the Japanese name for a small mushroom, Pholiota nameko, which grows wild in beech woods. It is also cultivated, formerly on wetted beech logs and now on a substrate of sawdust and rice bran. Nameko means ‘viscous mushroom’ and its salient characteristic is an unusual slimy coating. The cap is yellow or amber and shaped like that of a cultivated button mushroom. See illustration opposite.
The flavour is pleasant and slightly aromatic. Nameko are used extensively in Japanese cooking, e.g. in soups such as MISO soup, and stews, and cost less than the more famous SHIITAKE and MATSUTAKE mushrooms. They are sold fresh (although they do not keep well) and in cans and preserved in brine in jars.
P. nameko, although recorded from Taiwan, is essentially a mushroom of Japan only, where its distribution coincides almost exactly with that of the Japanese chestnut tree, Fagus crenata. For related species see PHOLIOTA MUSHROOMS. Although one, Kuehneromyces mutabilis, is a candidate for cultivation, none has so far rivalled the nameko.
a leguminous fruit, Cynometra cauliflora, apparently native to a region stretching from Thailand to E. Malaysia.
The fleshy pods are about 10 cm (4″) long, wrinkled, with yellow flesh and a single large seed within, which is discarded during preparation. There are two varieties, a sweet one which is eaten raw and a sour one which must first be cooked, when its flavour is reminiscent of quince.
the most popular sauce in Thailand, without which Thai food would be very different. (Since CHILLI peppers are an essential ingredient, it is clear that Thai food was in fact very different before the chilli arrived in SE Asia from the New World.)
Nam prik is on the table at every Thai meal, but exists in many versions. The essential features are, apart from chopped dried red chilli peppers (including their seeds), lime juice, Thai FISH SAUCE (nam pla), garlic, and a little sugar. Chopped dried shrimps are often added, and so are the smallest of all AUBERGINES (makeua puong—pea sized).
Nam prik is simply made, by preparing and mixing its ingredients. For nam prik pao (roasted nam prik) some of the ingredients, especially unpeeled garlic cloves and unpeeled small onions or shallots, are first heated in a heavy iron pan, without added fat. Shrimp paste (kapee) is similarly treated. Peanuts may also be roasted and included.
is the Persian word for bread, now also in common use in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, several C. Asian republics (particularly Uzbekistan) and Xinjiang province, China. In several Finno-Ugrian languages of W. Siberia, it is the general word for dough and dough products. In Afghanistan, it is used as the name for food in general.
People in western countries are likely to know nan, if at all, as something they have in Indian restaurants. However, its distribution in Asia and the various forms which it takes are a complex subject.
The original sense of the term was ‘ashcake’, a bread cooked on the hearth, as related words in Pashto and Armenian make clear. Nowadays, the basic nan is a wheat-flour bread leavened with a starter of the SOURDOUGH kind, cooked in a clay TANDOOR. The clay and the smoke in the tandoor combine to produce a characteristic flavour. The bread is flattish and has a crisp crust.
Nans prepared in Iran include:
The Uzbeks are known for their nans, which are nearly all round, rather than oblong, like a PIZZA with a thick ridge around the edge. They ornament their breads with geometric patterns of crimping and slashing on this ridge and concentric punch marks, made with a special punch called chekich (the subject of a study by Perry, 1994), on the flat centre of the loaf. Particularly beautiful breads are sometimes hung in hotels as art works. One has the impression that when the Uzbeks gave up nomadic life, the artistic impulses that had gone into the traditional nomad activity of carpet-making were channelled into baking. Their nans include some unusual items:
The Uzbeks also make a bread, Qashqari patir, said to have come to them from the Uighur city of Kashgar. It is made with onion juice in the dough, and the debris of squeezed onion shreds, mixed with sour milk, is smeared on the flat centre of the loaf, pizza-style.
The Uighurs of Xinjiang province, China, make the following nans:
Charles Perry/Helen Saberi
READING:
Solanum quitoense, a member of the nightshade family, bears fruits which resemble a little orange, as its common name, from the Spanish naranja (orange) indicates.
The shrub is believed to be indigenous to Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia, where it is grown commercially, chiefly for the production of juice, although the fruit is pleasant to eat. A brown hairy coat covers the fruit until it is fully ripe, when it rubs off. The fruit is about 6 cm (2.5″) across, and divides easily into four sections. The yellowish-green pulp has an acidly sweet taste, some say like a mixture of pineapple and lemon; and lots of tiny, thin seeds.
See also COCONA, of the same genus but bearing fruit with different characteristics.
Acanthosicyos horridus, a wild vine of the CUCURBIT family, common in the Kalahari and Namib deserts of southern Africa, which bears round, prickly, melon-like fruits. Local tribes, especially the Hottentots, depend on these fruits for a large part of their diet. During several months of the summer the fruits are eaten fresh. They are juicy, with a pleasant, slightly acid flavour. Fruits are also preserved.
The flat, oily seeds are kept for food in winter. They have a soft, nutlike texture and a buttery flavour, and are sometimes referred to as ‘butterpits’. Besides eating them, the Hottentots extract a cooking oil from them. Butterpits used to be sold as a substitute for almonds in S. Africa.
Tropaeolum majus, a S. American plant, is best known as an ornamental; but the leaves of most kinds are edible and the buds and seeds may be pickled to produce a substitute for capers. The flowers are also edible and make a decorative element in SALADS. T. minus, the dwarf nasturtium, has similar properties.
Young nasturtium leaves taste something like WATERCRESS. (Indeed the name nasturtium is Latin for cress, and means ‘twisted nose’, with reference to the plant’s pungency. In botanical nomenclature Nasturtium is the generic name of watercress.) They should be used sparingly.
A further idea was supplied by General Eisenhower in an exceptionally full and detailed recipe for vegetable soup which he contributed to Celebrity Cook Book (2nd edn, ed. Lady Appleton, 1969):
As a final touch, in the springtime when nasturtiums are green and tender, you can take a few nasturtium stems, cut them up in small pieces, boil them separately as you did the barley, and add them to your soup.
A near relation of some importance is YSAÑO (or mashua, T. tuberosum), which is valued mainly for its tubers but whose leaves and flowers are also edible.
a tough, jelly-like dessert made from COCONUT or PINEAPPLE trimmings, popular in parts of C. and S. America.
It is not a GELATIN or PECTIN jelly, but is composed largely of CELLULOSE, which is deposited by acetic acid-producing BACTERIA, Acetobacter xylinum. In fact it could be described as an unusually solid ‘mother of vinegar’ (see VINEGAR). The nata forms as a mat on the surface of a sugar solution in which the fruit trimmings are steeped. It is lifted off, washed, and sun dried; then cooked in syrup before serving. It is almost completely non-nutritious and has only a faint taste of the original fruit.
a Japanese fermented product made of SOYA BEANS, unusual in that it is fermented by BACTERIA (Bacillus subtilis) not by the MOULDS used for Indonesian TEMPE and other fermented soya bean products.
The bacteria give the beans a whitish coating and a flavour and texture which not all Japanese appreciate and which most other people find disconcerting. The flavour is strong, musty, and faintly ammoniac, and the bacteria develop on the beans a sticky slime which forms ‘strings’; the longer these are, the better the natto, according to those who like the product.
Natto was often made in the home. Cooked soya beans were wrapped in rice straw, which supplies the necessary B. subtilis, and were left in a warm place for one or two days. However, commercially produced natto, for which the beans are inoculated with a pure culture of the bacteria, has largely replaced domestic production; and frozen natto is now available.
Natto is often used as an accompaniment for rice, and is itself accompanied by SOY SAUCE, mustard, and negi (Japanese onion); or by raw quail eggs (broken into and mashed with the natto). It is most popular in the eastern part of Japan.
or pearly nautilus Nautilus pompilius, unique among CEPHALOPODS in retaining an external shell, is sometimes called the chambered nautilus because this shell is built up, as it grows, by the addition of one chamber after another until there may be as many as three dozen. The animal’s body is always accommodated in the last, outer, and largest chamber, and is equipped with several score of small arms. The shell contains a gas which makes it semi-buoyant, permitting the nautilus to change depth and to swim. It is not easy to catch, but Burma is one country where it is taken in quantity, perhaps because the shell, polished down to the ‘pearl’, can conveniently be carved into the shape of a peacock, the national emblem, and will then fetch a good price.
Although the shell may measure up to 25 cm (10″), its occupant is considerably smaller. It needs little preparation beyond removing the eyes, and may be cooked like any small SQUID.
a sort of stew of LAMB or MUTTON containing vegetables. During the winter months these will standardly be potatoes and onions, but in the spring the new season’s vegetables (carrots, turnips, beans, peas, etc.) are used to make a navarin printanier (‘spring navarin’). The French for ‘turnip’ is navet, which is probably the source of navarin. E. S. Dallas’s comment in Kettner’s Book of the Table (1877) suggests that the term was not of great antiquity: ‘Navarin is a stupid word which has arisen from a desire to get rid of the unintelligible and misleading name Haricot de mouton, without falling back on the vulgar phrase, Ragoût de mouton.’
John Ayto
besides meaning the sweet liquid which bees gather from flowers to produce HONEY, refers to the drink of the gods in classical mythology and, by extension, any particularly delicious drink. Nectar has thus a more restricted meaning than AMBROSIA, which can refer to both the food and drink of the gods, although commonly used of the food alone.
In the Homeric poems nectar is imagined as red (like wine) and as being served to the gods by Hebe, the divine wine-waitress (‘cup-bearer’ is the more traditional term). The ‘nectar of bees’, meaning honey, is a term first used by Euripides in the play Bacchae (c.400 BC).
Amygdalus persica, Nucipersica group, a variety of PEACH with a smooth skin and a flavour so fine that the fruit is named for NECTAR, the legendary drink of the classical gods. The flesh of modern cultivars is generally yellow and the skin red and yellow (although until about 1940 most nectarines, at that time smaller and with a sharper flavour, had greenish-white flesh). Like other peaches, nectarines may be ‘clingstone’ or ‘freestone’. Their smooth skin means that they lack the protective ‘fuzz’ which is a feature of other peaches.
The origin of the nectarine is a mystery. It is a true peach, not a cross between a peach and a plum as some have supposed. Peach trees sometimes bear nectarines, and vice versa. In early literature from the time of the peach’s origin in China to medieval times there is no clear reference to a nectarine. In France, however, the term brugnon was in use in late medieval times or soon afterwards for ‘fuzz-less peaches’, and in the 16th century at least one French writer gave a clear description of a nectarine.
The fruit soon reached England where by 1629, according to John Parkinson, there were six varieties and the name ‘nectarine’ was already in use. The nectarine was a latecomer to the USA. The first mention in print of cultivating nectarines was in 1722, in a book about Virginia, but cultivation in the eastern states only started in earnest in the early 19th century. Then, from about 1850 onwards, it became established in California, where the climate suits the nectarine perfectly. Since 1973 the production of nectarines in California, now embracing more than 150 varieties, has surpassed that of freestone peaches. In the 1990s Summer Grand and Mayglo have been the most important commercial varieties.
Nectarines are now grown in most areas where peaches are cultivated, although there are some where their lack of fuzz leaves them too vulnerable to disease. They are usually grown for eating fresh; if canned, they lose their special qualities. (Experts say that the special qualities of even fresh nectarines are less special than they used to be; cross-breeding with other peach varieties has left them with a less clearly distinctive flavour and texture.) Dried nectarines, of an attractive amber colour, are available.
is a landlocked, mountainous country in the Himalayas perched between INDIA to the south-west and TIBET to the north-east.
Nepal, almost isolated from the rest of the world until the 1950s, is a mosaic of peoples of Indo-European and Tibetan stock with a wide range of cultures and religions. These factors are reflected in the cuisines; these are noticeably diverse and still heavily marked by their former almost complete reliance on the ingredients available in each small locality. But many factors, including the influx of tourists in the last decades of the 20th century, have set in train processes of change which are smudging the old culinary frontiers.
The main external influences in the cooking of Nepal come, naturally, from its two neighbouring countries, India and Tibet. Religious wars between Muslims and the old Indian principalities caused Indian Brahmans (priests) and Kshatriyas (warriors) to escape to the remote Himalayas, bringing with them their caste system and culinary customs and traditions. From the Chinese side there has been a steady infiltration of pure Tibetans which continues to the present day.
The Newars, who today mainly live in the lush Kathmandu Valley region, are one of the main ethnic groups of Nepal. They have influenced Nepalese cuisine in many ways. They are renowned for their rich mythology, their traditions telling of the creation of the world, their numerous religious festivals and feasts, and their skill in growing the fruit and vegetables which are prominent at the feasts.
The Newars have in their turn been influenced by the hunting Ranas who, during the 19th century, virtually took over the Himalayan mountain kingdom and brought with them many culinary tastes and dishes from India, including recipes for venison and pork. Their rich, sumptuous food contrasted with the simple and plain food prepared by the ordinary people of Nepal.
Other groups with their own traditions and culinary tastes include the Gurkhas and the Sherpas. The Gurkhas, of course, were influenced by their service in the British army. Sherpas, well known as mountain guides and porters, live in the high mountains of E. Nepal. Most Nepalis are nominally Hindu or Buddhist and both religions have strictures against killing animals and eating meat. Butchers from Tibet come especially to slaughter YAKS whose meat is then dried and smoked. With the exception of a few high-caste Hindus, however, most Nepalis do eat meat when affordable and cook many meat dishes. But each ethnic group prohibits some subset of meats in ways that strike the outsider as almost random. Some do not eat sheep; others do not eat chicken; some do not eat buffalo. Most do not eat pork and none, barring some untouchables, will eat beef (which is considered sacred). Lamb and duck are also eaten. All this can create problems and goat is thought the safest choice when serving guests.
MAIZE is one of the few crops grown almost everywhere in the country. WHEAT and RICE are grown in the Kathmandu Valley, in the fertile Terai region which is mentioned below. Wheat, barley, buckwheat, millet, and beans are also cultivated, even further north at fairly high altitudes, alongside root crops (such as turnip and potato).
The main food of the Nepalese is rice (bhat) usually served with DAL and one or two vegetable dishes which are either fried or made into a stew. Potato (alu) dishes are very common. Meat may also enter their diet after an animal or bird has been sacrificed. At one of the more important temples—Dakshinkali—braziers are kept burning all day so that worshippers of Kali can have their meat cooked immediately after the offering and picnic on the spot.
Kabaf is a particularly Nepalese dish. Although the word may have the same origins as KEBAB, kabafs are unlike the usual small pieces of barbecued meat; they are large pieces, cooked in their own juice.
Although Nepal is landlocked there are many rivers flowing down from the Himalayas and lakes providing plenty of freshwater fish. Fish farming has also been started in some places, producing carp and trout.
Noodles (chau chau) are popular in Nepal, as are the meat-stuffed dumplings called momo (see MANTOU); these reflect the Chinese influence mediated through Tibet. GHEE or MUSTARD oil (which gives a characteristic pungency to the food) is used for cooking. On the whole, food is, in general, bland but the use of various hot and spicy pickles (ACHARS) and CHUTNEYS with the rice adds flavour and piquancy. Ginger, garlic, onion, and chives are commonly used in Nepal.
There are two words for bread in Nepal: roti (Nepali) and mari (Newari). Besides making many of the breads common in India (CHAPATI, ROTI, PARATA, POORI, etc.) the Nepalese make some breads from rice, maize, MILLET, BUCKWHEAT, SOYA BEAN, and PULSES. Some of these are steamed breads, once again reflecting the influence of N. China; these may have a stuffing and are sometimes referred to as ‘dumplings’. Yomari is one such, a steamed rice-flour dumpling made by the Newari people to celebrate Yomari Punhi, the festival of the full moon in December/January (a feast day of Lakhshmi, goddess of wealth), and also for the even (but not odd) numbered birthdays of children. Usually it is made in a conch shape and filled with roasted sesame seeds and brown sugar.
Of the numerous festivals in the Nepalese calendar, some involve fasting but the great majority call for festival food, for example, Kwati, a bean dish made with many sorts of beans at the Newari festival of Gumpuni. All the festivals feature sweet specialities, mostly the counterparts of Indian ones such as KHEER and JALEBI (although some seem to be distinctively Nepalese, e.g. sel, which are ‘slimline’ rice FRITTERS). An especially wide range of sweets is on offer during the Festival of Lights in the late autumn, and they also turn up at wedding feasts.
Yoghurt or curds are considered a delicacy and an important food for health. LASSI is also drunk, as are fruit-based drinks called sherbats (see SHERBET). Oranges and tangerines grow in the hilly regions of Nepal; mangoes in the Terai, the plain in the south of the country. Pineapple is cultivated in E. Nepal. Sherbats are made from all these fruits and also from BAEL (bel in Nepali) fruit and other fruits.
One Nepali habit of eating noted by Indra Majupuria (1980–1) deserves wider adoption:
Among Tharus, when women serve meals for their husbands, there is a peculiar custom. The wife kicks her husband’s dish of food with the toes of her leg. This is to symbolize the subjugation of men by the women.
Helen Saberi
is of Austrian origin and the best-known CHESTNUT pudding. Chestnuts lend themselves naturally to such a use. This (known in France as pouding à la Nesselrode) was named after a Russian count who was a prominent diplomat in the mid-19th century. It is made from cooked, sieved chestnuts combined with a rich, sweet custard lightened by separating the eggs and adding the beaten whites later. The mixture is poured into a buttered mould, ornamented with glacé fruit, steamed, and served with fruit syrup. (There is also a cold imitation made with broken macaroons instead of chestnuts.)
Another chestnut pudding in the grand style is Mont Blanc, which is made from chestnuts cooked in milk, sieved, flavoured with vanilla and a liqueur, and mounded on a plate, then topped with sweetened whipped cream to represent snow on a mountain.
A Chinese pudding, li tzu tan kao, is nicknamed ‘Peking dust’ because it resembles a little heap of brown dust swept up by a street cleaner in that dusty city. The chestnuts are cooked in brown sugar and puréed, then sprinkled all over the outside of a mound of very stiff whipped cream. The edge of the mound is ornamented with fried, sugar-glazed nuts.
Dutch cookery, i.e. that practised in the Netherlands (and closely connected with the Flemish-speaking part of BELGIUM), has shown great continuity since medieval times to the present, as befits people who can count conservatism among their numerous virtues and who have not only conserved (against the encroaching sea) their precious agricultural land but have even enlarged it by creating new polders in the Zuyder Zee.
Although this is not the place to discuss the complex political history of the Low Countries in general or of the Netherlands in particular, mention must be made of one great event, the Reformation, because, when this put an end to religious paintings (of the Madonna and saints and so forth) in N. Europe, the great school of Dutch painters turned perforce to secular themes; and it is to this change that we owe the abundance of still lifes of food, paintings of market scenes, etc., which do so much to bring alive for us the foodways of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Nor is the influence of Dutch explorers and traders and the colonial period to be overlooked. The fact that INDONESIA was for so long a Dutch possession (until 1951) has left its mark on recent food history. The study by Eloise Smith van Niel (1997) of the Dutch colonial kitchen in Indonesia deals mainly with the other side of the coin, but touches on changes in the home country. These consist mainly in the presence of Indonesian restaurants, some few offering truly Indonesian fare but mostly providing a Dutch-style ‘rijsttafel’.
There has not been much Indonesian influence on domestic cooking. However, on the takeaway front, Indonesian prepared foods—SAMBALS, SATAY, loempia (see LUMPIA) etc.—have become part of standard Dutch fare; and most butchers and poulterers sell strips of beef or chicken ready prepared and spiced for Bami goreng or Nasi goreng.
The conservatism of the Dutch in their kitchens was instilled in the female population by means of the popular cooking schools which were prominent in the first half of the 20th century, catering for the rapidly growing middle classes in cities throughout the country. The teachers developed a scientific approach in their courses, in which nutritional values were dominant and questions of palatability and pleasure were considered to be of secondary importance. The best known of all cookery school cookbooks is Eenvoudige berekende recepten (Simple Calculated Recipes) by Martine Wittop Koning, first published in 1901 and going through 62 editions until 1952.
There are other classic Dutch cookery school manuals which were characteristic of the first half of the 20th century. These are very substantial and thorough cookery books, and a roll-call of them evokes in majestic fashion the principal cities of the kingdom: Amsterdam (which had two), Rotterdam, The Hague, etc. They have an honoured place in the long history of cookery books published in the Netherlands, a history which began (if one excludes books published in what is now Belgium) in the 17th century and has now been comprehensively chronicled by Witteveen and Cuperus (1998).
As a group, these cookery school manuals appear to have no parallel in other countries, and they do serve to exemplify those qualities of solidity, patience, discrimination, and adherence to tradition which have helped to ensure that many kinds of Dutch produce are of the highest quality.
Until sometime after the Second World War most families in the Netherlands were large, and few were rich. Thus much Dutch cooking was subsistence cookery, making the best use of the cheapest available local products. It was also customary to supplement the family’s diet by fishing in the nearby canals, rivers, and lakes, and even the fishmongers generally supplied freshwater fish, including EEL (which, in smoked form, is one of the greatest Dutch delicacies). In recent years, however, there has been a noticeable change to seafood, due to pollution in the inland waterways.
Dutch eating habits generally followed the seasons, and there were specific winter dishes: Boerekool met worst (cabbage with sausage); Stamppot (mashed potatoes mixed with various vegetables especially brassica varieties); and also specific dishes for feast days, such as hot chocolate with Speculaas—spicy biscuits—on Sinterklaas Day, or Oliebollen (fried raisin yeast bread) and Appelflappen (apple turnovers) on New Year’s Eve. The appearance of certain foods in the market, such as MUSSELS, the new HERRING, and game, would add their nuances to home cookery at their respective seasons.
Traditionally, the Dutch diet centred around potatoes, vegetables, and meat. In wintertime a meal could consist of one of the famous Dutch soups (Erwtensoep, a split pea soup; Bruinebonensoep, a brown bean soup) eaten with rye bread and bacon. Desserts were generally varieties of pap (gruel) made from oatmeal, semolina, tapioca, or pudding rice cooked in either milk or buttermilk. On Sundays, the pap would be thicker (pudding), with the addition of some luxury item such as vanilla and eaten with boudoir biscuits and perhaps a fruit sauce. A famous Sunday dessert was Watergruwel (pear tapioca cooked in the juice of redcurrants with lemon peel, cinnamon, currants, and raisins, sweetened with sugar).
Dutch diet changed drastically during the years of the Second World War, when there was a great scarcity of foodstuffs and rationing was introduced. Winter 1944 is considered to be the low point of this century, when the Dutch people were reduced to eating, among other famine foods, BULBS (experienced by the young Audrey Hepburn, as noted in that entry, in the form of bulb flour).
With the improving economic situation after the war, and the influx of people from the former colonies (e.g. about 35,000 Moluccans in 1947) and also guest workers from Italy and Spain, followed by others from Turkey, Morocco, and Cape Verde, new and exotic products appeared in the markets and shops, and food customs underwent some radical changes. These are instructively described by Linda Roodenburg (2004). If it is true to say that the hallmarks of Dutch cooks are simplicity, quality, and a sort of conservatism which fends off gimmicks yet gives a slow and cautious welcome to beneficial innovations, then the passage of time will show which of these changes have come to stay and which have only enjoyed a temporary and superficial favour.
See also BANKETBAKKERIJ; EDAM; GOUDA; SPICE TRADE.
of the stinging kind, notably Urtica dioica which has a range from W. Europe to the Himalayas, are gathered wild and used as a green vegetable in many parts of the world. Only the young shoots and tops of the plants are eaten, and they have to be cooked in order to destroy the formic acid which gives them their sting. Nettle soup is the only European dish in which they play a leading role; but they are also used in the production of nettle and ginger beer, and are an ingredient of the herb puddings made in the north of England (see DOCK PUDDING). The Scottish version of nettle soup is Nettle kail. The term kail means not only the vegetable KALE but also, in a more general way, greens or a soup made from them. This Nettle kail was in some regions a traditional dish for Shrove Tuesday, or to celebrate the arrival of spring. It would incorporate a little barley meal or fine oatmeal and a boiling fowl or cockerel stuffed with oatmeal, onion, and wild garlic.
Stinging nettles are used for food in Asia. Tibetans say that Milaraspa, their world-famous poet and saint, lived solely on satuk, nettle soup, for many years, until he turned green. One of his meditation caves lies above Kyirong (Happy) Valley, in surroundings which ‘are completely barren, except for a long strip of nettles which starts at the cave and goes all the way down to the valley. People say that Mila accidentally dropped his soup pot one day, and that this strip marks its path as it rolled downhill’ (Dorje, 1985).
The European purple and white dead nettles, Lamium purpureum and L. album, look like and may be used like true nettles but do not sting and are more closely related to mint. They used to be a popular food in Sweden, and have been introduced to N. America, joining an indigenous relation, the henbit, L. amplexicaule. The ‘flame nettles’ of the genus Coleus are also related to mint.
is a mould-ripened, whole-milk soft French cheese named after a town in the north of Normandy—not to be confused with the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel, also a cheese-producing area but not possessing a variety named after it. Cheeses of the Neufchâtel type are manufactured not only in the area of origin but widely elsewhere, including the USA. They are always small, seldom much over 100 g (4 oz) in weight, and shapes vary widely: square (carré), heart shaped (cœur), a small loaf (Bondon), or a flattened cylinder (Gournay and Malakoff, the latter being rare now).
Neufchâtel is made by a variant of the usual French soft cheese process used for CAMEMBERT and similar varieties. The preparation is prolonged and complicated. Ripening takes place in a cool, damp cellar infected with several species of moulds and bacteria: strains of Penicillium candidum are prominent in a complex crew of micro-organisms.
Unlike many soft cheeses, Neufchâtel can be (and usually is) eaten when still relatively young and barely ripened: in this state the surface bloom is pure white and velvety. Such cheeses are very soft, with less flavour than later, but they have an agreeable tartness. When the cheese is allowed to ripen fully, the mould becomes blackish, the cheese hardens slightly, and the flavour develops considerably.
FLAVOUR is an enigmatic combination of sensations and perceptions—smell, TASTE, touch, temperature, ‘mouthfeel’. Understanding how these factors interact to produce flavour is a scientific challenge. Olfaction (smell) contributes approximately 80% of food flavour and its receptors (the olfactory receptors) are enmeshed in a gloop of mucosa inside and at the top of the ‘nose’, just behind and above the bridge. Uniquely, it is the only sense with receptors directly exposed to the environment. These receptors dispatch signals to structures called the olfactory bulbs which look like very small deflated balloons and are located under the front of the brain above the eye sockets on a pitted flat of bone called the cribiform plate. Because of this positioning, the bulbs have also been likened to ‘two wet match sticks on a cheese grater’. They are responsible for the first analysis of olfactory information; this is where olfactory sensation elides into perception.
From here, signals are sent to various regions and structures of the brain, including the olfactory nerve, parts of the brain’s large surface (the cortex), and structures beneath the cortex, including a structure called the thalamus. The thalamus is the brain’s relay station for all incoming sensory information and projects to two structures important to olfaction: the hippocampus, a structure involved in memory formation, and the amygdala, which seems to be involved in monitoring the environment for danger or stimuli that are best avoided (amongst other functions). These structures form part of the brain’s ‘limbic system’: phylogenetically old, subcortical structures largely involved in basic motivation (hunger, sex, thirst, and so on).
Odour molecules also stimulate the trigeminus, the fifth and largest cranial nerve, which extends across the face and responds to chemical stimulation: the lachrymal response to peeling onions and the flooring effect of a whiff of ammonia are attributable to trigeminal action. Almost every odour is thought to stimulate the trigeminus except one—vanilla—which is thought to stimulate only the olfactory nerve.
At the cortical level, exposure to the odour of food has been associated with increased blood flow to the frontal and temporal lobes, as well as to the amygdala and a region called the piriform cortex. Offensive odours, such as those associated with pungent foods, would be expected to produce activation in the amygdala (the more intense the odour, the greater the activation) and the tip of the frontal lobe. Damage to the frontal and temporal areas is known to result in impaired odour recognition and identification. The brain’s electrical activity is also affected by food aroma: the smell of chocolate, for example, is associated with a reduction in an EEG frequency normally seen during heightened attention.
Allied to smell is taste, and a food mixed in saliva on the tongue will stimulate the taste receptors which, in turn, fire signals to the brain via three cranial nerves. The front two-thirds of the tongue project to the facial nerve; the back of the tongue to the cranial nerve and other parts of the mouth to the vagus nerve. Nerve fibres called axons then forward the signal to a part of the brain stem (at the base of the brain, where most cranial nerves originate), then to the sensory relay station (thalamus), and then to two regions on the surface of the brain: the primary and the secondary taste cortex.
When macaque monkeys are fed glucose, neurons in the primary taste cortex become highly responsive. Neurons in a nearby area—the secondary taste cortex—also respond but when the monkey is sated on glucose the responsiveness here decreases. When the monkey is fed a food which it has not previously ingested (such as blackcurrant juice), neurons in this second area become responsive again. Similarly, when the monkey is fed blackcurrant juice to satiety and is then presented with (previously uneaten) glucose the same pattern of responsiveness and non-responsiveness is seen in this taste area. The behavioural phenomenon observed here is called sensory-specific satiety because satiety is related to specific, sensory aspects of the food (see APPETITE). The increase and decrease in the activity of ‘taste neurons’ in these regions is also found when monkeys see the foods they eat.
A similar pattern of responses is seen in humans. As satiety develops, activation in the primary taste cortex remains fairly stable but activation in the secondary taste cortex decreases—this has been found with a range of stimuli, from water and chocolate to fat. This cortical specificity indicates that one brain region is responsible for responding to the sensory qualities of food (taste, texture, smell) whereas another, more psychologically sophisticated, area is responsible for mediating the hedonic response to food (its pleasantness and its reward value). A Japanese neuroimaging study of the brain’s response to the strong taste of pickled plums (umeboshi) found increased activation in this area, amongst others. Simply looking at high- and low-calorie foods and appetizing foods also activates this region (and the amygdala and the insula) and, in clinical studies, damage to the frontal and temporal cortices has been associated with eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia nervosa.
The primary taste cortex is located in the frontal lobe. The secondary taste cortex occupies a different area within this region, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a resourceful and versatile brain area which mediates working memory, social behaviour, planning and organizing (damage to this region leads patients to forget important steps when following recipes), and other behaviours. It also contains neurons that are unimodal and multimodal: they either respond to one type of sensory stimulation (smell or taste only, say) or to more than one (such as smell and taste or taste and vision). Extensive studies are rare, but one very provocative study found that in the OFC taste area, 34% of neurons were responsive to taste only, 13% were responsive to smell, and 21% to appearance. However, 13% also responded to smell and appearance, 13% to taste and smell, and 5% to smell and appearance. These data from primates are partly supported by neuroimaging work in humans. If participants view a picture in the presence of a congruent odour, activation is seen in the OFC (and hippocampus); this activation is absent if the stimuli are incongruent.
There are fewer bimodal neurons (those that respond to smell and taste) in the primary taste cortex than in the OFC, highlighting the importance of the OFC to a more sophisticated analysis of food perception. Perhaps this is the region where smell and taste sensations are integrated. Could this be the region where the perception of the smell and taste of muffins, hollandaise, ham, and poached eggs deliver the irredeemably memorable flavour of Eggs Benedict?
G. Neil Martin
one country in the world where the crucial date for its culinary history sticks out a mile. As David Burton (1982) puts it:
On 20 October 1769 the Endeavour anchored at Anaura Bay, south of East Cape. During the crew’s brief spells ashore, wild celery was, on Captain Cook’s orders, regularly collected and boiled with potable soup and oatmeal for the crew’s breakfast. Probably the ship’s cooks did not realise that this first crude marriage of local food and British cookery had laid the foundations for modern New Zealand cooking.
The Maori, the inhabitants of New Zealand when Cook arrived there, were descendants of the Polynesians who arrived in the islands around AD 800. They found plenty to eat, especially birds (including the now extinct moa); indeed, Gwen Skinner (1983) describes their avian larder as comprising ‘an overwhelming choice of winged, flightless, foraging and wading birds’. They would have been less surprised by the wealth of inshore fish and other seafood (see, for examples, TOHEROA; TUATUA; PIPI). But the wide range of edible plants included some welcome novelties such as the bracken fern (see FERNS) which they came to cultivate besides eating it from the wild, and bulrush, see CAT-TAIL. However, they brought with them their own food plants, notably TARO and the SWEET POTATO (kumara) as well as things like the BOTTLE GOURD. The sweet potato was outstandingly successful in New Zealand soil and became their most valuable crop in the pre-European period.
Maori cooking methods included the ‘hot stones’ technique (see FULACHTA FIADH for a European version) with large wooden containers as recipients rather than pits. However, pits were the basic requirement for their most important cooking method, the umu or hangi. Earth ovens are familiar in the other islands of the S. Pacific, but there they are constructed on the surface of the ground or in shallow depressions. The Maori dug theirs deep down and what was cooked in them was actually cooked by steam. Skinner has a particularly fine quotation describing the building and operation of a hangi in olden times, but the practice continues and she is also able to describe and provide photographs of a hangi for 700 people in 1983. There is an obvious parallel with the New England CLAMBAKE. The other Maori cooking method, grilling—whether by fastening fish or birds to sticks leaning over the embers of a fire or by placing foods (such as clams) directly in the embers—was better suited to small meals, for just a few people.
The study in many volumes by Elsdon Best (1977) of the Maori includes much material about their foodways and is a shining example of how work of this kind should be done.
The arrival of European settlers brought new foodstuffs, some of them destined to become very important. The Maori did not give a big welcome to European vegetables such as carrots and turnips, but they were quick to grasp the advantages of the pig, which yielded more meat than any other animal they knew. They also, later, came to like mutton—of which large quantities were available very cheaply during the long period when sheep were being raised in New Zealand more or less exclusively for wool (in the absence of the technology needed to make possible export of the meat). And they enthused over the potato. Potatoes and wheaten bread cooked in the Maori style began to replace fern roots in their role as a staple.
The incoming settlers often had to resort, in times of hardship, to unfamiliar foods such as the Maori ate. Burton has a number of apt quotations about a soup made from SEA ANEMONE, a pudding made from fuchsia berries, the processing of the cabbage tree (TI, Cordyline spp) to produce sticky brown sugar crystals, and the reaction of hungry travellers in the bush to eating native rats (on the whole favourable—the rats had a wholesome vegetarian diet). However, generally speaking, the settlers were British in their attitudes to food, i.e. tending to be conservative and trying to reproduce on the other side of the world the fare to which they had been accustomed in Britain. Since the climate of New Zealand is comparable to that of Britain, although milder, this aspiration was not as inappropriate as it had turned out to be in various British colonies in the tropics (or, for that matter, in most of Australia). If this conservatism deterred the incomers from learning to appreciate some of the fermented foods which were a speciality of the Maori, they could nevertheless adapt their own ways of cooking birds and fish to the different birds and fish which they found in New Zealand. On some of them they bestowed unsuitable names (e.g. ‘blue cod’ for Parapercis colias, which belongs to a quite different family, but is, incidentally, of excellent quality, so that if one takes the term ‘cod’ to mean simply ‘a good fish’, as opposed to one with taxonomic significance, these early settlers got it right); but this was no impediment to cooking them successfully. Nor was there a problem over enjoying New Zealand oysters, clams, and cockles.
The arrival of some Italian and Greek immigrants, in small numbers in the 19th century but larger numbers later, did something to variegate the culinary scene. So did the introduced deer (a complicated story, which has culminated in deer meat being a major export of the country), and rabbits; and the discovery that subtropical fruits such as tamarillo (see TREE-TOMATO) and KIWI FRUIT would flourish in the New Zealand climate. The latter fruit in particular made some fortunes during the period when it was in heavy demand, especially for NOUVELLE CUISINE purposes, in Europe and before horticulturists in the Mediterranean region had discovered that their climate too was suitable for it.
New Zealand may claim to provide a better example than most other ex-colonial territories of a cuisine which successfully incorporates what was indigenous with what was introduced. It can also claim, without necessarily designating them as national dishes, some original contributions to the world’s repertoire. One is PAVLOVA. Another is toheroa soup, which Burton describes as:
the most celebrated and the rarest of all New Zealand soups, said by one romantic to have the flavour of oysters which have been fed an exclusive diet of asparagus tips. The more mundane truth is that toheroa feed on plankton, the green chlorophyll of which builds up in the toheroa’s liver and produces the soup’s asparagus-like colour.
Another, for which see BISCUIT VARIETIES, is the Afghan, which despite the mystery surrounding its name can stand as representative of the strong baking tradition in New Zealand.
Tetragonia tetragonioides, not a relation of ordinary spinach, but a creeping perennial with flat, thick, bright green leaves, which belongs to the same family as the ICEPLANT. The seed pods float and are borne naturally for long distances on ocean currents. Thus, besides growing in New Zealand and Australia, the plant is found in the Pacific islands, Japan, and S. America.
In New Zealand it is a coastal plant, eaten by the Maori; names in use there include kokihi, vengamutu, and warrigal cabbage. It has become less plentiful since the introduction of sheep into the country, but is now cultivated in many vegetable gardens. Captain Cook, when he was exploring New Zealand in 1770, realized its importance as a green and anti-scorbutic vegetable, had it gathered in quantity, and persuaded the ship’s company to eat it by having it served to the officers in cooked green pottages or salads. It was Sir Joseph Banks, his botanist, who took the plant back to England where it was grown in Kew Gardens. By the 19th century New Zealand spinach, known also as ‘Botany Bay greens’, had become a popular summer spinach in England and America. An incidental but interesting point is that Botany Bay was originally going to be called Sting-ray’s Harbour, since several large sting-rays had been caught and eaten there. But, as Banks recorded in his diary: ‘We had with it a dish of the leaves of tetragonia cornuta [the then name for New Zealand spinach] boil’d, which eat as well as spinage or very near it.’ This and other botanical discoveries prompted the change of name.
The great 19th-century French writer Alexandre DUMAS père committed what has become a notorious anachronism when he had d’Artagnan, one of his Three Musketeers, be offered in the 17th century a dish of ‘tetragon’, this vegetable whose discovery lay a century ahead.
New Zealand spinach differs greatly from true spinach, but has a somewhat similar flavour. A tendency to bitterness can be countered by changing the water while cooking it.
Other edible Tetragonia spp occur in S. Africa.
the edible ‘nut’ of a leguminous tree of SE Asia, Pithecellobium lobatum, commonly eaten in Burma (where its name indicates that it smells like the Burmese fermented fish paste, ngapi) and Indonesia. The wine-red young shoots and the flowers are also eaten.
The ‘nuts’, which are seeds borne in large pods, are served as a side dish in Java. Their offensive smell is dispelled when they are cooked. A popular treatment is to cook ripe seeds and then pound them into flat cakes which are sun-dried, fried, sprinkled with salt, and served as one of the side dishes called emping (see GNETUM).
the oil-yielding seed of Guizotia abyssinica, a plant of the same family as the SUNFLOWER, but smaller, about the size of a Michaelmas daisy. A native of E. Africa, tolerant of poor soil and low rainfall, it is cultivated in Ethiopia and also in India (under the Bengali name ramtil).
The seeds are eaten fried or incorporated in CHUTNEYS or made into little cakes. The oil they yield is similar to that from sunflower seeds, with a pleasantly nutty taste. It may be used as a substitute for GHEE.
an ominous name, because of the ill repute of Atropa belladonna, the deadly nightshade, which indubitably contains toxins. Although the genus Solanum, home of most other nightshades, includes many edible species such as the POTATO and AUBERGINE, and counts the TOMATO as a close relation, the shadow cast by belladonna caused the whole tribe to be viewed with suspicion when they first became known to Europeans. However, several species which are called nightshades have berries which can be used as food:
I was lecturing on the properties of the plants constituting the Solanaceae, and, as a matter of course, said that the berries of the black nightshade were poisonous. A young fellow from Fort Dodge, Iowa, spoke up and said that the people in his neighborhood made them into pies, preserves, etc. and ate freely of them. I answered him, as became a professor of botany, by saying that as it was well known that black nightshade berries are poisonous, the student must have been mistaken. After a while, however, I learned that the people in central and western Iowa actually did eat black nightshade berries, and they were not poisoned either. Later, I learned the same thing in Nebraska for this species. The leaves of the plant are also edible, and are consumed like spinach.
With regard to his last sentence, Gwen Skinner (1983) has an interesting passage about use in the Pacific Islands, particularly Niue, where the plant is called polo and the leaves are used in, for example, a baked fish dish.
Nypa fruticans, a palm of the region stretching from E. India to Australia. Its various parts serve almost as many uses as the coconut, from fuel and roofing through cigarette papers to sugar and toddy. When the inflorescence is growing, there is a flow of sweet sap containing sucrose up the stalk towards it, and this can be, and in former times was, tapped as a source of sugar. However, it begins to ferment at once, so that it becomes toddy almost immediately and VINEGAR within a couple of weeks.
The fruit is spherical, about 30 cm (1′) in diameter, with heavily protected diamond-shaped sections within. The starchy seeds are used by the Chinese to make sweetmeats. In Malaysia they flavour a commercial ice cream. In the Philippines, nipa vinegar is used to prepare chicken ADOBO and PAKSIW.
chemical compounds used in the curing of meats, for example to make ham, bacon, some sausages, and silverside of beef. The type traditionally used is saltpetre, potassium nitrate. So-called Chile saltpetre, sodium nitrate, is also employed; it is cheaper and slightly stronger.
As the curing process continues, BACTERIA decompose a little of the nitrate into nitrite. Nitrites react with myoglobin, a PROTEIN in the meat, turning it pink and producing the characteristic colour of cured meat products. At the same time, even smaller amounts of compounds known as nitrosamines are produced. These are suspected of causing cancer. There are strict limits on the nitrite content of cured meats, intended to keep nitrosamines down to safe levels.
Ralph Hancock
is a process discovered by the Aztec and Maya civilizations of Mesoamerica (see CENTRAL AMERICA), but not by the Inca in S. America, which transformed the MAIZE which they had already domesticated into a truly superior foodstuff.
It is a complex process that starts with soaking the ripe maize grains and then cooking them with lime or wood ashes. This enables the transparent skin on the grain, the pericarp, to be removed, and of course makes the grain easier to grind. But the major contribution of nixtamalization is that it much enhances the protein value of the maize for human beings. So superior is nixtamalized maize to the unprocessed kind that it is tempting to see the rise of Mesoamerican civilization as a consequence of this invention, without which the peoples of Mexico and their southern neighbours would have remained forever on the village level. When and where this discovery was made is unknown, but typical household equipment for making nixtamal out of maize is known on the south coast of Guatemala at dates between 1500 and 1200 BC.
The Europeans accepted maize immediately, but unfortunately for them they accepted it as another grain, to be used like European grains, that is to say ground and then made into mush or bread. They ignored nixtamalization, probably thinking it unnecessary with their more powerful and efficient mills. Because of this, maize-dependent cultures away from the New World suffer from dietary deficiencies like pellagra and kwashiorkor, which do not exist where nixtamalization is used. Nor did the Europeans take back home with them the nutritionally superior combination of maize and New World beans, although the two ingredients made the trip separately.
Sophie Coe
presents many problems for the literal-minded, not least, the food problem. It is indeed difficult to imagine how the logistics could have been handled. Bridget Ann Henisch (1967) devoted a charming and witty book, Medieval Armchair Travels, to the subject, and the rest of this entry is a quotation from that book.
Whatever the tragedies outside, the commentators kept Noah and his family much too busy to notice them. Their main job was to see that everyone was happy, clean and well-fed, the men looking after the animals, the women caring for the birds. This division of labour is remembered in a picture of the disembarkation in the Bedford Book of Hours, where it is a woman who is gently setting free a duck. No one is straining himself; indeed, Noah is having a nap, perhaps exhausted by the very thought of the strenuous timetable drawn up for him. In a Jewish story, no animal was prepared to be accommodating. Each expected to eat its favourite food at its accustomed meal-time, and so Noah raced up and down, one moment with buckets of vineshoots for elephants, the next with broken glass of which, as all agreed, ostriches were inordinately fond.
Christian commentators were less indulgent to these fads and fancies. A uniform diet of figs and chestnuts was favoured by many, led by St. Augustine, who remarked with brisk optimism:
Hungry animals will eat almost anything and of course, God … could easily have made any food pleasant and nourishing.
The City of God, Book 15, Chap. 27
Those who felt certain animals must have meat and could not be allowed to eye their neighbours, developed the theory that a special supply of sheep was loaded for them. This ingenious arrangement brought psychological as well as nutritional benefits: as the sheep were eaten, the Ark became roomier, and the irritations of close quarters were smoothed away. A Jewish storyteller partially solved the problem by making his lions seasick and unable to face more than a scrap of grass throughout the voyage.
Others dismissed the preoccupation with meat as irrelevant, in the belief that men and animals alike were vegetarians before the Flood. This was a popular idea, despite the unkind comment of Procopius that, if this were so, Abel had been wasting his time as a shepherd. After the Deluge vegetables were found to be less nourishing than before, and so God said that meat might be eaten instead, as a compensation and a reminder of the sin that had spoilt the world.
All worried about the vast quantities of food needed, and the consequent problems of storage and waste disposal in an already over-loaded Ark. Artists were much more relaxed, few bothering to squeeze in more than an occasional Lilliputian sack. Some tastefully arranged trays of fruit and vegetables lie unjostled in the larders. Under these, and inconsiderately far from the living quarters, are the stercoraria for dung and refuse.
A difficult term. It has two main current meanings in English. First, it denotes certain types of occidental PASTA, especially those which are in the form of narrow strips and are served in soups (cf. OED). This meaning has a tendency to be expanded in respect of E. European pasta. Secondly, it refers to most of the numerous kinds of Asian pasta.
Usage in other languages differs somewhat. Thus the French term nouilles is used in a more general way than the English ‘noodles’ in the first sense; but it may refer specifically to the Alsatian dish known as nouilles (tagliatelle). The German Nudeln denotes any kind of pasta served as a dish in its own right, but also has the English meaning of ‘noodles’ when served as a soup ingredient.
Noodles are of major importance in many Asian countries, but attain their fullest glory in the cuisines of China and Japan. As will be apparent in these entries Asian noodles can be categorized according to their major ingredient: wheat-flour noodles; rice-flour noodles; and the vegetable starch group, including bean and pea starch, potato starch, and cornstarch noodles. There are, naturally, many different sorts within these three categories (see the sections that follow).
As with PASTA in Europe, the history of noodles in the Orient is difficult to establish with precision. Under the heading ‘Noodles of China’ there is much relevant information. However, it is necessary to add that the best source of information on this subject is now the relevant part of Les pâtes by Silvano Serventi and Françoise Sabban (2000), an important new reference work.
These (including those of China and Japan, dealt with on pages 536 and 538) present an interesting pattern.
One salient point is the relative lack of noodles in the Indian subcontinent. It is hard to explain this on a simple basis such as lack of suitable cereal crops in the subcontinent, since noodles can be made from so many different and basic ingredients. The phenomenon seems to be more of a historical one. It may be that the kitchen territory which might have been occupied by noodles of certain kinds was already devoted to dishes in the DAL category. There is, however, one kind of Indian noodle which has achieved a moderate degree of prominence; see SEV, SEVIYAN.
Looking northwards at the huge arc of territory which extends from China and Mongolia in the East all the way to Iran and the countries of the Middle East, there are two aspects which deserve comment. One is that, again, there are large areas where noodles are of minor importance—Iran itself and the Arab countries at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. This is something of a mystery, since there are grounds for believing that noodles may have begun in what is now Iran (Perry, 1981), and they were certainly of importance in medieval Arab cookery. It seems possible that what happened was that PILAF in Iranian territory and COUSCOUS in N. Africa gradually encroached on the role played by noodles in ancient times. In fact, the ‘mystery’ can be resolved by postulating gradual changes in area-wide eating patterns.
A further interesting point is that in the noodle-using areas between Mongolia and Turkey there is great emphasis on what would be called filled pasta in western countries, items which are often in practice referred to as dumplings (see DUMPLINGS OF ASIA). A prime example is MANTOU. Also important in this category are JOSHPARA (with its strong Iranian connection) and PEL’MENI (familiar in Russia), and it would be true to say that filled pasta has proved less vulnerable to encroachment by pilaf etc. than ordinary noodles.
A simple, perhaps too simple, explanation of the prevalence of mantu etc. could be that the combination of a meat or similar filling and a cereal envelope was convenient for nomadic cultures and more generally for people with very simple cooking facilities. One cooking pot would do, and the filling could be varied according to what was available—e.g. the vegetable filling in the ashak of Afghanistan (like ravioli) stuffed with gandana, which are Chinese CHIVES, or a filling of curd, or whatever.
However, the prevalence in the region of stuffed items has not excluded noodles which resemble vermicelli or have a ribbon shape; see RESHTEH; LAKSA, for two examples.
The picture is rather different when one looks at noodles in SE Asia. There, the stuffed noodles are less common and the influence of Chinese noodles of the thin ribbon type, and especially rice noodles, is far more apparent. It is dominant in what used to be called Indo-China. In Laos, khao pun, the national dish, is based on rice vermicelli. In Vietnam rice vermicelli are also prominent (bun, or the ultra-thin kind called banh hoi), and so are the flat thin rice noodles (banh pho), often referred to in English as ‘rice sticks’. Vietnamese also relish the so-called ‘cellophane noodles’ (mien/bun tau, also called ‘bean threads’ in English, because made of mung bean), and egg noodles (mi) are prominent in some areas. The situation in Cambodia is similar but shows a closer relationship with some of the nuances displayed by the food of neighbouring Thailand. In Thailand a strong Chinese influence is evident, particularly in the north, but many of the wares offered by Thai street hawkers (e.g. mi or mee, a term which just means noodles but can also indicate a wonderfully complex dish of noodles with various seafoods—so good that it turns up as mi Siam in Malaysia) represent an evolution away from Chinese originals. This is true also of the noodles of Malaysia and Indonesia; they too reflect a strong Chinese influence, but modified by the impact on their cuisines of influence from the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent, conveyed in the Muslim culture which is dominant in these countries.
Further east, in the Philippines, one finds the greatest and most intriguing mixture of noodle dishes from other cultures.
To round off the survey one could continue eastwards to HAWAII, another outstanding example of mixed culinary cultures.
To understand the history of noodles in China, it is necessary to know something of the history of the various cereals from which noodles can be made, and to realize that, originally and now, Chinese noodles have fallen into two distinct categories.
The earliest cereals used by the Chinese were MILLET and RICE, and the pair were known as mi. They were eaten primarily in the form of grains. However, either flour or starch could be produced from them; these, known as fen, were originally used mainly for cosmetic purposes, but from the 6th century onwards for food preparation, including the making of noodles. When this development occurred, the noodles so made were also called fen, and the term subsequently acquired an even wider meaning, embracing for example MUNG BEAN flour and SOYA BEAN flour (which provide two of the numerous non-cereal noodles which are popular in China).
Meanwhile, however, BARLEY and WHEAT had come into use. The collective term for them was mai. These two cereals were not normally eaten as grains but in products made from their flour. Once they had been processed to become flour, they were known as mian. This latter term became familiar later on (from the 12th century) as a general name for noodles, which it still is.
ALTHOUGH Filipinos have developed their own highly interesting ways with noodles—hence this special box for them—their debt to China (and to a lesser degree Spain) is obvious. The generic name for noodles is pansit (also spelled pancit), which comes from the Hokkien pianesit, which means ‘something that is conveniently cooked’. The names of the different types of noodle are still the Chinese names, or derived from them: thus, bihon (rice vermicelli), miswa (fine, dried wheat noodle), sotanghon (bean thread), miki (fresh wheat noodle with egg), Canton (pre-cooked wheat noodle with duck’s egg).
The ways of cooking use Chinese and Spanish techniques, indigenized by local combinations. The most common way is to sauté noodles with garlic, onions, tomatoes, shrimps, pork, and vegetables: guisado in Spanish, thus bihon guisado, sotanghon guisado, etc. Other additions might be meat or fish balls, Chinese parsley (cilantro, coriander), mushrooms, etc. Another way is to cook it in broth (pansit mami), or to shake the noodles in boiling water in a bamboo skimmer (luglug) and then add a shrimp-based, annatto-coloured sauce (palabok), thus pansit luglug or pansit palabok, which is prevalent in Luzon. This may then be garnished with flaked smoked fish, crumbled pork crackling, sliced kamias (BELIMBING ASAM), sliced hard-boiled eggs, and CALAMANSI halves, then sprinkled with fish sauce (patis).
Some dishes are named after the towns of origin: pansit Malabon has oysters and squid, since that is a fishing town; pansit Marilao has crumbled rice crackers, since this is in rice-growing Bulacan. Pansit molo is not in noodle shape, but is rather pork-filled wonton in a broth originating in the town of Molo, the Chinese section of Iloilo city. Pansit habhab is from Lucban in Quezon, where it is eaten from a banana leaf without hands or forks, ‘habhab’ style.
Pansit is served at birthdays for ‘long life’, and is also the universal party dish and food gift.
The earliest restaurants in the Philippines were called pansiterias by the Spaniards. The name has persisted but now refers to the numerous noodle shops in the Philippines. At these economical and quick shops, one can buy a wide range of cooked noodle dishes.
Doreen Fernandez
Wheat products were particularly esteemed and favoured when first introduced and were designated by the name bing. This name, which is often met in historical studies of Chinese noodles and the like, used to mean all wheat-flour products; but its meaning has now become restricted to pancakes and similar little round cakes or breads.
It is against this background that one must regard the hierarchy of noodles in China and the fact that those made from rice (in the south) and from wheat (in the north) are always in top place. It is noteworthy in this connection that mian (wheat noodles) can be made easily in the home, whereas fen (rice noodles) are nowadays always manufactured commercially.
Noodles were first popular in the north of China, where the climate favoured those cereal crops which are best adapted to noodle-making. The exact origins of noodles, however, are unclear; certain specialists think that they originated in C. Asia. However, once the concept was introduced to ancient China, it flourished because of its versatility—noodles are easily prepared from a variety of raw materials; they provide cheap and nutritious and filling food; they cook quickly; they may be eaten hot or cold; and in their dried form they may be stored for considerable periods.
It is likely that large-scale commercial production was already well under way in Han China, about AD 100, following the introduction of wheat-milling technology, probably imported from the Middle East. Noodles were first enjoyed by China’s rulers, and then, as wheat became more widely available, by ordinary people. They acquired great importance in Chinese culture as they came to symbolize (by their length) longevity. It is for this reason that, in modern China, long noodles are always on the menu of a birthday celebration meal.
The diversity of Chinese noodles lies less in their shape (usually wide like fettucine (see PASTA SHAPES) or narrow like vermicelli) than in the number of food products they are made from, e.g. wheat, rice, beans, tapioca. Other ingredients are often added, particularly in making wheat noodles—e.g. egg, chicken extract, tiny shrimp or crab roe, spinach, LYE water (strong alkaline liquid, often rich in potassium carbonate from wood ashes).
The following examples illustrate the numerous varieties and qualities of Chinese noodles:
MANY Chinese cooks, particularly in the northern provinces, have kept alive the traditional method of making long noodles by swinging them by hand. Yan-Kit So (1992) gives the following description of making noodles by hand:
The noodle master who knows the Way follows five distinct procedures. First, he adds cold water to strong flour, makes it into a smooth dough and leaves it for several hours or overnight. Second, he throws the dough on a hard work-top many times in order to strengthen the gluten before he rolls it out into a tubular dough. Third, with each hand holding one end of the dough, he picks it up as high as his own shoulder level and starts to stretch and elongate it horizontally, yet without letting it break in the centre. He puts it down, folds it back to more or less the original length, then takes it up again to repeat the rhythmic ‘dancing’ of the dough. This he repeats many times until he knows it is strong and elastic enough for him to proceed to the next step. Fourth, away from the work-top, he stretches the dough even longer, so long that it falls to form a semi-circle. Just as the onlooker holds his breath lest the dough fall to the floor, the noodle master, with one hand and great dexterity, swiftly passes one end of the dough to the other hand and, in the course of doing so, causes the semi-circle to twist into a rope hanging in mid-air. With both hands, he stretches out the rope again and repeats the rope-twisting several times until he feels that the dough is at last inherently strong and outwardly smooth enough for the splitting, the ultimate step that turns the dough into strands of noodles. Fifth, he places the rope back on the work-top and begins the splitting procedure. Magically, holding the ends in a special way and folding them back and forth, he splits the dough, doubling the strands every time. From 1 to 2, then 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256; in eight splittings, he has a very impressive spread of individual noodles strands which he hangs across a thin bamboo pole to the thunderous applause of his audience. The action from dancing the dough to splitting it into noodle strands takes a consummate master about fifteen minutes, but it takes him about two years before he succeeds in harnessing the spontaneous energy to perform it.
This process gives the noodles a unique silky texture and they may be as fine as the ‘angels’ hair’ grade (done by the most skilful operators). Noodles made by machine, of a coarser texture, are available in a great variety of shapes, either fresh or dried.
Throughout China, noodles are now eaten as snacks and meals at almost any time of day. Fresh (wheat) noodles are made at home and both fresh and dried noodles can be purchased in most food stores. They can also be eaten in specialist noodle restaurants. Generally speaking, rice noodles are found in the south, wheat and BUCKWHEAT noodles in the north. In Guangdong egg noodles, uncommon elsewhere in China, are particularly popular.
Noodles are normally boiled first. They may subsequently be fried with other ingredients (see chao mian below).
The most usual way of eating noodles in modern China is, as it has long been, in soup. The combination is called tang mian. Small amounts of vegetables, meat, or seafood are usually added to the soup. An interesting version of noodles-plus-soup is guo qiao mian (crossing the bridge noodles), when the diner is given the noodles and the hot soup (with a layer of fat floating on the top which keeps in the heat) in two separate bowls. The origin of the name is the subject of more than one legend. It is said, for example, that in the days of the imperial court, when a bridge divided the emperor’s palace from the rest of Beijing, the cook had to walk from the kitchen, which was outside the walls of the Heavenly City, over the bridge and into the palace, carrying a pot of hot water and the noodles. The noodles were dropped into the pot just as the cook reached the bridge. By the time the pot arrived at the emperor’s table, the noodles were ready and still hot. However, the true explanation of the name seems to be that the diner makes a ‘bridge’ in passing the noodles from their bowl into the soup bowl.
Another soup-noodles dish is called wo mian, meaning nest noodles—there is usually a poached egg in the centre of the nest of noodles in the soup, and the dish is favoured for convalescents.
Previously boiled noodles are also stir fried with meat and vegetables. The Chinese term is chao mian, from which the English term CHOW MEIN comes.
The third common way of serving noodles is on a dish with meat, seafood, or vegetables, with some sort of sauce or dressing poured over the whole. The dish may be hot or cold. There is a popular sauce in Beijing called tianmianjiang, made by a complex process involving two fermentations, which yields a thickish brown product of a sweet and sour nature.
In addition there is the range of WONTON dishes. Wonton wrappers or skins, made from wheat flour and egg (sometimes treated with lye water), are thin, pastry-like wrappings, stretched like freshly made noodles, which can be stuffed with minced meat and other fillings and then either poached in bouillon, or (less often) fried. They are usually larger than western filled pasta (of which RAVIOLI are typical).
Menrui is the collective term for noodles in Japan. When a particular type of noodles are referred to, they are called men, which derives from the Chinese word mien or mian.
It is generally accepted that menrui was first introduced into Japan from China during the Nara period (710–94). The original menrui, however, seems to have been more like sweet DUMPLINGS than what we call noodles. (These dumplings were called konton, the word whose original meaning is ‘chaos’, presumably because they had no definite shape. This is the same word as the Chinese hun-t’un, now familiar as WONTON. Later the name changed from konton to undon, and eventually UDON.) It is not known when the transformation from dumplings to noodles took place. In any case, it must have been a gradual process.
In time the custom of eating grain in pasta form spread throughout the country as a means of supplementing or, at times of famine, replacing boiled RICE as the staple food. This applied particularly to noodles made of BUCKWHEAT, which thrives in a cold climate where rice cannot grow. As for wheat noodles, their popularity may well have been partly due to the fact that the type of wheat produced in Japan, as in Italy, is not suitable for making bread.
Unlike the Chinese, the Japanese have almost never used rice for making noodles, although there is a Japanese term, maifun (the Chinese mi fen), for rice noodles. Plain boiled rice has always been so highly esteemed as a food that the Japanese have had no reason to turn it into anything else. Thus, while noodles have occupied an important place in Japanese diet, they have been mostly eaten in lieu of, or in addition to, boiled rice, never challenging the latter’s supremacy. The role of noodles remains basically unchanged; they are popular snacks and light meals.
The Chinese practice of eating noodles on special occasions as a symbol of longevity is also found in Japan. A typical example is the custom of eating soba on New Year’s Eve. Until not so long ago people who had moved house would distribute soba to their new neighbours by way of greetings.
There are now five main types of Japanese noodles, with many regional variations. These are as follows, the first two being the most important:
Nowadays noodles are mostly machine made and are sold either fresh, boiled, or dried. (Hiyamugi and somen are always sold dried.) However, some noodle restaurants make a speciality of hand-made noodles, and in rural areas the art of making noodles at home is still alive.
There are two basic ways of serving soba and udon: mori and kake. In mori (literally ‘to pile up’) the boiled noodles are served with a cold dipping sauce (tsukejiru) made of DASHI, SOY SAUCE, and MIRIN. Soba is often served in this way but with small bits of NORI (laver dried like paper) sprinkled over it. Then it is called zaru. In kake (literally ‘to pour over’) the noodles are served hot in soup (kakejiru) similar to tsukejiru in a deep bowl. There are many variations on the theme of kake, depending on the toppings added to the noodles—prawn TEMPURA, aburaage (fried bean curd), pieces of chicken, a raw egg, etc.
Kishimen is eaten like udon.
Hiyamugi and somen are very much summer food. They are normally served chilled, often floating in iced water in a large glass bowl, and eaten with dipping sauce. Occasionally somen is eaten hot, in which case it is called nyumen.
Any account of Japanese noodles is hardly complete without a mention of Chinese (or Chinese-style) noodles. It was chiefly after the end of the Second World War that they came to be eaten commonly in Japan, but they have now nearly surpassed the traditional Japanese noodles in popularity—in particular among the younger generations. There are two main types. One is ramen—thin, yellow, sometimes wavy wheat-flour noodles served in soup, with toppings like pieces of ch’a-shiu (Chinese barbecued pork). Instant ramen—fried noodles with a sachet of soup base that can be cooked in a few minutes—is extremely popular among the Japanese. The other type is yakisoba, similar to the CHOW MEIN of Chinese restaurants abroad.
Noodles are eaten perhaps more often in restaurants than at home—in urban areas, at any rate. Everywhere there is a restaurant which specializes in noodle dishes and which usually also delivers freshly cooked noodles. In the larger cities noodle stands are commonly found in railway stations, department stores, universities, etc. Ramen vendors who set up their stalls at street corners at night are also a usual feature of city life.
It is remarkable that, alone among Japanese foods, noodles are to be eaten in noisy, slurping fashion.
For products which are not considered by the Japanese to be true noodles, but are noodle-like and apt to be referred to by non-Japanese as noodles, see HARUSAME and shirataki (described under KONNYAKU).
or laver an important group of SEAWEEDS in the genus Porphyra, especially P. tenera (Japan), P. perforata (N. Pacific), and P. umbilicalis (Europe). Of all the edible plants which grow in the sea, these are the most valuable and the most widespread; but their importance is obscured by the fact that they pass under various English names in different places. Laver is the name in England and Wales. In Scotland and Ireland it is sloke. The Japanese name nori has been largely adopted in N. America.
Laver is a reddish seaweed, of relatively small size and distinctive shape, which is harvested and dried before use. It may be sold in the dried form or, as happens in Wales, it may first be boiled which turns it into ‘laverbread’, a green mush rather like spinach purée in appearance. It can be warmed in a pan and served on toast with a little lemon juice. Or it can be mixed with a little oatmeal and fried in patties. (Welsh cookery books usually bid one make the patty of the laverbread and then coat it with oatmeal; but in practice this is difficult to do, the laverbread being too mushy to hold its shape.)
However, although the consumption of laver in Wales is of great antiquity, having been noted in medieval times, it is completely overshadowed in terms of quantity by the Japanese consumption, which amounts to many billions of sheets annually. The Japanese liking for nori can be traced back as far as the 8th century AD; and by the 17th century it was being cultivated in some of the inlets and estuaries which abound on the Japanese coasts. This, however, was a chancy business. In the last two months of the year, the plants grew to their maximum size, permitting a lucrative harvest in December and January. But no one knew what happened in the summer months, when all trace of nori disappeared; and no one could be sure that a seed-bed, rented from the owner as was the custom, would perform consistently. It might be very prolific in one year and barren in the next.
Without knowledge of the lifecycle of the plant, the nori farmers were unable to remedy this situation. Moreover, the increased pollution of the waters over the seed-beds was, by the late 1940s, threatening to extinguish the farming completely. Fortunately, a former student of Manchester University in England, Dr Kathleen Drew, had meanwhile been investigating what happened to the nori spores in the summer. She worked in Wales, being concerned to discover how laver reproduced itself. In 1949 she published a paper which contained the answer. The spores burrowed into the tiny pores and crevices of sea shells, where they grew into tiny pink, threadlike organisms. When the weather turned cold, these detached themselves, found a new anchorage and established themselves in readiness for the growing season. Dr Drew was also able to demonstrate that eggshells were just as suitable breeding places as oyster shells.
The Japanese were quick to follow up the discovery of ‘Kassurine-San’, as they knew Dr Drew, and had developed within a short space of time the system which is now followed for cultivating nori. Shells are suspended in nets in the water, and attract the spores which can develop safely in these artificial homes. As a result, production of nori in Japan increased tenfold from 1950 to 1980. Murray Sayle, in an essay on the subject, records the manner in which the Japanese do honour to the saviour of their nori. In 1963 a bronze monument was unveiled on a hill overlooking the Bay of Shimbara, which abounded in nori farms operating on the principle which she had discovered. ‘On April 14 every year … Dr Drew is remembered in a touching ceremony in which the local nori farmers put her gown and mortar-board on her monument, hoist a Union Jack which has been made by local housewives … and place a tribute of nori from the current year’s crop at her feet.’
In Japan nori is mostly sold in the form of thin paper-like sheets called hoshi-nori. Before being eaten, each sheet is held over fire for a few seconds so that it may become crisp and flavoursome (and turns dark green). Nori is sometimes eaten by itself (dipped in SOY SAUCE) or with rice; it can also be used for TEMPURA or cooked with soy sauce and made into a thick, black mush. But perhaps the two commonest ways of using nori are for norimaki (nori-roll—vinegared rice with some savoury morsel is made into a roll and wrapped in a sheet of nori) and omusubi (a rice ball with a pickled Japanese apricot inside is wrapped with a square of nori). These are typical picnic foods in Japan; when rice is wrapped with nori, you can eat it with your fingers without making them sticky. Nori also serves as a wrapper for SUSHI and the like. And it is often used to produce decorative effects on seafood platters. The Japanese rightly believe that, besides having a fine marine flavour and an interesting texture, nori is very good for them; it is a good source of iodine, calcium, iron, and other minerals which the body requires, besides providing a useful amount of protein which is of particular value in a vegetarian diet.
The name nori, as already noted, is used all by itself as an English-language name for Porphyra spp. In Japanese, however, nori refers to various species, some belonging to other genera, and therefore occurs with prefixes which tell one exactly what is meant. Asakusa-nori is purple laver (P. tenera), usually sold in sheet form. Ogonori, funori, komenori are all names for red algae of other genera. So is tosakanori (Meristotheca papulosa), an expensive product which may also be met in green form (having been treated with wood ash and then boiled) or white (bleached to make it look better with fish). AWO-NORI or aonori (green nori) is also a seaweed of another genus.
Some prefixes relate to form or use. Yaki-nori is toasted sheets; sushi-nori is the sheet used for SUSHI.
Cultivation of nori is mainly carried out in Japan, but it has also been established in N. America and a start has been made in W. Europe.
is a mountainous country with only small areas of arable land along the coast and in the valleys. The coastline is long, with fjords cutting deep into the land. The Gulf Stream provides a better climate than could otherwise be expected in a northern country. Still, the growing season is short, and the soil unproductive during much of the year.
Transport along the coast and to inland areas used to be difficult for much of the year. This made it necessary to rely on conserving almost all food for later use. Farm animals were usually slaughtered in the autumn: the meat would keep better during the cold season. The harvesting of foods from the ocean, lakes, forests, and mountains was also seasonal. Fish, game, and wild berries had to be conserved for use during the rest of the year.
Cereals, milk, and milk products were the most important elements of the older Norwegian diet. Barley and oats, better adapted to the climate than wheat, were the most common grains. Porridge and gruel were made from them, boiled with water or milk. A sour cream porridge, rømmegrøt, was made for special occasions.
Bread, in the form of thin, crisp flatbread, was made from the same grains. It would keep for months and was baked only a few times a year. Lefse is softened before use, but otherwise similar to flatbread. More recent variations are lompe and potetlefse, both soft and made with potatoes. Leavened bread only replaced flatbread as the main type of bread by the end of the 19th century. The most common varieties in today’s bakeries are kneippbrød (named after a German clergyman and doctor Sebastian Kneipp) and franskbrød (‘French bread’), names that reflect its short tradition.
Different types of soured milk (usually cow’s milk, sometimes goat’s milk) were used in the diet along with cheeses, butter, and WHEY. Blande, a soured milk mixed with water, was the daily drink. The cheeses were most often sour-milk cheeses: pultost is a ripened, unpressed curd cheese with a strong taste; GAMMELOST is a semi-hard cheese with a grainy texture, dark brown in colour. Several types of brown, sweet, WHEY CHEESE, mysost, are made, originally a way of conserving and using the whey. Nowadays milk or cream are often added.
The wide fertile valleys of E. Norway were best suited to the keeping of cattle. In the mountains and fjords sheep and goats were more common, but even the smallest farms usually had a cow or two. Salted and dried meat was eaten uncooked, while brine-salted meat was boiled. Spekemat, assorted cured meat, is used today as a snack, or as a party food. Fenalår, salted, dried, and occasionally smoked leg of lamb, is one of the more popular types. The most popular meat dish is kjøttkaker, minced beef patties, fried and served in a brown sauce. Mors kjøttkaker, the beef patties made by one’s own mother, are always considered to be the best. Also highly regarded is fårikål, a mutton and cabbage stew.
Large uninhabited forests and mountain areas have supported a rich wildlife and provided opportunities for hunting (elk, reindeer, red and roe deer, hare, ptarmigan, black grouse, capercaillie).
There has always been a good supply of fish from lakes and rivers and from Norway’s long coastline. COD and HERRING have been the most important species. Herring, called ‘silver of the seas’, has at times been eaten up to four times a day, although its availability has varied greatly. Herring used to be salted, dried, or (in the past) fermented in a light brine. Nowadays herring is most frequently encountered at breakfast tables and buffets, pickled and marinated in a variety of sauces. Cod was salted, dried, or both. Klippfisk (salted and dried, originally by laying it on cliffs) and tørrfisk (STOCKFISH, dried but not salted) are still produced in large quantities. Stockfish and klippfisk have been used in many ways, beaten till soft and eaten with butter, or boiled. One of the most popular dishes is LUTEFISK, stockfish softened in a solution of lye.
One of the greatest changes in the diet was brought about by the introduction of the potato in the middle of the 18th century. It could be grown successfully over larger areas than cereals, and in less than a century it was found on every dinner table. In the late 19th century Norwegians ate 144 kg (315 lb) of potatoes and 10 kg (22 lb) of other vegetables each per year, while the average in Paris was 22 kg (48 lb) of potatoes and 118 kg (260 lb) of other vegetables. Potatoes were mostly boiled, but also used in a variety of other ways. Komler, komper, or raspeball are potato dumplings, eaten with meat, or made with a filling of pork. After the Second World War potato consumption decreased, but many still feel that a dinner without potatoes is not a proper one.
The first Norwegian cookery book, written by Maren Elisabeth Bang (1797–1884), was published anonymously in Oslo in 1831. At this time the demand for cookery instructions and recipes was growing, and 30 editions of cookery books were published during the next fifteen years. The household and cookery book by Hanna Winsnes (1789–1872), first published in Oslo in 1845, became the classic of the 19th century. These first books contained mostly recipes taken from foreign authors, as local dishes were familiar to everyone, and often not considered fine enough to be included.
Modern refrigeration techniques led to a decline in some of the old preservation methods and partly wiped out seasonal variations in the diet. Recently the interest in traditional foods has been renewed and some of the old dishes revived: the lutefisk already mentioned, RAKEFISK, and smalahove (sheep’s heads). Popular seasonal foods are fresh lamb in September, fresh poached cod in winter, fried mackerel and rhubarb soup in May, and fresh strawberries with cream in summer. It is interesting that almost all dishes considered truly Norwegian originated as peasant foods, and did not come from the upper classes.
(or Dublin Bay prawn, and langoustine in French) Nephrops norvegicus, a small lobster which is found from Iceland down to Morocco, and in the W. and C. Mediterranean, especially the Adriatic. Its maximum length, not counting the claws, is 24 cm (9–10″). Its carapace is pink, rose, or orange-red, often quite pale, and its claws are banded in red and white. It lives on a muddy sea bottom, in burrows, from which it emerges at night to seek food.
The name Norway lobster has a simple explanation: this CRUSTACEAN is abundant on the coast of Norway. It owes its second name to the circumstance that fishing boats coming into Dublin Bay often had a catch of it on board, which was disposed of to street vendors and hawked as ‘Dublin Bay prawns’; or, say some, because they were caught in Dublin Bay itself. Whatever the truth of the matter, the Irish were ahead of the British in eating the creature, since it was not until the 1950s that British fishermen began to think it worth while landing it. (It is nonetheless to be remarked that Lord, 1867, stated that many Norway lobsters were imported and that for every regular lobster sold at Billingsgate fish market, four Norway lobsters were sold. This shows that they were already popular in the 19th century.)
In the latter part of the 20th century the Norway lobster became a standard item on British menus, usually under the Italian name scampi. This reflects the fact that Italians in the Adriatic had many recipes for scampi, which became familiar to tourists. In N. America the name scampi is applied in a general way to large or medium SHRIMP, especially when cooked in butter with garlic and white wine.
The Norway lobster has several relations in S. American waters. The name ‘lobsterette’ is sometimes used for them.
Norway lobsters can be cooked like large prawns, e.g. by brushing them with olive oil and grilling them.
Nostoc commune, a mysterious food plant, whose name was invented, apparently out of the blue, by the 16th-century Swiss alchemist and medical writer Paracelsus. It is a blue-green alga, a primitive plant of the same class as SEAWEEDS or the green slime seen on rocks and jetties when uncovered by the sea at low tide. However, nostoc also grows inland, usually on rocks or soil made damp by fresh water. Its unexpected arrival and odd, gelatinous, beaded form have earned it a place among the heterogeneous substances which are called MANNA. It was viewed with horror in medieval Europe, where it was thought to be the ‘stinking tawney jelly of a fallen planet, or the nocturnal solution of some plethorical and wanton star’ (Lovelock, 1972). An old British name is ‘star jelly’.
The Chinese cultivate nostoc, since its gelatinous texture appeals to their palate. Besides the most common form of N. commune, which forms glistening, lumpy beads, there is a more stringy variety, var flagelliforme. Both these are also eaten in Japan and Java, while a different species, N. ellipsosporum, is eaten in C. Asia.
Nostoc is nutritious, containing fair amounts of protein and vitamin C. Like seaweeds, it contains a large amount of vegetable gum which gives it its texture.
are overlapping names for a large group of N. Italian cheeses which are generally of medium size, soft, round, and aromatic, with a relatively high fat content. They can be considered as members of the large family of ASIAGO/Vezzena cheeses. Nostrale is the name favoured in the NE Alpine region, and Nostrano is the common name of the region of Venice and Lombardy.
These cheeses exhibit many variations, but almost all are both eaten at table and used in cookery. Among the better known are Nostrale di val di Susa and Nostrano trentino.
the French and also English name, derived from the Latin nux (nut), for a confection of boiled honey and/or sugar syrup, mixed with beaten egg white, nuts, and preserved fruit. The ancestry of nougat can plausibly be traced back to medieval times and, beyond that, to early Arab sweetmeats.
Since the beginning of the 18th century, and possibly earlier, production of nougat has been particularly associated with the French town Montélimar (Rhône-Alpes); hence the occasional use of the word ‘Montelimar’ as a synonym for ‘nougat’ in English. This association has been the subject of a study by Durand (1993).
To make the traditional Montélimar nougat, honey and sugar are cooked to a temperature between 132 and 143 °C (270–90 °F) (‘soft crack’: see SUGAR BOILING) and whisked into the egg whites. Almonds (28%), pistachio (2%), and vanilla extract must be added at the end. The texture of the finished product—chewy or hard—is dictated by the temperature to which the sugar syrup is boiled, and the amount of sugar which is ‘inverted’ during this process (again, see SUGAR BOILING).
Italian torrone and Spanish turrón are, essentially, other forms of nougat. The similarity was recognized as long ago as 1607 when the anonymous author of Le Trésor de santé bracketed together nogats & torrons as a pleasant confection.
Torrone is a rich, almond-flavoured sweet which is quite hard in texture. It is especially popular at Christmas time. Turrón, a speciality of Alicante, is another mixture of toasted almonds, honey, and egg whites. The texture varies. The harder is called ‘de Alicante’, while the softer and more chewy is ‘de Jijona’, for the city of that name (Xixona in Catalan).
Similar nougat-like sweets are made in the Middle East. One example is the gaz of Iran.
a recurring term in the history of French cookery. As explained in FRANCE: NATIONAL AND REGIONAL CUISINES, it first came to prominence in the 18th century, when Vincent La Chapelle described the simplified style of cooking recommended in his Cuisine moderne (1733) as a ‘nouvelle cuisine’. This remained in vogue until the early 19th century. It was in the 1970s that the next ‘rebellion’ took place, producing the nouvelle cuisine which has, for better or for worse, altered the evolution of professional cooking in the western world during the closing decades of the century.
This latest nouvelle cuisine has its admirers and its critics, plus a lot of people who have mixed feelings about it, especially since it started to develop its own clichés, and a few aspects which look, perhaps, more like food for rebellion than rebels’ food. Nonetheless, it is an important phenomenon and deserves to be defined here in an authoritative manner, by Henri Gault (1996), on the lines of a paper which he prepared for presentation at Oxford University in 1995.
Gault believes that he ‘in all innocence produced a veritable manifesto’ for the movement in the form of an article he wrote in 1973. At that time he felt that traditional French cuisine was in a rotten state. Yet there were grounds for hope. The kitchen floor tiles were beginning, just perceptibly, to crack and buckle under the influence of movements of the tectonic plates underneath; and Gault could foresee that these exciting tremors would soon shake up the whole culinary scene, thanks to some brilliant young chefs with new ideas.
Gault suggested that the revolutionary movement could be defined in ten points, here summarized:
Such, in brief, was the ‘manifesto’. Three decades later, it is interesting to consider which of the planks in the platform are now fully accepted, indeed perhaps taken for granted, and which are not. It is also necessary to take into account three further points which Gault himself made, looking back on his ‘manifesto’ and taking into account what had happened since:
the French word for a fruit stone, has also come to mean a liqueur or syrup which is used as a flavouring. This has been well described by Stobart (1980):
Noyau—To good peasants who do not like to waste anything, the kernels of apricots, peaches, plums and cherries present a challenge. Like bitter almonds they contain a glucoside which, when mixed with water (or the saliva in the mouth) is converted by enzymes into a mixture of benzaldehyde and deadly poisonous hydro-cyanic acid. Noyau (from the French noyau, a fruit stone) is a liqueur, cordial and useful flavouring, which consists essentially of a sugar syrup, usually with alcohol, flavoured with macerated kernels or sometimes with peach leaves or bitter almonds, which contain similar principles. Noyau had a reputation for being ‘unwholesome’—naturally so, if there was cyanide in it. However, a quick boil will drive off the volatile poison, leaving only a delicate taste of benzaldehyde behind.
is a phrase with a double meaning in English usage. It is that fed to infants and children in their proper realms, the nursery and the schoolroom. Alternatively, it is bland food consumed with relish by adults (usually male) for its pricking of the memory of infant bliss. In America, it is more matter-of-factly called comfort food.
The first food of infants is human MILK but much effort has been expended to lessen the dependence of the child on its mother (see Fildes, 1988). The clever biological trick that protects nursing women from pregnancy might result in birth intervals of more than three years in foraging societies; agriculture and more available food would reduce this period, hence the rise in population that occurred once we turned from hunter-gathering. However, patriarchy and the desire for women to re-engage in sexual relations (as well as, in early modern Europe for example, the medical view that feeding the colostrum immediately after birth was a bad thing) encouraged the practice of wet nursing in many societies, ancient and modern. Wet nursing, it might be observed, was not invariably practised on the young alone. Pantaleone da Confienza, the 15th-century writer on cheese, advised that human milk be used as a regular food, and the Cambridge humanist John Caius (of Gonville and Caius College) ‘is said to have lived the last few years of his life on human milk’ (Albala, 2002). Further distancing of mother and infant occurred with the adoption of formula milks developed by Justus von Liebig in 1860 and Henri Nestlé in 1867 and, later, with the invention of evaporated and condensed milk. Weaning from liquid nourishment to solid is an event that has occurred ever earlier in the child’s life. In 18th-century Montpellier, girls were weaned at 18 months and boys at 24. Today, the norm is about 6 months. First foods are usually pap, PORRIDGE, GRUEL, or mush, either premasticated by mother herself (especially in gathering societies, but also noted by many Tudor medical writers), or made from cereals and water, whey, or milk—though weak beer was thought more healthful for the 6-year-old Prince Henry of England in 1273. This was the beginning of a generally bland and undemanding diet that neither exercised the jaws—though breakfast for the Earl of Northumberland’s children in 1513 included boiled mutton bones—nor assaulted fledgling palates. Many recall the regimen with horror, as did the Victorian novelist Charlotte M. Yonge, ‘Breakfast and supper were alike dry bread and milk. I so much disliked the hot bowl of boiled milk and cubes of bread that I was allowed to have mine separately, but butter was thought unwholesome. … As to eggs, ham, jam and all the rest, no one dreamt of giving them to children.’ Such a diet, certainly from the Renaissance onwards, was endorsed and prescribed by a medical opinion obsessed by the functioning of the digestion, much to the detriment of infant contentment.
The sweet blandness and the lack of effort required for ingestion were, however, manna for a certain class of person, perhaps anxious to recreate at table the enveloping succour of the maternal bosom, or its vicereine. This appears a particularly English foible. In recent decades it has resurfaced in the commercial provision of ‘nursery’ foods on restaurant menus, in dishes such as bread-and-butter PUDDING and other pappy sweets. But the tendency is older. The French chef Louis Eustache Ude (1828), while profitably employed by the English aristocracy, deplored the pernicious effect of English fog, the unremitting hostility of English doctors to good eating, and the indifference of English women to fine food. ‘The ladies of England,’ he wrote, ‘are unfavourably disposed to our art; yet I find no difficulty in assigning the cause of it. It is particularly the case with them (and indeed it is so in some measure with our own sex) that they are not introduced to their parents’ table till their palates have been completely benumbed by the strict diet observed in the nursery and boarding-school.’ Whether this is a complete explanation of England’s culinary reputation in the Victorian era may be moot, but male nostalgia for the nursery style of cooking has certainly persisted.
The 20th century witnessed the vast expansion of purées, some even tasty, with the entry of the food industry into the manufacture of baby foods (Gerber started in 1928, Heinz in 1931), while domestic technology allowed the mother (or nanny, or if silver-spooned, the cook) to liquidize or blend any manner of food at the touch of a button.
are a large group within the multifarious category of BISCUIT.
In some of these biscuits ground-up nuts, usually almonds, replace some or all of the flour. The simplest are known in English as MACAROON or RATAFIA, made from ground almonds mixed with sugar and egg white and baked crisp. Baked nut mixtures appeared in English cookery books at the beginning of the 17th century when they were part of the banquet, a selection of sweetmeats and sweet wines taken at the end of a meal. They continued to be popular through the 18th century when a softer almond sweetmeat, called a rout biscuit (‘rout’ was an 18th-century term for a party), became fashionable. These were not really biscuits but little MARZIPAN shapes decorated with nuts, candied fruit, chocolate, and glaze. They were still being made at the end of the 19th century, shaped from a mixture of almonds, sponge cake crumbs, sugar, and egg yolks. They were the predecessors of the tiny biscuits and cakes to which the name PETIT FOUR applies.
A wider range of nut biscuits, many of which verge on being sugar CONFECTIONERY, are specialities of the Mediterranean littoral, where the Italians and Provençal French have made a particular speciality of them. ‘Amaretto’ (see MACAROON) is the generic Italian name for macaroon, usually almond based, sometimes flavoured with bitter almonds or apricot kernels (or pine nut kernels—pinoccate, pine nut macaroons, are a Christmas speciality of Perugia). An almond mixture spread on wafers and cut in a lozenge shape forms the basis of the softer, more cakelike ricciarello, a speciality of Siena. The shape and wafer base of this confection relate it to the calisson of Aix-en-Provence, a soft, iced marzipan-like confection of almonds and candied fruit. Another nut biscuit is the croissant de Provence, crescent shaped and made from almonds, sugar, egg white, and apricot jam, coated with chopped almonds; a variation called pignoulat includes pine nuts as well as almonds.
Spanish and Portuguese nut confections related to marzipan and macaroons tend to be richer, mixed with whole eggs or egg yolks instead of whites. Many are shaped on wafer bases, such as the cinnamon-spiced bollo Eulalia of Spain, and the innumerable egg yolk and almond specialities of Portuguese convents and confectioners.
Italian nut biscuits which are richer and more elaborate than amaretti include the bacio di dama (lady’s kiss), made of equal weights of ground almonds, flour, sugar, and butter, flavoured with sweet wine. The small, round biscuits are sandwiched together with chocolate. Fave alla veneziana (fava is Italian for broad bean, because of this small sweet biscuit’s shape), traditionally sold in Venice during November, are based on a sugared pine nut paste. From Naples come diamond-shaped mostaccioli (moustaches) made from almonds and walnuts, with honey, cinnamon, pepper, and orange flower water among the ingredients.
Some nut biscuits are based on egg and sugar foams. Several of this type are made in Germany. Most famous are Nürnberger Elisenlebkuchen (see LEBKUCHEN).
Leckerli have been well described by Sarah Kelly (1985):
The word lecker, which in High German means ‘delicious’, becomes a noun in Switzerland, where it is applied to a wide variety of finger-length and rectangular biscuits that are baked for holidays. While many cities, including Bern and Zurich, have their own versions—each quite different and not necessarily spicy—the honey and spice version from Basel is certainly the most famous. In fact, one bakery in Basel produces nothing but Leckerli which are shipped all over the world in charming tin drum containers, symbolizing the Basel Fastnacht (carnival), a three-day pre-Lenten celebration, when the haunting music of pipes and drums, played by costumed Baselers, fills the air.
The Leckerli of Basle contain almonds but are not especially nutty. Those made in Bern (Berner Haselnüssleckerli) are based on hazelnuts and almonds with peel and spices. Züri Leckerli, of Zurich, are essentially marzipan biscuits, made with almond alone or almond and hazelnut. They come in four colours, corresponding to four flavours: white (rose water), pale beige (cinnamon), dark brown (chocolate), and rose red (powdered SANDALWOOD is the traditional colouring agent for these). All are decoratively moulded before being baked.
One nut biscuit which has developed in a slightly different manner is the FLORENTINE, which incorporates flaked almonds, candied peel, and dried fruit, and is coated with chocolate, ‘brushed’ to make wavy lines. These rich, chewy delicacies are not peculiar to Florence and are made everywhere.
Nut pastes also make fillings for many biscuits and pastries, from the BAKLAVA of the Near East to the Norwegian biscuits called bordstabler (stacks of planks) made from a rich whisked dough filled with almond paste, baked in thin oblongs, and presented in a square stack.
one of the two spices obtained from the nutmeg tree, Myristica fragrans; the other is MACE. The tree is native to the Moluccas in Indonesia, and is also cultivated in Grenada in the W. Indies. The fruit which encloses the mace and nutmeg is itself edible; see NUTMEG FRUIT.
There is no record of nutmeg being known in classical Greece or Rome, but it had reached Constantinople by the 9th century AD, when St Theodore the Studite allowed the monks who lived by his Rule to sprinkle it on their PEASE PUDDING on non-meat days. By the 12th century it and mace were well known in Europe. When the Portuguese reached the Moluccas in 1514 they were able to acquire a monopoly in the trade, which they held for almost a century.
At the beginning of the 17th century the Dutch wrested control from them and laid the foundation of the Dutch E. Indian empire in the Bandanese island of Nehra, part of the Moluccas. They maintained their monopoly for over 150 years, but in 1770 a French expedition returned to Mauritius with nutmeg seedlings, and the first French nutmeg was picked eight years later. The British, who occupied the Moluccas from 1796 to 1802, planted nutmegs in Penang and thereafter in other British possessions with seemingly suitable conditions, but it was not until the 1860s that cultivation of nutmegs in Grenada, which turned out to be the most suitable place for them, became significant.
The trees thrive in tropical conditions near the sea, and seem to prefer volcanic soils, as in the Moluccas and Grenada. They start to bear fruit between 10 and 15 years of age, and continue to do so for another 30 or 40. The nutmeg tree may be either male or female, and in the plantations one male tree is needed to ensure pollination of about a dozen females. Nutmeg is the brown kernel of the nutlike seed contained in the fruit borne by the female trees.
In processing, the sheath or aril surrounding the seed is first removed (to become mace). Then the seed, which has a hard shell and is usually referred to as a nut, is dried. After drying the kernel will usually rattle in the shell. The nuts are then cracked and the kernels extracted to be sorted into sound nutmegs and unsatisfactory ones. They are soft brown in colour and speckled like an egg.
The chemistry of nutmeg is interesting. Myristicin is one of the substances responsible for the ‘warm’ taste and special flavour of nutmeg. It has a narcotic effect, not noticeable in the small quantities used by cooks; but consumption of a large amount could produce a ‘high’. (See also NUTMEG FRUIT.)
The chemistry of nutmeg is such that aroma and flavour disappear quickly once a nutmeg is grated. Hence the profusion of nutmeg graters, intended to be used immediately before the need arises. These graters are often made, felicitously, in the form of a mace.
Usage varies quite widely from one country to another. In Britain, for example, nutmeg is used for a number of milk dishes (RICE PUDDINGS, egg CUSTARDS, etc.) and in some cakes and beverages. In the Netherlands and Scandinavia it is also used, much more freely than in Britain, for vegetable dishes, including mashed potato and spinach; and may also turn up with pineapple and some seafood items. In France and Italy it may appear in a BÉCHAMEL sauce, depending on the end use of the sauce.
Myristica fragrans, normally thought of as just the receptacle from which the valuable spices NUTMEG and MACE are extracted, does have edible flesh, sometimes referred to as the ‘fruit-wall’.
In Sulawesi the entire fruit is peeled and split into two and fruit halves (after the mace and nutmeg are removed) are spread out, sprinkled with palm sugar, and left for three or four days in the sun. After this treatment they have become translucent, with a pale brown tinge from the sugar, and are slightly fermented. They can be eaten as they are, as a snack food or at the end of a meal.
The dried fruit could be described as looking a little bit like crystallized pear or ginger, and the taste and feel in the mouth are a bit like crystallized ginger. The names used in Indonesia are manisan pala and pala manis, evidently two versions of the same name, manis meaning sweet.
Eating an unusually large amount of nutmeg can produce a ‘high’, and the same effect (no doubt attributable to the same chemical substance) occurs if much of the fruit is eaten. An incident in the 1990s, involving two young British visitors to Sulawesi who ate a substantial amount of the fruit, left them convinced that it had had an APHRODISIAC effect. This impression was heightened by the hilarity accompanying their consumption of the fruit in the market place. Consideration was subsequently given to their testimony by a London-based organization devoted to the study of spices, but no definite conclusion was reached. It was noted that Burkill (1965–6), who gives a characteristically thorough description of the processing and candying of the fruit, makes only the briefest of allusions to possible aphrodisiac properties. Nor has there been any suggestion that the jam made from the fruits in Sri Lanka has any special attributes of this sort.
the supply and uptake of nourishment, has been studied since ancient times. The Greek physician Hippocrates, who lived in the 5th century BC, and his followers over the next two centuries examined the connection between diet and health; many of their writings survive. Unfortunately they pursued the doctrine of the ‘FOUR HUMOURS’ (See also COMPOSITION OF FOODS), which did much harm for many centuries afterwards. Chinese philosophers also studied nutrition, regarding all foods as having an influence on health so that there was no real distinction between foods and medicines; their beliefs live on in traditional Chinese medicine.
Only at the end of the 18th century did the science of nutrition begin to break free of the old theories. Gradually the basic constituents of food—PROTEINS, CARBOHYDRATES, and FATS AND OILS—came to be understood. This coincided with the Industrial Revolution, which over the following decades brought millions of people into towns, where they lived on foods increasingly impoverished by new techniques of food processing, and often heavily adulterated. The health of the working population declined. In Britain at the end of the 19th century, when large numbers of young men were called up to fight in the Boer War, they were found to be in such miserable condition that a commission of inquiry was set up. Its report (Watt Smith, Physical Deterioration: Its Causes and Cure, HMSO, 1907) recommended that schools should give instruction to both boys and girls in nutritional science. The School Meals Act of 1906 enabled local councils to provide meals for needy children.
At this time the role of VITAMINS and MINERALS in diet was becoming clear so that deficiency diseases such as rickets, once widespread, could be avoided. The British Medical Association produced the first recommendations for minimum requirements of nutrients in time for the food rationing imposed in the First World War to be organized on sensible lines.
After the war and at least until the slump of the 1930s, it was clear that public nutrition was much improved—though this was due more to prosperity than to ordinary people’s knowledge of what constituted a healthy diet.
The first comprehensive control of public nutrition was in Britain during the Second World War. The nation was far from self-sufficient in food, but imports were now curtailed by submarine attacks on convoys. Basic foods were strictly rationed: meat including bacon and ham, eggs, fats of all kinds, cheese, sugar, even tea. Other foods were controlled by a system of ‘points’ to prevent hoarding. The Ministry of Food set up a Food Advice Division under Sir Jack Drummond, which issued information through advertisements, films, and the radio. Food advice centres in large towns gave practical demonstrations of how to make adequate meals from scanty supplies. All this sound guidance was mocked and resented, but reluctantly followed. In 1941 the Vitamin Welfare Scheme was set up to issue cheap milk, concentrated orange juice, cod liver oil, and vitamin A and D tablets to pregnant women and children under 5. The result, to everyone’s surprise, was that, in spite of severe shortages of almost everything, public health improved to levels not seen before or since.
In western nations after the war, returning prosperity and the increasing availability of imported foods brought to ordinary people luxuries previously only for the rich. Ordinary people, too, began increasingly to suffer from the effects of overindulgence, and there was concern about the rate of heart disease. The public was increasingly bombarded with nutritional information from the Ministry of Health in Britain, the US Surgeon General, and pundits of all kinds. Much of this conflicted; for example, British and American lists of minimum daily requirements of vitamins and minerals were different, and still are.
Theories came and went. In the 1950s and 1960s people were encouraged to eat plenty of protein. Advertisements urged: ‘Drinka pinta milka day,’ and ‘Go to work on an egg.’ More recently, they have been supposed to follow a high-carbohydrate diet, eat eggs only occasionally, and drink semi-skimmed milk. It is small wonder that many become puzzled or sceptical as a result of all these S-bends and U-turns. But this is not a new phenomenon. Fernie (1905) observed that around the turn of the century one American authority advised that ‘Computing cards should be put into requisition at each meal; then when the day is over you can find out whether you have taken too much of one kind of food, or not enough of another.’ This prompted the Chicago Tribune to print a humorous verse of which the following is an extract:
Mother’s slow at figures, so our breakfast’s always late;
The proteids, and the hydrates make the task for her too great;
We never get a luncheon, since she figures on till noon,
And finds we’ve overdone it, and that nearly makes her swoon;
Mother’s always tabulating every pennyweight we eat;
Except the meals we smuggle from the cook-shop down the street.
One reason for recent changes in the advice offered was the observation that people in the Mediterranean countries suffered less from heart disease. This was attributed to their diet: plenty of vegetables, fruit, and carbohydrate foods of all kinds, some fish, not much meat, olive oil, wine. The health statistics were impressive. At the same time people were being influenced by the ideas of Elizabeth DAVID and her followers, who were extolling the virtues of Mediterranean cuisine not for health reasons but because it was delicious.
A noticeable tendency in the West, especially in English-speaking countries, was a rise in VEGETARIANISM. It is perfectly possible to gain proper nutrition from a vegetarian diet, but it needs care in choice of foods. Vegetable proteins are ‘incomplete’ and need to be combined; it is striking how many of the traditional cuisines of peoples who eat little meat have instinctively developed dishes which combine cereals and pulses to ‘complete’ their proteins—for example, DAL and CHAPATIS in India, rice and peas in Jamaica, SUCCOTASH (maize and beans) in the south of the USA. Vegetarians risk deficiencies of some B-group vitamins and iron. These are particularly severe in the case of vegans, who eat no foods of animal origin at all, not even dairy products.
While Mediterranean influence was making itself felt in America, American eating habits spread to remote parts of the world, having a particularly striking influence in Japan, where the higher intake of protein caused children born from the 1960s onwards to grow several inches taller than their parents. Not all changes were welcome: heart disease, previously most uncommon, also increased.
At the end of the 20th century there was still no sign of an end to the division of the world into rich nations whose inhabitants ate too much and suffered the diseases of affluence and wondered how to dispose of surplus food, and poor nations whose people simply did not get enough to eat. See also PROTEIN AND HUMAN HISTORY.
are impossible to define in a manner which would be compatible with popular usage yet acceptable to botanists. In this book popular usage is preferred, so the GROUNDNUT (a LEGUME, also called peanut) and the CHUFA NUT (a tuber) are allowed to shelter under the umbrella word. (Incidentally, some other languages lack an umbrella word equivalent to nut. Noix in French looks like one, but just means WALNUT.)
Nuts are highly nutritious. Some contain much fat (e.g. PECAN 70%, MACADAMIA NUT 66%, BRAZIL NUT 65%, WALNUT 60%, ALMOND 55%); most have a good protein content (in the range of 10–30%); and only a few have a very high starch content (notably the CHESTNUT, GINKGO nut, and ACORN). The water content of nuts, as they are usually sold, is remarkably low, and they constitute one of the most concentrated kinds of food available. Most nuts, left in the shell, are also remarkable for their keeping quality, and can conveniently be stored for winter use.
The nutritional quality of nuts is evidently one factor which causes people to think of them as particularly health giving. But they also have a certain mystique, perhaps as a putative food of the hominoids who preceded human beings; and this may be one of the factors which make nuts a prominent food of vegetarians—in England, ‘nut rissoles’ have served as a symbol, for non-vegetarians, of vegetarian food. And the fact that they come in a sealed container provided by nature—and one more substantial than, say, an eggshell or banana skin—buttresses their reputation as a ‘pure’ food.
Nuts are also associated with festivities such as Christmas and Thanksgiving. Partly because they are such a concentrated food, they are not a staple item in any modern diet, although in past times the chestnut and the acorn were staples in some regions of Europe. Some of the best nuts, e.g. the macadamia nut, PINE NUT, and PISTACHIO, are and are likely to remain expensive, but the increasing tendency to use nuts in small quantity, often to provide texture and flavour for foods which would otherwise be bland, makes it feasible to enjoy them in this way.