In France, cuisine is not simply a source of pleasure but a multifaceted discipline. For centuries, French gastronomes have articulated opinions in their writings and woven historical, sociological, and biological elements into personal philosophies of taste. A true ‘Science of the table’ has developed with its grand masters, heroes, and even its martyrs all serving the cause of la gastronomie française.
The enduring image of France as a epicurean paradise is due, at least in part, to the wide range of fruits and vegetables grown in its soil, to the attention given to breeds of animals raised for its tables and to the abundance of seafood culled from its waters. The existence of such natural resources would, however, amount to nil were it not for the savoir faire of specialists who transform pork into pâté, milk into cheese, and flour into bread, an army of professionals baking pastries, making candies, creating dishes, not to mention the existence of vineyards producing some of the finest wines in the world. Naturally, France is not the only country to boast of its gastronomic resources or culinary traditions but, thanks in particular to one of its most important exports, its reputation for culinary excellence has spread throughout the world. We are referring to the influence of expatriate French chefs who initially oversaw the kitchens of the wealthy and later ran restaurants with gastronomic pretensions. Never claiming to feed the masses or provide food to those of modest means, French chefs have long cultivated an artistic detachment from those they served and have traditionally claimed that their cuisine was only for those with sophisticated palates and discerning taste. Such chefs also promoted the impression that their cuisine was based on closely guarded secrets that the non-initiated could not comprehend and required the mastery of daunting techniques which could only be acquired in France. In a word, French cuisine was the exact opposite of its rivals that promoted a more democratic approach to cookery and, perhaps because of its very aloofness, became surrounded by a certain mystique.
The development and growth of French cuisine owes much to the fact that, unlike many other western countries, France has historically had a gastronomic capital, Paris. Culinary resources are concentrated there: the best ingredients and the most sensitive palates were all to be found in one place. But a concentration of resources, a receptive environment, do not alone explain the growth and development of French cuisine … one needs chefs. In France, cooks are respected but chefs are revered. Like soldiers and statesmen they are decorated and glorified; streets are named after them and schoolchildren can recite their names. French chefs do more than cook. They often feel a duty to improve upon the past, to ‘advance’ the art of cookery by renewing attitudes and exploring new tastes. Indeed the periodic formation of a ‘nouvelle cuisine’ is characteristic of French cuisine and one of its greatest strengths.
Since the 17th century, French chefs have been expressing their desire to ‘reform’ the cuisine they inherited from the past. As time passed, they became more and more articulate in their criticism of the ‘ancient cookery’ and boastfully dogmatic about the virtues of ‘modern cookery’. In 1735, for example, Vincent La Chapelle wrote: ‘If a great lord’s table were served today as it was twenty years ago, it would not satisfy his guests.’ His Cuisinier moderne announced the birth of a ‘nouvelle cuisine’, a new way of cooking that was to be adopted by several generations of French chefs … until Carême challenged it in the early 19th century. In our own time, French chefs have once again ‘rebelled’ and the ‘nouvelle cuisine’ that revolutionized cooking during the 1970s has led to a new respect for vegetables, lighter sauces, and the ‘discovery’ of regional specialities (notably foie gras). Indeed, perhaps more than anything else, it is the French chefs’ willingness to question and build on the past, to innovate, to revise, that has kept French cuisine pre-eminent among western cuisines and one of the great cuisines of the world.
Not only does French cuisine have its heroes (innovative chefs), its great men (the gastronomes who encourage and criticize the chefs), but its martyrs as well. The best known is Vatel, who preferred death in 1671 to the shame of serving a flawed meal (he promptly committed suicide when he learned that the fish he had ordered for a banquet had not arrived). Vatel’s gesture is symptomatic of the physical and mental distress chefs endure. Today the pressures stem from their annual re-evaluation by the authors of a reputedly neutral, and anonymous, authority … the Michelin Guide. In order to maintain their coveted Michelin ‘stars’, chefs have been known to go into debt and toil gruelling hours at the expense of their health. The most recent example of the toll such pressures can take is the untimely death of Bernard Loiseau in 2003. Having made an enormous investment in his own restaurant in Burgundy, the Côte d’Or in Saulieu, he also opened several trendy bistros in Paris and formed a company bearing his name. When rumours started to circulate suggesting that he would lose his three-star status, he took his own life rather than face both financial, and personal, collapse. Comparisons were quickly made between his fate and that of Vatel since both chose to die in the name of gastronomic excellence and to protect their reputations.
French cooking is a monument in a permanent state of renovation. It has a tradition of self-rejuvenation and periodic purges. It is open to innovation, willing to integrate new products and techniques, and both thrives on and promotes new trends in cookery. It is also a professional cuisine par excellence. This said, France also boasts a score of distinctly regional cuisines which are a source of pride, but the cooking of provincial France did not truly acquire gastronomic status until a relatively recent date. Indeed, no truly regional cookbooks appear in France until the 1830s when Nîmes gave us its Cuisinier Durand and Mulhouse its Cuisinière du Haut-Rhin. GRIMOD DE LA REYNIÈRE did much to whet the appetite of his fellow gastronomes for regional produce—and regional recipes—in his Almanach des Gourmands (1803 to 1812) which was, among other things, a veritable catalogue of regional specialities. He never tired of praising artisans who shipped the finest duck liver pâtés to Paris or excelled in the preparation of a regional mustard. He was constantly calling attention to the gastronomic wealth of the provinces, which inspired the anonymous author of the Cours gastronomique to go one step further and publish the first Gastronomic Map of France in 1808. As never before, one could now visualize the wealth and diversity of the regions. Though drawn in an extremely stylized manner, one recognizes the inlets of the Atlantic seaboard where the famous sel de Guérande is made, the oysters from Cancale are clearly visible along the Normandy coast, as are the large white beans from Soissons, north-east of Paris. Hundreds of other delicacies figure on the map which leaves virtually no region barren. There is no caption, but the reader is invited to imagine his own : ‘This the land of Milk and Honey, with turkeys as big as cows and strings of sausages as long as rivers, where pâtés are the size of wine barrels and every meal will be a feast. This is La France Gastronomique.’
Despite the enthusiasm of writers like Grimod and the publication of the Cours gastronomique, the century’s most famous food writer, BRILLAT-SAVARIN, has literally nothing at all to say about regional cuisines in his Physiologie du goût published in 1826. Perhaps his attitude accounts for the mid-century silence that can be observed when it comes to French regional cookery. Nevertheless, by the end of the century there is a new manifestation of interest in the cooking of at least a selected number of regions, particularly in the south and east. Regionalists become active in places like Provence (Reboul publishes his famous Cuisinière provençale just before the turn of the century), Lorraine (the cuisine of Metz is documented in 1890 by E. Auricoste de Lazarque), Alsace (Charles Gérard writes the first history of a regional cuisine in 1877, L’Ancienne Alsace à table), Bordeaux (in 1898 Alcide Bontou publishes the first book claiming to be about the cuisine of Bordeaux)—not to mention Marcel Herbet in Dax, south of Bordeaux, who had already published in 1858 a small Cuisinier gascon, reviving a title from the 18th century that, unlike its predecessor, actually contained recipes from the region! In short, when the 20th century begins, there seems to be a new-found interest in the foods of the provinces.
This burgeoning curiosity will get a tremendous boost with the advent of paid vacations in the 1930s and generalization of automobiles in the early years of the twentieth century. The coastal regions, in particular, benefited from the institution of paid vacations as many people headed toward the sea, and Provençal cooking (which had been ‘on the rise’ since the early 19th century) found itself with yet more numerous adepts. Two influential food writers, Curnonsky and Austin de Croze, also made an important contribution to the growing awareness of regional food about this time. Their most important work, from a historic point of view, is Le Trésor gastronomique de France, published in 1933. This 388-page volume is a survey of French specialities. No recipes, just an immense list. Region after region, a never-ending gastronomic roll-call of sausages, fruits, candies, soups, fish, mushrooms, cheeses: virtually every food the French are known to eat parades by. The French reader could only swell with pride and admiration as he turned the pages and discovered the ‘Douceurs’ of Picardy or the seven (!) different cassoulets of the Languedoc. Like the Carte gastronomique of 1808, Le Trésor was saying to him, ‘you live in the richest country on earth, the pleasures of the table are at your doorstep, every province is a gastronomic paradise with a wealth of sausages, cheeses, candies, fruits, and more.’ If France wasn’t the richest country in Europe from a gastronomic point of view, it wasn’t going to be easy to convince the French!
In addition to such gastronomic chroniclers as Curnonsky and Croze, French anthropologists, sociologists, and historians have all taken an interest in regional foods in more recent times. Some have tried to divide France into areas based on the use of three basic cooking fats: butter, lard, and olive oil. A map was drawn showing the entire Mediterranean coast covered with dots representing the use of olive oil; Brittany, half of the Atlantic coastline and the Loire valley were all covered with horizontal lines representing the use of Butter; the south-west and much of Alsace had vertical stripes over them meaning that in these areas the preferred fat was ‘lard’. The rest of France looked like a chequerboard indicating that both lard and butter were used, except for the Rhone Valley which also had a sprinkling of dots to indicate that all three were employed. But despite the fact that this map called attention to some basic distinctions of taste and culinary practice, it nevertheless lacked nuance—no mention was made of goose fat (important both in the south-west and Alsace) or walnut oil (important in south-west and in central France), undoubtedly because neither is as ‘basic’ a fat as the lard or olive oil by which these areas were characterized.
In the not-so-distant past, one could have divided France along different lines. There were, of course, many regions where wheat was ‘the staff of life’, but for centuries, people living in south-central France survived on a diet of chestnuts, not bread, and further south, towards Spain, cornmeal served a similar purpose. In the east, cornmeal was equally important. Indeed, in the Franche-Comté, it is called gaudes and used to make a porridge of the same name that was so frequently consumed by the people there that they were known as ‘yellow bellies’. Today, gaudes is little more than a curiosity; the old folks make it on Sundays now and again but they have become ‘bread eaters’ like everyone else in France. What bread are they eating? Baguette, of course. This would not have been the case at the turn of the 20th century when white bread was a perishable luxury only city dwellers could afford. A dark loaf, made with a mixture of rye and wheat, was the only bread country folk consumed then and it wasn’t until some time after the Second World War that the fragile baguette spread from Paris to the rest of France. Now it is the ‘national loaf’ just as Camembert, in the course of the last century, has become the ‘national cheese’.
Today, the products and cuisine of one region in particular are more visible than any other—those of the south-west. Shops selling only products from the old province of Gascony have sprung up from Alsace to Provence and cassoulet has become a national dish. One can purchase jars of cassoulet virtually everywhere and some companion products such as confit and foie gras are equally available throughout the country in shops with names such as ‘Ducs de Gascogne’. More obscure products such as smoked duck ham or preserved duck gizzard (once considered oddities) are now familiar to everyone.
This is not the first time that regional specialities have been ‘popularized’ and entered the national diet. In the 19th century Alsatian sauerkraut (choucroute) spread throughout France via a new kind of restaurant, the brasserie, and in the 1920s crêperies did the same for Brittany’s crêpes. But the biggest difference between today and the past is that today, people are willing to recognize that each region has its own full-fledged ‘gastronomy’. Indeed, in the 1990s, the French authorities began taking regional food seriously enough to lend their support to an official inventory of regional foodstuffs which, when completed, will count no fewer than 25 volumes (each for an administrative region of the country); see under IPCF in the bibliography.
This said, some foods popular in one region might be totally rejected in another. This is notably the case of the andouille de Vire, a famous smoked tripe sausage. Its pungent taste even proves challenging to adepts of other tripe sausages like the andouillettes of Troyes or Lyons. The same is true of some seemingly innocuous condiments such as horseradish, consumed only in Alsace and Lorraine, or a hot chilli pepper from the Basque country known as piment d’Espelette. Particularly strong-tasting cheeses like the paprika-dusted boulette d’Avesnes or the Vieux Lille from the north of France are too pungent for all but a relative handful of devotees. In a similar vein, stockfish, a wind-dried cod very different from salt cod, is consumed almost exclusively in the isolated Aveyron district of south central France (estofinado) and within the confines of Nice (estocaficada). Many who heartily enjoy such salt cod dishes as brandade de morue from Nîmes or the Provençal grand ailoli find the taste of these stockfish dishes overwhelmingly unpleasant. Especially among the younger generations, in spite of the greater availability of the better-known regional specialities, there has been an overall narrowing of the taste spectrum on both regional and national levels in France.
In his celebrated Physiologie du goût Brillat-Savarin predicted that one day gastronomy would be considered a science and acquire academic status. He claimed that ‘in a few years’ academies would be created to promote the study of food, professors would create courses for devotees, and awards would be offered to those who made significant achievements in the field. More than a century would pass, however, before Brillat-Savarin’s predictions would come true. Not surprisingly, the French led the way in making gastronomy a legitimate field of study. In the latter half of the 20th century, pioneers such as Jean-Paul Aron, who analysed the importance of restaurant culture in France, and Jean-Louis Flandrin, who placed the pleasures of the table in the broader context of what he called ‘a history of taste’, were among the first to take the cultural impact of food seriously in its historical context. Today, several French universities award degrees in gastronomic studies and public funds have been allocated to institutions toward the research and preservation of local traditions.
In recent years, the supremacy of French cooking has been challenged by chefs in other countries whose creativity and skills are universally acknowledged. Nonetheless, the enduring importance of French cuisine has never been challenged, and the continuing appreciation of such classic French creations as mayonnaise, soufflés, omelettes, and pâtés are permanent reminders of France’s pervasive influence on an international level. One tends easily to forget that it was in the 1970s that a creative French chef named Michel Guérard revolutionized French cooking when he developed a new low-fat cuisine known as cuisine minceur. His innovative techniques were quickly adopted by followers of what was being called nouvelle cuisine and foreshadowed the proliferation of high-quality diet cookery in recent times.
Currently, French chefs have promoted the use of wild foods, accepted cross-cultural trends, and started to exploit chemistry as a means of refining traditional cooking methods and techniques. Though the French can no longer claim to monopolize the term ‘cuisine’ they continue to enlarge its scope by working toward the preservation of their culinary heritage while promoting innovative cooking. France still remains a culinary power of considerable weight, although more and more French chefs are forced to share the limelight with colleagues around the world.
Philip and Mary Hyman
a culinary term now well established in English as well as in French, which has an interesting history and various applications.
Claudine Brécourt-Villars (1996) observes that the variant form franchipane appeared in a French cookery book of 1674, meaning a custard tart flavoured with pounded almond and pistachio; and that it appeared with the usual spelling in a dictionary of 1732 as a name used by confectioners. She and other authors record the story that the name comes from an Italian aristocrat, Don Cesare Frangipani, who became famous as the inventor of a perfume used to scent the gloves of Louis XIII. Her view is that frangipane originally meant a ‘cream’ flavoured simply with almond and used in the construction of various cakes; but later, by a natural extension, the confections made with the cream. Hence the similar modern meaning of products such as a tart or tartlet filled with an almond-flavoured mixture (whether of the consistency of custard or more solid).
The perfume was evidently based on the plant sometimes known as ‘red jasmine’, but also as ‘frangipani’. This plant is now classified as Plumeria rubra, and its flowers are edible. Various authors have sought to ascertain what connection there could have been between the plant, the perfume derived from it, and the frangipane which we eat. Ayto (1993) may be consulted on this point. It has to be noted that Goldschmied (1954), in his authoritative dictionary of Italian culinary terms, mentions the ‘perfumed gloves’ story but gives frangipane as having two meanings: one a cream (but flavoured with vanilla—no mention of almond), and the other a panada used for stuffing fish and poultry.
a long, slender smoked SAUSAGE with a very soft fine texture. They are scalded before sale and parboiled in simmering water, so belong to the sausage type known in Germany as Brühwurst (see SAUSAGES OF GERMANY). As their name suggests, the sausages originated in or near the city of Frankfurt in Germany—according to E. Lissner’s exhaustive Wurstologia (1939), in the mid-17th century.
Genuine frankfurters are made from lean pork mixed with bacon fat made into a paste and smoked, although similar sausages of beef or veal and pork, spiced and smoked, are made in the area. TRIPE, pig’s HEART, and small amounts of cereal in the form of flour or breadcrumbs also find their way into some frankfurters; salt, saltpetre, sugar, mace, pepper, coriander, garlic, and onion are used in various combinations for seasoning. The saltpetre gives a pink colour. The ‘franks’ sold in the USA often contain a mixture of beef and pork; kosher types, consisting entirely of beef, are also made.
In 1904 the butcher Johann Georg Lahner, who produced frankfurters in Frankfurt, moved to Vienna, where he began to make similar sausages, likewise slender and smoked, and made from mixtures of pork and beef. These quickly became popular under the name Wiener or Wienerwurst; they are simply known as Würstel (or sometimes Frankfurter) in Vienna or ‘wienies’ in the USA. Some Wiener have a more coarsely chopped filling than frankfurters but, especially in types made abroad, there is usually no real difference.
In Prague sausages similar to frankfurters are sold in twos and referred to as párky (pairs). The French saucisse de Francfort is not unlike a frankfurter but is not parboiled before sale; saucisse de Strasbourg is much the same.
A frankfurter (or, sometimes, a wienie or other type of sausage) served hot in a finger-shaped bread roll is known as a hot dog. The connection between hot dogs and dogs, the animals, is at one or two removes. The name is thought to stem from newspaper cartoons of around 1900 by T. A. Dorgan, which portrayed talking frankfurters; these were also known as ‘dachshund sausages’ because of their shape.
The originator of the bun-and-sausage idea is unknown. It was not a major innovation, as sausage sellers everywhere would offer bread of some kind with their wares, as well as mustards and other relishes. However, the shape of the bun made it easier to hold than a greasy sausage, with or without a slice of bread. All that can be said with any certainty is that in the closing decades of the 19th century frankfurters and wienies were being sold in buns in various cities in the USA. Some sources credit A. L. Feuchtwanger, a small-scale sausage vendor in St Louis, Louisiana, in the 1870s, with the introduction of the bread roll; others cite Charles Feltman, a German butcher on Coney Island. Whoever had the idea first, and whether it was a frank or a wienie in the roll, it was an employee of Feltman, one Nathan Handwerker, who popularized them, opening his ‘Nathan’s Hot Dogs’ stand on Coney Island in 1916 and undercutting his former employer’s prices.
Since then the frankfurter, accompanied by ketchup, mustard, or pickles (or all of these), has become a favourite N. American street snack, and is firmly established in many other parts of the world.
Laura Mason
(also fereek) roasted green WHEAT, a speciality of certain Arab countries, notably Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt, is exquisitely good. The green wheat stalks are harvested and gathered in bunches, then roasted in the fields over an open wood or charcoal fire. When cool, the ears are shucked and the grain is either kept whole or cracked. Of the two main kinds, that which is coarsely cracked and brownish-green in colour has a markedly smoky taste. The other, brown in colour, with the grains whole, is blander.
Chicken with freekeh, the latter swollen with the chicken stock in which it is cooked, is a remarkably good combination.
Dagher (1991), surveying traditional foods of the Near East for the FAO, observes that freekeh is normally eaten in place of rice, to which it is nutritionally superior. In the same context he refers to a product which has a similar sounding name, frik, but differs from fereek in several respects. It is made by parboiling or steaming, and then drying, immature grains of BARLEY; and is mainly used in N. Africa. It is also known as mirmiz.
Anissa Helou
among all the processes for PRESERVATION of food, has the advantage of causing relatively little change in the food.
It is thought of as a recent innovation, but has been used since antiquity, although only in places where the climate is cold enough for it to be possible by natural means. The Inuit (Eskimos) and other peoples of the far north have always stored food by simply burying it in the snow. This natural freezing has been practised in the northern parts of Russia, China, and Japan.
In more clement regions, ICE could be brought down from the mountains to assist in preserving food; but the use of ice by itself was not freezing and is dealt with separately—see also REFRIGERATION. It was not until the early 16th century, in Italy, that the discovery was made that if enough salt is mixed with ice its temperature falls to −18 °C (0 °F), and that this mixture can be used to freeze things. For a long time this technique was used only to make ICE CREAM and the like, not for preserving food.
The first food other than such desserts to be frozen artificially for sale was fish, in the 19th century. Dr Kitchiner (1817), mentioned frozen fish, presumably prepared in an ice and salt mixture, but the first patent for this method of freezing fish was not granted until 1842, to Henry Benjamin and Henry Grafton in Britain. The first mechanical freezing plant was built in Sydney, Australia, in 1861. By 1870 chilled meat—that is, a couple of degrees below freezing point, but not deep frozen—was being shipped from the USA to Europe in insulated holds cooled with ice and salt; 1880 saw the first successful shipment of chilled meat on the longer voyage from Australia to England.
By the end of the century the method was being applied to fish and poultry, and early in the 20th century experiments were made in freezing fruits. These were at first unsuccessful; the fruits were mushy when thawed, since they had been frozen too slowly so that large ice crystals formed which disrupted their delicate tissues. Similar troubles were encountered with vegetables, the more so since the need for initial blanching to destroy enzymes was not realized. Animal products generally emerge better from a process of slow freezing because of the greater elasticity of their tissues.
The problem was overcome by Clarence Birdseye, an American who lived in Labrador between 1912 and 1916. There, in the intense winter cold, he observed the effect of very rapid freezing not only on meat and fish, which the inhabitants customarily froze, but also on vegetables. He began experiments with artificial quick freezing and in 1923 set up a company to prepare and sell frozen fish. This soon went bankrupt, but he did manage to develop the first specially designed quick freezer for vegetables and fruits. In 1929 he was bought out by General Foods and the era of frozen food began in earnest.
At first only shops had freezers. At home, people kept frozen foods in the ice-making compartment of a refrigerator, which is just cold enough to store them for a few days. The home freezer came in gradually during the 1930s as an expensive luxury, at first mainly in the USA.
The preservative effects of cold are described under REFRIGERATION. When food is frozen rather than merely chilled, other effects come into play. The liquids in food are not pure water, but solutions of salts and sugars; so they are still liquid at 0 °C (32 °F), and only begin to freeze at lower temperatures. The stronger the solution, the lower the freezing point. Once the liquid starts to freeze, pure ice forms and the dissolved substances pass into the remaining liquid, which thus becomes a stronger solution with a lower freezing point. The liquid therefore freezes little by little, and no water solution ever freezes completely, even in the coldest freezer—there is always a residue of very strong solution. At a certain point, however, the solution will have become too strong for micro-organisms to function, with the exception of some troublesome moulds which can grow very slowly in a freezer.
Freezing does not stop the action of ENZYMES, which continues slowly in the residual unfrozen solution. However, the blanching of fruits and vegetables before freezing destroys the enzymes. If foods are frozen completely raw, they will still have a respectable freezer life, but less long than if blanched. There are some exceptions such as crustaceans, whose enzymes are so active that cooking before freezing is essential. Fruits that are to be eaten raw, and so cannot be blanched, are often packed in sugar or dipped in syrup before freezing, to exclude air and thus inhibit enzyme action.
Freezing does little damage to the nutritive value of food. Fruits and vegetables lose some vitamin C, mostly in processes such as blanching before they are frozen. But frozen peas—which are often frozen within minutes of being picked—still have more of the vitamin than ‘fresh’ peas which have been hauled to a wholesale market and then left sitting in a shop. Meats lose a certain amount of vitamin B1, again mostly in initial processing.
Quick freezing processes are designed to take food through the temperature range from 0 °C to −5 °C (32 °F to 23 °F) in a few minutes, since this is when most ice crystals form. The less time they have to form, the smaller they will be and the less damage they will do to the cell structure of the food. The smaller the pieces of food, the faster they freeze. Several methods are currently used for items of different sizes.
Air blast freezing is the most used technique. It freezes smallish objects, such as packets of frozen vegetables, quickly and uniformly. The food is frozen on refrigerated trays by a blast of chilled air at −12 °C (10 °F), after which it can be cooled more slowly to the storage temperature of a commercial freezer, −20 °C (−4 °F). A variant used for very small objects, such as loose peas, is fluid bed freezing, where the food travels along a belt pierced with holes through which chilled air is blown, lifting the food so that it is frozen in mid-air.
Contact or plate freezing is suitable for larger items that do not have to be frozen very quickly, such as fish fillets. These are frozen between refrigerated plates which press lightly against the food.
Immersion freezing is used for very large things such as whole chickens and turkeys. These are immersed in a very cold liquid—brine, sugar solution, or propylene glycol (a chemical also used as anti-freeze). After the food is frozen it is centrifuged to remove the liquid. A related technique is spray freezing, where food is sprayed with cold liquid as it travels on a wire mesh conveyor belt.
Luxury foods that are easily damaged by freezing, such as soft fruits, are sometimes frozen by dipping them in liquid nitrogen at −196 °C (−321 °F). Freezing is more or less instantaneous, so only tiny ice crystals are formed.
This method can produce foods that are almost as well preserved as by straight freezing, but do not need cold storage. It exploits the fact that ice can ‘sublime’, or change straight from a solid to water vapour without passing through a liquid stage. (Sublimation is a familiar phenomenon in a home freezer: the frost that forms on the inside of bags of food comes from water vapour that has sublimed out of the food and then refrozen.)
Freeze-drying of a kind has been practised for centuries in cold, mountainous areas. If small pieces of food are left to freeze out of doors and hung up in the wind, the moisture will gradually sublime. The low air pressure at high altitude speeds the process. Products prepared in this way include CHUÑO, the dried potatoes of the Andes; and freeze-dried TOFU in Japan. (See also DRYING.)
Modern freeze-drying is used for small items such as peas and prawns, and also for liquids such as coffee. It is a relatively expensive technique and therefore used mainly for high-value products. The food is quick frozen by an appropriate method, then put in a vacuum chamber and very slightly warmed to encourage sublimation. The final product may have a moisture content as low as 2%. It is packed in an airtight container such as a foil pouch to prevent it from absorbing moisture.
The nutritional value of foods is scarcely more affected than in conventional freezing.
Ralph Hancock
is made mainly with soft (low-protein) European wheat, which gives a sweeter flavour than the hard N. American wheat used in e.g. Britain. It also absorbs less water, giving a drier loaf, and rises less. It is not meant to be buttered, as most English breads are.
The bread which is regarded as a symbol of France is the baguette, a long thin loaf, whose crisp gold crust encloses a characteristic open crumb with large holes and which can be seen standing in racks in all boulangeries. This is, however, a relative newcomer. French loaves were already taking on a long shape in the 18th century (a development which was criticized by some authorities as pandering too much to the love of Parisians for crust), but the very thin long baguette was only introduced in the 19th century and did not penetrate the provinces until the 20th century. (Oddly, as provincials took to this urban bread, city people started to demand rustic country breads.)
A mixture of about 80% soft and 20% hard wheats is used for baguette flour. The other ingredients are water and salt. After preliminary processing, the dough is shaped into long thin loaves and allowed to prove for a while. Before baking, the tops of the loaves are slashed with a thin curved blade. A special oven, into which a jet of high-pressure steam is injected at the commencement of baking, is required. This causes the dough to expand rapidly, the cuts on top opening to give the leaf-shaped scars typical of these loaves. After the steam is turned off, the dry heat aids gelatinization of the crust, giving the characteristic golden sheen. As baguettes stale quickly, several batches are made daily.
Breads which represent older traditions are the round miche, pain de campagne, pain de ménage, pain paysan, and gros pain, everyday family loaves, now mostly based on wheat. A piece of SOURDOUGH kept from the previous baking is the traditional method for raising these. Working slowly, it gives a distinctive flavour. It may be called pain au levain. (The use of sourdough has persisted longer in France than in England. The English were fermenting their bread with yeast in the form of ale-barm as early as the 14th century, whilst the French used sourdough for all but the finest white bread well into the 18th century.) Most of these breads have a coarse crumb and a thick crust and will keep for several days.
Various sorts of ring loaf (couronne) are common, and loaves of many other kinds, representing regional traditions and ably listed by Poilâne (1981), are still made, but in decreasing variety and quantity. For an interesting flat bread of the south, see fougasse (under FOCACCIA). For certain enriched breads of France, see BRIOCHE; CROISSANT; VIENNOISERIE.
In England and many other western countries, the industrial baguette, part-baked in a central plant, frozen, and finished on site, is sold as a pale simulacrum of the original. However, French bakery practices have been revived and exported in the last 30 years, particularly as a result of the teaching of Raymond Calvel. In 18th-century England, the term ‘French bread’ meant not the loaf with which we are familiar, but an enriched dough more akin to a brioche.
Philip and Mary Hyman
Unlike the literature of cookery in other countries, French cookbooks were penned almost exclusively by men up until the 19th century. Prior to then, not only were cookbook authors males, but mainly male professionals—that is to say, chefs. This does not mean that their public was exclusively masculine or exclusively professional since women no doubt read their books (or had recipes read to them) long before they published recipes themselves. We find proof of this in the 14th century when an elderly Parisian copied recipes from existing manuscript sources into a compendium for his young bride—proof that she could read (and cook—or at least govern the kitchen). The collection, called the MENAGIER DE PARIS (The Goodman of Paris), includes many recipes from TAILLEVENT’S famous Viandier and the Goodman takes care to warn his bride that certain recipes are too complicated for his household or too expensive for his purse!
Taillevent’s book had the privilege, around 1490, of becoming the first printed cookbook in French and though it seems to be addressed to professionals, we cannot exclude some non-professional (and feminine) readers from among its first purchasers. The book was an immediate ‘best-seller’—remaining in print for over 100 years. In the course of the 16th century, a first book dedicated to ‘ladies’ also appeared, the Excellent et moult utile opuscule written by Nostradamus, a celebrated astrologer/doctor whose prophecies are much better known than this collection of beauty formulae, home remedies, and culinary recipes. The latter, for sweets (confitures) and syrups, are part of a much larger literature of confectionery which would be developed in the 16th century and afterwards become a feminine ‘speciality’, although no feminine author will appear in this domain for several centuries.
Though the ‘ladies’ would be addressed in books dealing with ‘their’ speciality (sweets), cookery books throughout the 17th century were written by male cooks for male cooks (les cuisiniers). The first and most important of these, Le Cuisinier françois, appeared in 1651. Signed by LA VARENNE it bore witness to changes in taste which had occurred since the last Renaissance cookbooks were published, most notably in the abandonment of medieval spices in favour of native herbs for seasoning. The 1660s saw the first ‘culinary encyclopedias’ with titles such as the Ecole parfait des officiers de bouche (1662), and Ecole des ragouts (1668). At the end of the century Massialot introduced another innovation by publishing his famous Cuisinier royal et bourgeois (1691) in dictionary form with folding plates devoted to table settings.
But it is not until the 18th century that French cookbooks become truly grand productions. The most spectacular was undoubtedly the second edition of Vincent de La Chapelle’s Le Cuisinier moderne (1742), a full five volumes with 13 folding plates, one of which, for a table of 100, measures more than a metre long when fully deployed! This is the century of the first NOUVELLE CUISINE when French chefs took to publishing multi-volume treatises on the ‘new’ art of cookery.
It was in the midst of all these ‘revolutionary’ tomes that a lone, slim volume on cookery—La Cuisinière bourgeoise—finally addressed itself specifically to women, teaching female professionals employed in middle-class households how to prepare economical and fashionable meals. The book, unsigned but attributed to a certain ‘Menon’ (his name appears in the royal ‘privilege’), was an immediate success and became one of the best-selling cookbooks of all time. First published in 1746, La Cuisinière bourgeoise was to go through more than 120 editions and its recipes would remain in print for over 150 years, being pirated in its sixth year by a Brussels publisher who made a fortune with his own editions, far more numerous than the Paris originals he was copying!
Despite the success of Menon’s work, no other author addressed a feminine public until the Revolutionary period when a tiny volume appears addressed to La Cuisinière républicaine. This work, printed in ‘l’an III de la république’ (1795), has the distinction of being the only cookbook attributed to a woman in the pre-1800 period in France. It is a small treatise of 42 pages entirely devoted to only one food: the potato. The author, Mme Mérigot, caught up in the revolutionary fervour for a plant which, it was hoped, would provide an alternative to wheat, here provides 34 recipes for preparing the humble tuber.
After the Revolution, numerous ménagères (housewives) followed Mme Mérigot’s lead and seized their pens, starting with Mme Louise-Auguste-B. Utrechte, ‘widow of P. J. Friedel … famous confectioner in Berlin’ (or so the title page of her first book proclaims). Devoted to a traditional ‘feminine’ subject but one which women had never written about before, L’Art du confiseur (The Art of Confectionery) was published by the author herself in Paris in 1801, and was still in print 24 years later. In 1805, Mme Gacon-Dufour became the first woman to sign a complete cookbook addressed to women, the Manuel de la ménagère à la ville et à la campagne et la femme de la basse-cour (A Household Manual for Women in the City and the Country with Advice on Managing Barnyard Fowl). In the first quarter of the 19th century an impressive collection of small cookbooks appeared, signed by hitherto unheard of ‘Mesdames’; then a first ‘Mesdemoiselle’ signed a book in 1820. Suddenly all the Mesdames seemed to go into retirement, leaving the feminine author field exclusively to the Mesdemoiselles until the end of the century: Mesdemoiselles Françoise, Magdeleine, Marion, Jeanette, Marianne, Sillette, Thérèse, Marguerite, Madeleine.
Male chefs were far from inactive during this same period. The most important of these writers during the early years of the century is Marie-Antoine (Antonin) CARÊME (1783–1833). A pastry chef at the outset, not only did his cooking break new ground but his books did as well. Never before had cookbooks been so elegantly illustrated with delicately engraved chapter headings and tail-pieces, not to mention the carefully rendered plates depicting the monumental constructions that characterize Carême’s cuisine and pastry. It fell to one of his students, however, to have the honour in 1867 of doing something his master no doubt dreamed of—using colour illustrations. Jules GOUFFÉ included 25 chromolithographs in his Livre de cuisine published that year. Gouffé’s book, which separated grande cuisine recipes from simpler, ‘home cooking’ recipes, was to remain in print for over 50 years. But the true ‘successors’ to Carême are a duo, Urbain Dubois and Émile Bernard, who first published their influential La Cuisine classique in 1856. This book, which never included colour illustrations but which contained a frontispiece and up to 77 engraved plates in its later editions, remained faithful to Carême’s classic form of illustration but adopted a much larger format, growing to two volumes in its third edition of 1869 and remaining in print into the early 20th century.
As the 19th century neared its end, the French cookbook market was crowded with books of all shapes and sizes. Not only had chefs been actively writing for each other, but the ladies could now choose among books written for them by men and by women. By the 1880s, cooking was being taught in some French public schools, and the first private cooking schools, like the Cordon Bleu, opened in Paris in the 1890s. Cookbooks were becoming much more didactic but, despite the early use of colour by Gouffé, illustrations were generally in the form of black and white engravings, photography being only rarely used at the turn of the century.
The early 20th century in France was the ‘Age of Escoffier’ (see ESCOFFIER), a chef whose influence still goes far beyond France. Starting with its appearance in 1903, his Guide culinaire quickly displaced Dubois and Bernard’s Cuisine classique on professional chefs’ bookshelves around the world. Escoffier’s was the voice of the ‘new’ century, a true successor to Taillevent, La Varenne, and Carême. But strangely, unlike his immediate predecessors, Escoffier took no interest in illustrating his work: it never included engraved plates or drawings of any kind, and he eschewed the new medium of photography as well!
A contemporary of Escoffier, Prosper Montagné, wrote an equally monumental tome with Prosper Salles in 1900, this was Le Grand Livre de la cuisine which, enlarged in 1929, is still one of the major 20th-century cookbooks. But Montagné’s most important contribution, in partnership with Alfred Gottschalk, was the Larousse gastronomique, first published in 1938. Larousse was already one of France’s most prestigious dictionary publishing firms and the Larousse name on a dictionary guaranteed the reader of its seriousness. Indeed, this was a monumental tome: 1,087 pages of relatively small type dealing with everything which, in 1938, rhymed with French cuisine. The book has been reissued and updated on several occasions, but these succeeding editions do not replace the 1938 edition which, like Escoffier’s Guide culinaire, is a reference book on classic French cookery that has yet to be surpassed.
In the 1970s, no new Guide culinaire having been written, the young chefs who rallied to the cause of NOUVELLE CUISINE all began writing their own books and although some, like those of Michel Guérard or Alain Chapel, were to become ‘stars’, their books will never attain reference status. Today’s masters, like Joèl Robuchon or Alain Ducasse, have produced highly personal volumes that in no way codify the cuisine of the late 20th century. Indeed, it is the collection of chefs’ books that has become ‘a reference’ more than any individual work.
Now, as the 20th century comes to a close, French chefs are as active as ever, publishing both glamorous volumes in the great Carême tradition that one dare not take into the kitchen, and smaller, more accessible works with an eye to a broader reading public which they hope to seduce as well (à la cuisinière bourgeoise). An interest in regional cooking, which began in the 1920s and 1930s (see FRANCE: NATIONAL AND REGIONAL CUISINES), has grown during the latter half of the century as has interest in ‘foreign cuisines’, a novelty in France 50 years ago, but now a permanent fixture in the cookbook department of any bookshop in France.
Though women writers now have immense importance ‘at home’ and no doubt outsell the chefs on the domestic market, it nevertheless remains true that, as in the past, the most visible French cookbooks internationally are those written by chefs. These books give us a glimpse of the heights to which the French culinary arts aspire. Nevertheless, thanks to cajoling editors, some chef-authors make their recipes easier to follow and simpler to execute, adapting their know-how to the constraints of the housewife, or should we say the ‘home cook’ who, they know, will be reading them just as before with a practical eye. Today, with more women cooks rising to chef status in France, old distinctions (home cooking=women writers, great chefs=men) are less and less true. Women chefs are writing about their professional experiences for the first time and though ‘Madame le chef’ is still a recent phenomenon (Madame is more likely to be a humble cuisinière—cook), their number is growing. The masculine monopoly of French professional culinary writing, dating back at least 600 years, is on its way to becoming a thing of the past.
Philip and Mary Hyman
see CHIPS.
a French word meaning a dainty or delicacy, usually a small item of sugar CONFECTIONERY or a little CAKE eaten from the fingers. This word, having been out of fashion in English for some centuries, recently came back into vogue for describing PETITS FOURS and sweetmeats taken with coffee after dinner.
Laura Mason
READING:
a term which came into vogue in English in the early part of the 18th century in the context of meat cookery. It is ultimately derived from the French verb fricasser and thus closely related to FRICASSÉE. The essential meaning seems to have been a slice or slices of meat fried or braised, with a sauce or on a bed of something such as sorrel purée. The English translation by J.K. (1702) of two important cookery books by the French author Massialot contained a helpful glossary for English readers. This gave the following explanation of ‘fricandoes’: ‘a sort of Scotch collops [see COLLOP], made of thin slices of Veal well larded and farced, which are afterwards to be dress’d in a Stewpan, close cover’d, over a gentle Fire.’ The term was fairly common in English cookery books in the 18th century, but seems to have more or less disappeared from them during the first half of the 19th century. In France, however, ESCOFFIER was still giving a recipe for fricandeau of sturgeon in 1921 (in the 4th edition of his Guide culinaire).
a French term which long ago passed into English, at first meaning ‘any meat fried in a panne’, as Cotgrave (1611) succinctly put it. Although another 17th-century source declared it to mean ‘varieties of Meat boiled together in a Broth’, the term usually indicated frying (often small pieces, later to be enveloped in a thickened sauce) up to fairly recent times, when it began to fall into disuse. In France it is now used particularly of dishes based on white meat (chicken or veal) and clad in a creamy sauce.
(or bullet mackerel), a fish of the TUNA family in the genus Auxis. There are believed to be two species, A. thazard and A. rochei, both cosmopolitan in warm waters but not identical (although nearly so) in physiognomy and distribution (e.g. it is only A. rochei which occurs in the Mediterranean). The common names for them are confusing, often reflecting doubt whether they count as mackerel or tuna.
A. thazard may be over 50 cm (20″) long, A. rochei slightly less, but the usual size of either is around 35 cm (14″); so they are small in relation to most tuna. The pattern on their backs consists of dark bars or wavy lines.
The flesh of these fish is reddish and has a reputation for being indigestible. They are not in great demand.
the English word for a small portion of deep-fried BATTER, usually but not always containing a piece of fruit, meat, fish, or vegetable. Fritters are generally eaten immediately after cooking, as, like all deep-fried foods, they taste best hot and fresh.
Many kinds of batter or dough are used to make fritters. An egg, milk, and flour batter is most usual in Europe; mixtures similar to that used for choux PASTRY are also popular. In English the latter are known as BEIGNETS (the French word carries both the English meaning of fritter and a specific culinary meaning of deep-fried choux pastry). Runny yeast-leavened batters are used in some areas, making fritters akin to DOUGHNUTS. Some fritter-like confections are made in twisted shapes, for example, the various kinds of CRULLER. Others are closer to deep-fried stuffed pastries of the SAMOSA type.
Fritters are often sold at fairs, freshly cooked at special stalls. In several countries they are made as part of the carnival binge of rich foods, eaten before the fast of Lent begins; in Portugal, they are Christmas foods.
In Indian cuisines a mixture of BESAN FLOUR, water, and spices is used to coat vegetables for fritters; see PAKORA. Plain flour and water, or flour and egg-based, batters are used in China and Japan to coat meat, vegetables, and fish before deep-frying, for instance when making Japanese TEMPURA. Rice flour is not normally suitable for making fritters because it contains too little gluten to hold together.
The Roman scriblita, described by Cato in the 2nd century BC, was probably a precursor of both fritters and DOUGHNUTS. Lumps of a moist dough (leavened with SOURDOUGH) were spooned into hot fat, and allowed to stream in random shapes. Medieval ‘cryspeys’ were described in the Harleian MS of 1430; a liquid yeast batter using the whites of eggs only was run down the cook’s fingers so that five narrow streams entered the hot oil, where they set into a tangle. They were served sprinkled with sugar. The modern Indian JALEBI also uses a streaming method to form spirals.
Most medical writers considered that fritters were indigestible, but they were too good to refuse and have been popular ever since. They appeared regularly in menus, usually as part of the last course. C. Anne Wilson (1973) quotes John Russell, who observed that ‘apple fritter is good hot, but the cold ye [should] not touch’. Apple fritters have remained consistently popular through the ages. Other fruits, small pieces of meat or fish, slices of root vegetables (PARSNIP and SKIRRET were much liked for their sweet flavour), almonds, small balls of mixed herbs, pieces of fresh CURD, and fragrant FLOWERS were all used for fritters in the medieval kitchen. A 14th-century recipe used apple blossom mixed with white breadcrumbs and egg yolks, white wine and spices. In the 17th century herb fritters developed into delicate small fritters of individual leaves or pieces of leaves. Spinach, lettuce, and vine leaves were also used. Flower and leaf fritters survive, for example in Italy, where zucchini flowers and small young globe artichokes are dipped in batter and deep fried.
Most medieval fritters were yeasted with ale-barm, the froth on the fermenting drink. This continued to be added to batter until, at the beginning of the 18th century, it was realized that a better lift could be produced by separating the egg whites, beating them, and folding them back in.
Medieval batters for sweet fritters, like those for PANCAKES, contained wine or ale, sometimes cream, and more eggs than are usual today. Choux paste mixtures were in use for making fritters in France by the end of the 16th century. New varieties of fritter introduced in the 18th century were of flavoured ground rice; a thin type in the shape of a true lover’s knot (as in a pretzel) was piped with a forcing bag. This shape survives in the old French bugne and the American CRULLER.
A few types of fritter from around the world are described below, merely to exemplify the ubiquity and variety of forms which this item displays.
Apple and banana fritters, a popular dessert in Chinese restaurants in the West. A light batter containing whisked egg whites is used to encase the prepared fruit, and the fritters are coated with CARAMEL and sprinkled with sesame seeds after cooking.
Churro, a Spanish fritter shaped like a long, curled sausage. The dough is made by boiling water and adding flour; sometimes an egg is added to enrich it. The soft batter is piped through a star nozzle into hot oil. When cooked, churros are sprinkled with sugar and served hot. Eaten with coffee or hot chocolate, they are a popular breakfast dish in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America. Flavourings such as vanilla, lemon, or rum may be added.
Filho, one of various Portuguese types of doughy fritters, often made for Christmas (filhós de Natal). Aniseed and orange juice are popular flavourings.
Flädli, a German fritter made from flour and egg dough and fried in lard; eaten at Easter. Kücheli is a similar type.
Poffertje, a Dutch term for small round fritters, which are dusted with icing sugar after frying. See Witteveen (1995).
Sel, a Nepali ring-shaped fritter made from pounded, soaked rice, banana, sugar, and ghee mixed with water to a soft batter, which is poured in a circle into the hot oil to make the shape. It is eaten especially at weddings and festivals.
Sirnik, a Russian fritter made from curd cheese, egg yolks, and a little flour and sugar, used as a breakfast or supper dish. The mixture is worked into balls and fried. They may be served with jam or sugar, or, flavoured with nutmeg and herbs, dished up with melted butter or sour cream, as a savoury.
Laura Mason
an amphibian perceived by the English as a staple of the French diet, is indeed eaten in France but also in many other parts of the world, whether previously under French influence (as in Louisiana and some islands in the W. Indies) or not. The people of URUGUAY, for instance, are said to be ‘addicted’ to frogs. Normally, it is only the hind legs which are cooked and eaten.
The frog most favoured in France is Rana esculenta, found over much of Europe, larger than the common frog and usually greenish, but with black markings. However, there are numerous other species in Europe and in other continents; many of the frogs’ legs eaten in France come from elsewhere. There are frog farms in some countries and frozen frogs’ legs may reach Europe from as far afield as Japan. For some time the chief exporter of frogs was India, but the trade was banned after it was realized that depletion of frog populations meant less effective insect control. A similar, though temporary, ban existed in Bangladesh. Now, the main supplier is Indonesia, although former Yugoslavia and Russia have also entered the trade. Much of what is eaten in Europe, therefore, is not R. esculenta but the Asian bullfrog.
Frogs have a delicate flavour and are customarily said to resemble chicken meat. Why the idea of eating frog should be repellent to the English in particular is mildly puzzling. It may have something to do with the ugly (to human beings) appearance of the creatures, or the thought that they emerge all slimy from evil-smelling ponds, or possibly (as ESCOFFIER seems to have thought) from the sound of their English name. Equally, the fact that R. esculenta is not native to Britain may be the chief practical cause. Certainly early English dietitians thought they were a thoroughly bad thing. Andrew Boorde (1542) threw his hands up at the Lombards who ate them ‘guttes and all’. Perhaps, too, a certain revulsion became associated with the fact that frogs were Lenten fare for Catholics (they did not count as meat).
Escoffier’s English biographer (Shaw, 1994) has done a service in printing a translation of what that eminent chef had to say about the name, and about one of his ways of serving the legs:
Frogs or Nymphes à l’Aurore
For various reasons, I thought it best in the past, to substitute the mythological name ‘nymphs’ for the more vulgar term ‘frogs’ on menus, and the former has been universally adopted, more particularly in reference to the following ‘Chaud-froid à L’Aurore’:
Poach the frogs’ legs in an excellent white-wine court-bouillon. When cooled, trim them properly, dry them thoroughly in a piece of fine linen, and steep them, one after the other, in a chaud-froid sauce of fish with paprika, the tint of which should be golden. This done, arrange the treated legs on a layer of champagne jelly, which should have set beforehand on the bottom of a square, silver dish or crystal bowl. Now lay some chervil pluches and tarragon leaves between the legs in imitation of water-grasses, and cover the whole with champagne jelly to counterfeit the effect of water.
Send the dish to the table, set in a block of ice, fashioned as fancy may suggest.
or fromage blanc two names for what is essentially a single range of products: a fresh white CHEESE, lightly fermented and of varying fat content (see also CREAM CHEESE). The texture is smooth and creamy, sometimes almost of pouring consistency. Fromage frais is intended for immediate use. It combines happily with fresh fruits such as strawberries and is the basis of some delightful French desserts such as Cœur à la crème (when it is combined with beaten egg white and sugar and served in heart-shaped moulds). It also has many uses in dishes where a creamy effect is desired but without too much fat content (as in certain sauces and some stuffings for potatoes and other vegetables). Versions which are either unsalted or so lightly salted as not to be noticed are best for sweet dishes.
a British speciality, is a close, rich, heavy cake made by the creaming method, raised with baking powder and beaten egg. Up to half the weight of the finished cake may consist of dried fruit. In earlier centuries it was called plum (or plumb) cake, ‘plum’ denoting all kinds of dried fruits. Today the name plum cake survives (in the English form) on the mainland of Europe, though here it often means a sadly dry product without much fruit.
Fruit cakes are used as part of celebrations, such as weddings; see WEDDING MEALS AND CAKES. They also loom large among CHRISTMAS FOODS and may make an appearance at christenings and birthdays. Many families have their own favourite recipes. Decoration is important; festive fruit cakes are usually topped with MARZIPAN and covered with royal ICING, suitably embellished with piping, cut paper, and little figures.
Lighter cakes, made with less fruit, to be eaten at tea-time or for snacks, include Genoa cake (not to be confused with GÉNOISE). DUNDEE CAKE is a medium-weight species of fruit cake.
The fruit in these cakes may be any or all of currants, raisins, sultanas, and candied peel. CANDIED FRUITS, particularly cherries, are usually added, as are ground almonds.
Alcohol, usually brandy, is sometimes mixed into the batter for rich fruit cakes before baking. Some prefer to add it afterwards, by making small holes in the base of the cake with a skewer and dripping in a little liquid. This process may be repeated several times, as a fruit cake keeps for months when correctly stored; it is quite normal for it to be made well in advance of the event for which it is required, and most people consider it improved by keeping.
The fruit cake as known today cannot date back much beyond the Middle Ages. It was only in the 13th century that dried fruits began to arrive in Britain, from Portugal and the E. Mediterranean. Lightly fruited breads were probably more common than anything resembling the modern fruit cake during the Middle Ages. Early versions of the rich fruit cake, such as Scottish BLACK BUN dating from the late Middle Ages, were luxuries for special occasions.
Fruit cakes have been used for celebrations since at least the early 18th century when ‘bride cakes’ and ‘plumb cakes’, descended from enriched bread recipes, became cookery standards. The relationship between fruit breads and fruit cakes is obvious in early recipes, such as those given by Eliza Smith (1753) which include yeast.
Prodigious quantities of ingredients were required. Relatively modest plum cake recipes given by Eliza Smith called for 4 lb (1.8 kg) of flour to be mixed with sugar, spice, eggs, sack, cream, currants, and candied lemon, orange, and citron. Her ‘Great cake’ required among other things 13 lb (6 kg) of currants, 5 pints (2.8 litres) of cream and 4 lb of butter, 20 egg yolks, and 3 pints of yeast. Surprisingly little sugar was called for: only 1.5 lb (700 g). This probably reflects the cookery practices of the late 17th century, as Smith wrote her book at the end of her career.
Making a rich fruit cake in an 18th-century kitchen was a major undertaking. The ingredients had to be carefully prepared. Fruit was washed, dried, and stoned if necessary; sugar, cut from loaves, had to be pounded and sieved; butter washed in water and rinsed in rosewater. Eggs were beaten for a long time, half an hour being commonly directed. Yeast, or ‘barm’ from fermenting beer, had to be coaxed into life. Finally, the cook had to cope with the temperamental wood-fired baking ovens of that time. No wonder these cakes acquired such mystique.
By the mid-18th century the use of yeast as a cake leavener was dying out. In the 19th it seems to have been more or less forgotten, except for regional specialities such as BARA BRITH. Mrs Beeton (1861) made the observation that for leavening cakes: ‘As eggs are used instead of yeast, they should always be very thoroughly whisked.’ Yeast-raised cakes may have lost popularity because they did not keep as well as egg-raised cakes. By the late 19th century BAKING POWDER had replaced YEAST entirely as a leavener for cakes.
The hallowed formula of fruit cake with marzipan on top and icing on top of that was first put into print by Mrs Raffald (1782) and has held its place until now. (How this formula was reached is described in detail in an appendix to Bridget Ann Henisch, 1984.) Fruit cakes, rich or plain depending on the means of the household, were regarded with great affection by the British middle classes for most of the 20th century. They went into the tuck boxes of children at boarding schools, and were much used for picnics and shooting parties. Most people regarded them as robust, nutritious, comforting food. This was a complete change in attitude from that displayed by Eliza Acton in Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845), who said that ‘more illness is caused by habitual indulgence in the richer and heavier kinds of cakes than could easily be credited by persons who have given no attention to the subject’.
Laura Mason
a dessert made from fruit SYRUP and GELATIN, allowed to set in a cool place. Valued for its clear, sparkling appearance, it was originally based on a gelatin-rich stock made from calves feet (or, sometimes, ISINGLASS). This type of JELLY demanded time and technical skill during preparation. Eighteenth-century jellies were served in glasses, sometimes presented as ‘ribbons’—layers of jelly in different colours. Nineteenth-century jellies were often set in elaborate copper moulds, giving tall castellated and other shapes when turned out. See drawing on next page.
Nowadays a fruit jelly is mainly perceived in Europe as a treat for children, and is easily prepared from blocks of coloured, flavoured gelatin dissolved in water. In N. America, under the trade name Jell-O, it was used to a remarkable extent in the mid-20th century, mainly for the benefit of adult women.
READING:
fruit sweetmeats made by puréeing fruit to give a homogeneous mass; sieving (if necessary); and mixing with an equal weight of sugar before drying over heat. The result is rather solid and has good keeping qualities. The basic principle of applying heat to fruit and adding sugar as a preservative is used to produce a wide range of related sweetmeats, including JAM, JELLY, and MARMALADE; bottled and canned fruits; and CANDIED FRUITS.
A variation is to dry the paste in thin layers to give a sheet of fruit ‘paper’ or ‘leather’. Sugar is not always used in these, as they are usually based on very sweet fruits such as APRICOTS. They are made mostly in countries which have reliably hot and sunny summers (see also ICE CREAM; LEBANON AND SYRIA; RAMADAN). The Middle Eastern armadine or armadeu is an example. Another variation on fruit paste is to use dried fruits such as apricots, DATES, or PRUNES, finely chopped and mixed with sugar, to give a very simple uncooked sweetmeat. CARROTS occasionally provide the raw materials for sweet pastes.
Fruit pastes provide an unsophisticated method of preservation in the sense that the integrity of the fruit is completely lost during the process (in contrast to candying, in which every effort is made to preserve the appearance of each item). The raw materials can be irregular, blemished, or can be trimmings from larger pieces. HONEY may have been used in the past in place of the sugar. The Romans preserved fruits in jars of honey; and must surely have known that fruit reduced to paste and dried would keep well, although no records of this have survived.
Numerous recipes for fruit pastes occur in 17th- and 18th-century cookery books. They are based on many different kinds of summer fruit, particularly stone fruits such as PEACHES and PLUMS; and PEARS, APPLES, and QUINCES. The words ‘paste’ and ‘marmelade’ (and sometimes ‘preserve’ or ‘conserve’) are used interchangeably to indicate a solid mixture of sugar and fruit purée. Sometime during the 18th century these developed into the substances we now know as jam and marmalade; strained juice was used for jellies, and concentrated to make flavourings. The use of the word ‘cheese’ to describe a solid fruit confection crept in.
In the CONFECTIONERY industry today, fruit pastes appear to have been reduced to a minor role as centres for FONDANT, CHOCOLATES, and DRAGÉES. Fruit pastes are made at home, and many countries have at least one version of a fruit paste-based sweetmeat. The home-made English version—apple paste or butter—which was fairly common in the past, is now almost forgotten except on the island of Jersey where a spiced ‘black butter’ is made from slowly reduced apple pulp.
Further east, many fruit paste recipes become complex and develop into HALVA-type confections. Fruit pastes are also made in the New World; for example, Fannie Farmer quotes peach leather as a speciality of Charleston in S. Carolina.
See also QUINCE PRESERVES.
Laura Mason
an item which has adorned millions of menus in the western world, was first recognized as a dish in the mid-19th century. Mariani (1994) treats it as a precursor of the modern American term ‘fruit cocktail’ and says that American recipe books of the 1850s referred to ‘fruit salad’. Ayto (1993) says that the term seems to have been first mentioned (in Britain) by Mrs Beeton (1861).
Whatever its history, fruit salad is a simple concept. Fresh fruit is chopped up (unless already very small) and mixed together with the possible addition of wine or a little liqueur or other ingredient designed to enhance flavour or (as when a sprig of mint is placed on the salad) appearance.
It is of course possible to have a ‘salad’ of dried fruits and nuts, as in the Middle Eastern khoshab; and, further east, Indonesia offers the spicy fruit salad rujak, which is patently different from anything in the western world.
See also COMPOTE.
especially popular in Germany and Nordic countries, are something of an anomaly. The category of SOUP is one of almost exclusively savoury dishes. Fruit soups, however, although they may be served at the beginning of a meal, are essentially sweet dishes. They may be thin and delicate or thickened and substantial. Riley M. Fletcher Berry (1907) made interesting comments about this distinction. He observed that, for the prosperous readers whom he was addressing, fruit soups would be served in very small glass or china bowls or bouillon cups; very delicate. However, he admonished these same prosperous readers, one should not forget that fruit soups ‘are foods and as such are used in many countries by even the peasants, though they may lack dainty table appointments’.
One outstanding example of a dish which occurs on both sides of the dividing line, but predominantly as a ‘solid’ moulded dessert dish, is KISEL. It is quite closely related to another, which is more commonly met in liquid or near-liquid form; this is rødgrøt, the red berry soup popular in Denmark and other parts of Scandinavia (also in Germany as rote Grütze), which may be thickened with semolina but remains a soup rather than a moulded dessert.
Other fruits commonly used to make soups include cherries and apple, also gooseberries or blueberries, rose-hips, rhubarb, and even lemon; Sitruunakeitto is a creamy lemon soup of Finland. Dried fruits can also be the basis of a soup, with results similar to the Middle Eastern khoshab.
Persons obsessed with the categorization of dishes meet some perplexing problems in this area. The apple soup proposed by Eliza Acton (1845) is basically mutton broth but it does have a large amount of apple in it. The Ash-e-meeveh popular in winter in Iran contains lots of fruit (mostly dried) but also vegetables and the sort of seasoning which belongs to savoury dishes. How are these to be classified? One can only say that fruit plays an important role in many soups which would not usually be called fruit soups.
a ‘porridge’ made from WHEAT. The name is derived from the classical Latin frumentum meaning corn (in the general sense of the word). In the Middle Ages it seems to have been a staple food but as time progressed the dish appeared only on special occasions and with slight regional differences.
In the preparation of frumenty, new wheat is shelled, cooked slowly in milk, and flavoured and sweetened. This glutinous mass, which is known as creed (past participle of the verb ‘to cree’) wheat, used to be available ready dressed. Modern recipes which include butter, cream, sugar, rum, or brandy to produce something like a liquid Christmas pudding have little in common with the traditional forms of frumenty.
Frumenty appears to have been used formerly as an accompaniment to animal food, as ‘venison with frumenty’ and ‘porpoise with frumenty’ formed part of the second course served at the royal banquet given to Henry IV at Winchester on his marriage with Joan of Navarre. At the present day it is usually boiled with new milk and sugar, to which spices, currants, yolks of eggs, etc. are sometimes added, and is occasionally eaten as a dinner sweet at various times of the year—at mid-Lent, Easter, and Christmas. In the north of England, however, it is always exclusively a part of the Christmas fare, and is eaten hot.
There is evidence that in the past, frumenty was eaten at secular feasts, in celebration of harvest home, for instance. Before the 1860s it seems unlikely that frumenty was an everyday food for the rural poor; wheat was an uncommon grain at this time. In the Victorian age, however, records show that it was common workhouse fare.
There are many regional variations. In Somerset, it is known as furmenty or furmity.
the process of cooking food in hot fat or oil in an open pan. The FATS AND OILS used vary from place to place. All share the quality that they can be heated to a much higher temperature than boiling water. The surface of food cooked by frying therefore coagulates quickly; further cooking induces flavour changes and the result should be an attractive, crisp-textured food.
Deep-frying, in which the food is submerged in oil, LARD, or DRIPPING heated to a high temperature in a deep-sided pan, is something of an art. Many foods, including chips (French fries), DOUGHNUTS, and FRITTERS, are cooked this way. Careful temperature control is necessary for optimum results: too low, and the food will emerge pale and greasy; too high, and the exterior will scorch and toughen. If the temperature is correct, the outside cooks instantly, forming a seal, and the water inside the food converts to steam, from the surface inwards. This has the dual effect of cooking the food very quickly, and preventing fat from entering, as much of the steam escapes outwards through the surface. The fat or oil should not be allowed to burn (‘smoking hot’ fat is too hot—it smokes because it is burning). A frying thermometer is useful here. Otherwise a small cube of bread can be dropped into the oil and observed; it should take about a minute to brown, in which case the temperature is satisfactory.
Foods destined for deep-frying may be prepared by coating them with batter or egg, substances which form effective seals when they come into contact with hot fat; alternatively they may simply be dusted with flour, or blotted with paper or cloth, to remove surface moisture. After frying, they are allowed to drain briefly, then served up quickly, as fried food which has gone cold becomes unattractive. An exception to this rule is a tribe of fried confections and biscuits, many of Middle Eastern and Indian origin; see JALEBI for the best-known example.
Shallow-frying, using smaller quantities of oil or fat in a low-sided pan, is used for many foods, including eggs, fish, and steaks, which are allowed to brown on one side and are then turned. The residue left in the pan after meat has been shallowfried is often used as the basis of a sauce (see DEGLAZE). The method is sometimes called ‘pan-frying’ in English.
Both shallow- and deep-frying are popular methods of cooking, but deep-frying has also developed into a specialist craft. The speed with which the food cooks, and the appetizing smell produced make it a favourite method for cooking snacks and street foods around the world. Many festival foods are deep-fried, an echo of times when fats were in shorter supply and were reserved for special occasions.
Laura Mason
a sweetmeat made from sugar, milk, and butter boiled to the soft ball stage (see SUGAR BOILING) and then beaten, to produce a characteristic grainy texture. This is due to the presence of small sugar crystals in a supersaturated sugar solution. If the mixture is beaten whilst still hot, the crystals are relatively large; if the mixture is allowed to cool before beating, the crystals formed are much smaller and more even, giving a smooth texture. A slightly different method is employed when fudge is manufactured on an industrial scale: here a proportion of FONDANT is added to ‘seed’ the mixture with crystals. Finally, the mixture is poured onto a surface and allowed to cool and set before being cut into small pieces.
Fudge is a favourite confection for home sweet-makers, as it is simple and can be flavoured with many different ingredients. Vanilla, coffee, chocolate, peppermint, nuts, and coconut are frequently encountered; fruit essences are sometimes used. Brown sugar or MAPLE SYRUP also provide variations.
The Scottish confection TABLET is similar in flavour and texture to fudge. The name ‘praline’, which is properly applied to a crisp confection of nuts and sugar (see PRALINE), is sometimes given in the USA to a soft fudge with nuts, often made with brown sugar or sometimes CORN SYRUP or light molasses (see SUGAR). Plain white sugar is also used. Some types are flavoured with chocolate or orange.
Fudge, properly so called, seems to have originated as a midnight feast among women undergraduates in New England colleges in the USA in the late 1880s and quickly spread thence hither and yon. It is possible its origins lay not in tablet but in penuche or panocha, a Mexican fudge with nuts, and sometimes coconut. Panocha is the name of a coarse Mexican sugar and this is used in the authentic sweet. As penuche, it has long been popular in the USA, where conventional brown sugar, sometimes with corn syrup, is used. There were other soft candies made in the USA at the time that may also have acted as models.
Confections which taste fudgelike, based on milk reduced over heat combined with cereal cooked in oil, or on milk curd, plus boiled sugar, are also made in the Indian subcontinent. BARFI is a good example. See also MILK REDUCTION; INDIAN SWEETS.
Laura Mason
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the Japanese name for some species of BLOWFISH which are regarded as a great delicacy in Japan. The best known are Fugu rubripes (torafugu), and F. porphyreus (mafugu or namerafugu).
Shimonoseki, in the westernmost corner of Honshu Island, is specially celebrated for its fugu dishes. There it is called fuku.
These fish have to be prepared with great skill to avoid any possibility of the fatally toxic parts being eaten or contaminating the flesh. The lethal poison is tetrotoxin and it is found in the fish’s gut and also in the liver, ovary, and skin. There are whole books devoted to the necessary technique, and only cooks who have qualified in this are allowed to deal with the fish. Even so, instances occur of Japanese dying from fugu poisoning, usually because someone without the necessary skill has attempted to prepare the fish.
For SASHIMI the flesh of fugu is sliced so thin as to be almost transparent, and the slices are arranged on a large round dish like flower petals. They are eaten with a dipping sauce usually containing some citrus juice and SOY SAUCE.
The flesh of fugu, milt, bones, head are cooked with tofu, vegetables, etc. in DASHI in an earthenware pot at the table. This is called Fugu-chiri.
The fins of fugu are grilled until they are slightly burnt and steeped in warmed SAKÉ. The resultant beverage is called hire-zake and drunk by the diners while eating fugu.
(or fian) outdoor Bronze Age cooking sites, presented under their Irish name because Ireland possesses so many examples. The term fulacht, derived from Old Irish, means ‘a pit used for cooking’ and fiadh can be interpreted as either ‘of the deer’ or ‘of the wild’, while fian refers to a mythical band of Irish warriors known as the Fianna, hence ‘the cooking pit of the Fianna/deer/wild’. They are the most numerous archaeological monument in Ireland; over 4,500 sites are known and 2,000 of these are in the County Cork region. Similar sites, known as boiling mounds or burnt mounds, are found in the English Midlands, the Orkneys, the Isle of Man, and along the N. Atlantic coastline.
In the field the fulacht fiadh is a distinctive crescent-shaped mound and the site is located near a water source, often a stream, natural well, or marshy area. The mound surrounds the cooking place, which consists of a rectangular stone or wood-lined trough and fire area. When cooking, the trough was filled with water and stones were heated in the nearby fire. Red-hot stones were toppled into the trough and the water was brought to the boil. Meat wrapped in cloth or straw was then immersed in the water for boiling. Experiments (see O’Kelly, 1989) have shown that a trough containing 450 litres of water can be brought to the boil in 30 to 35 minutes and the meat is cooked at a rate of 20 minutes to the pound. After each boiling the trough was cleared of the shattered stone debris, which was thrown aside and over time built up into the mound area.
Many fulachta fiadh have associated hut sites, many containing roasting ovens. These have been interpreted variously as hunting camps, butchering and meat-cure houses, and meat stores, interpretations which would suggest that fulachta fiadh were complexes designed for the large-scale butchering and preservation of hunted animals.
In Irish mythological literature the sites are used by the legendary warriors, the Fianna, for cooking the produce of the hunt, usually deer. A 12th-century text, Acallam na Senórach (The Colloquy of the Old Men), suggests that song birds may have been cooked in the pits: ‘Birds out of trackless oaken woods would find their way into the Fianna’s cooking pit.’
One theory suggests that the sites functioned as both cooking places and saunas. Both activities are mentioned in the following extract from Keating’s history of Ireland (Dinneen, 1908).
However, from Bealtaine until Samhain, the Fianna were obliged to depend solely on the products of their hunting and of the chase as maintenance and wages from the kings of Ireland; thus, they were to have the flesh for food, and the skins of the wild animals as pay. But they took only one meal in the day and night, and that was in the afternoon. And it was their custom to send their attendants about noon with whatever they had killed in the morning’s hunt to an appointed hill, having wood and moorland in the neighbourhood, and to kindle raging fires thereon, and put into them a large number of emery stones; and to dig two pits in the yellow clay of the moorland, and put some of the meat on spits to roast before the fire; and to bind another portion of it with súgáns [hay or straw ropes] in dry bundles, and set it to boil in the larger of the two pits, and keep plying them with stones that were in the fire, making them seethe often until they were cooked. And these fires were so large that their sites are today in Ireland burnt to blackness, and these are now called Fulacht Fian by the peasantry.
As to the Fian, when they assembled on the hill on which was the fire, each of them stripped off, and tied his shirt round his waist, and they ranged themselves round the second pit we have mentioned above, bathing their hair and washing their limbs, and removing their sweat, and then exercising their joints and muscles, thus ridding themselves of their fatigue; and after this they took their meal; and when they had taken their meal, they proceeded to build their hunting tents, and so prepare themselves for sleep.
Regina Sexton
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Fulmarus glacialis, a cliff-dwelling, gull-like bird of northern seas and coasts; it belongs to a group of seabirds commonly known as petrels and shearwaters.
Francesca Greenoak (1979) remarks that:
The most famous Fulmars are those of the island of St Kilda, where they have probably lived and been hunted for nearly a thousand years. The ornithologist William MacGillivray visiting the island in 1840 reported that the Fulmar ‘forms one of the principal means of support to the islands, who daily risk their lives in its pursuit.’ There is, however, strong evidence to show that the present great Fulmar spread is not of St Kildan birds, but a population overspill from Iceland.
The same author tells us that ‘Fulmar’ is from Foul Maa, meaning Foul Gull, because a sitting bird, if provoked by the near approach of a hunter, will ‘eject a stream of oily secretion and half-digested food at the attacker, forcibly enough to be on target for about a metre and a half’.
The eggs of the fulmar are large, white and beautiful. They are prized as food.
(or medames) often described as Egypt’s national dish, certainly occupies a place of primacy in that country, and has done so for a very long time.
Jill Tilsley-Benham (1989) points out that it is a standard dish for breakfast (including the evening ‘break-fast’ of RAMADAN), but is also eaten as a snack (MEZZE) or a main meal. Egyptian immigrant workers in the Persian Gulf have been responsible in recent decades for spreading its currency eastwards. Lane (1860) had referred to the practice of leaving the beans to cook overnight in a pear-shaped earthenware pot which was ‘buried, all but the neck, in the hot ashes of an oven or a [Turkish] bath, and having the mouth closely stopped: they are eaten with linseed-oil, or butter, and generally with a little lime-juice’.
The etymology of Ful mudammes is not entirely clear. Perry (1993), contributing to a learned discussion of the matter by four authorities, writes:
Fûl is the Arabic word for fava beans, cognate with the Hebrew pûl. Mudammas looks like the passive participle of a verb derived from the noun dims, which means ‘ashes’ in the Egyptian dialect of Arabic; the sense would be ‘cooked over coals’. As we know, the beans are traditionally cooked overnight in a big pot set over coals.
Anyway, the word ful certainly means bean(s). However, the question arises: what beans? It seems abundantly clear that they are a variety, or varieties of the broad bean (Vicia faba, fava bean), but that leaves the question of defining or naming the varieties. Jill Tilsley-Benham explains that, in Egypt itself there are two kinds, of which the first is the more esteemed and more expensive:
There is another variety called ful rumi, ‘Greek’ or ‘European’ beans. These are larger, about 20 mm (0.8″) long, almost circular, very flat, and pale. They are rarely used in Egypt for making Ful mudammes, but appreciated by devotees in Syria.
The same author’s detailed description of how Ful mudammes is made and presented is the basis of that given in the box overleaf.
The basic recipe calls for the well-soaked beans to be placed in a special pot called damassa with plenty of cold water. Some cooks add a small proportion of split red lentils, which helps to thicken the sauce and improve the colour. Carrot/onion/tomato (alone or mixed) can be added for extra flavour. Those who wish to eat their ful with hard-boiled eggs sometimes add them at this stage. Bicarbonate of soda is another common addition—the bean skins are invariably tough—and (in the Gulf) slices of lemon are sometimes added as well.
The beans are boiled, then left to simmer gently for 8–10 hours. If oven baked, the damassa lid is generally sealed with dough to conserve all possible moisture. Hot water is added when necessary to beans left on top of the fire. Although older strains of ful would have taken longer to soften than those used nowadays, the habit of such extended simmering probably evolved from their use as a breakfast food—it being simply more convenient to cook them overnight. Nowadays, although the traditional earthenware pots are still used in the villages, cooking methods in towns have changed, the hot ashes being replaced by modern stoves. Specially designed low-wattage hotplates are used and ‘the latest style (aluminium) damassa is equipped with a rod-shaped heating element which keeps the beans simmering perfectly all night’.
Next, the ful are mixed (and sometimes mashed) with oil (cottonseed, linseed, olive, or corn) together with fresh lime juice. Alternatively they are simply mixed with samneh, a type of clarified butter, see GHEE.
The most common additional ingredients for the mixture are garlic (crushed), white or red onions (grated, chopped, or thinly sliced), spring onions (chopped), tomato (diced, juiced, or paste), hot pepper, and ground cumin seed. The fenugreek- and pepper-flavoured sausage bastirma is sometimes added.
Common accompaniments are chopped parsley, spring onions, fried or hard-boiled eggs, limes, olives, and assorted pickles. Country people relish a whole onion with their Ful mudammes, and this they divide into sections by a powerful blow with the heel of the hand. Salatet tehina, a creamy sauce of sesame paste (see TAHINE), garlic, and vinegar, is another favourite addition.
Ful mudammes is accompanied in Egypt by thin discs of the local wholemeal bread, aysh baladi, and in the Gulf by the similar khubz tannour, or nan.
a French term referring to a concentrated reduction of the stock obtained when cooking fish or vegetables in a liquid, often wine. It occurs most often in the fish version, as fumet de poisson, an important ingredient in many of the sauces which accompany seafood in European cookery. It is only rarely applied to vegetables except in the case of mushrooms (fumet de champignons being common enough).
is a subject which does not appear to have had any books devoted to it so far, although studies have been published of the customs prevailing in certain cultures or communities. Generally speaking, efforts are made to provide those attending a funeral with attractive, palatable fare, although sometimes the theme of frugality and moderation is prominent. The nature of the relevant religion and the general attitudes to food of the people practising it have an effect here.
Certain foods are perceived as connected with death and may be served at a funeral feast for that reason. For an example, see BROAD BEAN, which gave rise to the old English expression ‘beano’.
In many cultures a funeral is a finite event, occupying a relatively short period on one day, and the provision of funeral foods, if any, is temporally adjacent, i.e. immediately after the funeral or (less often) immediately before it. However, in other cultures it may be inappropriate to focus attention on this short timespan, since the actual funeral is only a part of a larger ceremonial occupying several days (which in turn may be seen as only part of a much longer period of mourning). The burden undertaken by the bereaved family of providing food for mourners can be considerable if they have to cope with a period of several days rather than a single meal or refreshment. In the Middle East for example families can easily be ruined by having to provide food for large numbers of mourners who come for days rather than hours.
Certain foods or dishes are normally prepared only for funerals. An example which has been the subject of a study by Brears (1984b) is the category of funeral biscuits in Yorkshire. In fact his essay has a wider scope and incorporates a quotation from Nicholson 1890) as follows:
Before leaving the house for the grave-yard, the mourners have refreshment served to them—cheese, spice bread and beer for the men; biscuits and wine, both home-made, for the women. On returning to the house, a funeral feast is prepared, the like of which is only seen at these times … the expence was so great that families were impoverished for years.
This shows that the burden of expense can be crushing even when the timespan is limited. It also illustrates the practice of food before plus food afterwards, and makes an interesting distinction between spice bread (or cake) and biscuits. These biscuits were often provided in special wrappers, but frequently with a more chilling message such as:
When ghastly Death with unrelenting hand,
Cuts down a father! brother! or a friend!
The still small voice should make you understand,
How frail you are—how near your final end.
The biscuits could be what would now be called sponge fingers (see BISCUIT VARIETIES), or might be rounds of SHORTBREAD flavoured with CARAWAY seed and often stamped with a design including a heart (symbol of the soul, now departed). Brears records that the provision of funeral biscuits waned considerably in the first half of the 20th century and seems to have disappeared entirely thereafter.
Whereas the Yorkshire funeral biscuits were just for funerals, the special funeral food which is almost ubiquitous in the Balkans could be used for other occasions such as weddings or saints’ days. This is VARENO ZHITO, described in its separate entry. The symbolic value of the wheat which is the basic ingredient is clear.
The complexity of funeral rites (Hindu, Buddhist, etc.) in Asia makes it difficult to single out any particular funeral foods; but Asia does provide one charming custom which deserves mention in this context. In Thailand a person is likely to compose a small cookbook before her or his death, so that it can be distributed as a keepsake to the mourners attending the funeral. These little books can be of beautiful design, such that they would be welcome additions to any library. It is, however, the content which is the true gift, and this reflects the dead person’s taste in food, probably offering favourite recipes, which may be for simple or sophisticated dishes and may or may not be embellished by anecdotes and reminiscences. They constitute in effect a sort of symbolic ‘food’ which has the merit of being everlasting in that the mourners can use the recipes for the rest of their lives (and no doubt, if they wish, include them in their own funeral cookbooks, and so on ad infinitum).
[True to his convictions, Alan Davidson suggested the contents of his own cookbook should be presented to mourners at his funeral (Davidson, 2004).]
in the scientific sense, means any of a group of simple plants which include MUSHROOMS and similar plants, YEASTS, MOULDS, and the rusts which grow as parasites on crops (such as ergot on RYE). Unlike more advanced plants, fungi lack chlorophyll and so can only grow as saprophytes (from dead plants or animals); or as parasites (on living plants, see CUITLACOCHE); or in a mycorrhizal relationship (symbiosis between fungi and the roots of trees).
Fungi vary in size from single-cell micro-organisms, too small to be seen by the naked eye, to the giant PUFFBALL, which may measure 1.5 metres (5′) across. Edible fungi, exemplified by the common FIELD MUSHROOM and its cultivated relation, mostly fall between the two extremes.
The importance of fungi for human food is not limited to those which are eaten as such, or are visible. Many which are micro-organisms play an important part in making or processing human food. Yeasts are an obvious example, and are regarded as beneficent because of their role in, for example, the making of bread dough. But moulds, although generally regarded with suspicion, are also of importance.
This applies in both the western and eastern hemispheres, although there is a striking difference between occidental and oriental usage. In the West, fungi of this category are mostly used for milk products, notably in the manufacture of certain cheeses. In the East, their principal use is in the processing of SOYA BEANS (although they are also set to work on rice, groundnuts, cassava, fish, and other foods). See the entries on MOULD, SOY SAUCE, MISO, and TEMPE. The long history of cultivation of the soya bean in the Orient, its high protein content (of especial value in a region where protein has always been in short supply, dairy products are little used, and some religions prohibit meat), and the fact that it is hard to digest the beans unless they have been fermented are all factors which contribute to the different emphasis.
So far as the directly edible fungi are concerned, there is less of an East–West contrast, but something of a North–South one. ‘Mushrooms’, to use the term loosely as applying to edible fungi in general, are far better known as food in the northern than in the southern hemisphere.
A fungus is also used as a source of mycoprotein (fungus protein) for making ‘meat analogues’ or artificial meat products. The organism is the mould Fusarium venenatum, which is grown in vats. The extracted protein is drawn and spun into strands which can be pressed together to simulate chunks of meat or minced meat, to which artificial flavour may then be added. The mould was discovered in 1967 and production of Quorn, the trade name of this meat analogue, began in Britain in 1985.
a rare example of a ‘ghost food’, recorded by Bryson (1991). ‘The U.S. Army in 1974 devised a food called funistrada as a test word during a survey of soldiers’ dietary preferences. Although no such food existed, funistrada ranked higher in the survey than lima beans and eggplant.’
Gloiopeltis furcata, one of the red SEAWEEDS which is used as food in China and Japan. This is a relatively small seaweed, whose branches form a characteristic shape, giving rise to one Chinese name which means ‘antler vegetable’. Chinese commonly use it fresh as a vegetable, e.g. stir-fried. In Japan, much is processed to make a starchy food thickener, but some of the harvest is eaten fresh, or dried and subsequently reconstituted with dilute rice vinegar.
a name used for fish of the SNAPPER family, in the genus Paracaesio.
P. caeruleus, also known as the Japanese snapper, is an important food fish, although known only from S. Japan; it reaches a length of 50 cm (20″). P. xanthurus, the southern fusilier or yellowtail blue snapper, is a little smaller but has a wide distribution in the tropical Indo-Pacific, and from E. Australia up to S. Japan.
Tweedie and Harrison (1970) comment that these species are among the few economically important fish of the coral reefs.
They are taken by an exciting operation involving the positioning of a net by the reef and the driving of the fish into it by a team of swimming men, each holding a long string weighted at the bottom and flagged at intervals in its length with pieces of white cloth. These strings are jerked up and down and the moving flags scare the fish and drive them into the net. This strenuous mode of fishing is of Japanese origin and is still called by its Japanese name ‘muro ami’.
as recommended by the Italian Futurists, especially Marinetti and Fillìa (1931), were one of the rare attempts to alter the fundamental design of a cuisine, indeed to achieve a full-scale culinary revolution. This was to be part of a much wider revolution, intended to overturn established patterns and conventions in all the arts as well as in politics and social organization. It is noteworthy that, while almost every feature of the proposed revolution could be criticized as unlikely to gain support, still less be achieved, it was the culinary aspect which from the outset seemed most clearly to be doomed.
Among the more sensational items on which critics immediately fastened were:
So far as the Italian public were concerned, the salient item was the first of those listed above and their reaction was negative. The Futurists protested that there was far more to their plan than a simple ban on pasta, but protests had little impact. This was, in some ways, unfortunate, since some of their ideas—even if they took too extreme a form—merited consideration. One example was the banishment of music from meals, except for the express purpose of complementing a particular food or dish. The exclusion of normal condiments and ‘a consistent lightening of weight and reduction of volume of food-stuffs’ are other ideas which Marinetti advocated and which do not sound so very strange today.
Science, according to the Futurists, should play a greater part in cookery; but in general the scientific content in Futurist thought about cooking and foods was subordinate to artistic considerations, which were applied not only to the preparation and presentation of foods but also to the architecture of the restaurants, or rather ‘cultural centres’, in which the dishes would be served; for their consumption was to be attended by aesthetic experiences such as poetry recitals, art exhibitions, and fashion shows. (This was a fairly tame idea compared with the mock aircraft in which people were to have their appetites stimulated by the vibration of motors, their accustomed ideas shaken by tilted seats and tables, and their senses assaulted by weirdly composed dishes listed on aluminium menu cards.)
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