development of the cast iron kitchen range to have an oven on site and ready.
The nature of bread production—that it should usually be on a larger scale than that of other foods—also gave rise to its early organization into a professional trade. Full-time bakers are identifiable from the records of ancient Egypt; the 5th-century BC Greek author Archestratus refers to Lydian, Phoenician, and Cappadocian bakers; in Rome there was a bakers’ guild from approximately 150 BC; in 12th-century London and Paris bakers’ guilds were among the earliest craft brotherhoods. The complexity of production also led to sectional groupings: millers were, of course, distinct, but bakers in 14th-century London were divided between those who made white bread and brown, and the town governments of Provence at the same period distinguished between bakers and oven-keepers.
Professional organization, as well as the importance of the food itself, determined the nature of government controls over bread—an early candidate for every form of interference in most western societies, whether to ensure honest retailing, satisfactory ingredients, or acceptable prices. Langland’s ‘Bakers and brewers, bouchers and cokes—For thees men doth most harme to the mene puple’ only needs to add millers to the list to complete the gallery of poor men’s rogues.
It could be said that the early history of bread was dominated by efforts to ensure its distribution to as many people as necessary to avoid civil unrest, or to control its distribution to the advantage of the rulers over the ruled. In contrast, the history of bread since the Industrial Revolution has been driven by technological change and its consequences. This shift was mirrored by the change in the nature of government controls. At first, as indicated above, they were preoccupied with price, fair dealing, and the nature of trade. Latterly they have centred on improvements either to replace constituents removed by the technical processes of milling and baking, or actually adding nutrients to the benefit of the consumer, or controlling the manipulation of the raw material first suggested by technical imperatives—for example which chemicals should be allowed to accelerate the ageing of flour.
Technical changes have come about through greater understanding of how bread is made, and through the replacement of human effort by machines. The effect of roller milling (already mentioned) was matched by the mechanization of kneading, which took hold in most of Europe and America in the last quarter of the 19th century (though there had been simple mechanical aids even in ancient Rome, and 17th-century man was familiar with the dough-breaker) and improved the baker’s lot immeasurably. Taken together, these permitted large-scale production of white bread from the newly developed cornlands of N. America (which offered harder wheat than before experienced) and the creation of veritable bread factories. Subsequent change has been to improve industrial efficiency, to reduce the amount of time taken in production, and to exercise control over raw materials to obtain consistency. The outcome has been the plant bakery operating some form of accelerated dough development through high-speed mixing, dependent on chemical treatments to flours to maximize performance, and normally adding a cocktail of chemicals called ‘improvers’ (not in themselves harmful) to the dough. The result has been less individualistic and less characterful, less tasty in short, and so successful that the same measures have been adopted even by small-scale producers.
The history of bread in particular countries is touched on in the section on bread varieties below, or specific entries (BARLEY BREADS, ROLLS, MUFFINS, etc.), but the general tendencies are clear.
Although many grains have contributed to a variety of breads, depending on geography, climate, and agricultural development, wheat has been pre-eminent. Its gluten content ensures a lighter, more appetizing texture. With few exceptions, a light and refined loaf has been viewed as a better loaf. Wherever a distinction has been drawn between bread for the rich and bread for the poor, the poor get the heavier, browner loaf.
Some countries have retained a taste for RYE, especially in N. and E. Europe, and for the lactic fermentation or sourdough that gives rye bread more even texture and better balance of flavours. Few countries where wheat is readily or cheaply obtainable, however, have continued to depend on the lesser bread grains such as barley, oats, or millet, and even less on bean or chestnut flour, which once were staples in times of dearth or areas of poverty.
Exceptions to this rule have arisen when bread is the subject of considerations other than appetite or preference. No foodstuff bears greater moral and philosophical burden. Since ancient Greece, certain types have been seen as health giving, and by extension, bestowing some sort of moral worth on the consumer. Dr Thomas Muffat advocated eating brown bread in Health’s Improvement (1595) and such arguments reached their most extreme with the views of the American Dr Sylvester Graham, whose name was adopted by the French to signify wholemeal bread. In the 20th century, further work emphasized the importance of bran to human digestion, adding a new element to the debate already raging about the respective advantages and disadvantages of white and wholemeal bread (the former had no nutritional capacity, said some, while others accused the latter of inhibiting calcium take-up).
Part of the background to this bubbling pot of controversy was undoubtedly the aftermath of exposures of ADULTERATION of white flour with substances such as chalk dust and alum in 18th- and 19th-century England. Was the whitest of breads the purest or was it the most suspect? This sort of problem, plus the developments just mentioned, resulted in temporary reversals, especially among the better off, of the general trend towards light, white breads made with harder flours.
In countries where wheat or grains suitable for bread-making were not grown, other crops formed the dietary staple. In Japan, it was rice, though much barley was grown, and bread was only familiar in treaty ports where western trading ships were allowed. However, a series of rice famines in the 19th century led the Japanese to take bread more seriously. By the early 20th century it was common, and made by professional bakers. The usual product was dryish, sweetened, and cakelike. Nowadays, mass-produced western bread has made inroads on the original kinds.
Indian bread varieties are influenced by the availability and cost of the various cereals, wheat being common in the north but expensive, and by the fact that only the more prosperous households have had ovens. The medium-sized clay TANDOOR oven produces NAN, a crisper and bubblier relative of PITTA BREAD, but most Indian breads are cooked on bakestones and are more in the nature of pancakes. Leavening is often provided by palm yeast, obtained by the spontaneous fermentation of palm sap as it turns into toddy.
In China wheat has long been grown in the north, though always a comparative luxury, the poor having to make do with millet and other grains. Barley is also grown. The Chinese adopted the rotary mill driven by animals after it had reached them from the Persians. Watermills and windmills were known by the Chinese but not harnessed to grinding corn. The Chinese were also ignorant of the bread oven; so their bread, like that of the Newari people of Nepal, was made by steaming, or the flour was converted to some form of flat pasta.
See also TORTILLA; TAMALES; and some items in CORN BREADS and BARLEY BREAD.
The archetypal bread is made of wheat flour, water, and yeast, which are allowed to ferment together, shaped, and then baked in an oven. However, as bread is such a widespread and ancient food innumerable variations have developed.