Chillies, even the hottest, are eaten fresh and whole in many countries, or are chopped up and used as a garnish, or ground up and mixed with other ingredients in a cooked dish. They may also be dried or roasted before being used in cooking; these processes affect the flavour.
When handling chillies, disposable plastic gloves should be worn or the fingers rubbed with salt. To calm a mouth which has been set on fire by hot chillies, some recommend slices of cucumber (perhaps in yoghurt, as in the Indian preparation raita), while others suggest plain boiled rice, and there are also advocates for something sweet (logical, given the criterion used for the Scoville scale).
For many dishes it is important to use the appropriate variety of chilli. Some of the commonest, most useful, or most interesting are briefly described in the box. It is chiefly in the Americas that one finds a wide range of strikingly different types and cultivars. Note that attractive names like Cascabel are often applied to different varieties, seemingly almost at random.
In India, the most important distinction is between green and red chillies, though Camellia Panjabi (1994) points out that local varieties often give quite different flavours to regional dishes–for example, in Goa. She mentions Kashmiri chillies, which are grown all over the place and are highly valued because they give a bright red colour to food as well as a moderate hotness. ‘The gourmets of northern India use a bright yellow dried chilli grown around the Sonepat area in Punjab for their white or yellow curry dishes.’
In Indonesia and Malaysia, practically all chillies are either large (C. annuum) or small (C. frutescens); the former are cabai (or lombok), the latter cabai rawit or lombok rawit. All are hot, but the smaller rawit types are especially so. Bird chillies (cabai burung in Malaysia) are also called bird’s-eye chillies because they are as small, vivid, and sharp as the eye of a bird. Colour is important (merah is red, hijau is green): cabai merah are dried and powdered, or are fresh ones crushed and used to give body to a hot sauce.
Chilli products include chilli powder, which is made in many countries from any type of chilli which is locally available. It varies considerably in hotness and flavour. (In N. America, ‘chile powder’–also known as ‘Mexican’ or ‘creole’ chile powder–is a spice mixture for making CHILI CON CARNE, containing cumin, clove, and garlic powder as well as hot pepper.)
The whole subject of chilli is adorned by legends, mostly to do with the heat. Jean Andrews quotes one charming legend from Bancroft (1882), as follows:
This pungent condiment is at present day as omnipresent in Spanish American dishes as it was at the time of the conquest; and I am seriously informed by a Spanish gentleman who resided for many years in Mexico and was an officer in Maximillian’s army, that while the wolves would feed upon the dead bodies of the French that lay all night upon the battlefield, they never touched the bodies of the Mexicans, because the flesh was completely impregnated with chile. Which, if true, may be thought to show that wolves do not object to a diet seasoned with garlic.
See also CAYENNE PEPPER; PAPRIKA; TABASCO. Important commercial sauces based on chilli include salsa picante, ubiquitous in Mexico.
Roger Owen
Anaheim, C. annuum, was developed in California c.1900 for the new cannery at Anaheim. Long, blunt-nosed green/red pods, ranging from mild to hot.
Ancho, C. annuum, is called poblano when green, from the valley of Puebla, south of Mexico City. Broad, somewhat heart-shaped fruit; used green, or dried and used in sauces or for grinding to powder. Fairly mild to hot.
Cascabel, C. annuum, is called Cascabel (‘jingle bells’) because the seeds rattle in the pod. The shape may be like a button mushroom. Very pungent. Not to be confused with Cascabella.
Cayenne, C. annuum, has thin, pointed pods, 10–30 cm (4–12″) in length. Named after Cayenne in French Guiana, where it probably originated, though it is not cultivated in Latin America today. Used mostly in hot sauces, also for grinding as CAYENNE PEPPER. Pungent and hot.
Chiltecpin, C. annuum; the Nahuatl name means flea-chilli, because this one is very small and bites sharply. It is also one of the many so-called bird peppers. Used fresh and dried.
Fresno, C. annuum, was developed by Clarence Brown in the early 1950s and named after Fresno, California. Wide, stubby pods, used mostly when still green for seasoning, sauces, and pickling.
Guajillo, C. annuum, is so called (‘little gourd’) because the seeds, in a dried pod, rattle. This is the red, dried form of Mirasol.
Habanero, C. chinense, has short, wide, lantern-shaped, orange-coloured pods, with an aroma of tropical fruit. Very, very hot. It may have originated in Cuba, as the name (meaning ‘from Havana’) suggests. A closely related variety, Scotch Bonnet, belongs to the Caribbean, and can be light green, yellow, or red.
Jalapeño, C. annuum, has blunt, almost oval pods. Named after the town of Jalapa in Veracruz state, Mexico. Hot. Much hyped in the USA, where it is the most popular hot chilli and enters into many commercial products. Large dried and smoked Jalapeños, called chipotles, are wrinkled and warm brown in colour.
Mirasol, the fresh, yellow form of Guajillo, is called Mirasol because the fruits grow pointing up at the sun; dried ones are also called Cascabel. It imparts a yellow colour and a distinctive flavour to dishes cooked with it. Very popular in Mexico for stews and sauces.
Pasilla, C. annuum, has long, narrow pods of a unique dark brown colour, which dry raisin black and wrinkled, hence the name, the diminutive form of pasa, a raisin. (Fresh pods, which reach the market only in small numbers, are called chilacas.) Relatively mild.
Peperoncini, C. annuum, has small, curved pods. A sweet red chilli, used while still green to make a pickle to accompany Italian salads.
Serrano, C. annuum, has small, tubular pods like little torpedoes. Named after the mountain ridges (serranías) in Mexico where it probably originated. Mainly eaten while still green, either fresh or made into sauce, e.g. guacamole (see AVOCADO). Hot, with a sharp acidic taste which makes it good for a fresh salsa.
Tabasco, C. frutescens, is the only chilli of this species commercially grown in the USA. Tabasco pods are red or yellow. Virtually all available production is used for TABASCO pepper sauce.
READING:
In the mythology of ancient China, Han, the Chinese man, is distinguished from savages and barbarians by two features of his eating habits: he eats cereals and uses fire to process his food.
In China, dietary practice involves two extremes; ‘eating to live’ and ‘eating for pleasure’. The former in effect meant the ingestion of cereals, the foodstuff capable of sustaining life, whereas the latter was achieved by cooking animal or vegetable matter, perceived as being of secondary importance, and destined to be an accompaniment to the cereals.
The make-up of the Chinese menu reflects this opposition/correlation between what is necessary and what is superfluous. A Chinese meal is usually made up of a starchy food (the essential dish called zhushi, ‘principal food’), and of one or several accompanying dishes based on animal or vegetable products (called fushi or ‘secondary food’). This model, which holds true throughout all Chinese territories, is executed differently in different regions and in different social classes. A contrast is drawn, in general, between N. China, a WHEAT area, and S. China, where RICE predominates, with a line between the two drawn by the Blue River (Yangtze); but the situation is made more complex because there are other starches besides wheat and rice.
Starches, which include cereals and tubers, are classified according to a scale of values. Cereals are always preferred to tubers, which are eaten only in case of dire necessity; but some cereals such as rice and wheat are much more highly prized than others, and ultimately their consumption can depend just as much on local habits as on economic factors. Specific regional preferences are nowadays completely blurred in certain areas by the rising standard of living. In Beijing, rice is eaten as much as wheaten products, whether of the NOODLE family or steamed breads (MANTOU). On the other hand, the inhabitants of the poor rural areas in the north and centre eat dishes based on MAIZE and MILLET more often than noodles or mantou, which are considered to be luxury items. South of the Yangtze, where rice is primarily cultivated (with wheat, as a secondary or fall-back crop), rice is usually eaten, and at feasts flour made from glutinous (‘sticky’) rice appears in the guise of cakes. It is in areas lacking in natural resources, or in periods of scarcity, that cereals are supplemented or even replaced by tubers: taro in the subtropics, sweet potatoes or potatoes in temperate and cold areas.
Similar variations are to be found in the attendant dishes, which can be anything from vinegar or a simple puréed pepper sauce to prepared and elegant meat dishes.
The relationship between the essential and the superfluous manifests itself also in relation to taste. Cereals, simply cooked in water or steam, without salt, marry well with flavourful side dishes which are seasoned to perfection and cooked by the most sophisticated methods. The neutral taste of the cereal symbolizes the consumption of the ‘essential’, while the palatability of the accompanying dishes produces the ‘pleasure’ derived from the combining of different flavours. And, although the cereal is indeed cooked, the simplicity of its transformation, which is achieved without the use of any aromatics, suffices to place it outside the category of the art of cookery.
Indeed, the art of cookery in China is concerned only with dishes prepared to accompany a cereal in daily life or, on the other hand, to be eaten by themselves on feast days. In fact, the ordinary menu, centred on cereals, loses its relevance as soon as one celebrates. No longer is it a question of subsistence but, on the contrary, of feasting by ingesting dishes which despite their richness and variety will satisfy the appetite in the same ways that cereals do on ordinary days. These last, moreover, disappear from the meal, or play only a minor role at the end of a banquet, appearing furtively and usually not actually eaten. In this case, ‘eating for pleasure’ supersedes ‘eating to live’ and the banishment of cereals symbolizes the triumph of gourmandise over physiological necessity.
The contrast of ‘eating to live’ and ‘eating for pleasure’ is to be seen in daily life also. Although cereal-based meals are eaten at regular times and are consumed in order to maintain the ‘vital principle’, between-meal snacks give the leisure to eat items destined to give pleasure to the palate. Thus were conceived the street foods called xiaochi (‘small foods’), titbits which can be eaten at any time of day or night in the towns. Extremely varied, they consist of savoury or sweet dishes, thick soups, bouillons, custards, jellies, doughnuts, omelettes, cakes of all description which are eaten without ceremony, simply to please the taste buds or to fill a small hole in the stomach.
These minor dishes are the most obvious and immediate markers of regional specialization. They often figure as famous gastronomic items, not to be missed if the opportunity arises to taste the local food when visiting this or that place. Thus in Beijing, for example, it would be mungbean milk (douzhi); in Shanghai, little vegetarian buns (sucai bao); in Jiaxing, glutinous rice cakes wrapped in lotus leaves (zongzi); in Jinhua, crispy cakes (subing); in Canton, rice porridge (zhou); in Fuzhou, fishballs; and in Xiamen, oyster omelette (haozijian).
The existence of local specialities is in keeping with the very ancient concept in China that each region can be represented by its natural products, and notably its edible foodstuffs. The system of tributes, sent annually to the emperor from the provinces, has probably contributed to the recognition of certain products as indigenous to the various Chinese regions. Nevertheless, the identification of regional cuisine is not just related to climate or ingredients; it also comes from a history in which politics, economy, and culture intermingle.
The division of China by regional styles of cooking is based on a historical evolution dating from the 12th century. At that time the little town of Hangzhou, situated at the south of the mouth of the Yangtze, was transformed into the capital after the court took refuge there as the result of pressure from the Mongols. It became a place for exchanges and intense mixing among populations which had emigrated from the north, tradespeople from the west, and the local inhabitants. Restaurants representing the tastes of the four horizons prospered, and thus was born the concept of ‘regional culinary style’.
Nowadays, the culinary division of China most often recognized distinguishes four great cooking styles. These correspond in general to the four cardinal coordinates: northern style, centred on Beijing and the Yellow River valley stretching to the east up to the Shandong; central and western style, concentrated around Sichuan but also including Ghuizou, Yunnan, Hunan, and Hubei; the southeastern style which includes Shanghai, Zhejiang, and Anhui; and finally the southern style, from Canton, Guangdong, and Fujian to the east. This classification, which is somewhat artificial, does not take into account certain important differences–thus it does not seem appropriate to associate Fujian with Guangdong. However, the scheme fits in with a desire to classify the world according to the ancient correlation between the macrocosm and the microcosm which linked the cardinal points to flavours, colours, climates, animals, cereals, etc. The identification of tastes plays a particularly important role in the appreciation of Chinese cuisine, and it is quite often one or several dominant flavours which give a regional cuisine its character.
The inhabitants of the Yellow River basin to the north are reputed to like strong smells, such as those of garlic, vinegar, and soy sauce. PEKING DUCK with its fat, crackling skin would be virtually inedible without its accompaniment of raw spring onions and a sweet and sour sauce. The same applies to mutton, which is normally eaten in winter in these regions and is associated with garlic and a ‘balsamic’ vinegar whose mild acidity goes marvellously well with its musky taste.
In Sichuan, considered to be the land of aromatics, spices are liked, particularly the hotter and more pungent ones, such as hot chilli peppers and SICHUAN PEPPER. All the dishes are flavoured with fermented bean paste (dou ban jiang), or sesame oil and sesame purée, which produce harmonious flavours with some highly evocative names: ‘strange taste’ (guai wei), ‘familiar taste’ (jiachanh wei), ‘peppery-scented’ (xiangla wei), etc.
In the lower plains of the Yangtze, ‘the kingdom of fish and rice’, it is tender vegetables which are appreciated, accompanied by freshwater fish and crustaceans. Here dishes with a delicate and subtle flavour are prepared, enhanced by the refreshing presence of ginger and the kick of Shaoxing wine. It is the only region where sweet and sweet-and-sour flavours are really appreciated and admirably used in cooking.
The complexity and richness of Cantonese cuisine do not permit reducing it to a few dominant flavours, the art of the Cantonese cook being to excel in marrying all the flavours, or on the contrary to privilege each one individually. Seafood has pride of place. Freshness is exalted, for example, by steaming fish in the simplest possible fashion; oyster sauce enhances poached poultry, or green vegetables barely blanched. But Canton is also famous for its whole-roasted milk-fed pigs and its gleaming lacquered meats hung temptingly in the front windows of restaurants.
These different regional cuisines, originating in geographical areas equal to or larger than a European country, might have had little or nothing in common. However, they have a common base of flavourings, procedures, and techniques which by general consensus are perceived as being Chinese. Although it is difficult to speak of one single Chinese cuisine, and one can even doubt its very existence, it is true that three aromatic ingredients are indispensable to the Chinese culinary scene, and are used throughout the entire territory: fresh ginger, soy sauce, and spring onions. Without these it would seem impossible to prepare Chinese food. Their inclusion in a dish gives a touch and smell which one can define as typically ‘Chinese’.
As to culinary procedures and techniques they are also common to all the regions, allowing for the fact that certain dressings and ways of making things are more sophisticated here or there. The order of execution of culinary work is in part influenced by the way the food is consumed. In China, kitchen space is clearly separated from the dining area. This means that once dishes leave the kitchen, they require no further attention prior to being eaten with chopsticks or a spoon, the only utensils admissible at table.
Carving and seasoning therefore constitute the two key stages of the preparation of a dish before its final transformation by cooking. Thus meats and vegetables are first cut up, shaped, sculpted, and cooked in such a way as to make it possible for them to be picked up, separated, or torn apart with recourse only to the consumer’s two available implements. In the exceptional instance of a piece of meat being cooked whole, either the flesh is prepared in such a way that it can be detached without special effort by the use of chopsticks; or, in the case of PEKING DUCK for example, the meat is cut up in the kitchen after cooking, as soon as it is taken out of the oven. The current practice of cutting up the duck in front of the assembled company, in restaurants generally open to foreigners, is a recent concession, encouraged by the growth of tourism, to display the virtuosity of the great chefs.
Once the ingredients are properly cut up into cubes or strips, sliced, shredded, chopped, etc., they are placed on a plate with the flavourful ingredients needed for the recipe: soy sauce, vinegar, ginger, pepper, sesame oil, whatever, depending on the final preparation.
The method chosen for cutting up this or that ingredient must facilitate both the use of chopsticks and the seasoning. The flavours are thus enhanced by the chosen shapes. One of the most striking examples of this relationship between shape and taste is that of cuttlefish, whose flesh is slashed with regular cross-hatched lines which cause the flesh to retract in such a way during cooking as to give the impression of little flowers, each of whose petals is thus impregnated to perfection with sauce.
All cooking methods are used in China, but the oven does not exist at the domestic level. Roasting is therefore elevated to the level of professional cooking, and is done in big drum-shaped vertical ovens. One could say that in China steaming takes the place held by roasting in the West. Yet the cooking method considered as most emblematic of Chinese cooking by the Chinese themselves is STIR-FRYING (chao). It consists in frying the various ingredients of a dish very rapidly over an extremely intense heat, most often separately one after the other, then reassembling them with their seasoning before serving them. This cooking method allows small pieces of food to be seared and cooked very superficially, thus retaining their texture and flavour. Vegetables thus prepared are crisp and have beautiful colour, two qualities considered to be essential by Chinese gourmets. Chinese cooking is also remarkably economical when it comes to utensils; only one sort of knife is used for cutting up food, and stir-frying–in common with other cooking methods–needs but one cooking pot, the distinctive kind of iron frying pan known in the western world under the Cantonese name WOK.
What we might call ‘passing over a flame’ rather than ‘cooking’ plays a major role in Chinese cookery. In fact, what counts for more than the idea of ‘cooking’ is that of ‘preparation to the correct and desired point’, which means that a foodstuff can, depending on its nature or on the recipe, need either very light cooking or, on the other hand, several cooking procedures destined to contribute varied flavours and consistencies to the dish. Raw things do not belong to any Chinese category. Every food must have been subject to some form of preparation leading to its ‘preparation to the correct and desired point’ in order to appear on the table; transformation by heat for a dish which is included in the menu, or transformation by steeping, pickling, or preserving if it is a question of a condiment or something to act as a standby.
One finds again in this exigency the figure of the Chinese myth which defined the Chinese man as a cook who is able to ‘transform’ foodstuffs by cooking and who eats cereals. This picture of the cook whose activities served even in antiquity as a point of reference for the art of government is without a doubt intimately connected with the great fame of Chinese cooking. Thus, because from early days it was a skilled profession, passed down from generation to generation with its laws and techniques, this activity has become the ‘haute cuisine’ recognized today with its schools and styles. It includes not only four great regional styles of cooking, but also a Muslim ‘haute cuisine’, in which pork and its by-products are excluded, and a great vegetarian cuisine, aimed at those who, Buddhist or not, wish to enjoy their food without attacking the lives of living creatures.
Françoise Sabban
READING:
Stachys affinis, an oriental root vegetable which is related neither to the globe artichoke (see ARTICHOKE) nor to the JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE. Of these three confusingly named plants it was the last to arrive in Europe.
The plant reached France in 1882, when the doctor of the Russian Legation in Beijing sent it to M. Pailleux, a prominent acclimatiseur, and it began to appear as a market vegetable five years later. Pailleux saw to it that it was called Crosne du Japon, from Crosnes the village where he lived. The root achieved, and retains, some popularity in France (it was an ingredient in the so-called salade japonaise for which Dumas (1873) helped to create a vogue), but it is not much in evidence elsewhere in Europe or America.
The Chinese artichoke tuber is small, typically 5 cm (2″) long. It is whitish and composed of up to a dozen bulging segments. Jane Grigson (1978) comments that ‘if you rubbed one or two clean in your hand, you would soon notice the beauty of form and pearly translucency that have made Chinese poets compare them to jade beads’.
It is likely that the English name was bestowed because of a vague resemblance to the Jerusalem artichoke, but it could have been prompted by a comparison of its flavour with that of the globe artichoke. In 1927 two eminent authorities, the discriminating Dr Leclerc and the cookery writer Mme Saint-Ange, both declared independently that its flavour lay between those of salsify and artichoke; and Dr Leclerc also praised the digestibility of the tuber.
The tuber must be used quickly after it is pulled up, for it discolours and deteriorates quickly. However, it can remain in the ground for quite a long season from autumn to the end of winter, and is a useful winter vegetable for those who can obtain it. There is no need to peel a Chinese artichoke provided that it is well cleaned. It can be eaten raw and grated in salads; plain boiled; fried (usually after a short parboiling); or as a pickle.
a name with a bewildering number of applications. Confusion is compounded by the fact that many Chinese names for species or varieties are taking their place in the English language, in parallel with the increased cultivation of these plants in western countries; and by the lack of agreement among botanists on their botanical classification. What is said about classification and nomenclature below is offered ‘under every reserve’, as the French say; and there is much to be said for the advice offered by one expert author, which is to forget the names and shop by picking up or pointing.
There is, however, one thing which it is helpful to know, as a clue: the Chinese word for vegetable is cai (choy or choi in Cantonese). There is no single word for cabbage, but the names for cabbages reflect their appearance. Thus bai cai (pak choi in Cantonese) is literally ‘white vegetable’, i.e. white cabbage; while da bai cai is ‘big white vegetable [cabbage]’.
The development of cabbage plants in China parallels that of the European CABBAGE in Europe. Both evolved by cultivation from wild ancestors; both have been important foods since the remote past; and both now exist in numerous varieties which can be bought almost all the year round. Chinese cabbages belong to the same genus, Brassica, as European ones. For other Chinese brassica vegetables see MUSTARD GREENS and CHINESE KALE.
With the sweeping reservations mentioned above, here is a list of Chinese cabbages, to which might be added a little group of polymorphic and variously coloured ‘loose-leafed’ varieties.
Brassica rapa ssp chinensis is sometimes known in the west as bok choy, pak choi, and kindred names, also sometimes as Chinese chard cabbage, or Chinese white cabbage. There are many varieties, including those called ‘spoon’, taking their name from the resemblance of the leaf stalk base to a Chinese soup spoon or ladle. Pak chois of one variety or another are available for all seasons.
All are open in form rather than hearted, generally with fairly smooth, oval green leaves on thick stalks which are pearly white (except for some, e.g. the variety Shanghai, which have pale green stalks). Both stalks and leaves shrink greatly when cooked. The flavour is mild but cabbagy. The Chinese harvest some as young plants, ‘chicken feathers’, for use in soups and salads; some when they are still small but already clumping; and others when they are mature.
B. rapa ssp chinensis var parachinensis, whose Mandarin name is cai xin, is sometimes called by its Cantonese name choi sam (or choy sum) in western countries, but is also referred to as Chinese flowering cabbage, since it is grown for its flowering shoots (as is another flowering brassica, CHINESE KALE). A popular vegetable in Hong Kong and S. China, it is sold as bunches of leaves rather than as whole plants, and is distinguished by its small yellow flowers and delicate green stems, which are slightly grooved.
B. rapa ssp chinensis var rosularis is the Chinese flat-headed or ‘rosette’ cabbage (wu ta cai in Mandarin and taai gwoo choi in Cantonese), a variety which grows in the shape of a plate, spreading over an area up to 30 cm (1′) or more in diameter although only 5 cm (2″) high. It withstands some frost, and is much grown in the region of Shanghai. It has rounded leaves and green leaf stalks. Young plants, with small leaves surrounding the central rosette, are best. This cabbage is widely considered to have an exceptionally good flavour.
B. rapa var pekinensis. This is possibly the vegetable with the best claim (in a chaotically uncertain world) to the name ‘Chinese cabbage’, although like the other brassicas of China it goes under many names, including Chinese leaves, napa, Peking or Tientsin cabbage, bai cai or chih-li (versions of the Mandarin names of two principal cultivars); and sometimes an approximation to the Cantonese wong nga baak. These cabbages have more than one shape, for example long and narrow like a cos lettuce, or less long and barrel shaped in profile. The long narrow form has almost no flavour of its own, which makes it useful as a vehicle for other flavours; the Chinese frequently use it in this way, e.g. with a highly flavoured meat sauce. It can also be eaten raw, in salads.
In Japan, the Chinese cabbages most commonly met are those of the last variety listed, which have been widely cultivated since the end of the 19th century. The Japanese name is hakusai, and uses are in dishes such as nabemono and tsukemono (see JAPANESE CULINARY TERMS).
READING:
(or Chinese broccoli), Brassica oleracea var alboglabra, is distinguished by its white flowers and a white bloom on the leaves, which are borne on thick, smooth stems.
The leaves have a stronger flavour than Chinese flowering cabbage (see CHINESE CABBAGE), but the peeled stalks are a delicacy. When young and tender (in bud but not in flower), Chinese kale may be cooked whole by boiling or steaming, like broccoli. Slightly older shoots have a better flavour, but their stems may need peeling and chopping. The latter is anyway necessary before stir-frying, the usual Chinese method of cooking this vegetable.
one of several unsatisfactory names for the rhizomes of Boesenbergia pandurata, a plant of SE Asia which belongs to the GINGER family. Light brown multiple roots (7–12 cm/3–5″ long, 1 cm/0.5″ in diameter) hang down from a central corm, like a bunch of keys. The flesh is bright yellow with a creamy core and has a distinctive lemony-ginger aroma.
Chinese keys are available fresh, dried, or powdered. Their sweet, aromatic flavour is an important ingredient in the green curry paste used in Thai curries of chicken, duck, and fish as well as in soups and sauces. They can also be steamed and eaten as a vegetable; pickled; or eaten raw when young.
Despite the name ‘Chinese keys’, they are not found in Chinese cookery, and they seem to be unknown in the Indian subcontinent.
Amaranthus tricolor, an annual plant, probably indigenous to India, whose leaves are grown and sold there and in SE Asia as well as China, for use like SPINACH. It is one of the numerous plants in the AMARANTH group, and not botanically related to spinach.
The leaves exhibit striking variations in colour, especially in Bengal, where cultivation is intense. Those of one variety familiar in China have red centres. It is usual to cut Chinese spinach into 5 cm (2″) lengths and stir-fry it. Leaves and stalks alike become limp when cooked, and have a mild flavour.
Eleocharis dulcis, is not a nut and is a completely different plant from the WATER CHESTNUTS of the genus Trapa. It is related to the European and African CHUFA. The ‘nut’ is really the corm of a kind of sedge. It resembles a gladiolus corm, round, flattened, usually between 2.5 and 5 cm (1–2″) in diameter, and mahogany brown. As sold in the markets, it has rings of leaf scars on it.
This water chestnut is generally considered superior to Trapa nuts. It is peeled before use. The white interior can be eaten raw, out of hand as a snack or sliced into a salad, and is crisp with a pleasantly sweet and nutty taste. If cooked quickly it retains its crisp texture, which is the main quality for which the Chinese prize it.
In Cantonese cuisine it is used in various sweet dishes; also grated, combined into shapes with minced meat and other ingredients, and steamed. It is especially associated with the Chinese New Year; but in Cantonese restaurants it is served as a DIM SUM all the year round.
It is this water chestnut which is the source of the water chestnut flour, man tai fan, which is an important Chinese ingredient.
The Chinese cultivate this water chestnut in tanks, and export it both fresh (e.g. to SE Asian countries) and canned.
Lycium chinense, a small shrub of E. Asia whose small red berries have had a reputation as a medicine and tonic in China since ancient times. A Chinese name for them means ‘drive-away-old-age berries’. They have little use in the kitchens of either China or Japan (where the name is kuko). However, since they impart a sweetish taste, they have a limited use as a flavouring ingredient in some dishes, for example the oxtail soup of Sichuan.
The plant, which occurs wild in most of Asia and has become naturalized in Europe, may also be referred to as Chinese boxthorn. Its thin, bright green leaves can be used to flavour rice or consumed as a vegetable; they play a leading role in a Cantonese soup which usually also contains pork liver. They wilt quickly and need only be cooked very briefly.
a small SAUSAGE filled with lean pork, pork fat, and cooked rice, and using a sheep’s intestine as the casing. Chipolatas are popular in France, where they are finger width, relatively long, and usually pan fried. They are sometimes used as a garnish for other dishes.
The name is derived from the Italian cipollata, meaning something containing onion as an ingredient or flavouring (cipolla = onion), and this is the meaning which is still valid in Italy; but the sausages called chipolatas outside Italy contain no onions and the origin of this usage is a mystery.
The explanation may be that the dish with onions which was correctly called Cipollata often or at least sometimes contained sausages of a distinctive kind, and that non-Italians, especially the French, began to think that it was these sausages which deserved the name. Thus the first recorded mention of the word in France, in Les Dons de Comus (1742), is in a recipe for chicken wings en chipoulate, beginning ‘Take the wings, bacon and small sausages about the size of your little finger.’ Courchamps, in his Dictionnaire général de la cuisine française (1853 edn), is even more illuminating; he defines ‘chipolata’ as ‘a kind of stew of Italian origin’, and then gives a recipe which calls for ‘twelve little sausages called chipolates’.
Thus the notion of small size as a distinguishing feature of chipolata sausages goes back a long way; and this is the notion which has become prevalent in Britain, where the term ‘chipolata’, in popular usage, indicates any small sausages, such as the so-called ‘cocktail sausages’ and other miniature versions of ordinary sausages.
are two words so familiar to the British that they need no further qualification unless made with some vegetable other than the POTATO. Yet what is denoted by them will depend on which version of English is spoken. In America, a chip is an English crisp; and an English chip is an American french fry or fried potato (this term first surfacing in an O’Henry story of 1894). A French chip, like the English ‘game chip’, is much like the American chip. And in New Zealand, ‘cold chips’ are British ‘crisps’ while ‘hot chips’ are British ‘chips’.
What these have in common is being deep fried from raw. Hess (2001) traces the earliest appearances, offering a recipe from La Cuisinière Républicaine (1795) which fries thin slices of potato that have been first dipped in batter as the pioneer, and going on to cite a memorandum of 1801-9 from Jefferson’s household (staffed by Frenchmen) and printed recipes from the 1820s for frying raw potatoes sliced as discs across the grain. This confounds the usual CULINARY MYTHOLOGY that the chip (American usage) was invented by chef George Crum at the Moon’s Lake Lodge in Saratoga Springs in 1852, further undermined by the French claim that the soufflé potato (but a sophisticated variant) was invented in 1837.
We have to seek an alternative origin for the lengthwise-cut french fry (no larger than a little finger, and cooked twice, at a higher temperature than in England) or the fatter British chip. Hess suggests it may lie near the Pont-Neuf in Paris at the end of the 18th century, where vendors offered cooked foods to hungry passers-by. Known in France as the Pont-Neuf potato, this gets much support from French recipe writers. The American usage has a certain logic, although french fries were not a staple there until the early 20th century. Equally, Belgians are anxious to claim the honour of invention, citing the emergence of chip stalls from the 1860s. That history is better discussed under FISH AND CHIPS. If the English and Belgians claim the chip or frites as a national dish (frites with mayonnaise), so too do French-Canadians with POUTINE, reputedly invented in Warwick, Quebec in 1957. Latter-day changes are in the main American with the development of frozen chips by McDonald’s in the 1960s.
The American chip (crisp) had been sold as a mass-produced, pre-cooked item from the 1870s: packed in barrels for consumers to take home from the store in paper bags for reheating. The first American waxed-paper chip bag was developed by Laura Scudder in 1926. The first popular English crisp was made by Frank Smith, sold in greaseproof-paper bags from a handcart in north-west London in 1920. His model was said to be French, not American. He supplied a twist of blue paper filled with salt for seasoning. Subsequent development of added flavours is better not contemplated. The real difference between the English crisp and American chip is that crisps are thinner and soaked in water to rid them of as much starch as possible before deep-frying. The result is tasteless, with a greater capacity to absorb oil.
Tom Jaine
an unusual marine MOLLUSC, whose ‘shell’ is a flexible girdle surrounding eight overlapping plates. Various species occur on shores round the world, typically living under rocks, and feeding on vegetation. They are not normally considered as food, but the fleshy foot muscle is eaten in some countries, e.g. in New Zealand, parts of S. America, and the Caribbean region.
Gibbons (1964) is alone in devoting a whole chapter to chitons as food. Emphasizing the extent to which American Indians of the north-west ate them in the past, he draws particular attention to:
the Giant Sea Cradle, or Gum Boot, Amicula stelleri, the largest chiton in the world, attaining a length of 13 inches. These and several other large species were eagerly sought by the West Coast Indians, and they became favorite seafoods of the Russians who first settled southeastern Alaska.
The ‘gum boot’ is unique in having a foot large enough to yield what can be called a ‘steak’ (as with ABALONE steak–and methods of preparation, including pounding, are similar). Smaller chitons have scant amounts of edible meat, but this is enough to warrant local exploitation of some, such as Acanthopleura echinata of Chile and Peru.
Chitons are used in the island of Tobago to make pak roo tea, a soup which has a distinctive flavour and a reputation for health-giving properties.
the small intestine, or part thereof, of a pig or, less often, another animal, have a twofold use in the making of SAUSAGES such as ANDOUILLES and ANDOUILLETTES; chopped up, they provide an ingredient for the filling, while they are also used to furnish casings.
Apart from sausages, there are only a few dishes in which chitterlings are a main ingredient. In England, chopped chitterlings were used in the 16th century in a kind of WHITE PUDDING; and a chitterling pie was known in England in the 18th century. They are still marketed to a small degree in S. England. They may be made into plaits, or cut into short lengths and sold by weight. Sometimes they are formed into a sort of brawn, together with pig’s maw. They are sold cooked and may be reheated. Mustard is the common relish (Mason and Brown, 1999).
Lamb’s chitterlings are cooked in similar fashion in Macedonia, where the dish is Pleteni tsrevtsa vo rerna (plaited smaller intestine [baked] in the oven). The intestine is cleaned but not bleached, braided into a three-stranded plait, coiled into a spiral, seasoned with salt and paprika, drizzled with melted butter, then baked. Cut into short lengths, this may be served as an appetizer.
Allium schoenoprasum, the smallest and the most delicate member of the ONION family, are the cultivated descendant of a wild plant of C. Europe, which is still found, mostly in rocky and mountainous regions. Wild chives and closely related species are found throughout the northern temperate zone of the Old and New World.
The leaves of chives, which are thin, hollow, and round in cross-section, are the part used. When cut they re-grow, so that a clump of chives can provide leaves from spring to autumn. It dies down in winter but reappears next spring. During its dormant period the clump can be spread by division of the small bulbs.
Chives must have been used in the wild form since early times but the first mention of them seems to be by Gerard (1633), by which time they were being cultivated.
The name ‘chive’ comes from the Latin cepa (onion). The German name, meaning ‘cut leek’, probably reflects their early use as a treatment for wounds. They have antiseptic qualities.
Chopped chive leaves make a pretty green garnish, and provide a discreet onion-like flavour. They are used mainly in the cooking of C. and N. Europe, and are at their best in mild, creamy sauces and egg dishes, or as a garnish for soups and salads.
The purple-blue blossoms of common chives, pulled apart, were used by American Shakers in their Blue-flower omelette.
Chives of the European type have long been known and cultivated in China, but more use is made there, and in Japan and E. Asia generally, of the so-called Chinese chives, A. tuberosum (syn A. odorum). This is also available in the West, sometimes called ‘kuchai’; this name, spelled in various ways, is a corruption via Malay of its Cantonese name, gau choi. Others will know it as garlic chives.
The leaves of Chinese chives are bigger, flat and solid in cross-section, with a stronger and more garlic-like flavour than European chives. Indeed, the plant is more closely related to GARLIC, but the name ‘chives’ has stuck because they are often used like European chives. Two main kinds are grown: a large one which is used as cooked vegetable (in mixtures and with discretion); and a small one which is grown for its flowering stems, used as a seasoning and garnish. (The white flowers of the latter, gau choi fa, have a delicate flavour. In contrast the flowers of European chives, which are purple, are never used, and the buds are picked off to stop the plant from going to seed.)
Gau wong are blanched Chinese chives, lacking colour and limp, but appreciated for certain purposes because they are tender. They are frequently added to noodles or noodle soups.
a cold soup of Poland, usually made when CRAYFISH are in season. It is based on a stock of grated BEETROOT, water, vinegar, and a little sugar which is then chilled before adding the crayfish and other vegetables such as spring onion, radishes, cucumbers, and DILL. Thick soured cream is stirred into the soup, and this, with the beetroot, gives it its characteristic pink colour. It is garnished with slices of lemon and chopped hard-boiled (US hard-cooked) eggs.
Helen Saberi
The cacao tree provides, with its seeds, the raw material for chocolate. Linnaeus, a chocolate-lover, assigned the species to a botanical genus which he named Theobroma, ‘food of the gods’. In this genus 22 species are now recognized, all native to C. and S. America, and two are cultivated. Theobroma bicolor is grown from Mexico to Brazil and produces pataxte, which can be drunk on its own or mixed with chocolate drinks. But vastly greater is the importance of T. cacao, the source of chocolate.
Cacao is the usual term for the tree and for its seeds (misleadingly, ‘cocoa’ has sometimes been used in English). A complex process of roasting, fermenting, and grinding turns these seeds into chocolate. Efficient extraction of cacao butter (a valuable and nutritious substance) leaves a residue which is marketed as ‘cocoa powder’ (see COCOA), or, mixed with sugar, as ‘drinking chocolate’.
Where cacao grows, the sweet pulp that surrounds the fresh seeds in their pod is a prized delicacy, whether eaten raw or fermented into an alcoholic drink. Green cacao pods used to be brought, as an expensive luxury, to the Aztec emperor at Tenochtitlan, far to the north-west of the cacao country.
The tree is indigenous to the region of Latin America that lies between S. Mexico and the northern Amazon basin. The cacao tree is an evergreen, achieving a height of 6–12 m (20–40′), depending on growing conditions. It is a prima donna, requiring shade when young, and susceptible to fungi and pests. Diseases are controlled by breeding resistant varieties; the one commonly used is the Forastero. The Criollo, grown by the Aztecs at the time of the Conquest, is delicate and little used today, although it produces finer beans. Hybrid varieties are also grown. Cacao is cultivated under banana or rubber trees which provide shade, and alternative sources of income if the cacao crop fails.
Cacao flowers, which are pollinated by a species of midge, grow directly on the trunk of the tree. Only a few flowers develop into fruit, or pods, an average annual yield being about 30 per tree. These are shaped like large, oval melons, saffron yellow or red depending on variety, and spring straight from the tree trunk. The tree produces pods and flowers simultaneously throughout the year, but commercial harvesting only takes place twice a year.
Ripe pods are collected, split, and the contents scraped out. The seeds, or beans, and their surrounding pulp are exposed to the sun making the pulp ferment. This step is essential for good flavour when the beans are used in chocolate manufacture (see below). Fermentation develops ‘flavour precursors’, breaking down sugar to glucose and fructose, and turning some protein into free amino acids and smaller peptides.
After fermentation the beans are dried and exported to manufacturers. They lose 50% of their weight during drying, the average annual yield of a single tree being no more than 0.5–1 kg (1–2 lb) of dried beans.
Cacao was well known to the classic Maya, whose remarkable civilization flourished and died in Yucatan and Guatemala in the 1st millennium AD. Alongside deceased Maya dignitaries were buried implements for use in the afterlife, including jars and bowls for chocolate. The identification of the word ka-ka-w in the inscriptions on these pots was a breakthrough in the decipherment of Maya phonetic writing. Moreover, traces of theobromine and caffeine, two active constituents of chocolate, have been found in some of them. An 8th-century painted vase shows chocolate being poured from a cylindrical jar, held high, into a bowl, thus demonstrating how the Maya raised froth in their chocolate: the froth was the most desirable part of the drink. They sometimes flavoured chocolate with chilli, with vanilla, and with other ingredients less easy to identify. They probably liked to drink their chocolate hot, as did the Maya of Spanish colonial times.
Linguists believe that cacao is in origin not a Maya but a Mixe-Zoquean word (perhaps kakawa), suggesting that the Maya learnt to use the product from the earlier Olmec culture, which flourished in the Veracruz and Tabasco provinces of Mexico between 1500 and 400 BC. Olmec hieroglyphs have not been deciphered, so we cannot read what they themselves said of cacao. No linguistic or archaeological evidence allows us to trace cacao or chocolate further back than this. The successor Izapan civilization spread Olmec culture, and perhaps cacao cultivation, to the Pacific littoral of Mexico and Guatemala: it was perhaps from the Izapans that the Maya would have learnt of chocolate.
Cacao will not grow everywhere where C. American civilizations flourished. Thus the beans became a commodity of trade, an object of warfare, and also a currency. By later Maya times long-distance traders had brought knowledge of chocolate to distant parts of Yucatan and also to the valley of Mexico, far to the west, where the Nahuatl-speaking Aztec were to establish their power. In due course cacao became a major source of the wealth of the Aztec merchants.
Aztec ‘puritanism’, however, linked with their reputed origins as poverty-stricken migrants from the north, led to an ambivalent attitude towards chocolate. One legend told of an expedition to retrace their steps, at the end of which the powerful emissaries of the Aztecs were told by the aged goddess of their ancestral home: ‘You have become old, you have become tired because of the chocolate you drink and because of the foods you eat. They have harmed and weakened you.’ But they did not stop drinking it, and huge quantities of cacao beans arrived as tribute in the valley of Mexico each year, both for use and for storage.
Like the Maya, the Aztecs frothed their chocolate by pouring it from vessel to vessel. They drank it from calabash gourds, or from cheaper earthenware; they liked it cold rather than hot, and invented new ways of flavouring it. By adding honey to their cacao they were apparently the inventors of sweetened chocolate, which almost the whole world now prefers. To the Aztecs, chocolate was a drink for warriors and the élite. The drinking of chocolate, like the smoking of tobacco, did not take place during a meal but immediately after it. Aztec soldiers on campaign were supplied with tablets of ground cacao, to be stirred into water as ‘instant chocolate’.
Chocolate lent itself to flavour mixtures. Both Maya and Aztecs mixed ground cacao with maize to make pinole, and made a different drink by mixing cacao butter with maize. Modern Mexicans still flavour chocolate, as the Aztecs did, with the petals of the ‘ear flower’, Cymbopetalum penduliflorum. The Aztecs liked to add the leaves or seeds of acuyo (Piper sanctum), petals of Magnolia mexicana, and several other herbs and flowers. Modern Mesoamerican peoples sometimes add black pepper, allspice, or annatto: the latter not only contributes flavour but colours the drinker’s mouth red, a reminder of the link sometimes made in Mesoamerican thought between chocolate and blood.
To the Maya and the Aztecs the ceremonial importance of chocolate was profound. It was provided generously at the banquets at which noblemen and merchants displayed their wealth. It was offered to the gods, and was used to anoint newborn children on the forehead, face, fingers, and toes in a rite resembling baptism.
On his third voyage to the New World, on 15 August 1502, Columbus captured a Maya trading canoe laden with cacao beans and other produce. He may have learnt that the beans were money but he never found out that a drink was made from them.
However, when the Spaniards under Cortés invaded Yucatan and then the valley of Mexico itself, between 1517 and 1526, they soon realized the full value of the black ‘almonds’ (as they at first called them) of which so many millions were stored at Tenochtitlan. At first disgusted by the frothy, dark beverage that was present at every Aztec banquet and festival, the conquistadores soon learned to appreciate it. Rumour credited it with aphrodisiac properties (perhaps simply because it was taken in late evening, when the meal was over), and long argument would centre on the question whether chocolate was a food sufficiently nourishing to be ruled out during Lent. In contrast to the Aztec view of it as a drink for warriors, chocolate has sometimes been seen by Europeans as a woman’s drink. This may have something to do with the fact that the conquistadores were taught to like it by their Mexican wives, concubines, and domestic servants. By 1590, ‘the Spanish men–and even more the Spanish women–are addicted to it’, wrote José de Acosta of his Mexican observations.
It was from an innovation of this period that the name chocolate originally comes. Hot water with a mixture of ground cacao and ground sapote kernels, maize, and other flavourings made a refreshing drink first described by the Spanish scientist Francisco Hernandez in the late 16th century. Its new name, chocolatl, appears to be a Spanish-inspired blend of Maya chocol ‘hot’ and Nahuatl atl ‘water’–an appropriate formation for the melting pot of cultures that was colonial Mexico. The word was soon applied to all the products of cacao.
The Spaniards in Mexico also appear to have invented a new means of producing the much-loved froth of drinking chocolate. Where Maya and Aztecs had achieved the effect by pouring, colonial Mexico developed the molinillo or swizzle stick, which required a chocolate pot with a well-fitting, pierced lid. Meanwhile cane sugar, introduced to America in early colonial times, became an ever more popular flavouring in chocolate drinks. Other flavourings, including cinnamon and anise, were also tried.
The reputation of chocolate travelled faster than the substance itself. It is mentioned in many early European works on botany, but this does not mean that it was actually available in Europe. Hence the dates that follow are later than those that will be found in some other reference books.
Chocolate is known to have reached the Old World by 1544, when a party of Kekchi Maya from Guatemala, led by Dominican friars, paid a visit to the future Philip II of Spain. They brought him chocolate, maize, and other New World products. As a commodity of trade, cacao beans began to reach Spain in 1585. In the 17th century the Spanish court was well known throughout Europe for its prowess in preparing chocolate drinks. Spain soon adopted the chocolate cup and saucer, mancerina, which had been invented in S. America–by the Marques de Mancera (Viceroy of Peru from 1639 to 1648) after he had seen a guest at a reception accidentally spill her clumsy traditional chocolate pot.
As an expensive, exotic spice, chocolate was gradually introduced to the rest of Europe with emphasis on its medicinal virtues. By 1644 chocolate was known at first hand to a Roman physician, Paolo Zacchia, who describes it as ‘a medicine brought here from Portugal not many years ago, to which it was sent from the Indies, called chacolata’. According to a Florentine chronicler, ‘a drink used in Spain called ciocolatto’ was first sold in Florence in 1668 ‘in little earthenware beakers, hot as well as cold according to taste’, and by then it was already known at the court of Cosimo III de’ Medici. The Grand Duke’s physician had written in 1666 of experiments with new flavourings for chocolate, including ambergris, musk, jasmine, citron peel, and lemon peel.
By the later 17th century Italian cooks had experience in the addition of chocolate as a flavouring to savoury and sweet dishes, including sorbets and ice creams. The poet Francisco Arisi, in ‘Il cioccolato’ (1736), detailed the over-use of chocolate in cookery:
One cook, running short of cheese in his kitchen, sprinkled two bolli of chocolate, well grated, on a fine polenta. The novelty was well received: the Apicii [gourmets] demanded the recipe. At a dinner I attended I found it made into a sauce, though, to tell the truth, it did not whet my appetite. It has been put into nougat; it has a place of honour in cakes; one day, no doubt, a cook will serve it with roast quail.
It was also in Italy that chocolate would reach its highest fame as a vehicle of poison (a reputation it already held in early colonial Mexico). Pope Clement XIV, who suppressed the chocolate-loving Jesuits in 1773, was widely believed to have been poisoned by way of a bowl of chocolate in the following year.
The first recorded chocolate-drinker in France, in the early 17th century, was Alphonse de Richelieu, elder brother of the more famous Cardinal. He used it ‘to moderate the vapours of his spleen’. In 1659 David Chaliou was granted a monopoly for selling chocolate throughout France. By 1671, according to the letters of Mme de Sévigné, chocolate was much in vogue at the court of Versailles, alternately praised for its medicinal virtues and blamed for unexpected side effects: ‘The Marquise de Coetlogon took so much chocolate during her pregnancy last year that she produced a baby as black as the Devil. It died.’
In the late 18th century the French still sometimes flavoured their chocolate with chilli, in the old Mexican and Spanish style, but they always added sugar and cinnamon and often vanilla. Martin Lister, a traveller of 1698, had already blamed the obesity of Parisian women on their habit of drinking sweetened chocolate. In the course of the 18th century French confectioners tried flavouring biscuits and sweetmeats with chocolate. The marquis de Sade was said to have given a ball at which were served chocolate pastilles laced with cantharides. He himself loved chocolate, and frequently wrote to his wife from prison demanding supplies of chocolate pastilles, biscuits, and cakes.
Chocolate was first sold in London about 1657 by a Frenchman with a shop in Gracechurch Street: he advertised it as ‘an excellent West India drink [which] cures and preserves the body of many diseases’. An enlightened entrepreneur, he not only sold chocolate ready to drink but offered to teach his customers how to make it themselves, with the help of a recipe book which they were encouraged to buy. The diarist Samuel Pepys, in the 1660s, several times recorded a morning drink of ‘Chocolatte’. It may have been in England that the use of milk in a chocolate drink first became popular. England’s supply of chocolate came from the plantations of Jamaica, captured from the Spanish in 1655. By the end of the 17th century, chocolate was available in New England too.
The chocolate houses which sprang up in London at this period became fashionable meeting places, precursors of men’s clubs: they had been briefly banned by Charles II in 1675 as hotbeds of radical politics. The Garrick Club began life as ‘The Cocoa-Tree Chocolate-House’ and was an early headquarters of the Jacobite party. White’s originated in 1693 as ‘White’s Chocolate House’, originally Whig, later Tory.
At the end of the 18th century chocolate remained a drink for the rich, and particularly for rich ladies. As such it figures in Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte. A maid enters carrying a chocolate pot and cups:
What an abominable life a lady’s maid leads! Sweating, toiling, labouring from morning till night … and we get nothing out of it ourselves. I’ve been beating the chocolate for half an hour: now it’s ready. Am I just to stand and smell it, my mouth dry? Isn’t my mouth just as good as yours? O gracious mistresses, why should you get the real thing and I only the smell of it? By Bacchus, I’m going to taste it–Oh! It’s good!
Through all this period, the preparation of chocolate for drinking remained very close to pre-Columbian practice. Toasting, winnowing, breaking, and grinding of the beans was highly labour intensive. In the 18th century there were 150 chocolate-grinders in Madrid. They plied their skilled trade from house to house, many drinkers preferring to keep a close eye on the quality and purity of their favourite drink by having it ground at home. The metate, the sloping stone on which chocolate beans were ground by hand, would still be familiar in 19th-century France and in 20th-century Spain and Italy.
As demand grew and the population of Mexico and Guatemala declined through disease and serfdom, other tropical countries began to be exploited as cacao producers. The Mesoamerican variety of cacao, originally the only one known in the Caribbean and the one that provided all the cacao of Europe up to the end of the 18th century, is called Criollo. It was this which now began to be cultivated in Venezuela, and in Jamaica, Trinidad, and several of the smaller W. Indian islands. In the 17th and 18th centuries Europe’s supply came mainly from these Caribbean plantations and, in declining quantity, from America itself.
In Ecuador and in parts of the Amazon basin in the 17th century Spanish and Portuguese prospectors found a distinct variety of cacao–that now known as Forastero–growing wild, and succeeded in establishing plantations of it. From Brazil (where the Jesuits had controlled the trade) the Portuguese took seedlings of Forastero cacao to São Tomé and Fernando Po, off the coast of W. Africa. By the end of the 19th century cacao was being cultivated in several W. African countries, and by the early 20th century it had been planted in Sri Lanka, Malaya, Java, Sumatra, New Guinea, the New Hebrides, and Samoa. W. Africa is now the world’s main source of chocolate, and the bitter Forastero variety accounts for 80% of world production.
When the cacao of Trinidad was almost wiped out by a blight, it was supplemented with Forastero plantings. Soon afterwards the hybrid Trinitario variety emerged there, combining some of the flavour of Criollo with the hardiness of Forastero.
Sophie Coe/Andrew Dalby
READING:
Already by the end of the 18th century there had been a perceptible increase in the amount of chocolate being eaten, in slabs and pastilles, in ices and sorbets, as an ingredient in desserts and main dishes, in pastas and soups. This was all full fat chocolate; the raw cacao bean is about 50% fat by weight. Attempts to reduce the fat content of chocolate during processing had been made in the late 17th century; but it was not until the Dutchman van Houten developed a screw press, patented in 1828, that real success was achieved. It removed about two-thirds of the cocoa butter from the chocolate paste, leaving a residue which became known as COCOA. This dispersed easily in water and was considered more digestible than full-fat chocolate. Alkalizing, or ‘Dutching’, was a process which also originated with van Houten, who found that treating cacao during processing with potassium carbonate led to a milder flavour and darker colour.
A use was soon found for the excess cocoa butter. Added to the ground beans it created a smooth paste which could be moulded, and was solid when cold, but melted easily in the mouth. By 1842 Cadbury Brothers were selling a block chocolate, described on their price list as ‘French’; and by 1847 Fry’s were marketing ‘Chocolat Délicieux à Manger’. Prices remained high, due to import duty levied on cacao beans. This was reduced in 1853, and imports of cheap sugar also helped lower the price, but chocolate was still a luxury. Mrs Beeton (1861) instructed that chocolate, served in an ornamental box, should be placed on a glass plate as part of the dessert. Cocoa, now a cheap by-product, became the less desirable version of chocolate.
Major contributions made by the Swiss to the art of chocolate manufacture included that of Rodolphe Lindt, who in 1880 increased the amount of cocoa butter in his formula and developed the process of conching. In 1876 Swiss confectioner Daniel Peter produced the first milk chocolate, using dried milk, a new product manufactured by Henri Nestlé. It developed as a means of using milk in areas where it was cheap and plentiful. Milk and chocolate liquor were mixed, dried, and cocoa butter added. This is very similar to the modern ‘milk crumb’ process described in the section on chocolate manufacture below. The Swiss dominated the market for milk chocolate until the early 20th century.
Chocolate reached a wider audience when it was included amongst rations for troops during the First World War. Between the wars, the price of chocolate continued to fall as prices of materials fell, technological advances reduced manufacturing costs, and concentration in the industry brought economies of scale. By the dawn of the Second World War, CHOCOLATE CONFECTIONERY was outselling sugar confectionery in England, and has continued to do so ever since.
Chocolate confectionery is a mixture of chocolate mass (processed cacao), cocoa butter, and sugar (see CHOCOLATE MANUFACTURE), often with additions of dairy produce and other confectionery.
Block chocolate, for eating or incorporation into other foods or drinks, is the primary manifestation of chocolate confectionery. That sold in Britain comes in three basic types: plain, or dark, which is a mixture of chocolate mass, cocoa butter, and sugar; milk chocolate, which includes milk solids and has a lower proportion of chocolate mass; and white, which is not really chocolate as it contains no mass, but is a mixture of cocoa butter, milk solids, sugar, and flavourings. In continental Europe and N. America, ‘plain’ chocolate is subdivided into categories of sweet, semi-sweet, and bitter-sweet. Unsweetened chocolate, which is hardened chocolate mass, is used by confectioners and bakers.
Nuts, dried fruit, biscuits, wafers, and sugar confectionery are often added to chocolate.
Chocolates, or pralines as they are called in parts of continental Europe, are sweetmeats made by coating small pieces of sugar confectionery or nuts with melted chocolate. Popular fillings include FONDANT flavoured with fruit, coffee, or mint; MARZIPAN; TOFFEES or CARAMEL; and PRALINE, mixed with chocolate to give a nut-flavoured paste.
Chocolates can be made by hand dipping. In theory this is simple, the centres being lowered on a special ‘dipping fork’ into molten chocolate, covered, and then deposited on paper to set. In fact, this skill takes years to learn properly. This method is mostly used by craft confectioners, for whom investment in production line methods would be expensive, but who wish to produce high-quality, individual chocolate selections. There are two automated methods for making chocolates: enrobing, in which the centres are transported under a curtain of molten chocolate, and shell moulding, which is time consuming and therefore more expensive. For this, molten chocolate is deposited in moulds to form the shell, which is then filled; a lid of chocolate seals the filling in before the chocolate is unmoulded. This method gives a better finish and allows for more elaborate shapes than enrobing. It is used for shapes such as Easter eggs and other novelties.
Liqueur chocolates, which magically enclose liquids, can be made by shell moulding, or by depositing the syrup into impressions made in trays of starch. Left undisturbed for some time, the syrup ‘crusts’ (by forming sugar crystals on all surfaces) and can be lifted out and enrobed. Another method for making chocolates with semi-liquid syrup fillings relies on the use of an enzyme to act on solid sugar centres after they have been coated with chocolate.
Other confections include TRUFFLES: these are based on ganache, a paste of chocolate and cream or butter with flavourings of spirits, nuts, or essences. Chocolate is used for panned sweets or dragées, either as centres which are coated with thin, crunchy sugar shells, or to cover dried fruits and nuts. For the latter, chocolate is sprayed onto centres rotating in revolving pans; cool air is blown over them to harden them.
Chocolate is popularly perceived as comforting, and perhaps ‘addictive’; and maintains a reputation as an aphrodisiac. How much of this image is due to intrinsic properties, and how much to clever marketing and associations with luxury and pleasure, is debatable. The basic combination, in chocolate, of fat and sugar is well calculated to give pleasure. And chocolate does contain phenylethylamine, a naturally occurring chemical in the human brain, responsible for the euphoric feelings associated with being in love. However, experiments to discover whether eating chocolate has a measurable effect on this aspect of body chemistry have proved inconclusive.
Chocolate also contains theobromine, a stimulant which acts on the muscles; and caffeine (but in much smaller quantities than tea or coffee). This stimulant effect was noticed by early European consumers such as Thomas Gage (1648), who drank chocolate when he wished to work late at night.
Finally, chocolate is nutritious: depending on the formula (milk or plain) it yields up to 600 calories of energy per 100 g (3.5 oz), mostly in the form of fat and sugar, useful amounts of protein, and iron. Because it is such a concentrated food source, it features in the survival kits of soldiers and mountaineers.
Perhaps for these reasons the term ‘chocolate’ has acquired in some parts of the world a much more general meaning: something sweet which is easy to eat from the hand. This is true in Kazakhstan, where ‘Kazakh chocolate’ (zhent) turns out to be a block of sweet matter made from millet, curd cheese, sugar, raisins, and butter (with not a whiff of even a chocolate substitute). And in Afghanistan children who are offered toffees will exclaim delightedly: ‘chocolates!’
has been an important industry in W. Europe since the late 18th century. Some great names in chocolate manufacture–Dröste, van Houten (Holland); Lindt, Suchard (Switzerland); Menier (France); and Fry, Cadbury, Rowntree (England)–can trace their history back to the mid-19th century and often earlier. Chocolate is manufactured in the USA by Walter Baker and Co. (founded 1779) and by Hershey. A curious aspect of chocolate manufacture, at least in England, is the link with nonconformist religions, the three principal companies all being founded by Quaker families.
Chocolate manufacture is a complex process, requiring substantial investment in machinery. The raw material is cacao (see the section on botany and early history above) which is imported from the country of origin as fermented, dried beans. Over 30 varieties are available, and the manufacturer’s first concern may be blending, using several varieties of bean to produce the desired flavour.
After cleaning, the first process in manufacture is roasting. This is important for developing flavour, and reduces moisture content to a level appropriate during later processing. It also facilitates removal of the shells from the beans during the next process, winnowing, when they are cracked between rollers, and the husks removed, leaving only the kernels or nibs. The nib (the cotyledon of the seed) is the part of the bean used for chocolate and cocoa manufacture. It may be further treated by alkalizing, altering flavour and colour.
Then the nib is reduced to a paste by grinding. Originally stone mills, echoing the Aztec use of stone implements for chocolate preparation, were employed, but now metal mills with sophisticated temperature controls are used. Temperature is important because the heat produced by friction during grinding releases the fat, or cocoa butter, from the nib. The mass emerges from the grinder in a liquid state known as chocolate liquor, chocolate mass, or pâte.
This liquor is the essential ingredient for chocolate manufacture. It is often made by individual manufacturers.
Cooled and hardened, the liquor becomes basic unsweetened chocolate. Some liquor is used to make COCOA; this is done by pressing it to release more cocoa butter, and grinding the residue to powder. (The extra cocoa butter is used to enrich liquor during chocolate production.)
For plain chocolate, liquor is mixed with powdered sugar. Cocoa butter is added to adjust the consistency. A stiff paste emerges and goes for refining, which reduces the size of the particles in the mixture, so that they are imperceptible to the palate. The mass is passed through a series of steel rollers, each of which rotates faster than the one before. These have a shearing action and the mass emerges almost as powder.
The next process is conching. This is said to have gained its name from the shell-like shape of the ‘conche’, a long, heated stone trough, curved at each end. It was fitted with a roller to work the chocolate mass back and forth at a temperature of 55–85 °C (131–85 °F), constantly turning the chocolate and exposing fresh surfaces to the air. During conching flavour develops, moisture content is lowered further, and more fat is squeezed out of the cocoa particles. Stone conches are still used, as well as modern rotary conches which knead the mass intensively. Conching may take from several hours to a week, depending on the quality required. Towards the end of conching and desired flavourings are added. Vanilla is the most common in European and N. American chocolate. Others often used are mint, orange, and coffee.
Chocolate couverture is chocolate with a very high cocoa butter content, intended as a long shelf-life product for bakers and craft confectioners. Milk solids may also be added. It is specially prepared for coating, and manufactured so that at a given temperature it will cover evenly, but not flow off centre. (The term ‘couverture’ can cause confusion, since it was used in England to describe a cheap product from which most of the cocoa butter has been removed and replaced by hydrogenated fat and a stabilizer. This is now called chocolate-flavoured covering.)
Milk chocolate is usually made by the ‘milk crumb’ process. Fresh milk, concentrated to a solids content of 30–40% is used; sugar is added and the mixture further condensed, under vacuum, to a dry-matter content of about 90%. This is mixed with chocolate liquor, giving a stiff mixture which is dried and broken up. Processing then follows the same steps (adding cocoa butter, mixing, and refining, and conching) as for plain chocolate. Conching for milk chocolate takes place at a lower temperature (45–60 °C/113–40 °F) for a longer time; this prevents the lactose (milk sugar) from aggregating and giving a lumpy consistency.
After conching, the chocolate mass, plain or milk, is used for chocolate confectionery (see the section on chocolate in the 19th and 20th centuries above). However, before being moulded, the chocolate has to be stabilized, or tempered, by heating to a temperature of 49–50 °C (120–2 °F), and then cooling it, whilst stirring, to about 29 °C (84 °F) for plain, or 28 °C (82 °F) for milk. The object of this process is to ‘seed’ the mixture with cocoa butter crystals of a uniform and stable type, which will keep well during storage. If nuts, dried fruit, biscuit, etc. are to be added, they go in at this stage. The mixture, warmed slightly, is then deposited in moulds, shaken to remove air bubbles, and chilled, before unmoulding and wrapping.
Chocolate is best stored at temperatures below 18 °C (64 °F), to prevent undesirable changes (such as the formation of a harmless but unsightly whitish ‘bloom’) in the cocoa butter crystals.
Laura Mason
In Europe and N. America chocolate is an important flavouring for puddings, desserts, baked goods, and ice creams. It combines well with nuts, fruits, orange, mint, coffee, and spirits.
In the form of COCOA, it provides a concentrated chocolate flavour for cakes, biscuits, and icings, and is sometimes added to pastry. Block chocolate is used for richer cakes, and to flavour creams, mousses, soufflés, sauces, and ice cream.
Some famous confections include chocolate by definition. Examples are SACHERTORTE, BLACK FOREST GATEAU, devil’s food cake, Poires belle Hélène, ÉCLAIRS, FLORENTINES, BROWNIES, and chocolate chip cookies.
The foregoing are all sweet items. N. Europeans, who think of chocolate exclusively in terms of sweetness, are often surprised to discover that it can be used to flavour savoury dishes, especially sauces for game. The pre-Columbian Americans who were the first to use chocolate would have been equally surprised, for they would have regarded a use of this sort as sacrilege (see MOLE on this point, and also for an example of later Mexican use of chocolate as an ingredient in a savoury sauce).
In Europe it seems to have been the Italians who first explored such possibilities. There are firmly dated Italian recipes of the 1680s which reflect such novel experimentation. This became so widespread that an Italian poet cited by Coe and Coe (1996) in a poem listed among those who misused the beverage cacao not only those who misguidedly blow the froth off their cups, or take snuff with it, or mix it with coffee, but also those who put it into meat pasties and kindred dishes.
It may have been from Italy that the idea passed to France. It made an early appearance there in Massialot (1691) as ‘Wigeon in a ragout with chocolate’, but this recipe seems to have been swiftly forgotten.
The Spanish have been more consistent in taking up the idea. They continue to make ‘Catalan-style’ dishes which are sometimes seasoned with chocolate. Chocolate is also still used, in small amounts, in Italy in salsa agrodolce (sweet-sour sauce), which is served with boar and hare. In Latin America, it is used more widely, perhaps reflecting Spanish influence as much as or more than any post-Columbian indigenous tradition.
Chocolate must be melted gently, using a bain-marie, a slow oven, or a microwave on a low setting. If it gets too hot (over 44 °C, 111 °F), the flavour is impaired and it ‘seizes’–goes hard and grainy.
READING:
is best made with semi-sweet or bitter chocolate, often with a little butter and vanilla. It goes particularly well with vanilla ICE CREAM, and cools so rapidly on contact with the ice cream that it solidifies almost at once, providing a contrast in texture as well as in flavour. This combination is called a Dame blanche, especially in Belgium. Chocolate sauce with PEAR, as in Poires belle Hélène, is another good combination.
Certain sauces with other names incorporate chocolate as an ingredient. In Spain, for example, it is used in a sauce for spiny lobster. In Mexico it is used in some versions of MOLE.
(or choereg, choereq, churekg etc.–the name has seemingly innumerable transcriptions)
means ‘holiday bread’. This is an enriched bread (using e.g. sour cream, butter, egg), oven baked, made in a variety of shapes and sizes and flavours in the Caucasus. The most common shape is ‘knotted’ or braided bread, but it also occurs in snail shapes in Georgia. Flavourings include aniseed, MAHLAB (a spice derived from black cherry kernels), vanilla, cinnamon, and grated lemon or orange rind.
In Turkey a similar bread is called paskalya coregi, meaning Easter bread, a role which is also played by the Greek version, tsoureki; see EASTER FOODS. Etymological considerations suggest that the Greek name comes via Turkey from the Caucasus, rather than the other way round.
red and black, Aronia arbutifolia and A. melanocarpa, an unfortunate name for these berries which are native to the USA. The fruits of the red chokeberry are eaten raw, stewed, or made into jelly. Native Americans used them for making PEMMICAN. The black chokeberry has a good flavour but is very astringent. They can be stewed with sugar or honey to make a fruit sauce and are also processed into a very dark, thick, good-flavoured jelly. They contain an abundance of pectin. In Denmark, E. Europe, and Russia black chokeberries are grown commercially for their dark, tannic berries, which are used for juices and soft drinks.
Helen Saberi
Prunus virginiana, the common chokecherry, which grows widely in the USA, so named because of the fierce sourness and astringency of the fruit when unripe. As William Wood (quoted from Fernald and Kinsey, 1943) wrote in 1634, ‘they so furre the mouth that the tongue will cleave to the roofe, and the throate wax horse with swallowing those red Bullies. English ordering may bring them to be an English Cherrie, but yet they are as wilde as the Indians.’ However, when the fruit was fully ripe, it was used by whites and Indians alike. The latter had many traditional uses and used the fruits in PEMMICAN, their preserved dried meat.
There is a considerable difference between common (eastern) and western chokecherries. The latter, P. virginiana var Demissa, can be eaten fresh from the tree, make a wonderful jelly, but are even better if turned into juice or a soup. P. virginiana var Melanocarpa, called the Rocky Mountain chokecherry, has purplish black fruits when ripe which are generally larger and less astringent than those of the common or western varieties. They can be eaten raw, dried, or processed into jams, jellies, and preserves.
a complex fatty alcohol, is essential for the proper working of the digestive and nervous systems. It is present in foods of animal origin, large amounts being found in egg yolk. Cholesterol is insoluble in water. In the body of a man or an animal; it is carried around by two types of proteins, low density lipoproteins (LDL) and high density lipoproteins (HDL). LDL is notorious as a contributory cause of atherosclerosis–clogging of the arteries with fatty deposits of pure cholesterol as well as gallstones. HDL, in contrast, is wholly beneficial and helps to keep the arteries clear. But it should be noted that some LDL is necessary; it is only harmful in excess.
In Harvard during the 1950s, Konrad Bloch and Feodor Lynen worked out the role of cholesterol in the body and its link with atherosclerosis, for which they won a Nobel prize in 1964. Most of the cholesterol in humans is produced internally, in liver; it is carried in the body by LDL and HDL. It became clear that many people in western countries had dangerously high levels of LDL and that this was caused, at least partly, by eating fatty foods. In particular, there were worries about foods which were themselves high in cholesterol, and some people stopped eating eggs altogether.
It is now thought that the main cause of high LDL levels is not eating cholesterol itself, but a combination of too much saturated fat (see FATS AND OILS) in the diet, and lack of exercise.
Ralph Hancock
as a concept noun in the context of meat cookery, emerged in the 17th century. Slices of meat the size of individual portions, they were in their way forerunners of hamburgers, served up to busy city dwellers in the London chophouses that proliferated from the 1690s onwards. Right from the start chop seems usually to have been applied to cuts containing a bone and chopped from the loin, shoulder, or particularly ribs. It did, though, take a little time to bed down as a solo term: at first people spoke of ‘a chop of mutton’, for instance, rather than simply ‘a chop’ (on 9 July 1663 Samuel Pepys recorded ‘Had a chop of veal’). In modern usage, chop is applied to cuts of lamb or pork, but not beef (a corresponding section of which would be too big to form a single portion that could fit onto the average plate).
John Ayto
a dish whose ingredients can vary–indeed, its very nature is that this should be so–but which usually includes things like bits of pork or chicken, beansprouts, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, and other vegetables such as celery, all chopped, plus soy sauce and perhaps some stock; the whole to be stir-fried or simmered and served with rice or noodles.
Chop suey may be a prime example of CULINARY MYTHOLOGY. The general perception of this dish in the western world is that it is a sort of parody of Chinese food, invented in San Francisco towards the end of the 19th century and spreading out from there to become a standard item in the American repertoire, and indeed known all over the world. Various accounts have been given of its birth. They all agree in supposing that a Chinese cook, confronted by a demand for food at an hour when none of his proper dishes was still available, improvised a mixture from leftovers and then, in response to questions from the people who had demanded food, said that the dish was called ‘odds and ends’ in Chinese. However, there are numerous candidates for the role of the demanding diners: drunken miners, a San Francisco political boss, railroad workers, a visiting Chinese dignitary who was suffering from indigestion, etc. etc. This variation in the supposed identity of principal characters is typical of mythology.
It has been left to Anderson (1988) to show what seems more likely to have been the true origin of the dish:
chop suey is not–as many would-be connoisseurs believe–an American invention. As Li Shu-fan points out in his delightful autobiography, Hong Kong Surgeon (1964), it is a local Toisanese dish. Toisan is a rural district south of Canton, the home for most of the early immigrants from Kwangtung to California. The name is Cantonese tsap seui (Mandarin tsa sui), ‘miscellaneous scraps.’ Basically, it is leftover or odd-lot vegetables stir-fried together. Noodles are often included. Bean sprouts are almost invariably present, but the rest of the dish varies according to whatever is around.
or petits choux, a small item of PÂTISSERIE in France which resembles soft PETITS FOURS secs (dry as opposed to the other category of petits fours which are moist, e.g. miniature SAVARINS) and whose name (in either version) has been adopted as a term of endearment. It has nothing to do with a cabbage, as the present author mistakenly supposed; he wondered in his youth why he should be addressed as a small cabbage and only discovered in the eighth decade of his life that this had not been the intention of female friends who in the distant past had applied the phrase to him.
The term is of long standing. A street cry in the 16th century was ‘Choux, petits choux, tout chauds.’ Cotgrave (1611) in his French–English dictionary gave the term as ‘tichous’ and translated this as ‘Little cakes made of egges and flower [sic], with a little butter (and sometimes cheese among) eaten ordinarily with sugar and Rosewater’. The author of the Thrésor de santé (1607) regarded cheese, and cheese of a certain kind not just any cheese, as obligatory rather than optional. However, towards the end of the century, the great dictionary of Furetière (1690) described something closer to the modern petits choux, without cheese.
Chouquettes are among the most popular Parisian FRIANDISES, eaten at tea when warm and soft, semi-dry at other times. Wedding cakes can be constructed from them, with confectioner’s cream inside.
an American term which came into use in the mid-19th century and was defined by the grocer Artemas Ward (1923) as: ‘a mixture of pickles of various sorts, especially mixed vegetables, in mustard. Also, and originally, a Chinese sweetmeat consisting of pieces of orange-peel, ginger and numerous other articles put up in sirup.’ Weaver (1993) suggests that chow-chow was derived from a ‘root recipe’ for ‘Yellow Pickle, or Axe-jar’, for which he cites a publication of 1837. See also ACHAR.
a term first used in N. America in the 1730s, may well be derived from the French word chaudière meaning the sort of iron cooking pot which early French settlers took to what are now the Maritime Provinces of Canada. When they encountered the Canadian Micmac Indians they found that the latter had a great appetite for their native clams but were having to cook them with hot stones placed in water in a hollowed-out piece of tree trunk. It has been suggested that a natural marriage took place between the clams which the Indians had and the pots which the settlers brought. Indeed, it seems likely that this combination of European technology with American foodstuffs was happening at many places more or less simultaneously, so that there could be no way of telling where the first real ‘clam chowder’ was made.
Chowder always means a hearty soup, usually but not invariably of seafood; and clam chowder is its best-known form. Indeed, one should say forms in the plural, for in New England, which along with the Maritime Provinces of Canada has for long been the main home territory of chowders, there are lively arguments about what is an authentic clam chowder. Mariani (1994) describes this thus in his excellent long essay about chowder:
By the end of the century certain New England regions became known for their various interpretations of chowder–one might find cream in one spot, lobsters in others, no potatoes elsewhere–but most were by then a creamy white soup brimming with chopped fish or clams, crackers, and butter. In Rhode Island, however, cooks often added tomatoes to their chowder, a practice that brought down unremitting scorn from chowder fanciers in Massachusetts and Maine, who associated such a concoction with New York because the dish came to be called, for no discernible reason, ‘Manhattan clam chowder’ sometime in the 1930s. By 1940 Eleanor Early in her New England Sampler decried this ‘terrible pink mixture (with tomatoes in it, and herbs) called Manhattan Clam Chowder, that is only a vegetable soup, and not to be confused with New England Clam Chowder, nor spoken of in the same breath’.
READING:
one of a pair of prominent Chinese-American dishes, the other being the somewhat similar CHOP SUEY. Mariani (1994) notes that the term first appeared in print in 1903.
Chow mein is related to and takes its name from chao mian, a Chinese dish consisting of previously boiled noodles stir- fried with meat and vegetables. There is, however, an important difference. In chow mein the noodles are deep fried in bundles, which are crisp and brittle when they emerge; whereas in the Chinese dish the noodles are soft.
a subject with surprisingly few negative aspects. Alone among the major religions of the world, mainstream Christianity has no general taboos which would forbid Christians ever to eat a whole category or categories of foods, such as the prohibitions described under MUSLIMS AND FOOD, HINDUISM AND FOOD, and JEWISH DIETARY LAWS. It is true that in the early centuries AD Christians continued to follow many of the Jewish laws which are stated in the Old Testament, but these were gradually jettisoned and in effect replaced by the Christian system of abstinence and FASTING (which see for the distinction between the two terms).
However, there are many feast days and fast days for Christians, in proportions which vary from church to church. See CHRISTMAS FOODS and EASTER FOODS for outstanding examples of feast days, to which can be added several forms of harvest festival and thanksgiving days.
Feasts, generally speaking, are not a problem. However, it is true that within Christianity a broad distinction can be drawn between those denominations which look with favour on the pleasures of food and drink, albeit perhaps urging moderation, and those which place emphasis on the dangers of all fleshly pleasures and which seem to be saying, in effect, that one must eat but that one should not do so for, or even with, enjoyment. The name of Calvin is prominent in the latter group, although Janny de Moor (1995) has shown that his own attitude was more ambivalent than has been generally supposed.
The main food issue which has confronted Christian ecclesiastical authorities, especially those of the Roman Catholic Church, has been that of FASTING (taking this term to include abstinence); not the principle, but the extent. It seems unlikely that the evolution of ideas on the modalities will ever reach a terminal point. See also LENT.
Of the symbolic foods which play a role in Christianity, the most important by far (and the most puzzling for non-Christians) are those which feature in the mystery of ‘Holy Communion’ where consumption of wafers and wine is held by some believers not merely to represent but to be consumption of the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. Obviously, no allusion to CANNIBALISM is intended; in many parts of the world Christian missionaries have been foremost in trying to eradicate that abhorrent practice. But when it comes to explaining just what is supposed to be going on, there are problems (of which Caroline Walker Bynum, 1987, gives a sympathetic description with well-researched history).
include in virtually all Christian countries or communities provision for a main meal on Christmas Day, or Christmas Eve, which in turn incorporates a main dish which is symbolic of Christmas. This main dish is liable to change, the only constant factor being that it is perceived as ‘special’. Thus the TURKEY which has during the 20th century provided the main dish for most families in England does not represent an antique tradition, for it was only in the 19th century that it began to replace the GOOSE. There is a similar question mark over the traditional CHRISTMAS PUDDING, whose ancestry (as plum POTTAGE or plum PUDDING) can be traced back for many centuries but which in its present configuration and status can also be counted as mainly a product of the 19th century. In other countries it is possible to observe similar gradual evolutions, although what is subject to change may be quite different: a carp, the favoured Christmas delicacy of some Scandinavian families, for example, rather than a bird.
What is, however, relatively common ground and relatively unchanging is the seasonal frenzy of baking in most European countries, as households (one used to say housewives, but patterns of activity change) make a stock of special foods for the Christmas period.
Mention of the Christmas period is highly relevant because, although Christmas is often taken to mean Christmas Day plus perhaps Christmas Eve and what is called Boxing Day in England, its more extensive meaning covers a long period, beginning with Advent in early December and continuing to Twelfth Night on 6 January. It is this longer timespan for which the baking frenzy caters.
Many of the bakery products, such as English MINCE PIES, Scandinavian GINGER BISCUITS, and German LEBKUCHEN, are indeed consumed throughout the season. Others are kept for specific days, which vary from country to country. In the Netherlands, Germany, and C. Europe 6 December (St Nicholas’s Day) is important (see BANKETBAKKERIJ); as is 13 December (St Lucy) in Sweden; Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Britain, the USA, France, and S. Europe; New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in Scotland; and 6 January (Epiphany) in France, Spain, and Portugal.
Although Christmas is supposed to commemorate the birth of Christ, a number of important pagan festivals which took place at midwinter have been incorporated. Their echoes still persist in the feasting, especially in the shapes of foods baked for this time of year.
All special breads made for Christmas involve doughs mixed with quantities of butter, eggs, and sugar. Many are spiced, or flavoured with lemon zest, and further embellished with nuts and dried or candied fruit.
In Switzerland and Germany on St Nicholas’s Day the saint is thought to reward good children with sweets but punish bad ones with a switch. In the Netherlands his role is to deliver presents to children. For this day Swiss bakers make Weihnachtsmänner, Father Christmases, and Grittibanzen, dough men. Shaped from lightly enriched dough, they range from simple figures with currant eyes to ones carefully dressed in fringed scarves and jackets, carrying walking sticks. Gingerbread and honey cake mixtures are also made into men for autumn and midwinter festivals over most of N. Europe, including Britain. There are no records of these having been made in the Middle Ages, but Bachmann (1955) conjectures that they represent a winter god, and refers to gods modelled in dough, mentioned in the Norse sagas.
On the day of the Immaculate Conception (8 December) the inhabitants of Madeira bake their bolo de mel for the coming Christmas. This honey cake (now sweetened with molasses), heavy with walnuts, almonds, and candied peel, is leavened by a piece of dough from bread-baking. Any honey cakes left from the previous year are eaten up on this day.
In Sweden St Lucy’s Day is celebrated with rich saffron-flavoured buns. The dough is mixed with fruit, candied peel, and almonds, and shaped into plaits, crosses, and buns called Lussekatter, St Lucy’s cats. Traditionally, one of the daughters of the house gets up to prepare a breakfast of these buns, and dresses in a long white robe with a crown of lingonberry twigs and lighted candles on her head to serve them.
As the season progresses other breads make their appearance especially on Christmas Day. In England, the ‘traditional’ Christmas cake, a rich FRUIT CAKE, has largely usurped the place of sweet spiced and decorated fruit breads. These cakes, round and covered in marzipan and a thick layer of royal icing, are made well in advance.
Breads have also been replaced by rich cakes in France, where the bûche de Nöel, a roll of light SPONGE CAKE, is covered in chocolate or coffee buttercream textured to resemble bark.
Christmas breads are part of the celebrations in Scandinavia. The Danish julekage is a Christmas fruit loaf, lightly enriched, kneaded with candied fruit, and flavoured with lemon peel and cardamom, and candied fruit; julbröd is the Swedish name for a similar loaf. Various kinds of coffee bread and Wienerbrød (DANISH PASTRIES) are baked in special Christmas shapes such as stars. These share the table with a plethora of Christmas biscuits such as pepperkaker (ginger snaps) and peppernotter (ginger nuts). The Norwegian kransekake (garland cake) is made from a marzipan-like mixture of ground almonds, icing sugar, and egg white, gently heated, and made into rings in graduated sizes; up to fourteen rings may be made, for which special tins are available.
C. Europe provides a wealth of breads. Some, such as KUGELHOPF (an Austrian favourite), are made throughout the year. Hutzelbrot, a heavily fruited and spiced bread, is sold at all the Advent markets which are a popular feature of Christmas in Germany. Swiss Christmas Birnbrot includes kirsch in its spiced pear filling, which is encased in a lightly sweetened and enriched dough. Tannenzapfen, ‘pine cone cake’, a Swiss Christmas speciality, is made from thin layers of sponge built up into the shape of a pine cone lying on its side, covered in coffee-flavoured buttercream, and stuck all over with split toasted almonds to resemble the scales on the cone. Dresden STOLLEN is one of the most famous German Christmas breads; plainer Stollen are also made, some aniseed flavoured, as are SPRINGERLE biscuits. German and Swiss bakers make lightly enriched doughs into intricate plaited shapes such as the Weinachtszopf, a straight plait with dried fruit; or crowns, wreaths, and stars for Christmas and New Year displays. The plaits are said originally to represent women’s hair cut off in sacrifice as part of mourning ritual (a custom observed through much of ancient Europe by the inhabitants of Greece and Rome, as well as the Germanic tribes). They are also very decorative shapes which show off a baker’s skill.
Baking is somewhat less important in Mediterranean countries, where nut and sugar confections such as nougat sustain the sweet-toothed. However, the principal Italian festive bread, PANETTONE, is on sale everywhere at Christmas. Christopsomo, Greek Christmas bread, is rich, sweet, aniseed flavoured, and marked with a Greek (equal-armed) cross. The Provençal Christmas galette or fougasse called pompe à l’huile is akin to their regular hearthbreads but made with a sweetened dough and olive oil.
The Church celebrates 6 January as Epiphany, the day on which the Christ child was shown to the three Kings. This date is also Twelfth Night, the last of the twelve days of Christmas. It has inherited some of the pagan customs associated with Roman Saturnalia, and its cakes are of such interest that they have separate entries; see TWELFTH NIGHT CAKE and (for France and other Latin countries) galette des rois (see GALETTE).
Traditions of baking aside, many communities have ritualized meals to punctuate the Christmas season. Catholic countries, for instance, had fasting suppers on Christmas Eve in the run-up to Midnight Mass, none more elaborate than that of Provence where the souper maigre may consist of an aïoli with snails or salt cod, a salad of bitter herbs, and a vegetable soupe de lasagnes, similar to an Italian minestrone. SALT COD is ever-present in the Portuguese version of this meal and a frequent choice for the Tuscan ‘white’ supper, so called because it contains neither meat nor tomato. In the Philippines, however, the pre-Christmas festivities extend back into December to encompass a series of nine dawn masses (misa de gallo). After each of these there may be a buffet with RICE CAKES such as bibingka and ginger tea to drink, but the Christmas Eve meal tops them all (often served as a buffet) with roasted pig (a very common Christmas meat where turkey is not the favourite) as the centrepiece. The Christmas Eve meal after, rather than before, Midnight Mass is a feature of Mexican life as well: salt cod is a frequent choice, so too turkey in MOLE sauce, and a mixed fruit and JICAMA salad.
The catalogue of dishes and meals would run long, but can be pursued through these cross-references: AïOLI; APPLE; BISCUIT; BLACK BUN; BRAWN; BRUSSELS SPROUTS; BULGARIA; CAPON; CARROT; CHESTNUT; DERBY (cheese); DESSERTS (gros souper); DOUGHNUT; FIGGY PUDDING; FLORENTINE; FOCACCIA; FRITTER; FRUIT CAKE; FRUMENTY; GHORAYEBAH; GOA; GREECE; HOGMANAY; ICELAND; ICING; LAMB; LUTEFISK; LUXEMBOURG; MANDARIN; MARRON GLACES; MARZIPAN; MAZURKA; MEDIEVAL CUISINE; MEXICO; NOUGAT; NUT BISCUITS; NUTS; OATCAKES; PANETTONE; PIG; PLUM; PTARMIGAN; PUCHERO; RICE (as food); RICE CAKES OF THE PHILIPPINES; ROSELLE; SANDALWOOD; SPICED BEEF; SPINACH; SWEDEN; WILD BOAR; YORKSHIRE CHRISTMAS PIE.
Laura Mason
READING:
the rich culmination of a long process of development of ‘plum puddings’ which can be traced back to the early 15th century. The first types were not specifically associated with Christmas. Like early MINCE PIES, they contained meat, of which a token remains in the use of suet. The original form, plum POTTAGE, was made from chopped beef or mutton, onions and perhaps other root vegetables, and dried fruit, thickened with breadcrumbs, and flavoured with wine, herbs, and spices. As the name suggests, it was a fairly liquid preparation: this was before the invention of the pudding cloth made large puddings feasible. As was usual with such dishes, it was served at the beginning of a meal. When new kinds of dried fruit became available in Britain, first raisins, then prunes in the 16th century, they were added. The name ‘plum’ refers to a prune; but it soon came to mean any dried fruit.
In the 16th century variants were made with white meat such as chicken or veal; and gradually the meat came to be omitted, to be replaced by suet. The root vegetables also disappeared, although even now Christmas pudding often still includes a token carrot. The rich dish was served on feast days such as All Saints’ Day, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. By the 1670s, it was particularly associated with Christmas and called ‘Christmas pottage’. The old plum pottage continued to be made into the 18th century, and both versions were still served as a filling first course rather than as a dessert.
Not all plum puddings were rich, festive, or ceremonial. Plum DUFF, essentially a suet pudding with less fruit and other enrichment, remained popular for centuries.
Even before Christmas pudding had attained its modern form, its consumption on Christmas Day had been banned by Oliver Cromwell. This was not simply a sign of his Puritan attitudes. The Christian Church everywhere was conscious that Christmas was merely a veneer of the old Celtic winter solstice fire festival celebrating the ‘rebirth’ of the sun after the shortest day, 21 or 22 December. This is still frankly celebrated in the Orkneys with the rite of Up Helly A, when a ship is burnt. Signs of paganism keep emerging: for example the Yule log, a huge log which is kept burning for all twelve days of the festival, and is still commemorated in the traditional French log-shaped Christmas cake. Other relics are the candles on the Christmas tree (imported from Germany in the time of Prince Albert), and the flaming pudding itself. There had been a similar official attitude in Scotland towards the consumption of the BLACK BUN on Twelfth Night.
What currently counts as the traditional Christmas pudding recipe has been more or less established since the 19th century. Usual ingredients are: suet; brown sugar (not always); raisins; sultanas; currants; candied peel; breadcrumbs; eggs; spices such as cinammon, nutmeg, and cloves, or allspice or mixed spice; and alcohol (e.g. stout, rum, brandy). Optional ingredients include flour, fresh orange or lemon peel, grated carrot or apple, almonds. The result is a remarkably solid pudding which has to be boiled for many hours then preferably left to mature for up to a year and reboiled on the day. A large pudding resists this treatment better than small ones–though few are as large as the one made in Devon in 1819, which weighed over 400 kg (900 lb).
The pudding is traditionally served with rum or brandy butter (US hard sauce) made from butter, sugar, and spirit. It is topped with a sprig of holly and set alight with rum or another spirit. This part of the tradition is still widely observed, but recipes for the pudding itself have been evolving in the direction of something lighter and more digestible.
The shape of the pudding is traditionally spherical, from being tied up in a floured pudding cloth. Most modern puddings are made in a basin covered with layers of foil and greaseproof paper.
Ralph Hancock
the name applied to most of the numerous species of plants of the genus Chrysanthemum in the daisy family. In the western world these plants are well known as a source of garden flowers and florists’ blooms. There is, however, one species which is important in the Orient for its edible leaves and flowers. This is the garland chrysanthemum, Glebionis coronaria (syn Chrysanthemum coronarium). It is mainly in Japan, China, and Korea that its leaves and young shoots are cooked as a green vegetable.
This species, grown extensively in the northern regions of Japan, is known to the Japanese as shungiku or kikuna, meaning ‘spring’ or ‘leaf’ chrysanthemum. The leaves, if sufficiently young and tender, may be eaten raw; but it is usual to parboil them, refresh them in cold water, and serve them as sunomono (see JAPANESE CULINARY TERMS). They may also be added to ‘one-pot’ dishes such as sukiyaki, or be fried as TEMPURA.
Kikunori, boiled and dried chrysanthemum petals which come in sheet form, are a product of Ainai in the Aomori Prefecture of Japan. They can be used as a garnish, like fresh petals.
Another traditional preparation in N. Japan is called kikumi. Hamada (in Yashiroda et al., 1968) gives an evocative description:
In late autumn, the cooking chrysanthemum opens its medium-sized, double yellow flowers. We used to help my grandmother gather the flowers, remove the green involucre from beneath the flowerhead and separate the rays, or florets. These are then washed and drained. After they are momentarily boiled, they are marinated in a bottle of Japanese rice wine and blended with soy sauce and pickled apricots. This completes the process, and the flowers are then ready for use in making kikumi. Kikumi is served in a deep bowl from which everyone helps himself. Such a bowl lasts two or three days even if served at every meal. The fragrance of the cooked chrysanthemum florets, blended with the sharp wine, pungent soy sauce and sour apricots, makes a very agreeable combination of flavors. It tastes of deepening autumn and makes me long for one or two haiku [seventeen-syllable Japanese poems] to capture the feeling.
terms which belong to the era of the cowboy in the west of the USA. Chuck was what they ate, and the chuck wagon was where the cook prepared it. ‘Come an’ Get It’ was the cry with which the cook announced that food was ready. It is also the title of the admirable book by Adams (1952) which records with picturesque details the equipment and supplies of the chuck wagon, the idiosyncrasies of the cooks and their helpers (called wranglers), and the nature of the food (in which loomed large meat stews, such as SONOFABITCH STEW, SOURDOUGH bread, dry biscuits, ‘frijoles and fluff-duffs’, and strong coffee often without sugar but with insects and Carnation milk).
Cyperus esculentus, a sedge common in S. Europe and Africa, has small, edible tubers a little less than 20 mm (just over 0.8″) in diameter. These are black, with a nutlike texture and a sweetness which increases when the tubers have been stored for a few weeks and become slightly wrinkled. Their resemblance to nuts accounts for many of their common names including nut grass, tiger nut, earth almond, and earth nut. Chufa itself is a Spanish dialect name.
The same genus, Cyperus, embraces many common plants of boggy places all over the world, including several others with edible tubers; and also the Egyptian papyrus rush (nut), C. papyrus, from which the ancient Egyptians made their writing paper. A near relative is the larger and better-known Chinese WATER CHESTNUT.
Chufa, which grows freely, has been used as food since early times, e.g. in ancient Egypt. The plant is sometimes cultivated, e.g. in the coastal regions of Ghana. The tubers may be eaten raw or roasted. In Spain they are made into a refreshing milky drink, horchata.
The plant was introduced into the USA in 1854; an act now regretted, for it has become a troublesome weed. It is grown in the southern states, mainly for feeding pigs, but people also occasionally eat it.
two dried potato products developed in the foothills of the Andes in S. America over 2,000 years ago. Dawn and Douglas Nelson (1983) believe that the process must have been discovered accidentally and that it was only in the Andes that the necessary climatic conditions existed; these were that every autumn should have long periods of sub-zero temperatures at night followed by bright sunshine and drying winds during the day. The Nelsons point out that the varieties of potato used are almost tasteless and are reserved for this purpose. They continue:
The freshly lifted potatoes are washed clean without damaging the skins and laid out on soft turf or straw padding to be exposed to severe night frost. As soon as they have thawed in the morning they are trodden with bare feet so that the skin remains intact but the fluid resulting from cell rupture is extruded. On the first pressing over 30% of the fluid may be lost. They are left in position and dried by the sun and wind. The process is repeated for five successive days. From the sixth day onwards no further pressing takes place and they are straw-covered to a sufficient depth to prevent further freezing at night. Once dried they are as hard as stone and can be stored indefinitely, and even a minor degree of damp does not seem to damage them unduly. This product is called chuño.
The preparation of tunta begins in similar fashion but includes a soaking in a pond for two months, followed by a final sun-drying. Tunta, which is also called ‘white chuño’, is pure white inside and readily disintegrates into a fine white flour.
Potatoes treated thus are frost-proof, capable of almost indefinite storage, light in weight, and highly portable (especially tunta). For use, chuño are simply reconstituted with water and may be added to the native stew called chupa, or used otherwise in savoury dishes. The uses of tunta are similar to those of wheat flour in Europe and N. America.
No doubt these products helped to make the Inca migrations possible; and they have always been regarded by Peruvian Indians as essential for journeys. Travellers who are carrying charqui (dried LLAMA meat, see JERKY) and chuño need only add water to have the makings of a nutritious stew. The Nelsons calculate that a month’s ration of this food would weigh only 9 kg (20 lb).
the ordinary English spelling of the Indian word which used to be spelled chutni and is now chatni.
In Indian cuisine a chatni is a spicy relish eaten as a side dish to add interest to less piquant food, such as rice or DAL. It is freshly prepared for each meal by grinding spices and herbs (e.g. ginger, chilli pepper, mint, coriander leaves) and mixing them to a paste with (e.g.) garlic, or tamarind, or limes, or coconut. Whole pieces of fruit or vegetable (especially mango) may be in the relish. An Indian chatni is always vegetarian and has a sour tang.
Generally, ingredients vary according to region and tastes. Thus coconut chutney is the most popular relish in S. India, while herb and coconut chutney is typical of W. India; purely herb chutneys are eaten in W. and N. India. A chutney made with unripe mangoes–the one which has become most popular in the western world–is also a favourite in N. India; while walnut chutney (also chutneys with sour cherries or pumpkin or radish) is popular in Kashmir. Tomato (green or ripe) chutney is the one which knows no frontiers; it is eaten all over India.
The British encountered chatni early in their colonial days and adopted it with enthusiasm, tending perhaps to emphasize the sweet aspect of what is essentially sour or sweet and sour. British chutneys are usually spiced, sweet, fruit pickles, having something of the consistency of jam. Highest esteem is accorded to mango chutney, imported from India, but the sorts of chutney have been legion; Law’s Grocer’s Manual (1895), listed, among others, chutneys called Bengal, Cashmere, Colonel Skinner’s, Lucknow, Calcutta Howrah, and Major Grey’s. The last named is famed in India as well as Britain.
insects of the family Cicadidae, the males of which make shrill chirping noises, are in some regions of N. America referred to as ‘locusts’. Those who have explored the history and scope of insect-eating mention them in various contexts as providing food for human beings. Thus the indefatigable Bodenheimer (1951), ever scrupulous in fully citing his sources, tells us that a Mr W. S. Robertson informed Asa Fitch, who used the statement to support a report by the Revd A. Sandel of Philadelphia (1715), that ‘the Indians use the different species of cicadas as an article of diet, every year gathering quantities of them. They are prepared as food by roasting in a hot oven and are stirred until they are well browned.’
Other authorities from the past are summoned up to confirm that the diet which cicadas themselves eat is thoroughly wholesome and that, at least after the wings have been removed, they may be eaten with enjoyment and nutritional benefit.
a term with two meanings. In N. America since Prohibition it refers to unfermented, unpasteurized, and usually unfiltered APPLE juice. After processing so as to resemble European apple juice, it is called ‘sweet apple juice’. Alcoholic cider is now described as ‘hard’ cider. Cider apples have never been grown in America, juice being pressed from general purpose orchard varieties. American cider is cloudy and replete with sediment, but in current market conditions looks as if it will be displaced by imports from China. In Britain, cider is an alcoholic drink, for which special cider apples are used; this has some limited uses in cookery and in making cider VINEGAR and VERJUICE. This kind of cider is also made elsewhere in Europe, notably in parts of France and Spain. Cider is the source of the distilled spirits applejack and Calvados.
the dried bark of Cinnamomum zeylanicum, a tree indigenous to Sri Lanka, and sometimes known as Ceylon cinnamon, has been an important spice since antiquity; but there was then, and indeed still is, confusion between cinnamon and CASSIA bark (C. aromaticum). In French, for example, the single word cannelle applies to both. And in the USA the term cinnamon can legally be applied to cassia bark, which is more plentiful and thus less expensive, whereas the British pharmacopoeia requires cinnamon to be the product of C. zeylanicum. Although these spices are closely related, cassia is thicker and coarser and its taste is less delicate.
Purseglove et al. (1981) have surveyed the historical problems of identification and the opinions expressed on the possible use of cinnamon in very early times. They draw attention to the likelihood, explained by Burkill (1965–6), that the barks entering into the cinnamon trade have changed in the course of time and continue:
It seems probable that the ancient Greeks and Romans had both cinnamon and cassia, but the Arab traders who supplied them protected their business interests by deliberately shrouding the sources of their products in mystery. Both Herodotus (5th century BC) and Theophrastus (4th century BC), who believed that cinnamon and cassia came from the region of Arabia, offered fantastic stories. Thus Theophrastus:
they say it grows in valleys where there are snakes with a deadly bite, so they protect their hands and feet when they go down to collect it. When they have brought it out they divide it into three portions and draw lots for them with the sun, and whichever portion the sun wins they leave behind. As soon as they leave it, they say, they see it burst into flame. This is of course fantasy.
During the 12th to 14th centuries Arabic writers alluded to true cinnamon from Ceylon, and recognized its superiority. Finding it was one of the goals of 15th- and 16th-century explorers. Columbus thought that he had found it in Cuba in 1492, but the bark brought to him probably came from a tree of the genus Canella, the W. Indian ‘wild cinnamon’. It was the Portuguese who eventually found cinnamon in its wild state in Ceylon, in 1505, and it was mainly for the cinnamon that they proceeded to occupy the island. When the Dutch took over the island in 1636, they inherited the monopoly in cinnamon, and began its cultivation. After the British conquest in 1796, the East India Company acquired the monopoly and kept it until 1833, when trade in cinnamon was freed.
The second most important source of true cinnamon is the Seychelles Islands, where it was introduced in the late 18th century by the French. In 1815 this source also passed into British hands. Some true cinnamon is also produced in the Malagasy Republic.
Cultivators of cinnamon manage their rootstocks in such a way as to encourage the formation of numerous straight shoots, in bush form. When these growing stems are about as high as a human being, they are harvested and taken away in bundles for peeling and processing.
Peeling involves first the stripping off of the outer bark. The inner bark is then rubbed with a heavy brass rod to loosen it, incisions are made round it and down each side, and it is prised off in half sections. The curled strips thus obtained are subsequently scraped clean and formed into compound quills, about 1 m (40″) long; each quill consists of many strips rolled together into a cylindrical shape, and trimmed and dried. For retail sale, they are cut into shorter lengths. Cinnamon is also commonly sold in powdered form, often (whether this is stated or not) in a mixture with powdered cassia bark.
Although it is always cinnamaldehyde and eugenol, with other minor components, which impart the characteristic odour and flavour of C. zeylanicum, the chemical composition of cinnamon products varies considerably. It and other factors affecting quality are influenced by the soil on which the shoots are grown, the cultivar used, the techniques of processing, etc.; so appraisal is a matter for experts.
The quills themselves are the subject of a complicated system of grading, in which the main groupings are Fine, Mexican, and Hamburg.
Cinnamon bark oil is the source of the cinnamon essence which is used for culinary purposes. Cinnamon leaf oil is a different product, whose very high eugenol content gives it a clovelike aroma.
In European cookery, cinnamon is mainly used for flavouring baked goods and confectionery. CHOCOLATE with cinnamon was a combination favoured by the Spanish in the 16th century, when supplies of the new commodity were shipped back to the homeland from S. America. Cinnamon is also a favourite spice for fruit COMPOTES and kindred sweet dishes. Outside Europe, it is used as often in savoury dishes. Meat stews of the Middle East such as Moroccan TAGINE and Iranian khoresht are often spiced with cinnamon; indeed, in Lebanon and most of Syria the only spices used on meat are cinnamon and ALLSPICE. As part of the traditional garam masala (see MASALA), it is used extensively for the aromatic dishes, for example PILAF.
It is sometimes served at table as a condiment, for example to sprinkle over melon. Cinnamon toast is especially popular in N. America. Elizabeth David (1970) points out that in England silver casters were often intended to be filled with cinnamon (not sugar) to be sprinkled on TOAST and MUFFINS.
Citrus medica, a citrus fruit resembling a huge, rough LEMON. Some varieties may be as much as 30 cm (1′) long. Most of the bulk is thick, dense rind; inside this the flesh is dryish and may be either sour or sweet, with a weak lemon flavour. The rind, which has a unique, resinous fragrance, is the most useful part.
The citron, like the lemon and LIME, is native to NE India, where it was used from early times as a perfume and in medicine. The earliest reference to it is in the Vajasaneyi Samhita, a collection of religious texts dating from before 800 BC, in which it is called jambila. The fruit seems always to have had a curious connection with religion and magic, and a high reputation as medicine, being regarded as an antidote to almost any poison and indeed almost a panacea.
Before 600 BC the citron had spread to Persia, then ruled by the Medes. From there it reached Babylonia, where it came to the notice of the exiled Jews, who later brought it back to Palestine. In 325 BC the army of Alexander the Great, returning from India to Macedonia, brought word of the citron to Europe; and soon afterwards the Greek writer Theophrastus described it, using the term ‘apple’ in its very general sense (usual in classical times), and under the heading ‘the trees and herbs special to Asia’:
The Median or Persian apple is not eaten, but is very fragrant, as also is the leaf of the tree. And if the ‘apple’ is placed among clothes, it keeps them from being motheaten. It is also useful when one has drunk deadly poisons, for being given in wine it upsets the stomach and brings up the poison: also for producing sweetness of breath.
Early attempts to grow the citron in Greece and Italy failed. However, the fruits, which keep very well, were imported as an exotic delicacy. Eventually, around the 1st century AD, perhaps because of a slight warming in the Mediterranean climate, it became possible to grow the fruit in parts of S. Europe (or further north in hothouses).
Later the citron gave its name to the whole group of citrus fruits as they became known in Europe, simply because it had been the first of them to arrive. There was also a confusion with its smaller and juicier relative the lemon (French citron, German Zitrone).
The citron did not reach China until the 4th century AD. When it did, a freak form (sometimes classified as var sarcodactyla) developed in which the fruit was separated into five (or more) lobes looking like the fingers of a hand. This variety, called fo shu kan (Buddha’s hand), was considered a symbol of happiness. For this reason and because of its especially fine scent, it was placed on household altars. Later it also became popular in Japan.
The ordinary citron also had religious symbolism from an early date. Perhaps because of its splendid size it came to represent wealth. In India the god of wealth, Kuvera, is always represented as holding a citron in one hand and a mongoose spewing jewels in the other.
In Orthodox Jewish practice a particular variety of citron, Etrog (which is also the Hebrew word for citron), is used during the joyous Feast of the Tabernacles, following the biblical commandment (Leviticus 23): ‘And ye shall take you on the first day the fruit of a beautiful tree … and ye shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days.’ The Hebrew phrase pri etz hadar, literally ‘the fruit of a beautiful tree’, has always been identified with the etrog.
What is clear is that early uses of the citron were purely religious or medical. Even as late as the times of Pliny the Elder (about AD 75) it did not figure as an ordinary food. Soon afterwards, however, the practice of cutting the rind into strips for culinary use began. The Romans soaked it in vinegar or GARUM (fish sauce) and other liquids. APICIUS gives several recipes.
After the fall of the Roman Empire the citron remained important in Arab cuisine. The Baghdad physician Muwaffaq Ed-Din Abd el-Latif bin Yusuf mentions an Egyptian citron containing ‘another citron complete with its yellow peel’–in other words, a navel. There were other varieties, ‘some of them as big as a watermelon’. The gradual introduction of sugar to the Arab world and later to Asia allowed citron rind to be candied.
Citrons are now used almost exclusively for the manufacture of candied peel; the Buddha’s hand variety is candied in China. Etrog citrons are in heavy demand in Jewish communities throughout the world for the Feast of the Tabernacles. The main producers are Italy, Greece, Corsica, Morocco, and Israel. Some are grown in the USA.
Although the citron is not particularly juicy, juice can be got from it. This was used for making a refreshing soft drink which was the precursor of lemonade. In Italy it was called acquacedrata, and in the 17th and 18th centuries the vendor of this, with a tank on his back, was a familiar sight in Italian cities. The term acquacedrata for lemonade is still occasionally heard.
World production of citrons is small. Apart from the two varieties already mentioned, Corsican (described as a ‘sweet’ citron because of its lack of acidity) and Diamante (acid flavoured) are of some importance. The cultivar Earle, which resembles Diamonte, originated in Cuba.
There are separate entries for CALAMANSI, CITRON, GRAPEFRUIT, LEMON, LIME, MANDARIN, MANDARIN LIMES, ORANGE, POMELO, UGLI, YUZU. Here, these fruits are considered as a family.
All citrus fruits are native to a region stretching from E. Asia southwards to Australia. Collectively they now constitute the third most important group of fruits; only the apples and pears, and the banana and plantain, surpass them in quantity produced and consumed.
Botanists have calculated that the history of the citrus trees goes back 20 million years, to a time when Australia was joined to Asia. Given this span of time, and the ease with which hybridization takes place, it is remarkable that so much of the development of the fruits has taken place in historical times, even in the last few centuries–the grapefruit dates back only to the 18th century.
One feature which gives citrus fruits a special quality is their unique internal structure. Inside the rind, the fruit is filled with small vessels called pulp vesicles, which contain juice. The vesicles are grouped in larger containers termed locules, one locule being one segment of e.g. an orange. The botanical name for this type of fruit is ‘hesperidium’.
Citrus fruits all have a more or less acid taste, due mainly to the presence of citric acid. This is widely used as a flavouring. In powder form, it is sometimes known as ‘sour salt’; and in the Near East it is known under the Turkish name limon tuzu, meaning lemon salt.
They also contain varying amounts of sugar and of bitter substances. The proportions of these constituents and the juiciness of the pulp determine whether they are edible or not. Most of the edible kinds have a strong orange or yellow colour, caused by various carotene pigments. (The colour of pink grapefruit is caused by a red carotene pigment, lycopene, but the deep red of blood oranges comes from an anthocyanin, the usual pigment of red fruits.) Tropical species tend to contain the green pigment chlorophyll which may mask the yellow colour, so that the fruits, e.g. limes, are green. If some species from cooler climates are grown in the tropics they too bear green fruits.
Why and where citrus fruits were first cultivated is not clear. However, the Monograph of Citrus, a Chinese document which was written in AD 1178, provides a detailed discussion of the growing of 27 varieties of sweet, sour, and mandarin oranges, as well as citrons, kumquats, and the trifoliate orange. The text indicates that, in China at least, cultivation had been practised for a long time.
Meanwhile citrus fruits had been spreading westwards. In India the Vajasaneyi Samhita, a collection of religious texts dating from before 800 BC, mentions the lemon and citron. The orange does not appear until about AD 100, in a medical treatise, the Charaka Samhita.
The citron was the first citrus fruit to reach Europe, which is why the whole group of fruits is called after one of its less important members. Its spread was helped more by its significance in religion and magic than by its culinary quality.
The orange and lemon seem to have arrived in Europe during the 1st century AD. A mosaic from Tusculum (now Frascati) of about AD 100 shows a basket containing lemon, citron, what are probably two oranges and another, smaller fruit which might be a lime.
After the fall of the Roman Empire the Arabs cultivated and disseminated the bitter orange, pomelo, lime, and sweet orange, between the 12th and 15th centuries. (The mandarin did not reach the western world until the beginning of the 19th century.)
The introduction of citrus fruits to the New World began directly after Columbus’ first voyage. From the 16th century onwards their spread in the Americas was rapid, culminating in the large industries which now exist in Florida and California. Orange and lemon trees were first planted in S. Africa by Dutch settlers in the mid-17th century. Orange, lime, and lemon arrived in Australia by the end of the 18th century.
Saunt (1990) provides an interesting table giving figures for world citrus production by main type and by hemisphere (northern/southern) and country. He points out that until recently the USA had led world production, but that Brazil is now in the lead. These two countries produce over 40% of the world citrus crop, but most of what they produce is processed rather than eaten fresh. Indeed, a third of the world’s citrus output is processed, mostly into frozen concentrated juice. The figures cited by Saunt show that, as one would expect, ‘Oranges are by far the most extensively produced citrus fruit.’
a French term which is usually met nowadays in the phrase civet de lièvre, which is a kind of HARE stew whose sauce has been thickened with the animal’s blood. However, in the early Middle Ages civets were made with eggs, veal, oysters, and much besides. As the author of the MENAGIER DE PARIS (14th century) explained to his young bride, the essential features of the civet were simply some fried onions and the use of breadcrumbs to bind the sauce of whatever dish was being made. Etymologists would say that if one were to go even further back one would find that a civet was simply a dish containing cives, i.e. onions or spring onions (the word cives varied in meaning in medieval times).
By the 17th century most of the aforementioned civets had disappeared and the civet de lièvre was by far the most important civet. In modern times the name of the dish does not evoke cives or thickening with breadcrumbs but simply a dish of blackish colour, bound with blood and usually made with game. Another interesting change is in the status of the dish; it belonged originally to ‘grande cuisine’ but is now thought of rather as a rustic dish.
Philip and Mary Hyman
a speciality associated with the Limousin region of C. France. In its original form it is a CUSTARD or FLAN with numerous cherries (traditionally, the first red ones of the summer) embedded in it, the whole being baked in a large earthenware dish and served either hot or cold.
There have been debates about the type of cherry to be used and whether or not the fruits should be left with their stones in, as traditionalists recommend. Modern recipes often call for lining the dish with pastry, so that the end result looks more like a cherry tart than a true clafoutis.
In the course of this century the clafoutis has gone from being a local preparation to national status as a popular dessert, and this has exposed it to experimental variations by innovative chefs. Although other fruits which are related to cherries, such as small plums and greengages, can legitimately be used in a clafoutis, the use of mangoes, for example, may be thought to be straying too far from the original.
a general name variously applied to a few, some, or many (but never all) edible BIVALVES. Clam is a shortened form of clam-shell.
Strictly, the name should refer only to those bivalves which can close their hinged shells completely, since it is derived from the verb clam, meaning shut. On this basis, almost all bivalves would qualify as clams; although, paradoxically, the SOFT-SHELLED CLAM and the RAZOR CLAM would not, since their shells always gape open slightly. In practice, however, those bivalves which are very well known and have their own names, for example the OYSTER and the MUSSEL, are rarely referred to as clams. And the name is used so much more in N. America than in Britain that some British people have the impression that clams are an American phenomenon. In fact, the clams which are eaten with such gusto in N. America exist also on the European side of the Atlantic; but they are rarely consumed in Britain or other countries to the north of France, although a start has been made in cultivating some species on the south coast of England and it is reasonable to suppose that the American pattern of consumption will eventually be replicated in NW Europe. Meanwhile it is of interest that the French reserve their word ‘clam’ for the species called QUAHOG in N. America.
The American interest in clams, especially the above-mentioned quahog (or littleneck or hardshell clam), the SOFT-SHELLED CLAM, and the SURF CLAM, no doubt derives from the experience of early settlers in adopting some of the eating habits of the American Indians, who had not failed to take advantage of the rich harvest on their shores. See also CLAMBAKE and CHOWDER.
For important clams of the Pacific coast of N. America see WASHINGTON CLAMS; PISMO CLAM.
In Australasia the name ‘clam’ is not in common use, although many bivalves which could well be called clams (see e.g. TOHEROA; TUATUA; PIPI) are prized. In SE Asia the name occurs in a somewhat haphazard fashion wherever English-language terms are in use, but most notably for the GIANT CLAM.
Particulars are given under HAMAGURI of the species most favoured in Japan and a few others.
European bivalves which might well be called clams are described under CARPET-SHELL, VENUS SHELLS, and VERNI. Some of these are found in other parts of the world too.
Minor uses of the name ‘clam’ include ‘sand clams’, for some of the very numerous clams which live in the sand. It is not a current term in English-speaking countries, except for some supposedly common names which are used only by conchologists, but has been applied to some SE Asian clams, as mentioned under VENUS SHELLS.
an American institution which can be approached in various ways: as a matter for anthropological or sociological study (see the essay by Kathy Neustadt in Humphrey and Humphrey 1988); or as a rite whose differing details in the various states where it happens should be ritually compared; or in a sit-back-and-let’s-just-enjoy-it mode. The last is chosen here. The enjoyable prose which constitutes the rest of this article is from the great Mrs Lincoln (1891).
An impromptu clam bake may be had at any time at low tide along the coast where clams are found. If you wish to have genuine fun, and to know what an appetite one can have for the bivalves, make up a pleasant party and dig for the clams yourselves. A short thick dress, a shade hat, rubber boots,–or, better still, no boots at all, if you can bring your mind to the comfort of bare feet,–a small garden trowel, a fork, and a basket, and you are ready. Let those who are not digging gather a large pile of driftwood and seaweed, always to be found along the shore. Select a dozen or more large stones, and of them make a level floor; pile the driftwood upon them, and make a good brisk fire to heat the stones thoroughly. When hot enough to crackle as you sprinkle water upon them, brush off the embers, letting them fall between the stones. Put a thin layer of seaweed on the hot stones, to keep the lower clams from burning. Rinse the clams in salt water by plunging the basket which contains them in the briny pools near by. Pile them over the hot stones, heaping them high in the centre. Cover with a thick layer of seaweed, and a piece of old canvas, blanket, carpet, or dry leaves, to keep in the steam. The time for baking will depend on the size and quantity of the clams. Peep in occasionally at those around the edge. When the shells are open, the clams are done. They are delicious eaten from the shell, with no other sauce than their own briny sweetness. Melted butter, pepper, and vinegar should be ready for those who wish them; then all may ‘fall to’. Fingers must be used. A Rhode Islander would laugh at any one trying to use a knife and fork. Pull off the thin skin, take them by the black end, dip them in the prepared butter, and bite off close to the end. If you swallow them whole, they will not hurt you. At a genuine Rhode Island clam bake, blue-fish, lobsters, crabs, sweet potatoes, and ears of sweet corn in the gauzy husks are baked with the clams. The clam steam gives them a delicious flavour. Brown bread is served with the clams, and watermelon for dessert completes the feast.
a Scottish potato and turnip dish which is a recommended accompaniment for HAGGIS. The traditional recipe, according to Marian McNeill (1929), calls for potatoes and turnip to be cooked separately then mashed together with the addition of butter and chives.
is the process of clearing a liquid of suspended particles. True, butter is not thought of as a liquid, and butter is clarified (see BUTTER and GHEE), as are other fats; but otherwise the definition holds.
In the kitchen, things which may need clarification are STOCK, clear SOUP, ASPIC, JELLY, etc. The agents of clarification are various. Filtration is simplest but will not catch the smallest particles. A change in temperature may suffice, if followed by drawing off the liquid from above or from below. Or ‘hunter-catchers’ may be let loose in pursuit of the particles, as when egg white and eggshell are employed or a few slices of potato are heated in used cooking oil. Even more drastic are the ‘hunter-killers’, in the shape of proteolytic or pectolytic enzymes which do not merely trap the offending material but destroy it.
also known as clary sage, Salvia sclarea, is a herb of S. and C. Europe whose aromatic leaves were more used in the past than now. The German name, Muskatellersalbei, indicates their past use to give a flavour to Muscatel wine (also to vermouths and some liqueurs). Clary is said to have been introduced to England in the 16th century. Evelyn (1699) commented: ‘when tender not to be rejected, and in Omlets, made up with Cream, fried in sweet Butter, and eaten with Sugar, Juice of Orange, or Limon.’ However, culinary use is now rare.
Our knowledge of ancient Greek cuisine is tantalizingly incomplete, although (as explained by Dalby, 1996) there is a larger corpus of evidence than has been generally realized. This reflects the fact the subjects other than food have tended to preoccupy classical scholars.
In the civilization depicted in the Homeric epics, the Iliad and Odyssey (8th century BC), there is little evidence of any elaborate methods of cookery. Meals as described in these poems consisted of bread with unspecified relishes, spit-roasted meat, and red wine; but there are references also to fish, cheese, honey, and orchard fruit (apples, pears, figs, pomegranates). There is no sign of any long-distance trade in foodstuffs, whether luxuries or necessities. Named wines and aged wines were appreciated.
But there is room for endless debate on how closely the ‘Homeric’ world resembled any real time and place.
By the 5th and 4th centuries BC a highly developed cuisine was practised in many Greek towns. Greeks of the mainland knew that this had come about under overseas influence. Some recipes were said to be Lydian (from the rich and civilized kingdom in W. Asia Minor) or Ionian (from the Greek settlements in and near Lydia). Others had come from the prosperous Greek colonies in Sicily; Sicilian cooks were famous. There was widespread trade in wine, oil, and luxury foodstuffs and an awareness that quality could be linked with geographical origin. Athens, which had during the 5th century rapidly become a large city, depended on imports even for staple foods. Growers of fruit and vegetables developed varieties that varied in quality, time of ripening, and soil and water requirements.
After Alexander’s conquests a material civilization with many Greek features, now known as ‘Hellenistic’, spread through the E. Mediterranean and Near East. The local food habits of towns in Greece were attracting antiquarian interest, but the wealthy demonstrated their wealth by lavish entertaining in a new style influenced by Macedonian, Persian, and other cuisines and customs. No sudden change occurred when most of the region became part of the Roman Empire. The cookery of Rome (see CLASSICAL ROME) itself came under strong Hellenistic influence. Meanwhile trade within the Mediterranean area continued to grow; crop varieties were exchanged and tested in new environments; new fruits (peaches, cherries, lemons) were introduced from the East; spices began to be imported from Persia, India, and beyond.
The staple foods of Greeks when leading a settled life were WHEAT and BARLEY. At home these were baked into loaves in clay ovens or under ashes; travellers and soldiers probably more often boiled them as gruel or porridge. Poor people supplemented this diet with little more than fruit, mushrooms, and vegetables gathered from the wild. Many could afford to add olive oil and flavourings such as cheese, onion, garlic, and salt fish (e.g. anchovy, goby). On the tables of the wealthy, the variety of fish and meat dishes and the many savoury and sweet confections were still typically preceded by wheat and barley loaves.
An elaborate dinner in 4th-century BC Athens began with the serving of loaves in baskets.
A relatively light first course consisted of a variety of appetizing relishes, paropsides, to eat with the bread; quantities served were small. A single large platter might be offered in turn to each guest, containing a selection of perhaps half a dozen of the following: oysters, SEA URCHINS, shrimps fried in honey, aphye ‘small fry’, fried or stewed sliced squid, pieces of galeos (smooth hound, see DOGFISH) baked or boiled and served with MULBERRY sauce, pieces of STURGEON, pieces of EEL, slices of salt TUNA; little FIGPECKERS in sweet pastry, thria (minced salt fish or other ingredients baked in a pickled fig leaf), cheese; bolboi (grape hyacinth BULBS) baked in ashes and served with a cheese and SILPHIUM sauce; asparagus, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, and other vegetables, olives of different types, garlic. Sliced egg is mentioned as a garnish. At a very large gathering whole fish dishes might also be served as entrées. At more everyday dinners etnos (pea or bean soup), phake (lentil soup), or bolbophake (bulb-and-lentil soup) took the place of daintier delicacies here.
The first course might be divided from the second by the serving of some small CAKES. Some descriptions, however, imply that the two courses were scarcely distinct. The baskets of BREAD would be replenished to accompany the main dishes next described.
The main course consisted of a selection of more generous fish, poultry, and meat dishes. Most frequently listed are eel, conger eel, tuna, sea bass, skate, ray, red mullet, grey mullet, glaukos (an unidentified fish), hake, sole, sea perch; chicken, duck, goose; beef, pork, WILD BOAR, mutton, goat, HARE (the only game commonly available in Athens). Meat was spit roasted or grilled, not oven roasted. Whole animals required to be slaughtered and prepared by a professional mageiros (‘butcher-cook’) with appropriate religious ritual: if this became too expensive the main course might be limited to fish. Meat could, however, be included more cheaply in the form of ham, tripe (served in silphium sauce), pigs’ trotters (see FEET), UDDER, womb, intestines, liver, snout, ears, and cheeks, lamb’s and kid’s HEAD and feet, ox tongue, intestines, and feet, pork and beef sausages, and blood puddings; generally, see OFFAL; BLOOD SAUSAGES; etc.
Between main course and dessert, wine was first served. It continued to circulate during dessert and the conversation and entertainment that followed. It was normally drunk much diluted with water. Wines of Chios, Lesbos, Thasos, and the coast of Macedonia had lasting popularity.
Dessert, called deuterai trapezai (literally, ‘second tables’), consisted of cakes and sweetmeats (mostly very sweet, with an emphasis on HONEY and SESAME), cheese (served with honey), eggs (presumably hard boiled), CHICKPEAS, nuts such as walnuts and almonds, fresh fruit such as quinces, pears, grapes, and figs, and dried fruit, especially figs and raisins.
The invariable constituent of the first two courses was bread, and of the third, wine.
Meals in Ionia and the Aegean islands were apparently not very different from those in Athens. Elsewhere in Greece barley was commoner than wheat, which Athens could afford to import from the Black Sea. In S. Greece and Crete our limited information suggests that more game was available, that meat broth and cheese (both served early in the meal) were important, and that fish was not much eaten.
The Hellenistic menu differed from the classical Athenian in several ways. New kinds of bread became popular, some apparently native to Cappadocia and Syria. Oven-roasting of meat was introduced from the East, allowing the development of large and elaborate stuffed meat dishes, which afterwards became typical of Roman cuisine. Following Macedonian preference, wine was served earlier in the meal and with less admixture of water. Fresh fruit and salad vegetables might be offered among the hors d’œuvres. Meat might appear in the first course and in the dessert (as roast THRUSHES, for example).
Much cooking was probably done out of doors, and took the form of grilling, roasting, frying, or boiling over a fire, or baking in hot ashes; the clay oven was perhaps reserved for bread. Cooks depicted in Athenian comedy of the 4th century BC happily list the methods they preferred for preparing various dishes (and, in particular, various kinds of fish). Although all too brief for the non-initiate, these laconic instructions are consistent enough with one another to carry some conviction: there clearly was a body of knowledge that professionals and household cooks learnt and transmitted by word of mouth and by example. At least one cookery book, by Mithaecus, had been written (there were others later) but only a few scraps survive. Also in the 4th century Archestratus of Syracuse had written a humorous gastronomic poem, evidence that the expertise of cooks could be acquired by interested laymen and that travel and trade was encouraging the appreciation of local produce and regional cuisine.
Comedy cooks sometimes list the range of ingredients they would expect to have at hand. These lists include thyme, oregano, fennel, dill, sage, rue, parsley, fig leaf, coriander leaf, and other herbs; raisins, olives, capers; onions, garlic, and leek; cumin and sesame seed; almonds; olive oil, vinegar, grape juice; eggs, pickled fish, salt. This list contains no eastern spices (pepper was just beginning to be known) and indeed nothing not found close to Athens. In classical Athenian cuisine the only commonly used ingredients that had to come from far away were silphion (dried silphium sap) and kaulos (silphium stem) from Cyrenaica; horaion and other forms of salted tuna, of which Byzantium was a major exporter; garos (see GARUM) manufactured at several Black Sea ports; and sumach. The trade in these products, like that in fish generally, in wine, and in wheat, was in Greek hands.
Greeks commonly ate two meals a day, a lighter ariston at the end of the morning and a heavier deipnon in the early evening; among the leisured classes the latter might lead into a potos or symposion (a drinking party, often with things to eat as well) which could go on all night.
In some areas of S. Greece the typical meal in classical times appears to have been a communal one, served in a public hall. In ‘Homeric’ houses, large or small, meals took place in the one main room, megaron; diners sat on chairs and stools. In Athens and other cities, by the 4th century, houses of the middle and upper classes had more rooms than this, and ordinary meals would take place in a less public location. One room, andron, was however reserved for men’s entertaining and was furnished with couches on which guests reclined (one or two per couch), a fashion imported from eastern civilizations. At the beginning of the meal a small table, freshly scrubbed, was placed in front of each diner or of each couch. Food from the serving dishes might be taken directly onto the table, or onto bread, and eaten with the fingers; for soups and stews a bowl might be supplied. Bread served for spoons. When dessert was about to be brought the tables were changed.
In classical Athens, and in much of the rest of Greece in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, women who were present at men’s dinners and symposia were in the categories of hetairai (‘girl friends’ and prostitutes) and hired entertainers. Celebrations and family parties might be held at home or might take place at a temple, either out of doors or in purpose-built dining rooms. When not entertaining, a man might be served with food by his wife or household women. Slaves and children of both sexes ate with the women. In all these cases it was the rule that free men ate apart from the rest of the household, whether at a different time, in a different place, or from different dishes.
Throughout the ancient period food was a medium of patronage and dependence. In the more public circumstances of Homeric households women, children, servants, beggars, and animals are described as present at the fringes of men’s meals, sometimes favoured with gifts of food and drink; in an age that knew nothing of money, entertainment was a good way to request and repay services. Later, the dependants (episitioi, parasitoi) of powerful Athenians, the serf caste (helotai) of Sparta, and the courtiers (kolakes, flatterers) of monarchs were fed by their masters, and similarly paid for their food with more or less tangible services. Cities offered dinner in the prytaneion, a public building containing dining rooms, as a welcome to ambassadors and as a reward to benefactors. Democracies provided food, or a subsistence allowance, in return for jury service and attendance at public functions. Food or the means to buy it was also, naturally, provided in return for military service, at least where the fruits of victory were to go to the state: on freebooting expeditions, from which the participants benefited, they had to feed themselves.
In classical Athens professional (male) COOKS, whose work was linked to religious observances, possessed relatively high status. They hired out the services of themselves and their slaves; in each household help would be available to them from those who did the everyday cooking.
Literature depicts men, not women, preparing meat. Women, however, typically carried out most other culinary tasks, particularly grinding flour and baking bread. At men’s entertainments service was provided by the host’s male slaves or by servants hired for the occasion. His household women would not be seen. Entertainment during a symposion might be got up by the participants (in the form of songs, riddles, and competitive games) or arranged by the host, who could hire slave acrobats and musicians.
Andrew Dalby
READING:
Roman gastronomy, or gluttony, impresses all who read the literature of the great Mediterranean empire of the past. Feasting was a central feature of its society. The cuisine of Rome, much influenced by that of CLASSICAL GREECE and the Near East, is the direct ancestor of the national cuisines of most of W. Europe. It can be reconstructed through descriptions in Latin literature, through ancient scientific and technical writings–including the recipe book known as Apicius–and through archaeology. Notable here are the finds at Pompeii, the city buried in AD 79 by the disastrous eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Founded, it was said, by Romulus and Remus in 753 BC, on the banks of the Tiber in C. Italy, Rome was a country town whose power grew and grew until it was the centre of what may fairly be called a world empire. In the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC Rome fought and defeated the Carthaginians of N. Africa, opening the way to domination of the whole W. Mediterranean. In the 2nd and 1st centuries BC successive victories in Greece and the East ensured that a single political entity was governing the entire Mediterranean and its hinterland by the time of Christ–the time at which the first two emperors, Augustus (ruled 27 BC–AD 14) and Tiberius (14–37), were establishing their power. Later conquests included Britain (from AD 43) and Dacia (modern Romania, AD 106). Crises in the 3rd and 4th centuries led to the division of the Empire into two parts, which had quite different fates. In the East, the Byzantine Empire (see BYZANTINE COOKERY) was the direct continuation of the Roman. The Western Empire crumbled, disappearing in AD 476, but the ‘barbarian’ kingdoms that succeeded it inherited Roman dietary ideas and developed a way of life which had many Roman features.
Even before the eastern conquests, Rome had become rich enough to spend enthusiastically on imported luxury foods and wines, and the fashion for lavish banquets grew. The price of slave cooks rose steeply. Moralists inveighed against these developments, but in vain. Meanwhile, other changes affected the Roman diet. Successively, new territories were providing the opportunity for experimentation in agriculture and food production. Romanization in the provinces encouraged the demand that what was available in the capital should also be available more widely. The effect on Britain, for example, was that vines, peaches, walnuts, celery, coriander, and carrots were first planted here in Roman times, and wine, olive oil, olives, figs, lentils, chickpeas, rice were among commodities now first imported.
Many special features of Roman administrative and economic life have left their marks on the food and cuisine of the vast region that was once the Empire. Great frontier armies, whose zones of recruitment ensured movement and mixture of populations, required reliable, standardized supplies on well-built roads. Inscriptions show that periodic markets existed (every eight days in Italian towns; twice a month in N. Africa; monthly or three times a month in Asia Minor) encouraging local and regional trade. Annual fairs, often religious in spirit, attracted wide interest; tax concessions, and special local coin issues, are evidence of the importance of these fairs in fostering travel and trade.
For modern readers Roman prose literature begins, about 175 BC, with the Farming Manual of the statesman Cato, which includes recipes for cakes, for preserves, and for flavoured wines suitable for farmhouse production. Later the personal, sometimes satirical poetry of the Augustan period is full of information on food and dining among the élite. The largest surviving fragment of the Satyricon by Petronius (probably Nero’s courtier, died AD 66) is the famous ‘Dinner of Trimalchio’, a vigorous satire on the luxurious lifestyle of the newly rich. The series of biographies of emperors by the imperial archivist Suetonius (The Twelve Caesars, written about 115) opens a window into palace lifestyles, in which feasts might indeed turn into Roman orgies. Lives of poorer people are depicted in the fictional Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass) of Apuleius (born 125), and in some saints’ lives. The encyclopedic work by PLINY (died 79 AD), Natural History, devotes books 12–19 to a survey of plants and their products, with close attention to fruits, vegetables, and wines, and is in Latin. Meanwhile medical, scientific, and scholarly texts were usually written in Greek, the second language of the Empire: examples are a dietary manual, On the Properties of Foods, by the famous physician GALEN (129–99), and the Deipnosophists of ATHENAEUS (c.AD 200), a miscellany of literary research on food, wine, and entertainment. The only recipe book that survives from the ancient world is, however, in Latin. This is APICIUS, compiled perhaps in the 4th century AD.
It was a commonplace of Roman food writing to despise complicated dishes designed for show rather than for taste. Yet, in practice, Rome bought the luxury foods and spices of the whole Mediterranean and beyond: the pepper of S. India and even the cloves and ginger of the Spice Islands made their way to Rome. The recipes of Apicius are so lavish in spices that the flavour of the main ingredients must often have been swamped. Whatever poets said, rich households must have spent much money and slave labour on the finding of rare ingredients and the elaboration of showpiece dishes. The parrot WRASSE and the DORMOUSE fetched high prices not because of their flavour but because of the way they looked on the table. PEACOCKS, and peahen’s eggs, were likewise in demand for their rarity more than their quality. Fashion ruled.
It was also a commonplace to boast of the freshness and simplicity of the farm produce that one was offering to one’s guests. The moral of these literary menus was that the host was at heart an old-fashioned Roman who, like Cato, kept a close eye on his farm and his farm manager. Cato’s own fulsome praise for CABBAGE goes together with stories later told of some emperors’ food preferences. Augustus ‘preferred the food of the common people, especially the coarser sort of bread, little fish, new hand-pressed cheese, and green figs from a twice-bearing tree’ (Suetonius).
Rome’s status as an overgrown city-state is signalled by one of the special privileges enjoyed by inhabitants of the city: the free BREAD ration. Interruptions in this led to riots: its continuity was eventually assured by Rome’s annexation of Egypt at the suicide of Cleopatra in 30 BC. Thereafter, huge grain ships left Alexandria regularly through the sailing season, bringing wheat to Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber. It was on such a ship that St Paul reached Italy after having been shipwrecked on Malta. Roman bakers baked leavened bread, both white and wholemeal. Small-scale baking required a dome-shaped baking-crock, testum clibanus: fragments of these are often found by archaeologists. A commercial bakery, complete with fossilized loaves, has been excavated at Pompeii.
The traditional staple food of early Italy had been not wheat bread but puls, emmer (see WHEAT) PORRIDGE. To early writers this was so well known that no recipes were needed, so none survive. The staple diet of the Roman provinces varied considerably, depending on climate and local custom. Although BARLEY had been considered a respectable, even a desirable, food in parts of Greece and Italy, Roman soldiers came to look on barley as ‘punishment rations’. This served to increase the demand for wheat wherever Roman armies were stationed. In Britain and Gaul, however, malted barley was indeed required for the manufacture of beer, a local speciality for which there was a steady demand in legionary camps.
Always in use in the Roman kitchen were OLIVE OIL, FISH SAUCE, and wine. All three were manufactured and distributed on a large scale. Fish sauce was the major source of dietary salt: scarcely any Apicius recipes call for pure salt. Must and wine concentrated by boiling were also much used in flavouring, as were honey and dates. Many recipes begin with the instruction ‘Pound pepper and lovage’, a reminder that both local LOVAGE and exotic PEPPER and aromatics were appreciated. Other commonly used flavourings were ONION, MUSTARD, DILL, FENNEL, RUE, SAVORY, THYME, MINT, PINE NUTS, CARAWAY, CUMIN, GINGER, and ASAFOETIDA, the C. Asian substitute for the SILPHIUM (laserpicium) that had been so much appreciated by the Greeks.
Pliny and Galen–both connoisseurs, to judge from their writings–provide full information on the wines that Romans drank with their meals. Italy had many fine wines to boast of. Falernian wine, from hillsides in N. Campania, was one which kept its reputation throughout the Empire. Italian vintages were known by the name of one of the consuls elected for the year: the Opimian vintage, of 121 BC, was legendary, its wines still valued (though not truly drinkable) 200 years later. It was in Roman times that the wine-growing regions of Spain, Gaul (France), and Germany came to real economic importance. Long-distance transport of wines was less risky if they were ‘cooked’ and sweetened with honey: it was in this form that Greek wines were enjoyed in Rome.
Romans tended to eat little during the first part of the day: a breakfast, ientaculum, was a snack that many did not trouble to take at all, and only the greedy wanted a big lunch, prandium. There was no better preparation for a big evening meal, cena, the one big meal of the day, than a couple of hours at the baths. These were fashionable meeting places, ideal locations for informal business discussions. One could easily spend a whole evening at the baths, for food and wine were available: as Jérôme Carcopino said rather censoriously in Daily Life in Ancient Rome (1940), ‘many congregated there to overeat and drink and indulge other disreputable tastes’.
City dwellers in imperial Rome, many of whom lived in tenement flats, had little opportunity to cook anything but the simplest of food for themselves unless they wished to risk setting fire to the whole building: these insulae did sometimes burn down because an occupant had tried to cook without safety precautions. Street food was, however, always available to the city dweller. Cakes and sweets, mulled wine, hot sausages, and porridge were on sale from street stalls and at cookshops. ‘In the tavern all are equally free,’ wrote Juvenal (born 67 AD) with an undertone of disapproval: ‘all drink from a common cup, the couch is barred to no man, the table is no closer to one than it is to another.’ The philosopher Seneca (died 65 AD) gives us the sounds of the busy street just outside his apartment window: ‘pancake-sellers and a sausage-vendor and a confectioner and all the proprietors of cookshops, selling their wares with miscellaneous shouts, each in his distinctive accent.’
For the peasant population of the ancient countryside, cooking was a shared task, but more often performed by the wife. Large households had kitchens staffed with slaves, the skilled cook himself often being an expensive and carefully chosen acquisition.
Typical larger Roman houses had a special dining room, the triclinium. Three couches arranged in a U, each large enough for three diners, surrounded a central table. A house with a big enough garden might well have a garden dining area, too, shaded by vines and creepers, with three stone couches sloping gently upwards to the middle–to be made comfortable with cushions and pillows. The open side of the square was for waiters to come and go.
Servants took off guests’ sandals as they reclined, and brought water to wash their hands. A sequence of dishes began with the gustatio, appetizers, followed by a sweet aperitif, mulsum or conditum. The appetizers might be more varied and more costly than the main course, though not so bulky. We know of a religious dinner, attended by Julius Caesar, at which sixteen appetizers awaited the priestly celebrants. They ranged from SEA URCHIN and CLAMS to slices of VENISON and WILD BOAR.
The main courses were accompanied by bread and wine. Waiters must have been forever coming and going, bringing new courses, clearing away, supplying perfumed water for finger-rinsing: for diners ate with their hands, with the occasional help of a knife. Music and dance, performed by slaves, might well accompany the drinking, which tended to continue long after the meal itself was over.
A napkin, which lay in front of the diners as they reclined, might serve as a knapsack to take home the little gifts of food or wine with which a host would regale his friends as they departed. Similar gifts were made to dependants not lucky enough to be invited to a real dinner. Martial (1st century AD) wrote a collection of short poems intended to accompany such gifts. They are the most obvious sign that hospitality helped to articulate the patron/client relations that permeated Roman society. Latin poems often seem to beg for dinner invitations–and poets were only the most vocal among the crowd of hangers-on of the rich and powerful. The Greek satirist Lucian (2nd century AD) wrote a convincing sketch of daily life in a rich Roman household, addressed to a friend who had been offered a post as private tutor: placed at the lowest table, Lucian warned, he would be sneered at by slaves and would taste little of the fine cuisine except the mallow leaves which garnished the serving dishes.
Upper-class Romans, like Etruscans but unlike Greeks, did not segregate the sexes at meals. Roman women, it was said, once sat demurely at the foot of their husbands’ dining couches: but by imperial times they too reclined. It was also said that in the old days women did not drink wine, and that the kiss a Roman husband gave his wife when returning home was a way of assuring himself that this rule had been kept.
Andrew Dalby
READING:
Galium aparine, a herb also known as goosegrass, which has a wide distribution in Europe, Asia to Siberia, and N. and S. America. Its common names are justified by the way in which the narrow pointed leaves stick or ‘cleave’ to persons or animals, and the practice of feeding it to goslings and geese.
The plant was formerly used as an ingredient in soups which would otherwise have been too greasy.
Parkinson (1629) had remarked that ‘Clevers … is of subtill parts: it is familiarly taken in broth to keepe them lean and lanke, that are apt to grow fat.’ The same author noted that ‘the herb serveth well the Country people in stead of a strainer, to cleare their milke from strawes, haires, or any other thing that falleth into it.’ The Greek author Dioscorides had recorded this practice in classical times and such sieves were still in use in Sweden in the 20th century.
Of the scores of supposed ‘coffee substitutes’, the seeds of cleavers are among the least implausible. The plant is related to the coffee plant, and its roasted seeds do have a similar aroma.
Cleavers is also called bedstraw, a name which it shares with its close relation G. verum. This plant, often called lady’s bedstraw, is native to temperate Europe but has become naturalized in N. America. It is not normally eaten, but its flowers contain substances which can curdle milk and they have sometimes been used instead of RENNET in cheese-making. The French name caille-lait means ‘curdle-milk’.
G. odoratum is WOODRUFF.
a factor which varies considerably (from Greenland’s icy mountains to India’s coral strands, as the hymn puts it), and which largely determines what foods can be grown where.
A change in climate may have consequences so severe as to destroy entire communities. A classic example is the Viking colony in Greenland, set up in the 11th century when the average temperature there was high enough for the growing of BARLEY and the grazing of CATTLE. In the 1370s the temperature fell steeply and the colony, unable to adapt to the changed conditions, collapsed. The original inhabitants, the Inuit, who lived by hunting and fishing, were much less affected by the cooling climate and have continued to live in Greenland.
The decline of the early Maya civilization in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico can also be attributed to climate change. In this case the weather became drier, a gradual shift which had been going on since 1600 BC. By 150 BC the land could no longer feed the people, who were obliged to abandon their cities and migrate inland. Lack of rain also caused the collapse of the Bronze Age Canaanite civilization in Palestine around 2000 BC.
It should be realized that climate change was not the only factor in these cases. The Viking colonists had allowed cattle to overgraze their pastures, and their arable land was badly affected by soil erosion. The Maya had become city dwellers, with more and more people making ever greater demands on a limited area of agricultural land. The Canaanites seem to have blamed the wrath of the gods for their troubles, and failed to adapt their agriculture to the drier conditions.
There is also a vicious circle at work. Lower rainfall reduces the amount of vegetation covering the ground, which reduces the amount of moisture that evaporates into the air. This depresses the formation of clouds, so that rainfall decreases further.
All these failures occurred because people failed to adapt to changing conditions. However, failure is not inevitable. In Palestine around the 2nd century AD, by now even drier than when the Canaanites had abandoned it, the Nabateans successfully irrigated crops by a complex system of rainwater channels and underground reservoirs. The Ethiopians adapted to changes in their climate (which was becoming drier) by growing TEF, a drought-resistant cereal.
Less dramatic examples concern crops grown at the limit of their climatic range. In the early Middle Ages there were vineyards in S. England and wine was made. The fall in temperature that forced the Vikings out of Greenland also affected Europe. From 1400 it was simply too cold for GRAPES to ripen. Europe continued to get colder; at the low point, in the 17th century, the Thames often froze so hard in winter that fairs were held on the ice. During the 19th century the climate slowly became milder, and by the middle of the 20th century it was once again warm enough to grow grapes in the south of England. Other crops have also been introduced; for instance, it is now possible to grow the hardier varieties of MAIZE.
Ralph Hancock
i.e. those of the genus Clitocybe, lack genuine, popular English names (though funnel-cap and funnel agaric are cited by some authors), and are not commonly eaten. However, a few of the numerous species, whose particular merits are described by Jordan (1975) and others, deserve mention.
C. flaccida, sometimes referred to as the tawny funnel-cap, has an orange or reddish brown cap, typically about 6 cm (2″) across. It is common in the autumn in coniferous woods. The acid taste can be turned to advantage if the fungus is pickled, or made into ketchup, or used in a piquant dressing for roast beef.
C. geotropa is often called tête de moine (monk’s head) in France, and likewise Mönchskopf in Germany, since its buff cap, which may measure up to 20 cm (8″) across, recalls a ‘shaven crown’. It appears in the autumn, often forming circles or lines, in clearings or grassy parts of woods, and makes good eating if picked young.
C. infundibuliformis is funnel-shaped, as the specific name indicates, and has a cap of variable colour: buff, ochre, brown, or reddish. A common species, whose season is summer and autumn. The aroma recalls anise and lavender.
C. odora, the anise clitocybe (similarly, clitocybe anise in France and seta anisada in Spain), has a more powerful aniseed smell, and is too strong to use by itself, but makes a good condiment, chopped or dried and ground, for addition to stews. Widely distributed in Europe and N. America, and known in Japan.
a Scottish speciality which is a sweet PUDDING steamed in a ‘cloot’ (cloth). A whole clootie dumpling–the best known of these sweet dumplings but not the only one–is of a round, flattened, ball-like shape, weighing anything from 115 to 900 g (4 oz to 2 lb), but the product is often sold in cut slices. Standard ingredients are flour, breadcrumbs, suet, dried fruit, eggs, treacle, spices, sugar, and milk, with a raising agent and often with some apple or carrot.
The clootie dumpling can be regarded as the sweet version of HAGGIS, the savoury pudding boiled in a sheep or pig’s stomach bag. Using a cloth or linen cloth instead, the sweet pudding mixture was made originally as the Scottish alternative to a celebration fruit cake for holidays, birthdays, and during winter solstice celebrations, known in Scotland as the Daft Days.
Easily made in the common domestic setting where there was no oven and the cooking was done solely over a fire in a large pot, these special-occasion dumplings usually contained a selection of ‘surprises’: a ring signifying marriage; a coin–wealth; a button–bachelordom; a thimble–spinsterhood; a wishbone–the heart’s desire; a horseshoe–good luck. Compared with rich celebration fruit cakes, or an English CHRISTMAS PUDDING, the dumpling mixture is much plainer. Clootie dumplings are sometimes served with cream. When cold they are often fried with bacon and eggs for breakfast.
Andrew Dalby
Rubus chamaemorus, one of the most delicious of all berries and one of the most costly, since it is confined to the northern regions of Europe and N. America and can be gathered in limited quantities only. In N. Scandinavia, where Finland, Sweden, and Norway meet, and the cloudberry thrives, the inhabitants of these peace-loving countries have been known to engage in ‘cloudberry wars’; and the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs maintains, or used to have, a special section for cloudberry diplomacy. In northern N. America, where the fruit may also be called the baked-apple berry or just ‘bake-apple’, it is not so highly esteemed, but is nonetheless a prized item. The berries are red when nearly ripe, and golden with a tinge of orange when ripe, and soft and juicy. They keep very well because of their high content of benzoic acid.
Bears are partial to cloudberries. News that cloudberries are plentiful in a given region is often followed by news that bears have been sighted there. But the reports of bears being sighted may be fabricated by local people to discourage others from coming to pick the berries.
Two varieties are recognized in Norway; molte and bekkemolte (brook cloudberry) which is a little bigger and with a stronger colour.
Most people encounter cloudberries in the form of preserves of one kind or another. Cloudberry jam is outstanding, and a fine accompaniment to ice cream or filling for pancakes. Cloudberries freeze successfully and can be kept thus for years.
the dried, unopened flower bud of an evergreen tree, Syzygium aromaticum, which belongs to the myrtle family and is native to the Moluccas (in E. Indonesia). Cloves are an important culinary spice, mainly cultivated in Zanzibar (Tanzania), the Malagasy Republic, and Indonesia. Indonesians use over 30,000 tonnes a year in the manufacture of their ‘kretek’ cigarettes, the largest single use of cloves.
The English name is from the French clou de girofle: literally, ‘nail of clove’, referring to the shape of the dried bud, the tree being a giroflier. The similarity to a nail is also noted in the Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Persian names. In Arabic individual cloves are called masamir qaranful, ‘nails of clove’, just as in French. The English mangled girofle into ‘gilofer’ and thence into ‘gilliflower’, an early name for the spice, then applied as ‘clove gilliflower’ to the clove-scented pinks growing in everyone’s garden.
Cloves were in use in China as early as the 3rd century BC, and have also been used in India since ancient times. They spread from Egypt throughout the Mediterranean region and then further north in Europe between the 2nd and 8th centuries AD.
Marco Polo, in the 13th century, mentioned seeing clove plantations in the E. Indies. The Portuguese, after taking possession of the Moluccas in 1514, controlled the clove trade for a century. The Dutch wrested the islands and the monopoly from them early in the 17th century, and used draconian measures to restrict the growing of cloves to the single island of Amboina; the penalty for cultivating or selling them elsewhere was death. French efforts to break the monopoly by securing plants and growing them in Mauritius, thanks to the derring-do of the aptly named Pierre Poivre (who also stole nutmeg), began to succeed towards the end of the 18th century; and subsequently led to the important plantations of Madagascar and Zanzibar.
Varieties of clove are defined by their place of origin. In the trade, Penang cloves are considered best, those of Zanzibar second, and Madagascar cloves third.
Some authorities do not accept the separation of the genus Syzygium from Eugenia. Be that as it may, the clove is closely related to the ROSE-APPLE, JAMBOLAN, and PITANGA. The tree is small and evergreen, and may live for a century or more. It flowers twice in the year, and it is the fully grown but still closed buds which are harvested to be dried and marketed. The four petals, with the stamens inside, form the quadrangular nail-like head of the clove.
Eugenol, which is also present in CINNAMON, is the substance which gives cloves their distinctive aroma.
There are two picking seasons in the year. The clusters of cloves have to be picked by hand, at just the right moment, when most of them will have developed a pink flush. Clove-picking, except for the young, small trees, or the lowest branches of big ones, is difficult. After picking, the stems are removed and the cloves carefully dried, when they assume their familiar brown colour. They keep well if stored in dry conditions, but some of the volatile oil will evaporate if storage is prolonged.
In India and some other Asian countries cloves are much used in connection with BETEL NUT chewing, but also have a role as a conventional spice in cookery. In western countries, they are a common pickling spice, e.g. in soused herring; they are also often stuck into onions and hams, and for various festive foods such as CHRISTMAS PUDDING, or drinks such as mulled wine. However, their main destination in the English kitchen, according to Elizabeth David (1970), is apple pie, whose taste, in her opinion, they spoil. She thought that the best use of whole cloves was in the ‘extraordinary candied walnuts of Turin’, black and soft after being cooked and half-crystallized, each with a clove stuck into the stalk end.
The addition of a single clove, or a fragment of one, is recommended in a wide variety of dishes, both sweet and savoury. Stobart (1980) comments that the addition of a clove to beef stock or to a stew gives it a richness whose source will be unidentified, and opines: ‘As a flavouring, cloves are best when kept below the level of recognition.’
READING:
an ingredient specified in early English recipes, especially of the 17th and early 18th centuries. What are meant are pinks, Dianthus caryophyllus, whose flowers were considered to have an attractive aroma like that of cloves. The spelling of ‘gilliflowers’ was highly erratic; ‘jelly-flowers’ occurs in Robert MAY (1685) as a garnish for a salad, and ‘gilliflewers’ in Hannah GLASSE (1747), to make a syrup, and there are numerous other variations.
leguminous plants which have leaves growing in groups of three, go together. Their main use is in feeding animals and providing nectar for bees; but although their importance for human food is thus at one remove it is considerable.
The common clovers, especially Trifolium repens, are among the most widely distributed and nutritious forage legumes of the world. The ‘sweetclovers’, of the genus Melilotus are among those favoured by honey bees. They also serve other purposes, for example as flavourings for certain soups, breads, and cheeses. The Swiss green cheese SCHABZIGER is usually flavoured and coloured by several herbs; exactly which is hard to determine, but M. officinalis and blue melilot, Trigonella caerulea, a species said to have been brought to Switzerland from Asia Minor by returning Crusaders (Montandon, 1980), are often cited.
a curious growth of which the various species include a few which are edible. A typical club fungus resembles a small white or yellow baseball bat standing on end, and may be as much as 30 cm (1′) tall. Clavariadelpha pistillaris has a more swollen top than most, and is almost the shape of a light bulb. Either can be cooked in any way suitable for an ordinary mushroom. Neither is especially good.
Although club fungus may be found in groups, each club is separate. It thus differs from the related CORAL FUNGUS.
Cyamopsis tetragonoloba, a leguminous plant known also as guar, whose pods grow in groups looking something like small bunches of bananas. It may be native to the Indian subcontinent, where it has been grown for centuries, mainly as a forage crop or for green manure. The young pods may be cooked in curry-type dishes, or fried. Sometimes the fully developed seeds are eaten as a vegetable.
In the 1950s it was discovered that the bean yields a gum which is of value in the food industry as an emulsifier, thickener, and stabilizer for salad dressings, ice cream, and other products. The plant is now cultivated in the south-west of the USA, and elsewhere, as a source of guar gum.
a technical term more familiar to cooks than is the companion term ‘flocculation’. The two are often confused, but have different meanings, and the distinction between them is worth knowing.
Flocculation and connected words such as flocculent (and the charming but neglected word ‘floccose’) are all derived from the Latin floccus, meaning a tuft or a lock of wool. Cirrus clouds may be described as having a flocculent appearance; and it is easy to see the resemblance between them and the loose, ragged patches of solid matter in a sauce which has separated.
Coagulation, on the other hand, refers to what is for the cook a much more serious state of affairs. Protein coagulates, i.e. hardens into a ‘cooked’ state, if subjected to a temperature of 74 °C (165 °F). This process is irreversible, as is readily understood if one imagines, for example, trying to unscramble scrambled eggs. Flocculation, in contrast, can be remedied. The two terms, with their different meanings, are subsumed in the vaguer term, CURDLING. This may suffice to indicate what is meant, but it is often better to use whichever of the two more precise terms is applicable.
an American term for a deep-dish PIE of cooked fruit (often apple or peach) with a thick crust on top. This usage seems to date back to the 1850s. Mariani (1994), comments:
This dish is called Bird’s nest pudding or ‘crow’s nest pudding’ in New England; it is served with a custard but no topping in Connecticut, with maple sugar in Massachusetts, and with a sour sauce in Vermont.
Cobbler dough can also be used as a topping for stewed meat dishes.
Cobbler can also refer to a kind of mixed alcoholic drink, and that meaning was recorded earlier than the above one.
See also PANDOWDY.
Rachycentron canadum, a fish of the open seas found in tropical waters all round the world except for the E. Pacific. Exceptionally, it may reach a length approaching 2 m (6′) and a weight of 40 kg (100 lb). The back and sides of adults are brown, with silvery stripes running along them. These stripes are presumably responsible for the common name ‘sergeant-fish’. Another common name is ‘crab-eater’; bestowed because this voracious fish does eat crustaceans, including crabs, with enthusiasm, although its diet includes other fish. In Australia it is officially known as ‘black kingfish’.
The cobia is a fine game fish, and good to eat. Its flesh has been compared to that of SPANISH MACKEREL, but is slightly coarser in texture.
a family of fungi of which there are 230 species in Britain alone. The English name refers to the gossamer veil which protects the gills when the cap is in its unexpanded state, and which bears some resemblance to a spider’s web. This feature is the most noticeable characteristic of these mushrooms, which in other respects such as size and coloration vary to a bewildering extent. They occur in China and Australia as well as in Europe and N. America.
Although a German author lists 40 cobweb-caps as edible (plus five toxic ones), only a few of these fungi are eaten by any save dedicated enthusiasts. For example, Phillips (1981) gives a straightforward ‘edible’ rating to only one European species, Cortinarius violaceus. However, French and Italian sources also recommend the brown-capped C. praestans, while Scandinavian authorities give a high rating to C. crocolitus, which has a yellowish cap with a tawny centre. Serzhanina and Zmitrovich (1978) list no cobweb-caps as ‘officially edible’ in Russia but point to literary evidence of some being eaten.
In the USA several of the species have been praised and McIlvaine (1902) reported that the number eaten had doubled in his time from less than a dozen to about a score. This notable increase may, however, have been largely attributable to his own experiments. He found C. violaceus (the American variety, which differs from the European, although both have a violet tinge) the best of the family; C. turmalis (yellow tan, plentiful in pinewoods, e.g. Maryland) of great value; C. cinnabarinus (red-flesh) radish flavoured; and the rare C. intrusus, which flourishes in cultivated mushroom beds, conservatories, etc. in the vicinity of Boston, ‘delicate, savoury, and a most accommodating renegade from its kind’, offering the additional convenience that it is available in February, generally a poor month for edible fungi.
There are several toxic species, so positive identification of any cobweb-caps to be eaten is essential. Young specimens should be chosen. There is no need to scrape off the scaly excrescences from the cap. All parts are fleshy and edible, and the flavour is mild.
a stimulant traditionally used in the Peruvian Andes and surrounding regions. It is the leaf of a small shrub, Exythroxylum coca, which grows at fairly high altitudes and of a less important species, E. novogranatense, grown lower down. Its use was originally a royal privilege among the Inca, but it is now widespread.
Coca leaves are chewed. They contain small amounts of the alkaloid cocaine. The effect is to increase endurance and suppress hunger, valuable among poor mountain folk who work hard and long on little sustenance. However, prolonged use causes addiction and lack of interest in food.
The traditional way of taking the drug is to chew the fresh leaves with lime and the ash of plants such as QUINOA. The leaves must be used soon, as they do not keep. For use in western countries, the cocaine is extracted by a straightforward chemical process which was discovered in 1860. At first cocaine was used only as a stimulant, but it soon became, and still is, widely abused. It may be sniffed in powder form or dissolved and injected. In 1884 it was discovered that cocaine was a local anaesthetic.
At this time the drink Coca-Cola was first being produced and marketed. Coca and cocaine did not then have their present evil reputation, so the name was given to the drink to encourage the idea that it was stimulating. Coca-Cola have always sought to keep their formula (in its successive versions, ably chronicled by Pendergrast, 1994) secret, but it is generally assumed that for a long time now it has contained no coca. It does probably contain COLA, a harmless stimulant.
READING:
a crimson dye used as a food colouring, is made from the dried, pulverized bodies of an insect, Dactylopius coccus, which is a parasite on cactus plants in America. When the female insect has mated, it settles on the cactus and becomes permanently fixed there, sheds all its limbs and swells into a round lump which looks more like an excrescence on the cactus than an insect. (The Latin word coccus means berry.) Several other kinds of insect behave thus, one of them being the KERMES bug which is native to the Old World and is also used to made a red dye.
The dye-making properties of the cochineal bug, already well known to American Indians, were soon recognized by the early European settlers in America. The kermes with which they were familiar in the Old World was expensive and the abundant cochineal insect could be used to make a cheap substitute. After exports to Europe began in 1518, the new product was first used to adulterate kermes but soon supplanted it; it gives a better colour. (It is said that in the 18th century the coats of the highest ranks in the British army were dyed red with cochineal, those of the middling grades with kermes, and those of the ‘redcoats’ of lower rank with a mere vegetable dye.)
Cochineal is now ‘cultivated’ in special plantations of cactus in several parts of tropical America. The dye is still popular despite competition from artificial colourings.
a Spanish meat and vegetable stew with a long history and a number of variations both within SPAIN and outside. It is the subject of a remarkable essay by Alicia Rios (1984), who explains that in all its numerous versions it is based on
slow and prolonged cooking that unites water, meat and horticultural products in a single pot. A single dish while it is cooking, it is tripled upon serving, for it provides three different courses (vuelcos, meaning overturns). The first course, or vuelco, is the soup; the second vuelco consists of a platter presenting the chickpeas with the beef, chicken and pork on top of them; and in the third vuelco the vegetables and sausages are served.
The Madrid version, cocido madrileno, is described as the central dish of that city’s gastronomy. There, the water is almost as important as the meat and vegetables. The purity of the water from the local sierras is seen as the secret of the success of this cocido. ‘It is still actually possible to see some purist people go with their water jug to the fountain of Plaza de Alcala to gather the water that will produce the miracle in the kitchen.’
The pot traditionally used (and now often replaced by a pressure cooker) is of earthenware, pot-bellied, glazed inside, and furnished with a tightly fitting lid. This is the famous olla, to which reference is made under OLIO.
So far as vegetables are concerned, the CHICKPEA is almost everywhere a ‘must’. As Alicia Rios puts it:
The chickpea presides over all cocidos and is the ancestral, unifying element of this family of dishes. Although all cocidos demand the presence of this golden leguminious pod, shaped, as the saying goes, like ‘an old woman’s head and a dressmaker’s backside’–it can be substituted by the white and red bean, as in the ‘Euskaldun’ cocido from Euskadi, the Basque country.
The orthodox Madrid cocido is otherwise characterized by potatoes and cabbage almost exclusively. However, the further one draws away towards the coast from the central plateau where Madrid is located, the more numerous the vegetables which are used. The variations are extensive:
Some cocidos will be salty, as in Castilla and the north: Leon, Santander, Galicia, Euskadi. In Andalucia and in the east (the Mediterranean basin), we find, perhaps because of the Moorish influence, a sweeter range of cocidos–containing onion, carrot, pumpkin or squash, sweet potato and even pears and quince; a wide range of nuances that includes the salty-salt, and the salt-sweet, and the sweet-sour (which can be achieved by a tomato sauce with a hint of vinegar in it). The presence in these regions of some meat balls called ‘pilotas’ … are symbolic traces of the hard-boiled eggs in the Sephardi adafina.