an outstandingly successful form of CRUSTACEAN, so much so that since the first crabs evolved in the Jurassic the number of species has multiplied to such an extent that within the order Decapoda (which includes LOBSTER, PRAWN, SHRIMP) some 4,500 of the 8,500 species are crabs.
The typical crab is thought of as a creature which scuttles sideways across the sea bottom or beach; and many crabs answer to this description. However, there are also swimming crabs and land crabs, and the range of sizes and configurations is huge. The tiny oyster (pea) crab is the size of a pea, whereas the giant Japanese spider crab may measure 3.6 m (12′) from claw tip to claw tip. The constant feature is possession of two claws and eight walking or swimming legs or ‘feet’, and that the whole creature is, like other crustaceans, contained within a hard exoskeleton which serves as protective armour except at those times when it has to be shed, as its occupant grows, and replaced by a new and larger one.
The most important crab fisheries take place in the N. Pacific, especially the Bering Sea, where king crabs of the genus Paralithodes and snow crabs of the genus Chionoecetes are taken in larger quantities than any other groups. These are processed in one way or another before reaching the consumer.
The W. Atlantic, including the Gulf of Mexico and the S. American coast down to Brazil, is another important region for crab fisheries, especially that for the blue crab, centred in Chesapeake Bay. The blue crab is third in catch by volume, worldwide.
The Pacific coastal waters of N. America yield the Dungeness crab, which, with its E. Atlantic opposite number, the feebly named but delicious ‘edible crab’, constitutes the fourth largest group.
It may be that a lack of full statistics for crab catches in SE Asia has prevented the regional group consisting of the mangrove crab (Scylla serrata) and swimming crabs (Portunus spp) from attaining their proper place in the league table. Thailand is, however, recognized as the third largest producer (after the USA and Japan), with the former Soviet Union and Brazil competing for fourth place.
Some crabs, such as the Dungeness and the European edible crab, yield meat from both claws/legs and body. The blue crab provides mainly body meat. Others, notably the king and snow crabs, furnish leg meat.
There is a similarity of flavour and texture between the white (claw/leg) meat of a crab and lobster meat. The latter is held in higher esteem, at least among those who can afford to buy it; but partisans of the more plebeian crabmeat challenge this, declaring that it can be just as good, or even better.
For particular species or groups, see BLUE CRAB; CRAB, COMMON; DUNGENESS CRAB; FIDDLER CRAB; HERMIT CRAB; HORSESHOE CRAB; KONA CRAB; LAGOON CRAB; LAND CRABS; MANGROVE CRAB; OYSTER CRAB; RED CRAB; ROCK CRAB; SAND CRAB; SHORE CRAB; SNOW CRAB; SPIDER CRAB; STONE CRAB; SWIMMING CRABS.
(or European crab) Cancer pagurus, the familiar large edible crab of W. and N. Europe. It may occasionally be found in the W. Mediterranean, but this is doubtful. The maximum width of the carapace is over 25 cm (10″) and the weight of the largest specimens can be as much as 5 kg (11 lb). The usual colour is pinkish or reddish-brown, with black tips to the claws.
There are some places where these crabs seem to grow larger than elsewhere. Street (1966) mentions the rocks round Cadgwith on the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall as one, and comments that the explanation is not known.
These edible crabs are of great importance in commerce, being more abundant than LOBSTERS and yet, in the opinion of many, producing meat of comparable quality. White meat comes from the claws only. The body produces brown meat, including the exceptionally large liver, which is a delicacy. On average the yield of meat from a crab will be one-third of its whole weight; and about two-thirds of this yield will be brown meat.
The meat varies in quality according to a number of factors. That of the male, which has larger claws than the female, is generally preferred. The sex of a crab can be easily determined by looking at the tail, which is curled up under the body; that of the female is broad and round, while that of the male is narrower and pointed.
It is usual to sell these crabs cooked; to which end they are steamed in huge containers, which used to present a dramatic sight at the old Billingsgate fish market in London.
sometimes shortened to ‘crab’, is the name given to any very small and sour apple, wild or cultivated, from any of numerous species in the genus Malus. The modern cultivated apple is classified as M. pumila, which is one of these species. Its ancestry probably includes also M. sylvestris, the common crabapple found in the British Isles; and M. baccata, the Siberian crab, also plays a role here. Other species grow in the Orient and N. America, and many of them have a history of local use in early times.
Generally, crabapples are edible and nutritious, but most of them are extremely sour and astringent. Their principle use in medieval and early modern times was as a source of VERJUICE. Syrup, apple butter, and spiced apples can be made but the main use for the fruit now is to make crabapple jelly which, with sufficient sugar added, has a tart astringency superior to that of plain apple jelly.
a name first used in N. America, from the mid-18th century onwards, for a plain, unsweetened, dry, hard, bread product; thus corresponding to part of the domain covered by the wider English term BISCUIT (of which another major part belongs to the American term COOKIE). When crackers are broken into pieces they make a cracking noise, which accounts for the name.
Crackers may be leavened or unleavened. Those of the former sort were formerly baked by a particular method which called for a dough leavened with bicarbonate of soda (hence the term ‘soda cracker’) and left to stand until pockets of carbon dioxide formed in the mixture. When biscuits of this dough were placed in a very hot oven they rose quickly, giving the characteristic texture.
Unleavened crackers may be made from flour and water only (as are MATZOS) or with the addition of a little salt. Some examples of this sort are the small oyster cracker, used on top of seafood CHOWDERS, and the crackers known as SHIP’S BISCUIT (or pilot biscuit or sea biscuit).
The Graham cracker, which is sweet, is made from Graham (wholemeal) flour.
The cracker barrel was an institution in American general stores and groceries which sold crackers loose in bulk. The term was first used in print in the 1870s.
In Britain crackers are generally thought of as a specific commercially made biscuit, the ‘cream cracker’, invented and first marketed by W. and R. Jacob of Dublin in 1885. Jacobs were also the first people to pack them in airtight cartons, so that crackers were soon exported all over the world. Cream crackers are made from flour, salt, and a very little fat, moistened with milk, or milk and water. The mixture is rolled very thin, ‘docked’ (punched with holes), cut into squares, and baked until pale brown. These crackers are now usually eaten with cheese.
Cream crackers, as Rachel Laudan (1996) informs us, achieved fame in Hawaii’s Chinatown as Krim Krakers, from Singapore. Hawaii is quite a wonderful place for biscuit historians. The lore associated with ‘saloon pilots’, Hawaii’s own name for crackers (or hard tack or sea biscuits), has much fascination. Laudan writes that:
Sea biscuits were known as pilot bread from New England through the West Indies. New England seamen must have brought the use of the work ‘pilot’ for a sea biscuit with them to Hawaii. My suspicion is that ‘saloon’ was added as the crackers became richer and finer than the original hardtack, because the saloon on a ship was usually reserved for the better-off passengers. Along with salted meat and fish and pickled meats, saloon pilots are one of many symptoms of the atavism of Hawaii’s food. Neither crisp and tender like soda crackers, nor elegantly spotted with brown like water biscuits, their thickness, their chewiness, and their relative lack of salt make saloon pilots closer to what I imagine hardtack must originally have tasted like.
For a completely different sort of cracker, from SE Asia but increasingly familiar in the western world, see PRAWN CRACKERS.
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in England, is the skin on roast PORK. Correctly cooked, it becomes very crisp and brittle. To produce good crackling, the raw skin is scored in close parallel lines, then rubbed with salt and oil. Roasting should be started at a high temperature and done without basting; any contact with liquid or fat makes the crackling tough and leathery. The skin can be removed and roasted separately if desired. To the English, crackling is a standard part of a meal involving roast pork. Many countries follow this pattern, but some remove the skin and fat for use in other dishes. This is particularly true in France.
Most countries make use of pork skin cooked until crisp. Sometimes this is a by-product of rendering LARD. Such items are the equivalent of English pork scratchings, and are known as cracklings in the USA, grillons or grattons in regional French, cretons in Quebec, and chicharrones in C. American and Spanish Caribbean cookery. Usually eaten as snacks, or with bread or mashed potatoes.
In N. America the cracklings are mixed with cornmeal to make crackling bread, a term which came into use in the 1840s and which has a pleasing alternative name, ‘goody-bread’. There are many variations on this theme. German Speckkuchen is relatively rich, made from a flat sheet of bread dough studded with pieces of fat bacon. Spanish torta de chicharrones is sweetened and flavoured with lemon zest.
In some parts of the world, especially where pork is not eaten, cracklings are made from lamb fat. Thus the version of crackling bread eaten in Afghanistan uses lamb crackling. See also FAT-TAILED SHEEP for a reference to lamb crackling sandwiches in Iran.
Laura Mason
important in Hawaii, is a wider category of confectionery items than the name might suggest. The category also goes by the Chinese name of see mui (pronounced see moy), and it was Chinese immigrants from Canton who brought crack seed to Hawaii in the 19th century. It is, essentially, preserved fruit, often with the stones (‘seed’) left in and frequently cracked (‘crack’) to expose the kernels and enhance flavour.
Rachel Laudan (1996) explains that everyone in Hawaii, not just the Chinese, snacks on crack seed and that what had been in its home country (China) a recognized but minor kind of food has here ‘exploded into a cacophony of variants and a much greater importance’. Describing a crack seed store, she writes:
The jars are full of preserved fruits, red and brown and green and black, some of them gleaming with syrup, some frosted with sugar, and yet others wrinked and dusted with salt, as many as forty or fifty different varieties. Their names are poetry: li hing mui, Maui-style sweet plum, … apricot poo ton lee, … Hilo slice ginger, … guava peel, … licorice peach, … wet lemon peel, … honey mango, … rock salt plum, etc etc.
Some of the innovative expansions of the genre are due to the Yick Lung Company (the name means ‘profitable enterprise’), and the range of tastes and flavours has become remarkably wide including the very salty as well as the sweet. Anise is one flavour which is common. The products seem to be quite addictive in a harmless way. Children pick up crack seed to chew on as they make their way home from school. ‘Homesick students away on mainland call and beg “Send seed”.’
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a Scottish dessert which became prominent in that role in the latter part of the 20th century, was originally a harvest festival version of the simple oatmeal GRUEL which was known as CROWDIE. For the festive version a coarser cut of oatmeal was used and cream was substituted for the water or BUTTERMILK which provided the liquid element.
The basic modern version of ‘cream crowdie’ or cranachan is based on lightly toasted coarse-cut oatmeal and whipped cream, with honey or sugar as a sweetening agent. Other flavourings may be added. Fresh soft fruits such as raspberries may be incorporated in the mixture or served with it. In restaurant versions there may be a whole panoply of ingredients, including even Scotch whisky.
The entry for CROWDIE explains that that term has two senses. Oddly, the other sense, a kind of soft cheese, may also be involved in cranachan; recipes may call for a mixture of such cheese and whipped cream, rather than just the whipped cream.
the most important of the berries borne by a group of low, scrubby, woody plants of the genus Vaccinium. These grow on moors and mountainsides, in bogs, and other places with poor and acid soil in most parts of the world, but are best known in N. Europe and N. America. All yield edible berries. The genus also includes the BILBERRY (see also BLUEBERRY).
The generic name Vaccinium is the old Latin name for the cranberry, derived from vacca (cow) and given because cows like the plant. This accounts also for the common name ‘cowberry’, which is lingon in Swedish, giving rise in the middle of the 20th century to the English term ‘lingonberry’. The origin of the name cranberry is obscure, apart from the dubious suggestion that cranes eat the berries. The common names of these berries are confusing and sometimes overlap with those of berries in other genera or families. See CRANBERRY TREE; HUCKLEBERRY; WHORTLEBERRY.
The plants to which the name cranberry was originally given are two species which occur in Europe as well as in other temperate parts of the world: Vaccinium oxycoccus and V. vitis idaea. The former is sometimes called the small cranberry. The latter, which replaces it in the more northerly regions and at higher altitudes, can be termed mountain cranberry, or foxberry. Either can be cowberry, or lingonberry (as mentioned above). Both plants bear reddish oval berries about 8 mm (0.3″) across with a piquant flavour. This fits them for making sharp sauces to go with game; and they also provide excellent jellies or preserves.
When the Pilgrim Fathers arrived in N. America they found a local cranberry, V. macrocarpon, which had berries twice the size of those familiar to Europeans, and an equally good flavour. American Indians were accustomed to eating these fresh or dried, and to adding the dried fruits as an ingredient in PEMMICAN (a dried, preserved meat product). Cranberries contain large amounts of benzoic acid, which is a natural preservative and accounts for this practice; the berries will keep for months without treatment of any kind. It was no doubt these large American cranberries which, at an early stage in the evolution of THANKSGIVING Day dinner, were made into sauce to accompany the turkey, which became established as its centrepiece.
For a long time now the American cranberry has been both cultivated and exported. Even in former times its remarkable keeping properties enabled it to withstand long sea voyages stored in barrels full of plain water. Cranberries for storage were selected, by tipping them down a flight of stairs. The sound berries bounced and fell to the bottom, while damaged ones stayed on the steps. This principle is still used in modern sorting machines.
Most cranberries on sale in Europe are imported from the USA, but there is some European cultivation of V. macrocarpon, and as a result of escapes the plant is sometimes found growing wild on European moors. Cranberry juice, with its high vitamin C content, is a popular product.
Various Vaccinium spp in other parts of the world produce fruits comparable to the cranberry but of less importance. One such is V. reticulatum of Hawaii, which bears the ohelo berry, red or yellow in colour, sweet enough to eat raw, and suitable for jam if its low pectin content is strengthened.
(also called high-bush cranberry), Viburnum opulus var americanum (previously V. trilobum), a shrub or small tree of Canada and the northern states of the USA, which bears berries similar in appearance and quality to the CRANBERRY, but with large stones inside (and belonging to a different family). A few cultivars have been developed. In Europe, V. opulus has been cultivated in some places.
The berries of the American cranberry tree produce an excellent jelly, and can be used for most purposes in the same way as cranberries proper. They have the same tart but pleasant flavour.
Megalornis grus, a stately long-legged bird which generally resembles the STORK and the HERON. It is a migrant, breeding in NE Europe and flying south for the winter. Its distribution may have extended as far west as Britain in the Middle Ages and earlier, since there is a record of King Ethelbert II of Kent asking a missionary in Germany in AD 748 to send him a couple of goshawks for hunting cranes. Cranes were certainly among the birds hunted by falconry in various parts of Europe.
Witteveen (1986–7), in the only survey of the subject available in English, remarks that cranes were cooked in CLASSICAL ROME, usually by braising them in a sauce; that roasting them was the preferred method in Italy from the 14th century; and that the same was true of England, where the roasted bird might be served with the sauce called cameline (later galandine–see GALANTINE).
Up to the 16th century, cranes were likely to appear on the menus of banquets, but this practice petered out in the 17th century, although cranes, especially young ones, continued to be eaten.
Sir Thomas Browne (1902) had remarked in the 17th century that cranes were often seen in Norfolk in hard winters and must have been more plentiful in earlier times, when they figured in bills of fare for banquets. It may be that increasing scarcity in W. Europe, perhaps reflecting changes of climate and of the migratory patterns of the bird, was largely responsible for the disappearance of the crane from banquet tables. However, this disappearance coincided, generally speaking, with the similar disappearance of other ‘great birds’ such as the PEACOCK, for which the arrival of the TURKEY from the New World is thought to have been partly responsible.
are CRUSTACEANS which can be regarded as the freshwater counterparts of the marine LOBSTER. Those in the northern hemisphere belong to the family Astacidae, those in the southern hemisphere to the family Parastacidae.
The name ‘crayfish’ prompted remarks by the English zoologist T. H. Huxley (1880):
It might be readily supposed that the word ‘cray’ had a meaning of its own and qualified the substantive ‘fish’–as ‘jelly’ and ‘cod’ in ‘jellyfish’ and ‘codfish’. But this certainly is not the case. The old English method of writing the word was ‘crevis’ or ‘crevice’, and the ‘cray’ is simply a phonetic spelling of the syllable ‘cre’ in which the ‘e’ was formerly pronounced as all the world, except ourselves, now pronounce that vowel. While ‘fish’ is the ‘vis’ insensibly modified to suit our knowledge of the thing as an aquatic animal.
In fact, crevis and crevice were Old French terms, which survive in the modern écrevisse. The term ‘crawfish’, allowed by some as an alternative to crayfish, was coined in the USA in the 19th century and is still used in Louisiana.
The distribution of crayfish is surprisingly patchy. There are none in the tropics except for those in Papua New Guinea and Cherax quadricarinatus, the ‘red claw’ of Northern (tropical) Australia. There is a species in Madagascar, but none is indigenous to the African mainland. Crayfish are absent from most of Asia and have only found two habitats in S. America. It also seems odd that there should be over 250 species in N. America, but only 7 in Europe and 4 in E. Asia; and that the 110 species in Australasia should only be matched by 10 in the whole of the rest of the southern hemisphere.
The demand for crayfish is also erratic. It is most intense in Scandinavia and France; growing in the USA, where it was for long confined to the region around Louisiana, and in Australia; but non-existent in many countries.
Crayfish vary greatly in size. Many species are too small to be worth eating. The smallest is a mere 2 cm (0.75″) long from head to tail (the claws being excluded in measuring the creatures), whereas the largest, the giant Tasmanian crayfish, may be 30 times as long and can weigh as much as 4.5 kg (10 lb).
They also vary in habits. Aquatic crayfish live in permanent bodies of water: rivers or streams, and sometimes lakes. Semi-aquatic crayfish can survive out of water for a long time and normally live in burrows connected with water by ‘shafts’ of their own construction. Land crayfish are seemingly independent of water, although they can only live on land which has water below it. But they are small creatures, with tiny tails, and are used only as bait. Some species are large enough to be potentially interesting as food, but still inedible. Those which are regularly eaten, apart from the famous YABBY and MARRON of Australia, include:
READING:
ranges in richness from British ‘top of bottle’, which contains barely more fat than MILK itself, to double cream, which is almost half fat. Examples of the fat contents of different grades in Britain and the USA are: ‘half and half’ cream 10–12%; British single cream 20%; US medium cream 25%; whipping cream 35%; and British double cream 48%.
In France the term crème has a wider meaning. However, so far as the narrower sense is concerned, French official regulations define only two kinds of crème, crème fraîche (often referred to as just crème, but it is not ‘just cream’ in the English sense, being lightly fermented) and crème légère. The former must contain at least 30 grams of fat per 100 grams: the latter need only have 12. However, although these are the only categories with legal standing, other terms are used. Crème épaisse (or crème double) will have a fat content higher than the minimum prescribed for crème fraîche, but its thicker consistency may also be due to loss of water content, and it is usually more acid, having been allowed to ripen. Crème fluide has a fat content of around 35% and has not ripened; it is used for whipping (see below). Crème à café, a light cream with a 15% fat content, is what the Swiss use for the purpose indicated by its name.
Cream separates naturally from unhomogenized milk, in which the fat globules are just too large to remain suspended in the emulsion. Being lighter than water, they slowly collect at the top. The old method of collecting cream was to leave milk, unrefrigerated, in a broad earthenware pan until the cream had separated to the required extent: up to 12 hours for single cream and 24 for double. It was then skimmed off. During this time, lactic acid-producing bacteria were active in the milk and the cream, ‘ripening’ them and developing a creamy taste by converting lactose (milk sugar) to lactic acid and citrates to diacetyl. The cream, any butter made from it, and the remaining skimmed milk all have this pleasant, slightly sour flavour.
Nowadays cream is separated mechanically in a centrifuge, a revolving circular vessel in which the cream migrates to the centre, from which it is drawn off. Any degree of extraction, even separating double cream from the thinnest milk, can be obtained in a few minutes. Consequently the cream has no chance to ripen; and since what is sold as ‘fresh’ cream must be promptly pasteurized to kill almost all the bacteria in it, modern cream does not have much flavour. (Batches of cream to be made into BUTTER and SOUR CREAM are treated differently. They are inoculated with starter cultures of chosen bacteria.)
Bottled, canned, and UHT (‘ultra high temperature’) cream are subjected to treatment similar to that for sterilized or UHT milk. A slightly ‘cooked’ flavour results.
Whipped cream adds a touch of luxury to almost any dessert and is essential for certain sweet confections such as ICE CREAM SUNDAES. When cream is whipped, the mechanical action introduces air bubbles into it. These are stabilized by the fat globules in the cream clumping at the air–liquid interface all around each bubble. The clumps of globules are stabilized by a coating of protein molecules (see EMULSIONS). To whip properly, cream has to have a reasonably high fat content: at least 30%, and 40% gives a lighter foam. Whipping cream is intermediate in fat content between British single and double cream. The clumping of the fat globules, and thus the successful whipping of the cream, is aided if the viscosity of the fat is increased by chilling the cream (to below 10 °C/50 °F–and chill the bowl and whisk too).
Whipped cream will not retain its airy bulk for long without assistance. When used as a topping for a TRIFLE, for example, it can be stabilized by adding egg whites, one to every 125 ml or 5 fl oz. of cream. MOUSSES and cold SOUFFLÉS using cream include either egg whites or GELATIN to hold up the fragile foam.
In France, crème Chantilly is a common feature of desserts. It is simply whipped cream which has been sweetened with sugar and flavoured with (usually) vanilla. Use of the name Chantilly (from the 1840s) may have arisen because the famous Château there had become a symbol of refined food, of which crème Chantilly is a fine example.
In cooking with cream, the main problem is that it curdles (see CURDLING) far more easily than milk.
Clotted cream, regarded by the inhabitants of Devon and Cornwall, where it is chiefly made, as an exclusively English product, is in fact a close relation of the Near Eastern KAYMAK etc.; and it has been suggested that Phoenician traders, who came to Cornwall more than 2,000 years ago in search of tin, may have introduced there the Near Eastern technique for making it. The traditional West Country method is to put milk in shallow pans until the cream has risen (12 hours in summer, 24 in winter), then heat the whole to about 82 °C (180 °F), keep it there for half an hour, and allow it to cool overnight. Clotted cream made in factories is produced more quickly by what is called ‘direct scalding’. Clotted cream has a distinctive ‘cooked’ taste, keeps for much longer than ordinary cream, and is too thick (at about 60% fat content) to pour.
The south-west of England is also the home territory of cream teas (see AFTERNOON TEA).
‘although so called, is not properly cheese, but is nothing more than cream dried sufficiently to be cut with a knife’. Thus Mrs Beeton in 1861. Her comment was pertinent in that the simplest form of cream cheese is made by draining CREAM through a muslin and leaving it for a few days until it becomes as firm as BUTTER. But what is normally offered as cream cheese is produced in a more sophisticated manner, and is rarely made from cream alone. Cremets d’Anjou, for example have an addition of egg white.
Most kinds of cream cheese are made from a mixture of cream and MILK, inoculated with lactic acid-producing BACTERIA chosen to produce the desired degree of acidity, or as in the case of MASCARPONE, curdled with lemon juice. The mixture may or may not need RENNET to precipitate the CURD. Although the bacteria are allowed some time in which to do their work, a cream cheese is not matured. Most commercial varieties are pasteurized, to kill the bacteria once their work is done.
The most important cream cheese, in terms of quantity, must be Philadelphia cream cheese; it has for long been the principal American variety, and cream cheeses are said to account for a quarter of all the cheese eaten in the USA. Cream cheese is defined in the USA as having a minimum fat content of 33%; in Britain it must be between 45% and 65% (over that and it is officially double cream cheese), and in France cream cheese must be at least 55% fat while double crème and triple crème have a minimum content of 60% and 75% respectively. See EXPLORATEUR for some examples of super-rich, lightly ripened cheeses. A cream cheese such as Fontainebleau is often eaten for dessert, with sugar. FROMAGE FRAIS may be a cream cheese or may have a lower fat content; it is, however, invariably cream textured and, as the name implies, uncured. Petit suisse is a cream-enriched fresh cheese, first made in Normandy in the mid-19th century. The Swiss connection is its inventor, a Mme Heroult, who came from Switzerland.
The Scottish caboc, known since the 15th century, was Sir Walter Scott’s favourite kind of cheese. It became extinct but has been revived as a rich cream cheese, made from double cream and given a crust of toasted pinhead oatmeal. It comes in ‘logs’ of 120 g (4 oz).
a mildly acidic substance used as an ingredient of BAKING POWDER, and occasionally to give a sour taste to soft drinks. In the food industry it is also used to help SUGAR to ‘invert’ in the making of syrup.
Scientific names for cream of tartar are acid potassium tartrate and dipotassium L-(+)-tartrate. It is an ‘acid salt’; that is, a SALT formed by the partial neutralization of an acid so that the product remains slightly acidic.
It is usually made by purifying tartar, the whitish crystals which precipitate out of wine. This is also a source of tartaric acid, which is an alternative constituent of baking powder.
Ralph Hancock
see SEMOLINA.
a delicate confection consisting of a round choux PASTRY shell filled with whipped CREAM (or, sometimes, crème pâtissière). These puffs have an obvious relationship with PROFITEROLES (which are smaller) and ÉCLAIRS (which are a different shape).
Cream puffs may be dusted with icing sugar. This certainly applied to the cream puffs in a famous story, ‘The Garden Party’ by Katherine Mansfield, referred to by Barbara Maher (1982); they were ‘beautifully light and feathery’, and Cook shook off the extra icing sugar as she arranged them. However, the puffs are sometimes iced, e.g. with a chocolate icing.
Cream ‘buns’ in English bakeries may be the same thing but are sometimes ordinary sweet buns with a cream filling.
a French word which not only means CREAM, the dairy product, but is also a culinary term.
In the French kitchen, there is no word to match the English term ‘custard’, and crème has to fill the gap. The thin pouring-sauce type of CUSTARD is crème anglaise.
Crème pâtissière is the equivalent of confectioner’s custard, though the English term tends to denote a less rich kind than the French mixture. Crème pâtissière is made from egg yolks, milk, sugar, and a little flour, with vanilla or some other flavouring; the light version used in ÉCLAIR fillings and Saint-Honoré (see GATEAU) also contains beaten egg whites.
Crème au beurre (buttercream) is a richer variant made with butter instead of milk, and omitting the flour. It is much used for filling cakes.
Crème frite (fried cream), an ingenious French invention, might be described as a FRITTER containing ice cream. A very thick, sweet custard strengthened with flour is frozen, cut up, egged and breadcrumbed, and quickly deep fried. The centre remains at least partly solid.
Petits pots de crème are little boiled custards in individual cups. (The correct term for the correct vessel is a RAMEKIN, French ramequin from a Flemish or German word meaning ‘little cream’; the term also embraces dishes made in such a container.) A custard turned out to serve is a crème renversée. Both the ‘right way up’ and the reversed type have numerous flavours and names, and exist in large and small sizes.
See also the following two entries, CRÈME BRÛLÉE and CRÈME CARAMEL.
is a French term for a rich baked CUSTARD made with CREAM, rather than with milk. The custard is topped with a layer of sugar (usually brown) which is then caramelized by use of a SALAMANDER or under a grill. Crème, meaning ‘cream’, is derived from the Latin chrisma through the old French cresme. The term brulé is applied to dishes such as cream custards which are finished off with a caramelized sugar glaze.
In English, the dish is Burnt cream. This term was in use as long ago as the beginning of the 18th century, but the French term had already been used by Massialot in 1691 and has priority, although it fell into disuse in France for a while in the 19th century (oddly, at just about the time when English people were adopting it in place of their own English term).
Crème brûlée is also sometimes known as Trinity cream because of its association with Trinity College, Cambridge, where the college crest was impressed on top of the cream with a branding iron. Florence White (1932) says of Caramel Cream:
This recipe is given by Miss Eleanor L. Jenkinson, sister of the late Cambridge University Librarian in the Ocklye Cookery Book (1909). Miss Jenkinson says: ‘It is amusing to remember that this recipe, which came from a country house in Aberdeenshire in the ’sixties, was offered to the kitchens of Trinity College, Cambridge, by an undergraduate, and rejected with contempt. When the undergraduate became a Fellow, just thirty years ago (in 1879), he presented it again; this time it was accepted as a matter of course. It speedily became one of the favourite dishes of May week’.
Helen Saberi
a sweet dish which is essentially a CUSTARD but, because there is no French term corresponding to custard and because it is seen as something originally French, is known as a crème. The entry for that term explains that a boiled custard is often served in France in little individual containers. If some caramel syrup is poured into the container before the custard is put in, and the custard is subsequently turned out when served, it will have a more interesting appearance and flavour; and will qualify as a crème caramel.
In the latter part of the 20th century crème caramel occupied an excessively large amount of territory in European restaurant dessert menus. This was probably due to the convenience, for restaurateurs, of being able to prepare a lot in advance and keep them until needed. Latterly, however, it seems to have been losing ground.
A kindred dish is described above under CRÈME BRÛLÉE.
See also FLAN.
The first thing that comes to mind on hearing the term is the food of the Mississippi Delta, a blend of French and American Indian cooking. But it is worth considering also the example of linguists who use ‘creole’ to refer to the language spoken by the children of individuals who by reason of migration, trade, or conquest had developed a rudimentary pidgin to deal with foreign-language speakers. Unlike pidgins, creoles develop complex grammars and extensive new vocabularies and have proved a rich resource for investigating the origin and growth of languages. In a parallel manner, creole foods–foods eaten by the descendants of parents from very different culinary traditions–offer the promise of throwing light on the causes of culinary change.
Creole foods probably go back many centuries, perhaps even millennia. The conversion of China and Japan to Buddhism, for example, or the conquest of much of the Mediterranean by the Arabs led to the conjunction of radically different food traditions. But the best-documented creole foods follow the European expansion beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Portuguese encouraged marriage with local women leading to creole foods in Brazil, Goa, Malacca, and Macao. Spanish imperialism resulted in two of the richest and most complex creole foods, the Mexican and the Filipino. Creole foods with a strong British strain were to be found in the eastern part of the USA and in India, and with a marked Dutch emphasis in what used to be the Dutch E. Indies and in South Africa. The French, in turn, contributed to contemporary Vietnamese cuisine. This simple picture of European colonists coming up against indigenous food traditions is complicated by the massive migrations, forced or voluntary, of other peoples. As a result of the need for labour on the great plantations of the tropical world–sugar, cotton, and rubber, for example–creole foods of two non-European groups and creole foods with three or more roots are common: Nonya (Chinese-Malaysian) in the Malaysian Peninsula, Chinese-Indian-European in Mauritius, black-American Indian-English in the south of the United States, Indian-Pacific island in Fiji, American-Japanese-Chinese-Hawaiian in Hawaii.
To clarify what is meant by creole foods, it is worth excluding two other kinds of foods: variant foods within a given tradition (food dialects, to continue the linguistic metaphor) and diaspora foods. An example of variant foods within the same tradition would be the French and the English. Viewed on the grand scale, the philosophies of food in England and France, however strikingly different they may appear to inhabitants of the two countries, are essentially the same. So too are the methods of preparing foods, the times and natures of the meals, and the range of ingredients, particularly the staples. The exchanges that have occurred regularly between English and French food do not add up to a new creole tradition. Neither do diaspora foods where a given group disperses to new lands retaining their philosophy of food, either by virtue of its strength (Jewish or Chinese) or by virtue of near-disappearance of the indigenous population and its foods (Europeans in Australasia and much of Latin America). In these cases, the group may absorb new ingredients and even parts of menus (chilli, salt beef) while retaining a recognizable culinary tradition.
It might seem that–except for their mere existence–nothing general could be said about creole foods. But in fact they share certain general characteristics at the level of philosophy, at the level of menu and methods of preparation, and at the level of ingredients. The philosophy of a creole food–theories about how food contributes to physical and spiritual health, about when a people should feast and when they should fast, and about what counts as a meal–differs from the parent traditions. In Hawaii, for example, all ethnic groups now feast on a baby’s first birthday (a baby luau) and a meal now consists of Asian rice with American quantities of meat. Second, the menu changes, foods are prepared in new ways, and foods expand into different slots. An instance would be Mexico where leavened wheat bread and distilled liquor (tequila) joined unleavened corn tortillas and naturally fermented beverages (pulque) in the diet. Third, the ingredients themselves change. Typical of a creole cuisine is the reliance on two or more staples from the different contributing cuisines (maize, wheat, and sweet potatoes in the American south or wheat, maize, and rice in Mexico). Also typical, given the displacement of peoples concerned, is the heavy use of preserved foods, often the traditional European sailor’s diet or the tinned goods developed in the last century (the condensed milk belt across S. and SE Asia, salted and preserved meats and fish, hard tack or crackers).
Thus true creole foods develop their own dynamic, something more than the sum of the parts of the contributing traditions. In the past, most were created by default, by peoples who were forced by circumstance to change their habits. Even so, among them are some of the world’s great cuisines, the Mexican, for example. The scale of migration in the late 20th century, the increased knowledge of methods and ingredients of different food traditions, and the willingness to experiment with new foods that follows on abundance suggests that creole foods are likely to become a yet more important part of the world culinary scene.
Rachel Laudan
READING:
a small flat French SAUSAGE encased in CAUL (French crépine). A crépinette is usually made with minced pork, but lamb, veal, or chicken can be used.
These sausages are highly seasoned and sometimes include chopped TRUFFLE. They are usually buttered before being grilled and served with a purée of potatoes.
a name derived from a Greek word meaning to creep, and loosely used for a large number of low-growing plants with small leaves, whose common use is in salads, although they may also be cooked. Most of them belong to the same family as the MUSTARDS and they are usually more or less pungent in taste; leaves or seeds of some have been used as a peppery condiment.
Some cresses grow in water. The only one of these to be cultivated is described under WATERCRESS.
The other main cultivated cress is garden cress, Lepidium sativum, and it is this, with its tiny leaves, which ought to be present in boxes labelled ‘mustard and cress’. It is a native of W. Asia, but its main use is in Europe and N. America.
The ‘wild cress’ called DITTANDER or poor man’s pepper and ‘Virginian cress’ (pepperwort, peppergrass) are both peppery. So is winter cress, Barbarea vulgaris, also called yellow rocket, and its close relation B. verna (American or land cress). The latter can be used in place of watercress, if necessary. Both are candidates for winter salads.
Pará (or Brazil) cress, Spilanthes acmella ‘Oleracea’, can be used to give some pungency to salads, but is distinctly milder than the parent S. acmella, known as the toothache plant or Australian cress. However, we are here moving away from plants of the mustard family and into the realm of pot-herbs which belong to the family Compositae and just happen to have ‘cress’ as part of one of their common names.
or crevalle a name loosely applied to various fish in the family Carangidae, sometimes with an epithet attached, as in ‘jack crevalle’. The name is derived from the Latin caballa (meaning mare) via the Spanish caballa (a name for certain carangid fish). However, it is hard to disentangle the relationship between ‘crevalle/crevally’ and TREVALLY. If, for example, one considers the list of species which are highly prized in Hawaii as ‘crevalle’ (or ulua, the local name) one finds that a couple of large ones, Caranx melampygus, the blue crevalle, which may attain a length of over 90 cm (35″), and C. ignobilis, which can be half as long again, feature in Australia as blue-finned trevally and giant trevally respectively.
See also JACK.
the name used for various jumping, chirping INSECTS of the family Gryllidae, especially Gryllus campestris, the field-cricket, and Acheta domestica, the house-cricket of ‘cricket on the hearth’ fame. Bush-crickets are mainly tree-dwelling grasshoppers. These insects, generally speaking, are edible and there is evidence from many parts of the world of certain species being eaten, often after being roasted.
The mole-cricket, Gryllotalpa africana, according to Bodenheimer (1951) is dug up from its deep burrows in Thailand and eaten with enthusiasm, especially by ethnic Lao. In the Philippines little mole-crickets called kamaru are first boiled in vinegar (see ADOBO), then fried in butter. They are crunchy on the outside, soft in the inside.
See also GRASSHOPPER and LOCUST.
the process of gashing the flesh of fish soon after it has been caught and before rigor mortis sets in, in order to make it contract and become firmer. The basic meaning of the verb to crimp is to contract, and gashing is merely the means to this end; but in the course of time means and end became confused and people thought that crimp meant gash.
The term dates back to the end of the 17th century and the process was widely used in the 19th century but has largely fallen into disuse.
a general name applied to a large number of species of fish in the family Sciaenidae. This family includes 200 or more species, some of whose members will be found under DRUM (another general name), KINGFISH, and MEAGRE. The name croaker, although imprecise, is used with reason, since it is normally applied only to those sciaenid fish which can make a croaking (or drumming) noise. Scott (1959) explains that the croaking
comes from their ability to produce a loud, croaking sound, similar to that of a frog. The large swim-bladder is used as a sounding box. The noise is not only heard when the fish has been pulled out of the water but is clearly audible by underwater listening devices and to the Malay ‘Jeru selam’ who lowers himself under the water and listens for the noises made by shoals of fish from which he can deduce the size of the shoal, species of fish and their approximate position, after which he directs his fishermen to set the net to capture the fish. Even persons drifting in a small boat while fishing have been mystified by the loud ‘frogs’ chorus’ suddenly starting up all round them, the source of which remained unseen until they started to catch the still-croaking vocalists.
According to Read, who quotes ancient Chinese authors to this effect, the listening devices used by Chinese fishermen were long bamboo tubes lowered to the sea bottom, and it is in the fourth moon of every year that the croakers ‘come in from the ocean in file several miles long, making a thundering noise’.
In general, the croakers of S. and SE Asia enjoy only moderate esteem, and some are downright insipid. The best is probably Protonibea diacanthus, the spotted croaker, which is also the largest (maximum length 120 cm/48″); besides lots of small spots it has dark blotches along its brown or greyish back. The runner-up may be Nibea soldado (or Pseudosciaena soldada) which reaches a length of 70 cm (28″) and, although essentially a marine fish, enters fresh waters in Cambodia and even ascends the River Mekong as far as the north of landlocked Laos, 2,000 km (1,250 miles) from the sea. It can be recognized by its high-arching greenish back, which was responsible for the name ‘greenback jewfish’. (Jewfish is or was a common alternative name for croakers and drums, but the reason for this is obscure.)
an almost exclusively Roman Catholic country, includes the old district of Slavonia and the ancient littoral province of Dalmatia. Until 1992 it was part of Yugoslavia.
The revival of national awareness, which took place in the 19th century, included also a lively interest in Croatia’s own gastronomic past, reflected in publications such as Croatian Cookbook (1976) which includes recipes from the 1876 original bearing the same title.
There is a marked distinction between inland and coastal cookery, due not only to contrasting climatic conditions, but also to differences in history. The connection of Croatia proper with Austria and the Austro-Hungarian Empire has strongly influenced its cuisine, which is C. European in character. The people of Dalmatia, on the other hand, were ruled for nearly four centuries by Venice before coming under Austrian rule, and it was not until the beginning of this century that they were united with Croatia. Not surprisingly, Dalmatian cookery is similar, after a fashion, to that of S. Italy and other parts of the Mediterranean, though the Dalmatians use more meat, especially smoked meat, and much less garlic and olive oil than is common in the rest of the Mediterranean.
Maria Kaneva-Johnson
an animal which needs no description, exists in various species of which the most notable are Crocodylus niloticus, the Nile crocodile, and C. acutus, the American crocodile. The former, which is the larger (maximum length 5 m/16′), had an extensive range in the past (as far north as Palestine for example) but is now found only in the northern part of the Nile and its delta. The latter is found in swamps in Florida.
Asia also has a freshwater crocodile, C. palustris, considered to be sacred in many of the regions where it is found. There is also a marine species C. porosus, perhaps the largest of all crocodiles and the only one with a reputation for attacking human beings. A large specimen killed in 1970 in Irian Java, New Guinea was thought to have taken 55 human victims while it was alive. This crocodile often swims many miles out to sea, will travel up rivers so far as the water remains salty, and is able to run swiftly on land. This species is now being ‘farmed’ in some places within its range, e.g. Papua New Guinea. Its range extends from the north of Australia to the south of India and across to the Philippines.
All crocodiles are surprisingly agile, both in and out of the water, and have a carnivorous diet. Considered as food themselves, they are far less prominent than the related ALLIGATOR, but have been eaten locally and have attracted various comments, such as a recommendation to prefer the legs. In those Pacific Islands where C. porosus is found, the meat of young specimens is preferred by the islanders and is thought to have a flavour and texture somewhere between fish and chicken.
In the Northern Territory of Australia the farming of both freshwater and marine crocodiles has become established; and it is illegal to sell crocodile meat other than the farmed products.
a French word meaning crescent or crescent shaped, is the name traditionally given to a buttery breakfast roll or bread popular in France. Croissants are made with a yeast-based dough, rolled to incorporate the butter exactly as is done when making puff pastry.
The bending of a little roll into a crescent shape, as probably happened in various parts of the world at various times, does not constitute the invention of the familiar, puffy, buttery croissant. There is more to the croissant than shape.
In fact, the croissant in its present form does not have a long history. See CULINARY MYTHOLOGY for the erroneous idea that it came into being in Vienna in the 17th century. The earliest French reference to the croissant seems to be in Payen’s book Des substances alimentaires published in 1853. He cites, among the Pains dits de fantasie ou de luxe, not only English ‘muffins’ but ‘les croissants’. The term appears again, ten years later, in the great Littré dictionary (1863) where it is defined as ‘a little crescent-shaped bread or cake’. Thirteen years later, Husson in Les Consommations de Paris (1875) includes ‘croissants for coffee’ in a list of ‘ordinary’ (as opposed to ‘fine’) pastry goods. Yet no trace of a recipe for croissants can be found earlier than that given by Favre in his Dictionnaire universel de cuisine (c.1905), and his recipe bears no resemblance to the modern puff pastry concoction; it is rather an oriental pastry made of pounded almonds and sugar. Only in 1906, in Colombié’s Nouvelle Encyclopédie culinaire, did a true croissant recipe appear. The history of the croissant, and its development into a national symbol of France, is a 20th-century history.
For many years, croissants in France were served only at breakfast with a large cup of coffee but, with the advent of what the French call ‘Le Fast Food’ in the late 1970s, a massive attempt was made to counteract the spread of the American hamburger through the creation of numerous French eateries called ‘Croissanteries’. In these establishments the previously plain, buttery roll was split open lengthwise and garnished, sandwich fashion, with every imaginable filling from ham to chestnut cream. The spread of these establishments, in which plain croissants were sold as well, strengthened the French attachment to what is considered a national food. Croissants are, indeed, to be found throughout France and, despite the infringements on their traditional form of consumption by the developments described above, they continue to be the French breakfast food par excellence.
Croissants can vary dramatically in taste because, as with many butter-based doughs, bakers find butter too expensive a commodity and prefer to substitute cheaper products or simply use less butter than is required for the very best results. Consequently, almost every bakery in France offers up two kinds of croissants to the customer: one labelled simply ‘croissant’ and the second ‘croissant au beurre’. Although the second must be made with butter, the first can be made with almost anything the baker wishes to substitute for it (generally margarine). Strangely enough, a growing number of French people have come to prefer the substitute to the real thing, since the breadier butterless version lends itself better to dunking into the breakfast coffee–a habit much indulged in by many croissant-eaters. The rise of the butterless croissant has been accompanied by a progressive straightening of the butter croissant and a pronounced curving of its rival, making them easily distinguishable from each other. Be they ‘au beurre’ or not, croissants are a French speciality to be found on breakfast trays around the world.
Philip and Mary Hyman
a French term which means ‘crunch in the mouth’ is the name for a whole range of elaborate French pastries which traditionally play an important role at weddings, baptisms, christenings, etc. The crunchiness is the result of glazing the component parts with sugar cooked to the stage before caramel.
The typical shape of a modern croquembouche is an inverted cone, formed by piling small choux pastries (see PROFITEROLE) on top of each other. However, when Alice Wooledge-Salmon (1981) investigated the history of these confections she found herself in a whole new world of architectural structures which had their origin in the SUBTLETIES displayed in medieval tables and evolved, under the influence of CARÊME in particular, into the category of grosses pièces de fonds, where they kept company with Turkish mosques, Persian pavilions, Gothic towers, and other pièces montées. The shape in those days was that of a Turkish fez, something like that of the confections later known as sultanes. The same author goes on to explain, vividly and in detail, how the whole genre spiralled upwards out of control towards the end of the 19th century, but then subsided to manageable dimensions–permitting the survival of a relatively plain range of croquembouches through the 20th century, the basic form being simply a conical pile of choux balls on a NOUGAT base with a spun sugar aigrette (plume) or other decoration at the top.
a popular French snack, consists of a thick slice of GRUYÈRE cheese and a thin slice of HAM sandwiched between layers of buttered bread and then toasted on both sides until the cheese has completely melted. Croque-monsieur can also be prepared by frying the sandwich on both sides in butter until crisp. Sometimes the sandwich is dipped in egg and breadcrumbed before frying.
Croque-monsieur literally means ‘crunch-sir’ or ‘munch-sir’ (croquer being the French verb ‘to crunch’ or ‘to munch’), but where the term originally comes from is not clear. It first appeared on French menus early in the 20th century.
A croque-madame is a more recent invention, with the addition of chicken, or a fried egg on top.
a French culinary term which was adopted into English too, as long ago as the beginning of the 18th century. Ayto (1993) points out that Phillipps (1706) gave the following meaning: ‘In Cookery, Croquets are a certain Compound made of delicious Stuff’d Meat, some of the bigness of an Egg, and others of a Walnut.’
As Phillipps thus indicated, a croquette is always quite small, but highly variable in shape (a ball, a cylinder, an egg shape, a rectangle, etc.); the basic ingredient is either vegetable or meat or fish (although occasionally something sweet) which is puréed or diced and bound together with a thick velouté sauce or panada; cooking is achieved by coating the croquette with breadcrumbs and deep-frying it, so that the exterior becomes golden and ‘crunchy’ (croquant). Potato croquettes are frequently met. Croquettes of SALT COD are especially good.
Croquettes are distinguished from RISSOLES (the French, not the English variety) inasmuch as their coating is crumbs, not pastry. They may be differentiated from CUTLETS by their size (small) and shape (never imitating a meat cutlet).
Spain, perhaps because of its affection for tapas, is in thrall to croquetas: of lobster, salt cod, mackerel, and many other fillings. Elisabeth Luard (2004b) remarked: ‘the art of the croqueta is a birthright.’
Philip and Mary Hyman
derived from the French croûton, has been an English word since early in the 19th century, whereas two other connected French culinary terms, croûte and croustade, have remained French–the former, no doubt, because the English word crust already had a somewhat similar meaning, and the latter because it is a more specialized term which the chefs and menu-writers who use it are happy to leave in its French form.
All these terms derive from the Latin word crusta, meaning ‘shell’. Thus the outside of a loaf of bread is the crust or croûte.
Croûton, the diminutive form, usually refers to the familiar little cubes of toasted or fried bread which might originally have been cut from a crust. (By extension, croutons/croûtons can refer to similar little cubes of some other substance such as aspic.) It first appears in French in the 17th century when it is described as ‘a little piece of bread crust served with drinks’. In recent times, croutons are often added to fish soups and occasionally to certain SALADS, e.g. Caesar salad.
A dish served en croûte, e.g. Bœuf en croûte, is more likely to be in a pastry case than enclosed by pieces of bread. This is another example of a natural extension of meaning. A pâté en croûte, therefore, is a pâté baked inside a pastry casing (indeed, all pâtés used to be en croûte since pâté like pâte is derived from the Latin pasta meaning ‘paste’ or ‘dough’, hence pastry).
Croustade, the third member of the trio, may refer either to a pastry case or to the pastry case and its filling. The English word custard is derived from this (because the cases were invariably filled with this unctuous substance), a usage elucidated by Ivan Day in Mason (2002). In classical French cooking these were elaborately sculpted and were likely to have not only a rich filling but also fancy garnishes. Nowadays croustades are considered old-fashioned in France; they may still be encountered on buffet tables at grand receptions, or as an accompaniment to drinks.
Philip and Mary Hyman
the fruit of Empetrum nigrum, a plant which grows in the far north of Europe, Asia, and America. It is a low creeping bush with needle-like leaves, somewhat like a prostrate yew. Its berries lack flavour, but are edible. They are small, round, shiny, and black, with half a dozen pips or so, and a firm pulp.
The crowberry grows as far south as Scotland, where it has occasionally been used for food, but prefers the regions above 60 degrees N. In most languages there is a separate name for the variety which is found in the more northerly parts of its range and at higher altitudes. Crowberries are abundant in Greenland.
American Indians of the north-west and Alaska used to gather crowberries for winter food, preserving them by drying or, in Alaska, by placing them with other berries in seal oil. The Inuit still gather and freeze them for the winter.
a fresh cheese made in Scotland from tepid milk to which RENNET has been added to form CURDS; a little salt and sometimes cream is added after the WHEY has drained away. Much crowdie used to be made by crofters in the Highlands. Production diminished after the Second World War, when crofters were leaving the land, and few of those remaining had cows; but since the 1970s it has increased again.
Marian McNeill (1929) gives a Highland recipe recorded earlier by Sir Walter Scott for crowdie to be served at breakfast. This called for two parts of sweet-milk curd and one part of fresh butter, worked together and pressed in a mould until firm enough to slice. In areas where whey was a popular drink, this was a useful way to use up the curd, especially as a stiff, finely blended curd would keep for months. Lowlanders, in contrast, only made and used what they called ‘one day’s cheese’. It is, however, from the Lowland Scots word ‘cruds’ (meaning curds) that the name crowdie comes.
Crowdie was also, in former times, the name for a mixture of finely ground oatmeal (see OATS) and water, stirred to a batter-like consistency but uncooked. Marian McNeill explains that Crowdie in this sense ‘was at one time a universal breakfast dish in Scotland’, and that it could be made with fresh BUTTERMILK instead of water. Indeed, to celebrate harvest home a festive crowdie could be made with cream and sugar. This ‘cream crowdie’ may still be met under that name, but is now better known as CRANACHAN.
an American FRITTER made of a dough similar to that for a DOUGHNUT but with more eggs, or sometimes with choux PASTRY. The first dough is made stiff enough to roll, and is cut into strips which are usually plaited together; the choux pastry is piped onto a piece of paper in a ring or figure of eight, and tipped off into the hot oil. After frying, crullers are sprinkled with icing sugar. Chinese deep-fried egg twists, made from a dough of flour, oil, sugar, and eggs, are made in a similar shape.
The distinguishing feature of a cruller is not its composition but its shape, which is always doubled or interlaced in some way.
Similar shaped items are made in Scandinavia, for example the Swedish klenäter (little things, trifles) and Norwegian fattigmann (meaning pauper, poor man) based on foamed eggs and sugar mixed with flour and butter, flavoured with lemon or cardamom. These are sometimes actually known as crullers.
Laura Mason
is the name of a simple topping spread instead of pastry on fruit pies of the dish type with no bottom crust, such as are popular in Britain. Recipes for crumble do not appear in old books of English recipes, nor is it recorded until the 20th century. Crumble is much quicker and easier to make than pastry and it seems probable that it developed during the Second World War. It is like a sweet pastry made without water. The ingredients of a modern crumble are flour, butter, and sugar; a little spice is sometimes added. (The original wartime type used some other fat–whatever was available.) The butter is cut into the dry ingredients, and the mixture spooned onto the pie filling without further preparation, after which the pie is baked. The butter melts and binds the solid ingredients into large grains, but they do not form a solid layer like a true pastry. The texture can only be described as crumbly. Apple crumble is probably the best-known form. But other fruits are often used. Numerous variations are permissible, for example the addition of coconut to the crumble mixture in Australia.
Crumble may have been inspired by a similar cinnamon-flavoured topping traditional in Austria and C. Europe for a rich tea bread or cake. The topping is called Streusel, and the cake Streuselkuchen (German streusen, to scatter). Streusel contains much less flour in proportion to sugar than British crumble, so that when baked it has a crisp and granular rather than crumbly texture, and remains firmly attached to the top of the cake. It is spread over a coating of melted butter on the raw cake, which helps it to adhere.
a type of thick, perforated PANCAKE made from a yeast-leavened BATTER containing milk. Crumpets are cooked on a lightly greased GRIDDLE, confined in ring moulds. Since the 19th century, the leaven in the batter has been boosted by a little BICARBONATE OF SODA just before cooking. Batter consistency is important: the characteristic mass of tiny holes will not develop if it is too thick.
Crumpets are only turned briefly on the griddle, the underside taking on a pale gold colour and smooth surface, while the top remains pallid. This is intentional as they undergo a second cooking by toasting after which they are spread lavishly with butter on the holey side. Dorothy Hartley (1954) says that crumpets may ‘vary locally from large brownish dinner-plate size made with an admixture of brown flour in some mountain districts, to small, rather thick, very holey crumpets made in the Midlands’.
The earliest published recipe for crumpets of the kind known now is from Elizabeth Raffald (1769). Ayto (1993), in an entertaining essay, discusses a possible 14th-century ancestor, the crompid cake, and the buckwheat griddle cakes (called crumpit) which appeared from the late 17th century onwards. He also illuminates the sexual connotation of crumpet, pointing out that it is now used of sexually attractive men as well as women, and that there was an analogous use of muffin (for women) in 19th-century Canadian English.
It seems clear enough that there is a connection with Welsh crempog (pancake) and Breton krampoch (buckwheat pancake).
Reading the collection of crumpet, MUFFIN, and PIKELET recipes made by Elizabeth David (1977) underlines the confusion of method and terminology between these three forms of yeasted pancake cooked on a griddle. A consensus might be that crumpets are made with a thinner batter than muffins, hence the need to confine them in rings (though this was not invariable), and hence too the holes in the top. Muffins are baked thicker, thick enough to be pulled asunder after toasting which crumpets would never be. Pikelets seems a northern usage–though perhaps originally Welsh if the proposed derivation from bara pyglyd (‘pitchy bread’) is accepted. Again the consensus is that the pikelet is near identical to a crumpet, though the batter is thinner still and baked without a ring on the griddle, thus much more like a yeasted pancake.
a mainly aquatic class of creatures, sharing with other arthropods such as insects and arachnids the characteristics of being invertebrates, with jointed limbs, segmented bodies, and an exoskeleton (exterior skeleton) of chitin.
Most crustaceans are edible, although some are not worth eating and some are so small that they have been disregarded as human food; but interest has been growing in KRILL, the collective term for the minuscule amphipods which abound in polar waters, and very small crustaceans of this sort already enter into the composition of certain SE Asian shrimp pastes. On a larger scale, the best-known examples are the various sorts of LOBSTER, SHRIMP, PRAWNS, and CRABS; but there are others, including the GOOSE-NECKED BARNACLE.
Like other arthropods, crustaceans can only grow if they are able to cast off periodically their rigid exoskeleton or shell, and grow a new and larger one in its stead. For a lobster or crab to ease itself out of its existing shell, at the very time when this is becoming too tight a fit, is an extraordinary feat. The emerging ‘soft-shelled’ creature is highly vulnerable for a short time, until the new shell is hard, and in the case of certain crabs (see, for the main example, BLUE CRAB) may find that its condition is exploited by human beings.
The meat of crustaceans is of fine quality. The fact that many crustaceans, being omnivorous, may act as scavengers and eat the corpses of fellow aquatic creatures need not be a deterrent. Carrion (other than what human beings themselves lay out as bait!) is only a very small proportion of the diet of any of them, and many crabs, for example, feed on algae or even on land plants.
to cover with a coating of SUGAR crystals. There are two methods of doing this. The simplest is to roll a slightly sticky food, such as a CANDIED FRUIT, in caster or granulated sugar. The second, more complicated, but technically more correct definition, is a process used during the manufacture of sugar CONFECTIONERY. Sweets such as FONDANTS are arranged in a layer on a grid, which is lowered into a sugar solution. This is left undisturbed for some time in a warm place. During this time, a layer of sugar crystals is deposited over the surface of the sweets, giving a sparkling appearance when they are drained.
‘Crystallized fruit’ is also a term used loosely to indicate candied fruits in general.
Laura Mason
a largely obsolete spice, is a kind of PEPPER from a climbing plant, Piper cubeba, which is native to Indonesia (hence sometimes called Java pepper) and has been cultivated there in the past. It is occasionally called for in medieval Arabic cookery books, nearly always as one component of a mixture of hot spices. In Europe the cubeb was a minor spice of late medieval times and the 17th century and was still being mentioned (sometimes as Benin pepper) in some recipes in 18th-century European cookery books.
Like true black pepper, it consists of the dried berries, and these are about the same size, but longer and grey (almost black) in colour and with stalks attached (hence yet another name, tailed pepper). They have a pleasing fragrance and a hot, camphorous, pepperminty taste. They are now little used except for medicinal purposes, although the oleo-resin from them is sometimes an ingredient in commercial pickles, sauces, etc.
Cucumis sativus, one of the oldest cultivated vegetables, grown for some 4,000 years, may have originated in S. India. Cucumbers were known in Europe in classical and medieval times, and were introduced by Columbus to Haiti in 1494, after which they soon spread all over N. America.
Like other CUCURBITS, cucumbers have a very high water content (96%). Of the large number (around 100) of varieties now cultivated, about two-thirds are for eating, and one-third for pickling; the longer fruits of the former are sold fresh, whereas the pickled cucumbers are relatively short and come packed in their pickle in jars.
A high proportion of the cucumbers sold for eating are now grown in greenhouses. They are seedless and self-pollinating, of uniform shape and length, and free of the bitterness which used to be a feature of cucumbers and accounts for the instruction in older recipes to debitter them. They are also said to be more easily digestible than their predecessors.
Besides its use in salads, and as a conventional garnish for cold salmon, sliced, chopped, or grated cucumber is often dressed with yoghurt and a little vinegar; in Indian raita, Turkish cacik, and Greek tsatsíki, etc. The Greek version is a common accompaniment of souvlaki or gyros (see DONER KEBAB) in immigrant restaurants in America and Australia as well as in tourist restaurants on their home turf.
Cucumber can also be made into a fine soup. In England, thin and delicate cucumber sandwiches are a requirement for certain functions in the AFTERNOON TEA category.
The term GHERKIN, which applies to the cucumber varieties grown for pickling, includes not only the small fruits of dwarf varieties of C. sativus, but also the fruits of C. anguria, sometimes called West Indian gherkin or (because of its spiny exterior) bur(r) cucumber. This latter species is well known from Brazil through the W. Indies to Texas and Florida. In Jamaica it is called maroon cucumber, ‘maroon’ meaning ‘run wild’; and in Trinidad cackrey.
DILL is often used in pickling cucumbers; hence the use of the term ‘dill pickles’. In France it is usual to sell especially small gherkins, which are fruits of varieties selected or developed for the purpose and go under the name cornichons.
an extensive family of plants with a vinelike habit of growth. Many bear edible fruits which, whether they are eaten as fruits or as vegetables, have well-established common names: the various kinds of sweet and ‘pickling’ MELON, the WATERMELON, the CUCUMBER, GHERKIN, the CHAYOTE, the CASSABANANA, and the KIWANO, all treated in their respective entries, are examples of these.
However, within the family Cucurbitaceae there is one genus, Cucurbita, which poses intractable problems of nomenclature, because the common names in use tend to be loosely applied, vary from one part of the world to another, and overlap with each other. The names in question are pumpkin, gourd, summer squash (including marrow/zucchini/courgette), and winter squash; and there is no fully effective way of sorting out the confusion.
The various botanical species can be distinguished under their scientific names, as is done below, but this is of less help than one would expect, since a single species may contain numerous varieties, of which one may usually be called a squash while another is termed pumpkin. The solution adopted, as the capitalized English names indicate, has been to provide separate entries for all the recognized common names, thus allowing familiar usage to prevail, at the cost of having some entries overlap with each other as the names do.
All members of the genus Cucurbita are of American origin.
C. pepo embraces many sorts of PUMPKIN, SUMMER SQUASH (including the British VEGETABLE MARROW, Italian ZUCCHINI/French courgette, besides the American Pattypan, Yellow Custard, Sunburst and Crookneck squashes), and the curious VEGETABLE SPAGHETTI. C. pepo is the most important species in the group and the one which can be traced furthest back. Remains of its rind and seeds dating back at least to 7000 BC have been found by archaeologists in Mexico.
C. maxima, which originated in the region of Bolivia, includes the larger kinds of WINTER SQUASH, e.g. the cultivars Hubbard and Buttercup. This species is little known in Europe.
C. moschata, a species which grows only in warm regions, includes some sorts of PUMPKIN, such as the large cream-coloured Cheese; some of the smaller sorts of winter squash, including the Winter crookneck and the Cushaw (see WINTER SQUASH); and no summer squashes.
C. ficifolia is the MALABAR (or ivy-leaved) GOURD of S. and C. America.
The name ‘cucurbit’ is not a properly botanical term, although derived from the name of the family, Cucurbitaceae, and that of the genus Cucurbita within it. Botanists call the fruits ‘pepos’ and count them, weird though this seems, as ‘berries’. They answer to the definition of a berry as a simple, fleshy fruit, without internal divisions, enclosing seeds (or, exceptionally, a single seed), and not having a separate, peelable skin.
Cucurbits have abundant, watery, and sometimes fibrous flesh. Their nutritional value is generally low, although some of them such as the watermelon and the pumpkin have edible seeds which are highly nutritious.
Norrman and Haarberg (1980) have contributed a semiotic study in which a very wide range of references, and not only in English, to cucurbits is exposed. There is a considerable emphasis on the ridiculous connotations of some of them and on their association with sex, but the very wide reading and open-minded approach of the authors ensures that the study is balanced.
also called archil or orchil, a dye extracted from various lichens, notably Rocella tinctoria, which grow around the Mediterranean. It has for long been used as a food colouring, and gives a purple red or clear red in most foods.
The lichen is first soaked in water and treated with ammonia to give a blue liquid. This is heated to make the ammonia evaporate, leaving a strong, concentrated red colour.
Cudbear was used illicitly, in former times, to deepen the colour of red wine. It is still used in bottled sauces and bitters.
(previously or sometimes spelled huitlacoche) is the maize smut fungus, Ustilago maydis. This is a disorganized greyish mass, glossy outside and black inside when overripe, which grows on MAIZE plants. Theoretically, anywhere maize grows so should this smut, but it thrives more readily in hot climates and drought conditions rather than in maize-marginal lands such as N. Europe. The smut invade the ovaries of the corn and kernels develop as misshapen grey-black fungi. It is edible and counted as a delicacy, particularly in Mexico, where the Aztecs encouraged it by damaging young cobs to allow the fungus entry. Supplies are exported from Mexico to the USA. In that country, it has always been viewed as a disease to be eradicated, although some farmers are now embracing it for its own charms. The flavour is earthy, some say smoky. In Mexico it is used, for example, in tamales and soups, or it can be incorporated into scrambled egg. It is available in cans as well as fresh. In an essay on the subject, Jane Levi (2006) explains how its native reputation has soared in recent years as Mexican gastronomy has embraced its pre-Columbian origins.
(‘little backside’), an Italian product made from pieces of PORK hindquarter pressed together in the manner of a HAM. It comes from the neighbourhood of Parma and is almost as expensive as the better known prosciutto di Parma. The meat, which is all lean, is salted, soaked in wine, and packed in a bladder. It is moist, delicate, and pink, and always eaten raw.
put to good use in various regions and cultures of the world, are made by burning certain bushes or trees until they crumble into ash. Among N. American Indians, Creeks and Seminoles use hickory, and Navajos use primarily juniper branches. Hopis may use various materials, such as spent bean vines and pods or corn cobs, but Hopi women prefer ashes made from green plants, since they are more alkaline. They especially prize the ash from the four-winged saltbush Atriplex canescens, also called chamisa. When burned, green chamisa bushes yield culinary ashes high in mineral content. In explaining all this, Juanita Tiger Kavena (1980) adds:
The Hopi practice of adding culinary ashes to corn dishes therefore raises the already substantial mineral content of these foods. In addition to increasing nutritional value, chamisa ashes enhance the color in blue corn products. When one is using blue cornmeal for any dish, the meal will turn pink when hot water is added, so Hopi women mix chamisa ashes with water to make an ‘ash broth’ which is then strained and added to cornmeal mixtures. The high alkaline content of the chamisa ashes create a distinctly blue-green color, which holds a religious significance for the Hopis.
potentially a subject for a whole book, is here confined to a small number of notorious examples. The historian Andrew Smith (in Walker, 2001) calls them culinary ‘fakelore’ and points out just how many tie broad movements or phenomena to a single individual, such as the TOMATO which was first eaten in the USA by one Robert Gibbon Johnson on the court-house steps of Salem in 1820, or the ring that was put into DOUGHNUTS by Hanson Crockett Gregory in 1847. Other examples of persistent myths can be found under the entries for APHRODISIACS, BANANA, LUTEFISK, MONKEY, PRETZEL, and WATER ICES.
Catherine de’ Medici arrived in France from Italy in 1533, as the 14-year-old fiancée of the future Henri II of France. She was accompanied by a train of servants including cooks. The myth consists in the idea that she and her retinue between them transformed what had been a rather primitive cuisine at the French court into something much more elegant and sophisticated, on Italian lines.
Barbara Ketcham Wheaton (1983) is not alone in demolishing this myth–far from it, since it has become an almost routine activity for food historians. However, she has mustered more evidence and more detail on this matter than most of her colleagues. She shows that French court cuisine was not transformed (in any direction) in the 1530s and 1540s, and that in any case the interchange of ideas of people between France and Italy had begun before Catherine was born and continued after her death. Italian culinary practice could exert such influence as it may have had on the French by means of the steady traffic and also through books (e.g. PLATINA); but the French in the 16th century had a conservative outlook which in any case immunized them against sudden and foreign influences. Where Catherine did eventually have an effect, it was less on the cooking and more on the attitudes and expectations of the diners, for the wonderful festivals or masquerades which she planned and executed (this was after the death of her husband Henri II) developed into an institution of great visual and dramatic significance.
This durable myth, which requires that nothing should have been known of PASTA in Italy until 1295, when Marco Polo returned from the Far East, can easily be shown to be wrong by citing references in Italy to pasta of an earlier date. How did this firmly held myth arise? The famous Italian authority Massimo Alberini cited an article that appeared in the American magazine Macaroni Journal in 1929. This, according to the American scholar Charles Perry is itself a myth. Although originating in Macaroni Journal, it was not in an article. It appeared as an advertisement; in the 1920s, advertisements often had lengthy texts (the idea seemed to be, ‘you’ve bought a magazine, you must like reading’) which could be jests or fairy tales. This one was clearly intended as both. Marco Polo is sailing in the China Sea with an Italian crew (evidently having discovered the way around Africa centuries before Magellan). One of the crew members goes ashore to fill a cask of water and reports seeing women making threads of dough, so Polo and the captain ask for a demonstration. And the crew member’s name is Macaroni! It’s hard to imagine anyone reading this and not seeing it as a pleasantry, but something about the tale touched a nerve in the public psyche.
The question of interaction between oriental and occidental forms of pasta and the extent to which particular forms may have travelled either eastwards or westwards, through C. Asia, is a different one, of a subtlety and complexity sufficient to deter myth-makers from trying to intervene in it. (To be effective, a myth must be comprehensible at the lowest level of intelligence.)
As Gillian Riley (1993) has written: ‘The idea that spices were used in the Middle Ages to mask the flavour of tainted meat has been expressed with considerable conviction by many writers about food and cookery.’
The same author demonstrates that:
Riley believes that the frequent use of the words ‘tainted meat’ is significant in implying a derogatory and backward glance at cultures less fortunate than our own; and that the ‘disguising’ role allocated to spices betrays a killjoy attitude which could not acknowledge the simple fact that they add to the pleasure of eating and were so perceived by people in the Middle Ages.
According to one of a group of similar legends, which vary only in detail, a baker of the 17th century, working through the night at a time when his city (either Vienna in 1683 or Budapest in 1686) was under siege by the Turks, heard faint underground rumbling sounds which, on investigation, proved to be caused by a Turkish attempt to invade the city by tunnelling under the walls. The tunnel was blown up. The baker asked no reward other than the exclusive right to bake crescent-shaped pastries commemorating the incident, the crescent being the symbol of Islam. He was duly rewarded in this way, and the croissant was born.
This story seems to owe its origin, or at least its wide diffusion, to Alfred Gottschalk, who wrote about the croissant for the first edition of the Larousse gastronomique (1938) and there gave the legend in the ‘Turkish attack on Budapest in 1686’ version; but who subsequently, in his own book (1948) on the history of food, opted for the ‘siege of Vienna in 1683’ version.
In fact, the world-famous CROISSANT of Paris (and France) cannot be traced back beyond the latter half of the 19th century, at the very earliest. The first relevant mention in any dictionary definition of the word was in 1863, the first recipe under the name ‘croissant’ (but describing an oriental pastry) in c.1905, and the earliest recipe which corresponds to the modern croissant in 1906.
Harold McGee (1990) introduces and deals with this myth succinctly:
It’s in the best of cookbooks and the worst of cookbooks, the simple and the sophisticated. ‘Sear the meat to seal in the juices,’ they say. This catchy phrase is probably the best-known explanation of a cooking method. It originated with an eminent scientist. And it’s pure fiction.
A nineteenth century German chemist, Justus von Liebig, conceived the idea that high temperatures quickly coagulate proteins at the surface of a piece of meat, and that this coagulum forms a juice-trapping shell that keeps the interior moist. The cooking technique that Liebig accordingly recommended–start the meat at a high temperature to seal it, then reduce the heat to cook it through–ran counter to the traditional ways of roasting and boiling. Despite this, or perhaps exactly because it offered a modern ‘scientific’ alternative to tradition, the technique caught on immediately in England and America, and eventually in France. Unfortunately, Liebig never bothered to test his theory by experiment. When home economists did so in the 1930s, they found that seared beef roasts lose somewhat more moisture than roasts cooked throughout at a moderate temperature. But Liebig’s brainchild continues to turn up in many recipes for roasting, frying, and grilling. It refuses to die.
McGee also explores the question of why it refuses to die; and explains how easily, by simple visual observation, even the most stubborn adherent may be convinced that the myth is indeed a myth.
Various legends have been current. They agree in supposing that a Chinese cook (usually in California), confronted by a demand from exigent diners for food at an hour when everything on the menu was ‘off’, improvised a mixture from leftovers and said that the dish was called CHOP SUEY, meaning ‘odds and ends’ in Chinese. The identity of the demanding diners varies (in a manner typical of mythology): drunken miners, a San Francisco political boss, railroad workers, a visiting Chinese dignitary, etc.
Anderson (1988) gives the true explanation. Chop suey is a local Toisanese dish. Toisan is a rural district south of Canton, the home for most of the early immigrants from Guangdong to California. The name is Cantonese tsap seui (Mandarin tsa sui), meaning ‘miscellaneous scraps’.
has been discussed to such good effect in Kettner’s Book of the Table by Dallas (1877) that it is his words which are here offered.
In one point, however, accuracy is well within our reach, and nearly all the cookery books–even those produced under the eyes of great artists–make a mock of it: we can be accurate in language. In the whole range of literature and science, there is nothing to be found comparable to the inaccuracy and corruption of culinary language. It is something astounding. It seems as if all the ignorances in the world had conspired together to darken speech and to stupefy cooks. There is no science of cookery possible without a correct phraseology. Science is but another name for clear and classified knowledge; and the first step to it is precision of speech. It is for this reason that in the following pages the reader will find more than usual attention paid to the naming of dishes and to their history. At the present moment the vocabulary of dinner is a mass of confusion and ridiculous mistakes, which is every day becoming worse and worse through the ignorant importation of French names (originally themselves bad enough) into English bills of fare. It comes of abominable pretension. A leg of good English mutton–the best in the world–will be entered as a Gigot of Pré Salé. What on earth has become of the English Southdowns that they should be described as a French Salt Marsh? I have seen a fillet-steak served with tomatos entered as ‘Filet de Boeuf à l’Orientale,’ under a notion that tomatos came originally from the East and not from the West, and that the people of the East are given to beef. This is not merely pretension: it is perfidy. You order the Oriental fillet expecting one thing, and you get something quite different.
Some people may innocently argue–‘What harm is there in a wrong word so long as the dish is good? We eat the food and not the name.’ But this is to mistake human nature. A hungry taste is apt to be querulous, and resents disappointment. Also there is a peculiar fastidiousness in what has never yet been thoroughly analyzed–that peculiar condition known as Acquired taste. Perhaps there is no such thing in persons who are grown up as a perfectly pure and natural taste. The taste may be sound and even fine, but it is always more or less influenced by custom and by association, until it breeds an Acquired taste which is not to be reasoned with and which will not be denied. The Greenlander takes to tallow; the southern Frenchman glories in garlic; the East Indian is mighty in pepper. No force of reasoning can prove to them that other tastes are better; they have an Acquired taste which insists on being pampered. And precisely the same phenomenon occurs, though in a less marked way, when we get a dish which we know, which we expect, and which does not correspond to its name. A very pleasant Julienne soup can be made without sorrel; but those who look for the sorrel always feel that without it the Julienne is a failure. An acquired taste has been created, which suffers under disappointment as cruelly as when the Greenlander is deprived of his whale-blubber, the Gascon of his garlic, and the East Indian of his curry.
Bad as it is, however, it is not on the perfidy or the pretension of wrong names that it is most necessary to insist. The great wrong about them is that they are a bar to all chance of science and of progress in cookery. An idea has got abroad and has been much fostered by French authorities, that cookery as practised by the great artists is perfect, and that there is nothing more to be done except to ring the changes on what these artists have achieved. It is probable enough that we shall not get many more new foods or combinations of savour; but it is quite certain that with the progress of science we ought to attain our results by simpler and shorter processes, with aim more precise and with success more assured. But nothing at all is possible until we first of all understand each other by agreeing upon terms about which there shall be no mistake. It is for this reason that … [I dwell] so much upon the mere grammar and vocabulary of the kitchen. Till we have settled our definitions there is no use in talking. And therefore, while in … composing receipts … I have done my utmost to simplify processes, to discard mere subtleties and variations, and to cut down useless expenses and tedious labour, I have gone first and foremost on the principle that the greatest waste of all in the kitchen is the waste of words. It is a simple fact … that the language of the kitchen is a language ‘not understanded of the people.’ There are scores upon scores of its terms in daily use which are little understood and not at all fixed; and there is not upon the face of this earth an occupation which is carried on with so much of unintelligible jargon and chattering of apes as that of preparing food …. We sorely want Cadmus among the cooks. All the world remembers that he taught the Greeks their alphabet. It is well-nigh forgotten that he was cook to the king of Sidon. I cannot help thinking that cooks would do well to combine with their cookery, like Cadmus, a little attention to the alphabet.
a fish soup associated with the fishing village of Cullen in NE Scotland, happened to be singled out for mention by Marian McNeill (1929) in her pioneering survey of traditional Scottish cookery. However, it is but one of a number of such soup/stews, based on smoked haddock and incorporating milk, with potato as a thickener. Catherine Brown (1996) affirms that these were made by fishwives all along the coast.
In fact the word ‘skink’ comes from the German word Schinke (ham) and has the same meaning in Scotland as HOUGH, i.e. the part of an animal corresponding to the human ankle or shin; so the archetypal skink is a soup made from shin of beef. Presumably the people in places such as Cullen adapted this to the fishy version.
served cold with cold meat, is made with redcurrant jelly, mustard, pepper and salt, blanched ‘matchsticks’ of orange peel, and port wine. Elizabeth David (1970), having conducted characteristically thorough research into its origins, observes that: (a) there is a legend that it was named for the Duke of Cumberland who was brother of George IV; (b) the first reference to it by name was in a French book, Alfred Suzanne’s La Cuisine Anglaise, of 1904; (c) what was essentially the same recipe had been published by Soyer in 1853, but without the name; and (d) the famous chef ESCOFFIER, who flourished in the Edwardian era, popularized the recipe given by Suzanne and was responsible for the commercial success of the sauce.
If there were any need to confirm these findings, one could add that the sauce had not appeared in any of the late 19th-century compilations, such as Law’s Grocer’s Manual (c.1895), in which, had it become known and commercially available by then, it would certainly have figured; and that the Duke of Cumberland of the legend, who had become King of Hanover, died in 1851, more than 50 years before Suzanne made his reference to Cumberland sauce.
or cumin (sometimes cummin) for short, a spice consisting of the dried, seedlike, fruits of Cuminum cyminum, a pretty little annual herb of the parsley family, Umbelliferae. It probably originated in the E. Mediterranean region, but is now grown also in India, China, Japan, and Indonesia.
Cumin was well known in antiquity. There are biblical references to threshing the harvested plants with rods to collect the ‘seeds’, a procedure still followed in some places in the E. Mediterranean.
Pliny (1st century AD) paid cumin a high compliment (‘when one is tired of all seasonings, cumin remains welcome’); and to judge by the collection of recipes attributed to Apicius the Romans used it frequently.
It was popular in England in medieval times, but later was largely eclipsed by CARAWAY. Cumin is still much used elsewhere, e.g. in pickling mixtures. In the Netherlands and Switzerland it spices certain cheeses; and in France and Germany it flavours some cakes and breads.
Cumin is an ingredient of the Iranian spice mixture ADVIEH; the Afghan char masala, the Indian garam masala (see MASALA) and other CURRY POWDERS.
In N. Africa cumin seeds are used in meat and vegetable dishes. Their use in Spain for stews and for breads continues, but on a diminishing scale; as is perhaps implied by a curious Spanish saying, ‘me importa un cumino’, meaning ‘I couldn’t care less’. The popularity of cumin in Latin America, originally due to Spanish influence, and the popularity of Mexican food such as CHILI CON CARNE (in which the cumin which is always present in chilli powder is a prominent flavouring) in the USA have combined to make cumin an important spice for N. Americans.
There is an uncommon variety of true cumin whose seeds are black or near-black. Names for this include siyah zira in Iran and Afghanistan, and kala jeera or kala zira in India (or, a corruption of the name in Iran, shia zira). See also BLACK CUMIN.
the name given, from some time in the 19th century, in Britain and generally in N. America to a small cake baked in a cup-shaped mould or in a paper baking cup.
In N. America the term may originally have referred to the American measuring system, based on the cup measure. Just as recipes for POUND CAKE called for a pound of this and that, so recipes for cup cake would involve a sequence of cup measures, often making one large cake rather than a lot of small ones. The earliest example cited by Craigie and Hulbert (1940) of cup cake appearing in print is from Miss LESLIE (1828) and is of particular interest because her recipe (for White Cup Cake) appears to exemplify both meanings. Main ingredients are one large coffee cup of cream or rich milk (best when sour), one cup of butter, two cups of sugar, and four cups of flour. The prepared mixture is then to be baked in ‘little tins’.
a large group of fungi, some edible. They all belong to the order Pezizales in the class Ascomycetes, the fungi which form their spores in small sack-shaped cells.
The scarlet elf cup, Sarcoscypha coccinea, is one of the most eye-catching edible fungi. It grows on fallen branches from winter to spring and looks just like a scarlet cup of a size which would suit an elf. It is common in N. America as well as Europe. Children in the Jura are said to eat it raw on bread and butter; and one French author suggests adding the cups, with a little kirsch, to a fresh fruit salad.
The orange peel fungus, Aleuria aurantia, is not dissimilar, but its cup has a surface which is less smooth and resembles an orange skin turned inside out, being whitish outside and orange within. It too is a European and N. American species. In Italy it is considered edible, even raw in salads, but lacking in flavour.
Otidea onotica, the hare’s ear fungus, is of the shape indicated by its name and creamy yellow in colour. It needs to be well cooked; and can then be used in salads, but has little flavour.
the name for a bird in one group of the family Cracidae. The other two main groups have the names chachalaca and guan. All these birds bear a general resemblance to the HEN, PHEASANT, or TURKEY. The chachalacas, relatively small, can look like scrawny hens as they scratch around in barnyards. Curassows, on the other hand, are large and may be compared to turkeys. Their size gives them more importance as table birds. The great curassow, Crax rubra, may weigh as much as 4.5 kg (10 lb).
The name curassow comes from the Caribbean island of Curaçao, whence the first specimens to be seen in Europe. Whether or not this family of birds originated in S. America, that is certainly the region where they evolved most rapidly and are best known. The northerly limit of their range is the frontier between Mexico and Texas; the southern limits are N. Argentina and Uruguay.
These birds may be prepared and cooked like their counterparts among domestic fowl such as CHICKEN and turkey.
or curds is the solid part of MILK which has been separated by CURDLING with RENNET or an ACID. Separating the curd in this way is the first step in making almost all kinds of cheese.
The curd contains the main milk PROTEIN, casein, and the milk fat. The liquid fraction, whey, contains the milk sugar and the remains of the protein. Curds and WHEY are eaten together as JUNKET, a bland ‘nursery’ dessert. Also, of course, curds and whey were providing sustenance for Little Miss Muffet until the spider frightened her away.
Curd can be eaten as it is, with sugar or salt, cream or whey. ‘Cruddes’, as they were once called, have been a poor man’s staple and middle-class ‘milk-meat’ for centuries. Samuel Pepys, the diarist, recorded having curds and cream or whey as a snack on several occasions. In modern times, curds have more often been used to make curd cakes or tart fillings (as in Yorkshire curd tarts), and similar dishes.
The word ‘curd’ is also used in other contexts, notably in the name of bean curd (see TOFU), a comparable substance made from SOYA BEANS; and for a kind of fruit preserve of which lemon curd is the archetype (and which may also be described as a ‘cheese’, especially when made with damsons). In India the name curd is often used to mean yoghurt.
a term which at first sight is puzzling since virtually all cheeses are made from CURD. It is generally taken to mean any soft cheese made from unfermented curds, and as corresponding to the Russian tvorog and the German QUARK. In contrast, COTTAGE CHEESE is defined as being made from unpressed curds, and therefore having a different texture.
The fat content of curd cheeses is typically higher than that of low-fat cottage cheeses but lower than the CREAM CHEESES.
the separation of an EMULSION such as MILK or MAYONNAISE. Cooks normally use the word when something has gone wrong, but the deliberate curdling of milk is part of the normal process of making CHEESE and other milk products. The term is also used vaguely for various misfortunes that produce a lumpy texture. Other words used in this context are flocculation, which means the formation of any kind of lumpy or fluffy masses and is understood here to mean a lumpiness that can be reversed; and COAGULATION, which means an irreversible hardening–if a sauce coagulates, the only thing to do is throw it away and start again. The term coagulation is normally used only of PROTEIN.
Foods that curdle in the true sense include all the emulsified sauces made with egg and oil; some cake batters; and milk, cream, and yoghurt, as well as any sauces, soups, or stews to which these are added–although in these cases separation may occur for more than one reason.
An emulsion is a mixture of two liquids in which one liquid forms tiny droplets suspended in the other. In cookery one liquid is generally an oil of some kind, the other water or some watery liquid such as vinegar. When the mixture curdles, the droplets run together into larger drops. If the mixture is left to stand, the two liquids may separate completely so that one floats as a layer on the other. This is a familiar event in vinaigrette dressing, which is an unstable, temporary emulsion. When separated it can be remixed simply by shaking hard in a jar with a lid.
Milk and mayonnaise are stable emulsions–at least over a time scale of hours or days. The droplets are maintained by an emulsifier, a substance which forms a protective boundary layer around them. Emulsifiers are sensitive to changes in their environment, and if the temperature or acidity of the mixture changes they may stop working. In this case more than shaking or stirring is required to re-form the emulsion.
Mayonnaise may curdle if the oil is added to the egg yolk faster than the two can be beaten together, so that there is no time for the physical work of beating to break the oil into small enough droplets. It may also separate if the ingredients are not all at the same temperature, or if an ingredient such as vinegar is added without adequate stirring, so that it forms regions of excessive acidity. Even when mayonnaise has been successfully made it may separate if put in the refrigerator, which makes the oil begin to solidify.
In all these cases the emulsion may be repaired by stirring it into another egg yolk. This must be done as gradually as when making the original mixture. If no more eggs are available, sometimes the mayonnaise can be reunited by stirring it into a spoonful of water, but, since there is much less emulsifier around when this method is used, it does not always work.
Milk does not consist only of fat and water; it also contains protein molecules suspended in the water. It can separate in two ways. In fresh, unhomogenized milk the droplets of fat float to the surface, forming a layer of ‘top of milk’. The milk can be remixed by shaking it. But when milk separates into semi-solid curds floating in clear whey it cannot be remixed. In this case not only the fat but some of the protein has separated, and the protein has begun to coagulate into a solid that cannot be liquefied again. Similarly, when milk is boiled the heat makes protein coagulate into a skin on the surface, which cannot be stirred back into the milk. The technical term for an irreversible change in protein is ‘denaturing’. This change can also be brought about by adding acid or alkali to milk.
Many hot dishes, especially sauces, soups, and stews, call for CREAM or YOGHURT to finish. In some cases, most frequently when brought back to the boil, the milk protein will coagulate, producing a granular texture which cannot be rectified. Yoghurt and light or single cream are the most susceptible, and will be the more subject to the vice if there is acid (wine, say, or tomato) in the dish being cooked. Heavy or double cream, or crème fraîche, are much less unstable and will merrily boil to even thicker reductions.
Yoghurt and SOUR CREAM are less stable than fresh cream because of their acidity. However, yoghurt that is to be used in cooking can be prevented from curdling by first stirring in cornflour or egg white while it is slowly brought to the boil. These act as physical binders to thicken the mixture. It should also be noted that sheep’s or goat’s milk yoghurt, or strained yoghurt often called ‘Greek’, are more stable than plain yoghurt.
In this context, lumpiness in a WHITE SAUCE needs a word of explanation. White sauce is partly an emulsion, because it is made with milk, so it can curdle like any other mixture made with milk. But it is also a ‘sol’, a dispersion of starch such as FLOUR or CORNFLOUR in liquid, and it is this other aspect of the sauce which usually causes trouble. The major cause of lumpiness here and precautions to be taken are explained under STARCH.
Ralph Hancock
Numenius arquata, a drab-coloured bird of about 60 cm (24″) in average total length, of migrant habits, with breeding grounds in the north of Asia and Europe.
The curlew is not a common article of food, although it used to enjoy some popularity. Birds which have been feeding at sea or on the coast tend to have a fishy taste. Those taken from inland moors, where they eat berries and insects, are greatly preferable.
The Scots name for curlew is whaup.
The godwits mentioned in early English cookery books are marsh birds of the genus Limosa, not unlike the curlew, but smaller. They had a high reputation as table fare. Sir Thomas Browne (1902), writing in the 17th century about the natural history of Norfolk, observed that they ‘were accounted the daintiest dish in England and I think, for the bignesse, of the biggest price’.
the fresh fruits which may be red, white, or black, have nothing to do with currants in the other sense (see RAISINS, SULTANAS, AND CURRANTS), but belong to a separate genus of plants, Ribes, which also includes GOOSEBERRIES. They are small, round berries which often retain, at the end opposite the stem, withered remnants of the flower from which they grew.
Wild currants, both red and black, grow worldwide in northern temperate regions. Cultivated species are virtually all derived from European and Asian types. Native American currants were used by Indian tribes, especially for making PEMMICAN (preserved dried meat, fat, and fruit), but one of them, R. aureum, the golden currant, is so good that cultivars of it have been developed by a process of selection.
The redcurrant (Ribes rubrum, syn. R. sativum) was first mentioned in European literature in a German manuscript of the early 15th century. A drawing appears in the Mainz Herbarius of 1484. It was domesticated in Europe in the 16th century, mainly in the Netherlands and Denmark. There are many hybrids between these and other species. Wild redcurrants taste much the same as cultivated ones.
The whitecurrant, now relatively uncommon, is a variant which arises spontaneously in several redcurrant species.
In Britain redcurrants are essential for the making of at least one delicacy, SUMMER PUDDING; and redcurrant jelly is a fine accompaniment for lamb and other meats. Redcurrant juice is a popular drink in and around Germany. Generally, the popularity of redcurrants is most noticeable in the northern parts of Europe, including Scandinavia.
In other parts of Europe, especially the far south, currants of whatever colour have never caught on. The most common Latin languages use the same name for ‘currant’ and ‘gooseberry’. Even when, in Paris in the 18th century, redcurrant juice became a fashionable drink, the fruit was known as groseille d’outre mer (overseas gooseberry). However, there is at least one exception to this general statement. Bar-le-Duc, a town in NE France, is known for its exquisite preserve made from redcurrants. The process for making this is exacting; it requires that the currants should be individually pierced with a quill to remove the seeds, before being boiled with sugar syrup and some redcurrant juice. (Similar preserves are made with whitecurrants or tiny strawberries. All may be served with cream cheese for dessert.)
The blackcurrant, R. nigrum, was first cultivated a century later than the red, and for a long time was considered to be distinctly inferior. Its flavour, though pleasant, lacks the brilliance of that of the redcurrant, especially when the fruit is raw. The original blackcurrants grew in N. Europe and in Asia as far east as the Himalayas. They have been crossed with other Asian species to produce the plants now cultivated.
Early uses in Britain were partly medicinal, as a cure for sore throats. The leaves were made into a tea said to have strengthening properties. Blackcurrants also became popular for jam and for making sorbet–and an ice flavoured with the leaves is also very successful, perhaps mirroring the Russian practice of using them to flavour kvass. In France the alcoholic cordial crème de cassis, made in the vicinity of Dijon in Burgundy from locally grown blackcurrants, won worldwide fame.
The discovery of vitamins at the beginning of the 20th century gave a boost to consumption of the blackcurrant, since it is outstandingly rich in vitamin C. Half a dozen blackcurrants have more of this than a large lemon. Blackcurrant juice is now widely used as a healthful drink.
a term adopted into the English language from India, has changed its meaning in migrating and has become ubiquitous as a menu word. It now denotes various kinds of dish in numerous different parts of the world; but all are savoury, and all spiced.
The Tamil word kari is the starting point. It means a spiced sauce, one of the sorts of dressing taken in S. India with rice, and soupy in consistency. Different words in Tamil refer to stewlike dressings (meat, fish, poultry, vegetables, in small quantities) and to ‘dry’ dressings. Europeans, however, fastened on the word kari and took it to mean any of these dressings. Hobson-Jobson (1903; Yule and Burnell, 1979), who gives the fullest (and most entertaining, but in some respects confused) account of the term’s history up to the beginning of the 20th century, observes that the Portuguese took over the word in this manner, and cites evidence that a recipe for karil appeared in a 17th-century Portguese cookery book, probably reflecting a practice which had begun in the 16th century.
The earliest apparent mention in print in the English language occurs in a translation (1598) of a Dutch traveller’s account of voyages in the E. and W. Indies. Referring to Indians, this text states that: ‘Most of their fish is eaten with rice, which they seeth in broth, which they put upon the rice, and is somewhat sour but it tasteth well and is called Carriel, which is their daily meat.’
This account was reasonably correct. However, the first curry recipe in English, ‘To Make a Currey the India Way’, was provided by Hannah GLASSE (1747), and her instructions plainly lead to the making of a stew of fowls or rabbits, with but a spoonful of rice and several spices. This recipe, echoed by many later ones, exemplifies the transposition which had taken place. What had been an Indian sauce to go with rice has become an English stew with a little rice in it. Meanwhile, however, kari itself had been changed by the introduction to Asia from the New World of capsicum plants, and the hot red pepper made from them. From that time on kari included this pepper, whereas previously it had contained nothing more pungent than black pepper.
The traditional S. Indian kari does not have a fixed set of ingredients, but a typical mixture was and remains the following, all roasted and ground to a powder: kari patta (CURRY LEAF); CORIANDER, CUMIN, and MUSTARD seeds; red and black PEPPER; FENUGREEK; TURMERIC; and less certainly CINNAMON, CLOVES, CARDAMOM.
Such a mixture is always freshly prepared in India. The British, becoming accustomed to it and wishing to have it available in Britain, created commercial ready-mixed CURRY POWDER, which reflects the above mixture with more or less accuracy (often less–some terrible tales are told of what has been found in them, and they were often made with spices of inferior quality and stretched with sago flour).
Use of the word ‘curry’ in English spread to Malaysia, and was matched in the Dutch E. Indies by the Dutch word karie. Many Indians were in SE Asia, and dishes based on either their practice or European transmogrifications of it exist throughout the region, and also in E. Africa. Indeed, they are now a worldwide phenomenon.
See also ANGLO-INDIAN COOKERY; ASIAN RESTAURANTS; INDIA.
the shiny green aromatic leaf of the small tree Murraya koenigii, a member of the family Rutaceae to which the citrus fruits belong. The tree grows wild in much of S. and SE Asia, and is cultivated in some countries. The leaves, disposed in a feather-like arrangement, have a pleasing fragrance and are widely used as a flavouring in cookery, including CURRY dishes and in many kinds of CHUTNEY, in S. India, Sri Lanka, and some parts of SE Asia, e.g. the north of Thailand. Names for the leaf in India vary, but kari patta (plural) is widely used.
The function of curry leaves, like that of MAKRUT LIME leaves, corresponds to some extent to that of the BAY LEAF in western countries (and to that of coriander leaves in N. India). If used fresh, either whole or broken up (to intensify their aroma), they are fried before being incorporated in the dish; this makes them brown and crisp. Whole leaves are usually removed from a cooked dish before it is served.
The leaves retain their aroma when dried, and in places where there is not an abundant fresh supply they can be bought in semi-dried, dried, or powdered form. (Powdered leaves might be expected to be an ingredient of curry powder, but they are not.)
The leaves of the related M. paniculata, sometimes referred to as jasmine orange, are likewise used to flavour curry dishes.
In Nigeria, curry leaf is a common name for partminger (see BASIL).
of the kind sold commercially, represents an attempt by British (originally and still primarily) manufacturers to provide in ready-made form a spice mixture corresponding to those used in S. India. The latter are called kari podi; kari because they incorporate kari leaves (see CURRY LEAF).
A mixture in S. India, as noted already under CURRY, is likely to include also CORIANDER, CUMIN, and MUSTARD seeds; red and black PEPPER; FENUGREEK; and TURMERIC–with the possible additions of CINNAMON and CLOVES and CARDAMOM, and channa dal (split CHICKPEAS). All these are roasted and ground to a powder. The powder is freshly prepared when needed.
Since it was this sort of mixture which the British in India sought to replicate in standard forms, it is to the most notable writer on ANGLO-INDIAN COOKERY that we turn for information. Colonel Kenney-Herbert (1885) gave as ingredients in his ‘stock receipt for curry powder’ ‘turmeric, coriander-seed, cumin-seed, fenugreek, mustard-seed, dried chillies, black pepper corns, poppy-seed, dry-ginger’. The first seven items correspond to the first seven in the preceding paragraph, and only the last two are different; thus the resemblance is close.
Commercial mixtures had been available to cooks in Britain from late in the 18th century (at least one recipe (H. Glasse, 1796) of the 1790s calls for ‘curry powder’), but seem not to have been a common article of commerce until later. Such mixtures, then and subsequently, have varied considerably but have usually contained many or most of the ingredients mentioned above (except cardamom, which has hardly ever been used).
At the close of the 19th century, Law’s Grocer’s Manual listed 12 recipes for curry powder, drawing on 19 ingredients. These included rice flour; and an excess of this or an addition of sago flour were mentioned as two of several possible adulterants.
In recent times, increased awareness of what Indian cooking in its authentic form is like has created a demand in Britain for curry powders which bear a closer relationship to it. However, the uses to which the powders are put in western countries–uses which stem back to Anglo-Indian cookery–do not, generally speaking, correspond to Indian practices. The whole curry powder scene is always going to be irreconcilable with its origins.
It is, incidentally, not only the British who use curry powder. In France poudre de curry is obtainable, and in Denmark, with its long tradition of trade with the Orient, there has for long been a ‘karry’ powder available (but a relatively mild version.
also known as torsk or tusk, a fish of the cod family which has a range stretching right across the northerly waters of the N. Atlantic. Its habits are unlike those of its brethren; it does not mass in shoals but tends to a solitary and sedentary existence, growing slowly in the cold Arctic waters (maximum length 110 cm/44″). It has only one dorsal fin, and just one barbel.
There is some commercial fishing for the cusk, which may be marketed either fresh or salted. Its flesh contains a moderate amount of oil and is well suited to grilling or baking.
the general name for two fine edible sea fish of the southern hemisphere, Genypterus capensis and G. blacodes. They belong to the family Ophidiidae, and are not true eels although somewhat eel-like in shape. They also bear a resemblance to the CUSK (hence cusk eel) and the LING.
G. capensis may reach a length of 1.5 m (5′), and is generally pinkish with brown blotches. It belongs to the Cape of Good Hope region and is known there as kingklip, a name which according to van der Elst (1988) is a contraction of the old Dutch word koningklipvisch, meaning king of the rockfish. It counts as one of the finest table fishes of S. Africa.
The liver of the kingklip is greatly appreciated, a point which also applies to G. blacodes, a smaller species of Australasian waters which is of less commercial interest and which locally bears the misnomer ling.
is now deemed a mixture of milk and eggs thickened by heating. It is a basic item of western cooking and occurs in many dishes in either a dominant or subsidiary role. It may be baked (although current British usage will usually distinguish it as ‘baked’) or gently cooked (just short of boiling), but for that see custard sauce, below.
It derives from the French word croustade, denoting an uncovered pastry case or TART which was often, if not invariably, filled with what we call custard. Hence the container gave its name to the filling. Meanwhile, in France, there was the FLAN, again a pastry case, often filled with a custard base. Here too, the container lent its name to the contained, for the flan beloved of southern French and Spanish restaurants (crème caramel elsewhere) is innocent of pastry.
The French word for ‘custard’, in all its guises, is CRÈME, and thus it is easy to forget the role that custard mixtures play in things as diverse as QUICHE Lorraine and ÉCLAIRS. See also CRÈME CARAMEL and CRÈME BRÛLÉE for connected subjects.
The use of custard-filled ‘pies’ or tarts was memorably extended in the 1920s, when the throwing of custard pies into the faces of characters in silent films became a standard Hollywood procedure. Lorna Woodsum Riley (1987) devoted a chapter of her appropriately titled Reel Meals to the subject, recalling that the comedienne Mabel Normand, around 1913, launched the first such missile, probably at Fatty Arbuckle; that Arbuckle himself developed into a champion pie-thrower (able to toss two at once in opposite directions); that the pâtisserie which supplied the pies to Keystone Studios soon developed a special ballistic version of the pie, with heavy-duty pastry and especially slurpy ‘custard’, demand for which from film-makers–who might stage scenes in which a thousand or more pies would be thrown–grew to such an extent that the pâtisserie was eventually making nothing else. Marion Mead (1996), writing about Buster Keaton, gives a precise recipe for custard pies for throwing. These are most certainly inedible. She also describes three different throwing techniques.
Two other medieval preparations, CAUDLE and POSSET, have a history linked with that of custard, and in some instances have virtually been custards. Although in their plainest form they were drinks, they were often thickened to a fair degree of solidity.
One way of cooking custards was to bake them in a bread oven after the bread was taken out and when the oven was fairly cool, or in one of the small side ovens which became increasingly usual at the end of the Middle Ages. Another device used at this time, the chafing dish gently heated with a layer of hot coals under it, provided an ideal way of making custards. Sometimes the thick kind of medieval custard was further stiffened by adding breadcrumbs. This was done with both tart fillings and free-standing custards. Other ‘enforcements’, as the term was, were flour and finely pounded meat, for example pork flavoured with sage. There was at this time no clear distinction between savoury and sweet, and meat might coexist with quantities of sweet ingredients such as sugar and fruit, as well as almonds, herbs, and spices.
A gelling agent was sometimes added to custards for serving cold. Some old local British recipes make use of CARRAGEEN moss. Custards liquid enough to pour were also made, variously flavoured. These might be poured onto bread to make a ‘sop’, or onto poached eggs.
In the 16th century ‘fruit creams’ became popular. These were sweet, made with eggs, cream, and puréed fruit. Early types of FOOL were similar. During this time it became usual to make custards in dishes or individual cups rather than in a pastry case, though many types of custard tart continued to be popular.
Much later, when ICE CREAM arrived in Britain, custard mixtures were used for it as well as straight cream ones, one reason being that a rich emulsion was less prone to form unwanted ice crystals during freezing.
Custard sauce is made from the same ingredients as custard, but is runnier. It is now very much more common than a true custard, at least in Britain. Indeed, the term ‘custard’ by itself usually refers to the sauce, as in ‘Prunes and Custard’ (to select a menu item which many people, although unjustly, regard as offputting–what could be better than prunes d’Agen with a well-made custard sauce?)
What is unclear is just when the transfer of custard to the sauceboat began to happen. There are various mid-19th-century recipes for rich custards including flavourings such as bitter almonds, chocolate, various liqueurs, and lemon zest, but they were served cold, probably alone. Mrs Beeton (1861) does, however, give a recipe for a ‘custard sauce for tarts or puddings’ of eggs and milk, so the transition had begun by the time she was writing.
What is abundantly clear is the importance in all this of the invention of custard powder. This product is not a dried form of real custard. It consists mainly of cornflour and sugar, coloured and flavoured, to which hot milk is added to make a sauce. It was invented by Alfred Bird, who opened a shop in Birmingham in 1837 under the sign ‘Alfred Bird F.C.S., Experimental Chemist’. Johnston (1977) says that:
it was not the pursuit of scientific knowledge which prompted him to devise a new custard based on cornflour rather than eggs, but rather his concern to find a compromise between his wife’s partiality to custard and her allergy to eggs.
Chinese cooking does not normally use dairy products, but contains several dishes in which eggs are combined with water and sometimes oil or fat to give the effect of a custard. One such, ‘steamed eggs’, is made with mixed meats or seafoods covered with an egg mixture lightly seasoned with soy sauce and wine and steamed over water.
A Japanese savoury baked custard, Chawan mushi, is made by pouring a mixture of eggs and DASHI (stock) over a mixture of cooked chicken, seafood, and vegetables in individual lidded china cups. These dishes are the only Japanese ones normally eaten with a spoon.
Steamed egg ‘custards’ are known in Korea, and a few, savoury or sweet, turn up in the cuisines of the Indian subcontinent. As for SE Asia, there is a Thai and Lao sweet custard, sankhaya or Sankhagnaa mak phao, which uses COCONUT milk. This is mixed with eggs and sugar and poured into containers made from young coconuts still soft enough to carve with a knife, formed into elegantly shaped pots with a lid and a foot. These pots are steamed until the custard inside sets.
Demand for Bird’s product increased steadily during the second half of the 19th century. Competitors, using formulae whose ingredients included arrowroot, sago flour, or potato starch, coloured with turmeric or chrome yellow, and flavoured with cassia or bitter almonds, also entered the market. Bird’s, however, promoted their product with skilful salesmanship, and became so closely identified with custard powder that few competitors survived.
A principal factor in the success of custard powder was that, as it did not contain eggs, there was no longer any risk of the sauce curdling in unskilled hands. During the late 20th century, the old egg-based custard sauce has become a rarity.
a name widely applied to various annonaceous fruits, and referring to their creamy pulp, which does taste something like custard. Nothing called custard apple is related to the true APPLE. The fruits most likely to be intended by the term are CHERIMOYA, SUGAR-APPLE (alias sweetsop), BULLOCK’S HEART, and (in the USA) POND APPLE. Of these, bullock’s heart is the fruit with the best claim to the name.
There is, however, an African fruit to which the name wild custard apple is properly given. This belongs to Annona senegalensis, which grows throughout tropical Africa. The fruit is oval/round and 2.5–10 cm (1–4″) in length. The fleshy pulp is orange or yellow, with a scent of pineapple, and full of seeds. It is considered by some to be the finest of the fruits indigenous to Africa.
To dine with cutlery is to participate in western culture. Other sophisticated civilizations eat without these tools: the Chinese and Japanese with chopsticks; the Indians with their hands, for example. Cutlery, therefore, cannot be considered a necessity for civilized dining. Rather, its use points to western society’s deepest values.
Hand-eaters often argue that cutlery deprives one of the tactile pleasures of touching food. Those who reel in disgust should consider that hand-washing and thoughtful service can avert hygiene issues, the understanding of which post-dates the European adoption of cutlery.
Cutlery distances its user both from the food being eaten and from others sharing it. ‘Marry, he must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil,’ warns Shakespeare in The Comedy of Errors. Significantly, the spread of forks exactly followed the northward path of the Italian Renaissance, which placed a new emphasis on individuality, a value that remains critical to western thinking.
The first documented dinner fork in Europe belonged to a Byzantine princess who married the Doge of Venice c.1060. The church fathers cursed her for using what they considered a diabolical object. Although gradually taken up in humanist circles, resistance to the object remained tenacious, especially in the north. In 1515 Martin Luther purportedly said, ‘God protect me from forks’. Two centuries later, Louis XIV of France refused ever to use one, although most of his courtiers ignored his example.
Prior to the fork, the most important piece of European cutlery was the knife. Carving was an honorific ritual performed to emphasize the perquisites of game enjoyed by an aristocracy descended from tribes of hunter/warriors. 20th-century sociologist Norbert Elias argued that society de-emphasized the dinner knife as its presence became disturbingly violent. From the late 17th century, blades were rounded or blunted whenever possible. However, western society has never banished them entirely. The solemnity with which a holiday roast is carved today echoes medieval ceremony.
Used to feed infants, the sick, and the elderly, to ladle, and to pour, spoons have since ancient times also been offered as commemorative gifts. God commanded Moses to make spoons for the Tabernacle of the Ark of the Covenant. They have traditionally been given at christenings, funerals, betrothals, as tokens of friendship, and as souvenirs.
The timeworn expression ‘born with a silver spoon’ hints at the rarity of even a single piece of cutlery in previous generations and of the preference for silver as its material.
Even in wealthy homes, one could not assume that cutlery would be laid for each guest until the 18th century, or later in country districts. Local customs varied considerably. The development of tableware paralleled the emergence of SERVICE À LA FRANÇAISE, the logical ordering of kitchens and courses. Together with porcelain (whose formula Europe discovered in 1708), cutlery enabled chefs to refine sauces and soups, which then rose in importance.
The subsequent transition to SERVICE À LA RUSSE, the consecutive serving of individually portioned courses, in the later 19th century resulted in innumerable new utensils for specific foods, distinguishing, for example, forks for lettuce from those for salad.
Streamlined lifestyles after two world wars brought an end to the gargantuan flatware services of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. However, the post-war application of wartime technology to stainless steel, discovered early in the 20th century, made inexpensive cutlery available to even the humblest households.
Carolin C. Young
a term used in butchery and meat cookery which has more than one meaning. The first is a neck CHOP of MUTTON or LAMB. The second is one which applies to VEAL; a veal cutlet is a flat piece of veal (on or off the bone, depending on whether it incorporates a small piece of bone). Thirdly, a cutlet may be a round or preferably cutlet-shaped patty formed of minced meat or fish (or a substitute, as in ‘nut cutlet’) bound with a thick velouté sauce, like a RISSOLE (of the English variety) or CROQUETTE.
The word is derived from the Latin costa (rib) through the French côte (rib) and côtelette (chop). This derivation suits the first meaning. In the other two meanings cutlet is treated as though it were a diminutive of cut (the noun), so meaning a small piece (of meat).
See also the discussion under Costoletta alla milanese in the article on VEAL, where the Italian terms costoletta and cotoletta are explained.
an edible CEPHALOPOD (the group of molluscs which also includes SQUID and OCTOPUS). The species familiar in the Mediterranean and E. Atlantic is Sepia officinalis, which has a maximum body length of about 25 cm (10″) and is usually dark in colour with markings as shown in the drawing. Like other cephalopods, it has ink sacs which secrete a dark ink, intended for ejection when a predator threatens it. That of the cuttlefish was formerly used to produce the colour sepia. Both cuttlefish and squid may be called inkfish.
In the Indo-Pacific area there are a number of species of cuttlefish, of which those most commonly consumed are:
Japan is by far the most important market in the world for cephalopods, and the Japanese generally pay more for cuttlefish than for squid or octopus; but this may be partly because supplies are smaller.
The Chinese, remarking that ‘the cuttle has ink in its bosom’, have called it ‘the clerk of the god of the sea’. Other Chinese names in use at Hong Kong include mak mo (nanny inkfish) and foo ban woo chak (tiger-blotched black thief).
There are also some very small cuttlefish, such as Sepiola rondeleti and Rossia macrosoma in the Mediterranean. They are only 3 to 6 cm (about 1″ to 2″) long, and are often offered for sale ready cleaned and fried, when they make delicious morsels. It is these which the French call suppions and the Spaniards globitos or chipirones. They can be distinguished from baby specimens of Sepia spp by the prominent ‘ears’ which project from their tiny bodies.
Cuttlefish can be cooked like squid or octopus, but need no special treatment to make them tender.
are exceptionally primitive plants; they were familiar to the dinosaurs, 100 million years or more ago. They and the GINKGO, the sole surviving species of an equally ancient group, are among the oldest of seed-bearing plants.
A cycad looks like a palm tree with fernlike leaves, but proves that it is not a palm by producing cones, often resembling those of a pine but sometimes far larger. The biggest ever found, from a S. African cycad, Encephalartos caffer (source of the so-called ‘Kaffir bread’), weighed 42 kg (92 lb).
The plants are long-lived–some are more than 1,000 years old–and highly resistant to drought and harsh treatment. Cycads of several genera are found throughout tropical and subtropical regions worldwide.
The large, nutlike seeds found between the scales of the cones are no delicacy, being starchy and bland, but provide a useful food to many peoples. However, they are toxic in their natural state, and have to be processed quite elaborately before they are safe to eat. Menniger (1977) quotes Safford on the methods employed: ‘the poisonous properties … they remove by pounding, soaking, and repeatedly changing the water, after which the macerated starchy substance is ground and baked.’ Menniger goes on to say that ‘it may be sun-dried and stored for later use’.
In Malaysia and Indonesia the young leaves are cooked and eaten. They are tender and mucilaginous, and reputedly have a flavour between that of cabbage and of asparagus.
The main African genus is Encephalartos. Besides E. caffer, mentioned above, there is E. hildebrandtii (source of the so-called ‘Hottentot bread’). These species variously yield stem sago and seeds, yielding a flour which, after being sun dried and soaked to make it safe, is used for porridge or bread.
There are also cycads in the warmer parts of the Americas. In the W. Indies and Florida, Zamia pumila is cultivated on a small scale for the production of starch from the roots. This is known in Jamaica as ‘wild sago’ or ‘arrowroot’ and in Florida as ‘Florida arrowroot’. Other names for the plant are ‘coontie’, a Seminole word, or ‘seminole bread’. During the American Civil War a number of Federal soldiers died after eating the roots without giving them the careful washing treatment used by the Seminoles. Likewise, as Low (1989) explains, cycads in Australia, used by Aborigines after detoxifying them, caused fearful agonies among early European arrivals, e.g. Captain Cook’s crew. The latter did not know what precautions had to be taken.
an island in the E. Mediterranean which has two mountain ranges, an extensive coastline, and a population of under a million, has had a turbulent history, which is reflected in its food.
A Greek colony 4,000 years ago, it has since been conquered by Egypt in the 6th century BC, later by Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Venetians, and in 1571 by Turks until 1878 when it came under the British. Subsequently it became a British crown colony in 1925. In 1960 it became an independent state but there was continuing strife between its Greek and Turkish populations until in 1974 a full-scale war broke out. Turkey invaded the island and brought about its present division into two parts.
Cyprus is a fertile island with a clement climate. Its gastronomy reflects the surrounding Mediterranean foodways (especially those of GREECE, TURKEY, and LEBANON AND SYRIA), and the fact that it is geographically closer to the Arab East rather than the European West.
There is a strong link with BYZANTINE COOKERY. Spices are used in a generous way, especially coriander. This was also a favourite feature in Byzantine cooking when cumin and coriander were added to several dishes and in particular to plainly boiled Lenten pulses such as chickpeas and lentils. A number of labour-intensive and intricate dishes such as koubes or koupes, koupepia (the local name for DOLMA), and the sweet-and-savoury Easter cheese pies called FLAOUNES still have their place in the island’s gastronomic pantheon. This feature of intricacy could betray either Byzantine or Arab influence.
Vegetables are the protagonists on the daily table and there is a universal love for pulses. A bewildering array of greens, some wild and others cultivated, which are used, after being boiled, for salad, e.g. MALLOW shoots, Swiss CHARD (with black-eyed beans), RAPE before it flowers, and so on. Greens are often sautéed and made into omelettes such as Strouthia omeletta–an omelette with young pea shoots.
Similarity between Greek Cypriot cuisine and that of Greece is shown by landmark items such as egg-and-lemon sauces added to chicken and fish soups and casseroles; grilled and fried fish; various pies; and breads such as the delicious elioti (made with olives and olive oil). There are also two dishes which may have come straight from ancient Greece. One is louvana (fava in Greece), a purée of yellow split peas similar to the ancient etnos. The other is tra(c)hanas (see TARHANA), which is cracked wheat boiled with milk and then rolled into thick breadcrumbs, sun dried and stored for the winter, to be made into a porridge-like soup with a lightly fermented taste.
However, many Cyprus favourites are quite unknown in Greece, e.g. the Arab dip hummus made with CHICKPEAS, and the Arab KIBBEH which are rissoles made with a layer of cracked wheat (see BURGHUL) on the outside and stuffed with a fried mixture of spicy minced meat, onions, and parsley, appropriately Hellenized under the name koupes which means cups.
TARO (kolokassi) a vegetable which was known in Byzantium but is not known in Greece, is often included in Cypriot casserole dishes, for which the general name is kapamas. These casseroles can be made with lamb or pork. Taro has other uses; it is often cooked with dolmas or boiled with celery and lemon and served as a salad.
Other prominent dishes are Tavas (a Persian word, meaning frying pan), which is cubed beef or lamb, potatoes, tomatoes, and cinnamon, covered and roasted slowly in a low oven; and Afelia–a casserole of pork, red wine, crushed coriander seeds, and cinnamon. Of the numerous grilled meats the star is sheftalia, a spicy sausage made with pork or lamb and wrapped in CAUL.
Cypriots are no exception to the general rule that people like sweet things. Their favourites include loukoumades (see JALEBI), and GLIKO.
Rena Salaman
for most of the 20th century perceived as a single country with SLOVAKIA. They thus share much culinary history.
The western part of the Czech Republic, adjoining Poland, Germany, and Austria, corresponds to the former kingdom of Bohemia, whose territory represented quite precisely the centre of Europe and which was poised on the frontier between the German and Slavonic parts of that continent. The territory was also a rich one for agriculture.
Bohemia had a high reputation for cookery skills and is said to have provided many cooks for Vienna, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to which Bohemia belonged. There was no doubt an influence in both directions, with results still visible. Generally, however, Czech fare tends to be more robust than that of neighbouring Austria, with considerable emphasis on root vegetables and DUMPLINGS as well as on the meat which they accompany and the soups which they fortify.
Czech dumplings (knedliky) are unforgettable. The huge loaf-sized ones, which are served in slices with stews, are one of the first things which a visitor notices. They are the leviathans of a massive range which extends all the way down to the tiny liver dumplings which are traditionally served in soup by the bride to her new husband, and which includes ham dumplings, cheese/curd dumplings, sweet fruit dumplings, and many others.
On the sweet side, Bohemian traditions have left a legacy of tearooms and coffee houses and sweet things to eat in them, including various sorts of STRUDEL, biscuits, and yeast buns, as well as numerous large cakes such as makovy kolac (poppyseed cake with sultanas), bublanina (bubble cake, a sponge with cherries, or other fruit, baked into it), and streuselkuchen (crumble-topped cakes). See also MEHLSPEISEN, since this food category of the Austrian Empire remains valid and important in the Czech (and Slovak) Republics.
Lesley Chamberlain (1989) records that the foremost Czech cookery writer was Magdalena Dobromila Retigova, a literary figure of the early part of the 19th century who was prominent in the Czech National Revival movement; and that much may also be learned about food in daily life in Bohemia from the work of another pioneering woman writer, Bozena Nemcova (1820–62), whose semi-autobiographical ‘novel’ featured a grandmother who was a repository of knowledge about the good old foodways which were threatened by newfangled sophistication from alien sources.