Jargonelle, a fine old French pear dating from about 1600, is a dessert or cooking fruit with a distinctive aroma which is roughly imitated in the traditional British sweet called ‘pear drops’. The main component of the fragrance is amyl acetate (which is also the smell of nail polish remover).
Josephine de Malines, a 19th-century pear of Belgian origin, is still grown commercially in the southern hemisphere. The pear was named by Major Espéren, an unsystematic but indefatigable grower, in commemoration of his wife; and it is the only important pear to have pink flesh. The scent is said to resemble that of the hyacinth.
Kaiser is a big, coarse, russet pear often on sale in continental Europe, but of no special merit.
Louise Bonne de Jersey is a pear to be picked towards the end of September, but not until it has what Brooke calls ‘a painted, varnished look; the red must be shining red, and the greener portion must be turning yellow.’
Olivier de Serres, an old French variety often seen in S. Europe, is a good dessert pear which ripens very late. Dull greenish-brown, squat, and short necked.
Passe crasanne, a late winter pear suitable mainly for cooking, is common in S. Europe. It is big, broad, dull greenish-brown, and well flavoured, but rather coarse in texture. Coming from Italy, it bears the name Passacrassana.
Seckel, an American pear with a particularly good spicy flavour, but a rather granular texture. It is small, brownish-yellow, and russeted, often with a red blush. It is said that it was found as seedling by a trapper when he bought a piece of woodland in 1765.
Wardens, often referred to by Shakespeare and Parkinson, were cooking pears. For centuries Warden was the pear most commonly grown.
Williams, called Bartlett in the USA and Australia, now has several varieties. It was raised in 1770 in Berkshire by a schoolmaster called John Stair and was renamed Williams when it arrived in London. It was later taken to America by Enoch Bartlett and renamed again. All varieties are good dessert pears and good for cooking. They are also used for canning. The flavour is pleasantly musky. The season begins early, in late summer. The original variety, Williams bon Chrétien, is dull green with a red blush; there are now also clear green and red kinds.
Winter Nelis, a long-keeping pear in season from late autumn to late spring, has an excellent spicy flavour and a fair texture but lost popularity, partly because of its small size and rough skin, and partly because a high proportion of the fruits go bad in storage. The name is that of Jean Charles Nelis, a Belgian grower of the early 19th century.
the common name of Pinctada maxima and P. margaritifera, edible BIVALVES of SE Asia. They are not true OYSTERS, but there is a general resemblance. P. maxima may measure 30 cm (1′) and has shells which are at first yellow but later purplish-black. The inside is of a pearly brilliance; and there may be an actual pearl inside as well. P. margaritifera is dark inside.
The meat of the pearl oyster is delicious, and expensive.
a flour produced by processing yellow field PEAS such as are grown in E. England. They are roasted gently, a process which caramelizes some of the sugar, makes more starch and protein available for digestion, and darkens the colour. Then they are ground through three pairs of water-powered millstones, becoming successively finer with each set of stones, and packed into airtight containers for distribution.
The flour, which is produced and mainly used in Scotland, is brown-yellow in colour with a texture varying from fine and smooth to slightly gritty. The flavour is strong and earthy.
This flour and foods made from it, notably BROSE and BANNOCKS, have a long history in Scotland, especially as food for the common people. Marian McNeill (1929), explaining that pease bannocks are made in the same way as barley bannocks (the flour is mixed with water, milk, or whey, rolled thinly, and baked on a GRIDDLE), quotes an earlier reference to ‘pease-scons’.
When peasemeal is used to make a brose, it is mixed with boiling water (or stock) for immediate consumption, eaten with butter and pepper or salt, or with sugar and raisins.
See also PEASE PUDDING.
(alternatively known as pease porridge) is a peculiarly British dish, on account of the long-standing preference in Britain for PEAS over other pulses. It began its career in remote antiquity as pease POTTAGE, a thick PORRIDGE made from the dried mealy peas that were a staple food; this was the most usual way of preparing them. Pease pottage and, when available, bacon went together in the diet of simple country people. The bacon was heavily salted and the pease pottage, made without salt, balanced the flavour.
At the beginning of the 17th century the introduction of the pudding cloth allowed pease pudding, a more solid product, to be made. Usually the ingredients consisted only of peas (previously soaked, if dried peas are used), and a little flavouring: sugar and pepper, and sometimes mint, were commonly used. The ingredients were mixed and simply cooked in a pudding cloth in simmering liquid, perhaps alongside a piece of bacon, for which the pudding would be a fine accompaniment. Sometimes this very solid pudding was lightened with breadcrumbs, or a little egg or butter were used to enrich it. Pease pudding has now lost its importance in the British diet, but remains popular in the north. One can even buy it in cans.
It has been suggested that the old nursery rhyme:
Pease pudding hot,
Pease pudding cold,
Pease pudding in the pot
Nine days old
referred not to the inevitable appearance of the dish at all meals but to the making of a fermented product like a semi-solid version of Indonesian TEMPE, or a primitive form of Japanese MISO. Certainly, if the procedure in the rhyme were followed, boiling, cooling, and leaving for nine days, micro-organisms naturally present would have caused some kind of fermentation to take place, but unless some kind of starter had been used, the most likely result would have been spoilage.
The Chinese make a sweet version of pease pudding from cooked, puréed dried peas mixed with sugar and fried. This is more of a pottage than a real pudding. It is eaten hot as a dessert. There is also a cold cake made from the same purée with sugar and cornflour.
See also PEASEMEAL. A Scottish dish, pease brose, is mentioned in BROSE.
the most important native nut of N. America, is borne by one of the hickory trees, Carya illinoinensis. The hickories, which are related to the walnut trees, include several species with edible nuts (see HICKORY NUT), but the pecan is much the best. Its native habitat is the central southern region of the USA.
The name pecan comes from the Algonquin Indian paccan, which denoted hickories, including pecans. Rosengarten (1984) explains that:
A creamy liquid called powcohicoria or ‘hickory milk’ was prepared by the Algonquins: paccan kernels were pounded into small pieces, cast into boiling water, strained and stirred. This rich, nutty concoction was added to broth to thicken it, and to corn cakes and hominy as a seasoning.
Most pecans now come from cultivated trees, although many old, wild trees continue to produce nuts which are gathered and marketed. Cultivation is carried out in many states, especially Georgia and Texas. Since the time when Antoine, a slave gardener in Louisiana, achieved a breakthrough by ‘topworking’ some pecan trees and producing the variety Centennial, further advances have been made and there are now more than 500 named varieties.
Despite its excellence, the pecan is still little known outside N. America and Mexico, although it is now being grown in Israel, S. Africa, and Australia.
The nut shell, unlike a walnut shell, has a smooth surface. The kernel inside does bear some resemblance to that of a walnut, but is oilier and milder in flavour.
The main uses of pecans are in sweet dishes and confectionery, although they are also used in a stuffing for turkey. Pecan pie is one of the most famous American desserts. Pecan butter is also made.
Tayassu angulatus and two other spp, American animals which look something like a small wild pig, and are sometimes so called, but which belong to a different family, Tayassuidae. This family is the New World counterpart of the PIG family in the Old World.
The peccary is one of the animals which exhibits a smell of MUSK, so is also called musk hog.
The range of the peccary is from S. Brazil to Arizona in the USA. It is eaten locally but is not accounted a delicacy. For the Maya people, however, it was a food resource of some significance. The region of C. America which they inhabited was not rich, in pre-Columbian times, in edible animals.
the Italian name for a CHEESE made of sheep’s milk. In this sense it covers a wide range of cheeses, many of which are produced locally and only on a small scale.
Pecorino cheeses may be young and fresh, or aged and suitable for grating. The latter feature has given rise to a second, more specific meaning of the name: hard cheeses made from sheep’s milk in the central region of Italy and in Sardinia, where they play a similar role to that of the GRANA cheeses of N. Italy.
Many pecorino cheeses are small and disc shaped. With few exceptions they are heavily salted. Some have a patterned surface produced by a traditional mould of plaited straw, or by a metal copy designed to produce a similar pattern.
Pecorino Romano is the most famous. The classical author Columella gave instructions for making it which remain more or less valid. It is produced in Lazio and also in Sardinia, in weights varying from 8 to 20 kg (18 to 45 lb). It is salted and matured, and in its traditional form was given a protective coat of oil lees or suet, coloured dark. Another pecorino made in Sardinia is usually called fiore Sardo, because made with a RENNET derived from flowers.
Other well-known kinds of pecorino include:
the substance which causes jams and jellies to set, is a CARBOHYDRATE which exists in the cell walls of fruits and vegetables.
Unripe fruits contain a predecessor of pectin, called protopectin or pectose. As the fruit ripens, enzymes convert this into pectin, the quantity of which reaches its maximum just before the fruit is fully ripe. Continuing enzyme action turns it into pectic acid. Neither pectose nor pectic acid has the setting power of pectin itself; hence the well-known difficulty of making jam or jelly with fruit that is overripe or markedly underripe.
It is equally well known that fruits vary in the amount of pectin they contain. Apples and citrus fruits have a lot. Cherries, figs, peaches, pears, pineapples, and rhubarb have much less. Strawberries and raspberries have pectin of inferior setting ability.
Pectin consists mainly of methyl pectate, which is a polysaccharide (a substance composed of long chains of sugar molecules). About half these sugar molecules are crosslinked to molecules of methyl alcohol. The nutritional value of these complex chains is negligible. Their value lies in the way they behave when fruit is made into jam or jelly.
The first step, boiling the fruit, causes the pectin to disperse through the mixture. The next, adding sugar and further boiling, crowds the chains of pectin together. The crowding effect is a simple consequence of the withdrawal of water, some of which is now occupied in holding the sugar in suspension and some of which evaporates. The crowded chains tangle. Then, when the mixture is allowed to cool and the molecular agitation within it diminishes, the tangled chains set into a continuous network with the remaining water trapped inside it. This is a gel.
The tangling effect, without which no gel can be achieved, will in this case only take place if the degree of acidity of the mixture is right, not much above or below pH 3.0. Mildly acid conditions are necessary to counteract small electric charges on the pectin chains which would otherwise attract water and maintain the pectin in solution. If the acidity is slightly too high, too strong a gel forms, giving a rubbery jam which shrinks and ‘weeps’, forcing out droplets of excess water. Strongly acid conditions prevent the pectin from setting at all.
Several other factors must be taken into account when making jams or jellies (see under JAM and JELLY). A familiar problem is that of making jam from fruits which contain little pectin, or pectin of low quality. One traditional answer is to mix fruits which have little pectin with others which have plenty. But one may not wish to add, say, apple to raspberry. Fortunately it is possible to obtain pectin as a liquid extract or in powdered form. These products are prepared from apple or citrus trimmings, preferably the former.
Special pectins used by the food industry include so-called low ester pectins which are capable of forming a gel in a sugarless solution, if a small amount of calcium salts is added to the mixture. These last pectins are used commercially to make aspic and to coat frozen foods with a protective layer of jelly.
Bactris gasipaes (syn Guilielma gasipaes), also known as pupunha or peach palm, grows wild in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil. It was already being cultivated and distributed by Indians in prehistoric times. In C. America its presence is most noticeable in Costa Rica, where almost every Indian dwelling has a patch.
The palm reaches a height of 13 m (43′). The fruits grow in clusters of 50 to 300, and look like small peaches. As it ripens the fruit changes colour from yellow or orange to red or purple when fully ripe. The flesh usually contains a small seed, although some cultivated varieties are seedless. Both the fruit and the seed are edible.
In the Amazon basin it is one of the most popular articles of food, a position fully justified by its nutritional qualities. The authors of a survey of Underexploited Tropical Plants with Promising Economical Value (ed Ruskin, 1975) describe it as ‘probably the most nutritionally balanced of tropical foods’. They point out that the fruit contains a finely balanced array of carbohydrates, protein, oil, minerals, and vitamins.
In one season, lasting from autumn to spring, a tree may produce 50 kg (110 lb) of fruits, borne in large clusters. Each fruit is about 5 cm (2″) in diameter, with dryish, mealy, yellow or orange flesh surrounding the black seed. This is roughly pear shaped, and about 2 cm (0.75″) broad. Once the fruit has been boiled, the flesh comes away readily from the seed. It is farinaceous in texture, with a pleasant flavour which has been compared to a mixture of chestnut and cheese. The seed has a thin, hard shell and an oily kernel, with a flavour like that of coconut.
The pejibaye has to be cooked (usually boiled, but also fried or roasted) before eating as it has a caustic effect (giving a burning sensation) if eaten raw. Both the young flowers and the palm hearts make good eating. The latter are of excellent quality, numerous (from the multiple shoots produced by the tree), and often canned for export.
a term most used for a special way of cooking duck which produces what is probably the most famous dish of Beijing (formerly Peking); and also the name for the variety of DUCK used in this dish, and now commonly bred in many parts of the world.
Chinese authorities do not attribute a very long history to the dish. Roast duck had been recorded from the distant past, but this originally meant a Nanjing duck, of small size and black feathers, not artificially fattened. The story goes that the transfer of the capital from Nanjing to Peking brought unexpected results for the ducks which lived alongside the canal leading to the new capital, a canal used for grain supplies. These ducks, which like the Nanjing ducks were MALLARD ducks, were now able to feast on grains which fell overboard from barges, and they gradually became larger. In the course of time there evolved a new variety of duck, not only larger but plumper, and with white plumage. The plumpness was increased by the practice of force-feeding, mentioned in texts from the Five Dynasties in the 10th century AD.
This new variety of duck was appreciated outside China. In the 19th century it was introduced to N. America and became a firm favourite. It was also introduced to Europe and the famous Aylesbury duck of England is, if not exactly the same variety, a very close approximation.
However, it was only in China, and indeed for a long time only in Beijing, that the special dish known as Beijing kaoya (in China), Peking duck (in English), and canard lacqué (in French) was prepared. There was no single formula for the dish, but all versions have several features in common. First, the duck is a Peking duck, normally around two months old and specially fed, to reach a weight of 2 to 3 kg (5 to 6 lb). Second, after it has been killed and plucked, air is pumped in (usually by the cook, blowing hard) between skin and body, so that the bird is inflated. It is then gutted, hung up, blanched with boiling water, and coated with maltose to give it a dark amber colour. Third, the rear orifice is plugged and boiling water is poured into the inside of the bird, filling it to about 80%, to make it finally ready for roasting (preferably hanging, in a vertical oven built for the purpose, such as the specialist restaurants use, in which wood from fruit trees is burned).
The effect of roasting after this special treatment is to produce a cooked bird which has a shining golden exterior, attractively crisp, and a moist, succulent inside, the whole having a fine aroma and being free of excess fat.
Peking duck can be eaten in various ways. Perhaps the most common is to cut it into thin slices and then roll these up, with pieces of cucumber and Chinese chives (see CHIVES) or something similar, in fine pancakes, which have previously been brushed with sweet salted bean paste (tianmianjiang). There is some flexibility in the choice of added flavourings and in the sort of pancake used—sesame pancakes, for example, are recommended by some authorities.
a molasses-like concentrate of grape juice used as a winter preserve and tonic in Turkey and the Balkans.
The equivalent of pekmez in many Arab countries of the Middle East is DIBS. Another example is the S. Italian vincotto or vino cotto; and a third is mostarda (not to be confused with MOSTARDA DI FRUTTA DI CREMONA), in which the concentrated grape juice is thickened with cornflour and flavoured with lemon, orange, nuts, and raisins. See also RAISINÉ (also called vin cuit).
The history of these products goes back to classical times. Before cheap sugar was available, unfermented grape juice (‘must’), rich in naturally occurring sugar and richer still after being concentrated, provided an alternative source of sweetness to honey in grape-growing countries. Cooks in classical Rome used grape juice reduced by specified proportions as a sweetener; defrutum was must reduced to half the original volume; carenum was reduced by one-third; and sapa by two-thirds.
Aporrhais pespelecani, an edible MOLLUSC inhabiting a single shell, found in the Mediterranean and also in eastern N. Atlantic waters; A. occidentalis is its counterpart on the western side.
The lip of the shell fans out into a shape like a webbed foot, indicating a relationship with the CONCH. But this is a smaller creature (up to 6 cm/2.25″), less well known, and consumed in only some of the countries on whose shores it occurs, notably Italy. It is abundant in the Adriatic, and has been the subject of a festival, the sagra della crocetta, in the summer in the Marche.
a Russian equivalent of RAVIOLI, is often said to be derived from Chinese dumplings of the JIAOZI type spread through Siberia by Mongol invaders. However, it has been suggested that the Russian pel’men’ is of Persian, rather than Chinese, origin, the name having been Russianized in the last 200 years from the original form pel’n’an’ which Russian adopted from the Udmurts, a Finnish people of Siberia. In the Udmurt language, pel’ means ‘ear’ and n’an’ means anything made from flour: flour, dough, bread, etc. The word n’an’ is simply the Persian word NAN ‘bread’; the Udmurts learned of flour from Persians.
Shapes of pel’meni vary; they may be curled like tortellini, square, or triangular. The traditional form is ear shaped. The dough is made with egg. The filling is of meat: traditionally a mixture of beef, pork, and elk.
Pel’meni are normally home made but have for some time been available ready made in Russian supermarkets. They are boiled and served with sour cream, butter and lemon juice, or oil and vinegar; or covered with sour cream and herbs and finished in the oven. Sometimes they are cooked and served in clear broth.
Ushki, a smaller version of pel’meni, are semicircular, shaped like little ears (which is what their name means). They are stuffed with chopped onion and mushroom, deep- fried, and, like their larger relations, eaten with certain soups.
Another fried member of the family is chebureki, a filled pasta of C. Asia, which is essentially the same as pel’meni except for being fried and not boiled.
a form of hard, preserved meat, used by N. American Indians. The name is derived from the Cree word pemikân, from pimiy, meaning ‘grease’. The meat, from buffalo, deer, or other animals, was air dried in strips until quite hard, then pounded to a powder and mixed with melted fat. It was usual to mix in berries, especially CRANBERRIES, but also CHOKEBERRIES. The resulting stiff paste was packed in skins, inside which it dried to a hard, chewy consistency.
Pemmican made in this way keeps mainly because it is dry (see DRYING). Salt played no part in the original drying process, though it might be added later for flavour. The berries were probably also added for flavour, but had a useful effect because of their content of benzoic acid, a natural preservative, which represses the growth of micro-organisms. The fat also helps preservation by sealing the meat from the air. The skin wrapping is not a sterile container because the food is not cooked in it—in fact, the only heating is the melting of the fat—but at least keeps the contents clean.
Pemmican was adapted by white explorers to suit their own needs and tastes. In the 1820s the Arctic explorer Sir John Richardson used the malting equipment of a brewery to make pemmican. The meat was dried in the malting kiln and ground in the malt mill. It was mixed with rendered suet, currants, and sugar, and packed in tin canisters. Soon pemmican was being canned in a conventional manner, which safeguarded its preservation and allowed it to be made in a slightly less dry and tough form. It could be chewed as it came, from the can, or made into a primitive stew. Canned pemmican remained a staple food of explorers and mountaineers.
a flightless bird of which there are many species in ANTARCTIC waters. Although their appearance is so familiar (and people in the western world are often reminded of it by, for example, buying the paperback edition of a book or eating in a very old-fashioned restaurant or observing at social functions those few Englishmen who still dress up to look like either waiters or penguins—it is never clear which), the sight of a real penguin in its black and white livery is always exciting; and the study of the social behaviour of these birds is full of interest. Penguins are not often thought of as a source of food, but do provide edible meat. André Simon (1983) cites a description of the last Christmas Day dinner enjoyed by Captain Scott in the S. Pole ice pack, which included ‘an entrée of stewed penguin’s breasts and red currant jelly—the dish fit for an epicure and not unlike jugged hare’.
So far as food for humans is concerned the importance of penguins lies rather in their production of guano, a good fertilizer which has given its name to the Guano Islands off the S. African coast. It was in these islands and under official supervision that penguin eggs were, until 1968, collected and sold on a commercial basis. Bosman (1973) describes this trade and adds the following advice:
The penguin’s diet consists exclusively of fish and other marine animals, and the flavour of its eggs is therefore totally different from that of poultry eggs, as it has a strong sea-food taste and smell. The egg is much larger than a hen’s egg, the average length being approximately 7 cm, with a diameter of about 5 cm in the middle …. Gourmets who appreciate penguin eggs prefer to eat them after boiling them for 12 to 20 minutes. After the shell has been removed, the egg is mashed finely with a fork, and salt and pepper and vinegar (or lemon juice) are added, with perhaps also a little butter.
Another S. African source, Leipoldt (1976), agrees and, although he points to the possibility of scrambling or buttering penguin eggs, or combining them with flakes of fried fish, declares that no other treatment can compare with what he calls ‘hard-boiling’:
My old preceptress, who emphasised her injunctions with good-natured taps of her wooden spoon on my head, insisted that penguin eggs should be boiled in sea water, steadily for 15 minutes. That produced a clear, transparent jelly surrounding an opalescent green yolk that crumbled readily to fine primrose-yellow flaky fragments, for nobody ever ate them soft-boiled.
Baker (2004) observes that when he was sailing in S. Georgian waters, he found the eggs of the Macaroni penguin richer and better for omelettes than those of the Gentoo breed.
cookery does belong to Pennsylvania (although the style spread widely, notably to Ontario, Ohio and parts of the Midwest), but is not Dutch in the modern sense of the term. ‘Dutch’ here is either a corruption of Deutsch, meaning German, or, possibly, a survival of the archaic use of ‘Dutch’ to mean, in effect ‘Germanic’ or ‘German-speaking’. The influence of the Dutch themselves on N. American cookery way back can best be studied in the book by Peter Rose (1989).
Thus it may be more appropriate to use the phrase adopted by Weaver (1983) as the subtitle of his book on the subject: ‘Pennsylvania-German Foods and Foodways’. This scholarly work, later complemented by the same author’s book on Pennsylvania Dutch Country Cooking (1993), was based on a rare early cookbook in German, Die geschickte Hausfrau (1848), for use by the German-speakers of Pennsylvania, but ranges much more widely, setting the whole array of Pennsylvania Dutch kitchen equipment, ingredients, and recipes in their historical and cultural contexts.
Weaver observes that:
The central characteristic of classical Pennsylvania-German cookery was the interplay of sweet flavors against salty ones. The combination of fruit and salty meat in such Pennsylvania-German dishes as Schnitz un Gnepp (a stew of dried apples, smoked ham, and dumplings) or its older cousin Gumbis (apples, ham, bacon, and onions) … were typical of this classic arrangement of flavors.
Another dish is scrapple (Panhaas), a sort of savoury ‘loaf’ made with pork, cornmeal, and other ingredients, to be chilled and sliced, the slices then to be fried and served very hot. It is also known as Philadelphia scrapple, and is eaten as a breakfast or brunch dish, often served with apple slices and brown sugar.
The Pennsylvania Dutch repertoire includes a fine array of sausages, one-pot dishes, pickles, and baked goods.
Mentha pulegium, a perennial herb of the Near East, of prostrate habit, which has spread through Europe as far north as Finland. The ‘penny’ in its name is derived (by a tortuous route—see Grigson, 1955) from the Latin name by which it was known in the Middle Ages; this was pulegium, meaning flea plant. It then had a high reputation for driving away body lice and fleas, and is still valued for some medicinal purposes; but its use in the kitchen has been mainly as a savoury pudding herb, especially in the north of Britain, where it bears names such as ‘pudding herb’.
Pennyroyal is commonly in use in Spain for a herbal tea.
the fruit of Solanum muricatum, a small bush of about 1 m (3′) in height which is native to temperate Andean areas of Peru and Chile and cultivated elsewhere in C. and S. America, and Australasia. The name pepino is Spanish for cucumber, and the Latin American name pepino dulce means sweet cucumber. (One variety, Rio Barba, is vinelike and its fruits do resemble a small cucumber.) However, since the pepino is usually more like a melon, it is sometimes called pepino melon or melon pear.
A typical fruit is about 7 cm (3″) in diameter near the stem end, and 13 cm (5″) long. Its skin is golden streaked with purple. It has little flavour, but can be used effectively in fruit salads.
The name pepino is used in parts of S. America for the CASSABANANA.
the common spice, black pepper, Piper nigrum.
True peppers belong to the genus Piper, but the common name ‘pepper’ has been applied to very different articles; sometimes, as with capsicum peppers in the 15th century, this was done deliberately to cause confusion.
To summarize: the peppers that belong to the genus Piper—the ‘true’ peppers—are: white and black pepper, which are described below; LONG PEPPER; ASHANTI PEPPER; and CUBEB pepper. Other foodstuffs called ‘pepper’, for varying, sometimes not very obvious, reasons include SICHUAN PEPPER, RED PEPPERCORNS, MELEGUETA PEPPER, Jamaica pepper (see ALLSPICE), PEPPERMINT, CAPSICUM peppers, and CAYENNE (which also deals with Nepal pepper). The actual word ‘pepper’ comes from the Sanskrit pippali where it referred to long pepper.
Both white and black—and even red and green—peppercorns are the berries of the perennial climbing vine P. nigrum, of the Piperaceae family and one of the world’s most important spice plants. P. nigrum is native to the forests of Tranvancore and Malabar and now extensively cultivated in tropical regions around the world. The pepper tree is a climber; on plantations it is usually grown on other trees—betel, palm, or mango—as its cordlike stems need support. The tree begins to bear fruit in its third year and continues for six or seven more.
To produce black pepper, the berries are gathered when they are turning red but before they are completely ripe. They are left in heaps for a few days to ferment and then spread out on mats in the sun to dry. As they dry the berries turn black and the skin and part of the pulp form a reticulated covering to the seed.
To produce white pepper, the berries are left for longer before harvesting. They are then soaked until the pericarp and pulp have become soft and loose, when the whitish seed can be easily removed. White pepper, although it contains more piperine than black pepper, is less aromatic and has a weaker flavour. It is usually used when dark specks would spoil the look of the dish, for example, in any white soups, in blanquette de veau (see BLANQUETTE), etc.
There is also a sort of pepper called decorticated black pepper which has had the skin of the peppercorn removed by machine and is therefore white. The flavour is between black and white pepper.
There are numerous references to pepper by classical authors. Pliny (1st century AD) describes black pepper minutely, complaining about the price and noting that white pepper cost almost twice as much as black. Pepper was a precious and expensive substance for the Romans and Gibbon lends his authority to the tale that Alaric the Goth demanded 3,000 lb (1,360 kg) of it as part of a ransom for Rome.
By the Middle Ages, pepper had assumed great importance in Europe where it was used by the rich as a seasoning, and also a preservative. The commonly accepted notion that its main use was to disguise the smell of tainted meat and other food has been largely exploded (e.g. by Gillian Riley, 1993, but there are many other refutations). The earliest reference to the pepper trade in England is in the statutes of Ethelred (978–1016) where it was enacted that ‘Esterlings’ bringing their ships to Billingsgate should pay a toll at Christmas and at Easter plus 10 lb of pepper. The first mention of the Guild of Pepperers, one of the oldest guilds in the City of London, is from 1180, when the guild was fined for not having obtained a royal licence. In 1328 the Pepperers were registered as ‘Grossarii’ from which the term grocer is derived.
Pepper has been one of the most important commodities of the SPICE TRADE. In Antwerp in the mid-16th century, for example, the price of pepper served as a barometer for European business in general. Singapore is now the most important centre of world pepper trade.
Green peppercorns are just the unripe seeds of P. nigrum. The berries are preserved by artificial drying or by bottling in vinegar, brine, or water. If bottled just as they begin to turn red, they may be termed ‘poivre rose’, but are not the RED PEPPERCORNS of commerce which are from a different plant altogether.
The seeds of P. nigrum are also a source of oil of pepper and oleoresin, used for flavouring sausages, tinned food, and drinks. The oils have the pepper aroma and flavour but lack pungency.
Indian black pepper is usually of a high quality. The main area of production is still the Malabar coast where the Alleppey variety comes from the south; Tellicherry from the north. The latter is the more expensive and is the sort used whole in Italian salami. Another Indian pepper is Mangalore; very dark with a good flavour.
The pungency of pepper is due to the active principles it contains—the volatile oil, piperine, and resin. The spice increases the flow of saliva and gastric juices and so improves the appetite. If consumed in sufficient quantities, it will have a cooling effect.
Pepper is available whole, cracked, coarsely ground, medium, or finely ground and has become, with the exception of salt, the most everyday spice in the world. In western cooking it is ubiquitous in the kitchen and as a condiment on the table.
Mentha × piperita, the member of the MINT family which has become a major horticultural crop, is thought to be a hybrid of M. aquatica (water mint) and M. spicata (spearmint). It is much more pungent than spearmint, and is the principal source of peppermint oil, which is extensively used in confectionery, and also in products such as chewing gum and toothpaste and by the tobacco industry. Menthol is the constituent to which it owes its distinctive odour.
Peppermint is grown in England, France, Germany, Italy, and other European countries. But N. American production is much greater. The main area of cultivation has moved several times in the last 100 years. Early in the 19th century it was in W. Massachusetts whence it moved to New York state, and then (after the introduction of the hardier Black Mitcham variety) to the Midwest. From there it has moved on to the states of Oregon and Washington. Control of quality of peppermint oil (and spearmint oil) has been carried further in the USA than anywhere else, partly no doubt because of the importance of these flavours in chewing gum. See Landing (1969) on the US industry.
A special French peppermint, stronger than the usual kinds, is menthe de Milly, grown and prepared for the markets at Milly-en-Gâtinais, a small town in the Île de France (i.e. not far from Paris) which has a long tradition of cultivating herbs with medicinal uses, a testimony to which is provided by Jean Cocteau’s murals in the chapel of St Blaise. Menthe de Milly was formerly a special variety, Ameliorée de Milly, but since 50 years ago this has been replaced by Mitcham. The product is used as a flavouring in cookery and also for TISANES and in confectionery such as the famous pastilles à la menthe, as well as in various sweet or alcoholic beverages.
(sometimes pepperpot) has two overlapping meanings. In the W. Indies it means a savoury stew, often highly seasoned, incorporating various vegetables and (for example) pieces of pig’s tail and stewing beef. However, no one recipe can be identified as ‘the recipe’. Connie and Arnold Krochmal (1974b) observe that ‘each island has its own version of pepperpot’. And Norma Benghiat (1985), who counts it as a soup, gives an excellent historical survey, in which she says:
It is probably of Arawak origin, though it seems to have been more of a stew in those days. It is still prepared in the Amerindian way in Guyana, but in Jamaica it has changed over the years under the influence of cooks of different cultures. The ingredients have varied according to what has been available, and the dish has become more of a soup.
The second meaning, which goes back to the 18th century in the USA, was at first equally general and indeed may have migrated from the W. Indies to the mainland. Later, however, it referred to a particular version known as Philadelphia pepper pot, which apparently incorporated SEA TURTLE meat for a while in the 19th century but then adopted TRIPE as a less expensive substitute. In this sense the dish always lives up to its name by being highly seasoned with crushed peppercorns.
a name applied to various fish, notably Perca fluviatilis, a moderate-sized (maximum length 50 cm/20″) Eurasian river and lake fish which has been widely introduced elsewhere for the benefit of anglers and because it is considered to be a good food fish. The yellow perch of N. America is almost indistinguishable from the European perch, but often classified separately as P. flavescens.
The name perch has been applied, by extension, to other species, freshwater or marine, which display characteristics (e.g. two distinct dorsal fins) similar to those of P. fluviatilis, especially members of the very large family Percidae. However, the English-speaking colonists who encountered fish in other continents and often had the privilege of bestowing common names on them were not, understandably, as systematic as ichthyologists would have been in their use of the name perch. Thus the climbing perches of Africa and Asia would not, ideally, be called perches at all. And the name ‘sea perch’ has been bestowed in such a seemingly random fashion that it has little meaning except in a local context. Morone americana, called sea perch (or white perch) in N. America, belongs to the GROUPER family, Serranidae. On the other hand Sander vitreus, which does belong to the family Percidae, is not called perch but walleye (although S. lucioperca is called pike-perch). Examples of such inconsistencies, inevitable since perchlike fish are so numerous, could be multiplied many times.
Littorina littorea, an edible MOLLUSC living in a small single shell (up to 2.5 cm/1″), widely distributed on both sides of the N. Atlantic. Periwinkles, or winkles as their vendors commonly call them, are now eaten much more in Europe than America, although the middens of American Indians testify to their use there in the past. Prehistoric mounds in Denmark, Scotland, and elsewhere show that they have been a popular European food for a very long time; and the diversity of vernacular names, such as kruuk’ls in Zeeland, points to continuing popularity in more recent centuries. Now, however, they are becoming a grander food, being served as amuse-gueules in expensive restaurants.
Species of Littorina are found around the world. Many of them live above the high-tide mark, knowing the waters of the sea only from splashes. It is thought that they may be on the way to becoming land snails. Their shells are usually dingy in appearance. Ricketts and Calvin (1968) discovered by chance a way of having these cleaned. He had occasion to feed a periwinkle to a sea anemone which required sustenance. The anemone swallowed it, but ‘it was an intact and healthy Littorina that emerged, like Jonah, after a residence of from 12 to 20 hours in the anemone’s stomach. It had apparently suffered no harm whatever, but its shell was beautifully cleaned and polished.’ The horny operculum with which the periwinkle, like other gasteropods, closes its shell had effectively kept out the anemone’s digestive enzymes.
Periwinkles feed blamelessly by scraping detritus and organic matter off almost bare rock. It has been estimated that their grazing lowers the level of the rock at La Jolla in California by a centimetre every century.
It is usual to cook periwinkles for about 10 minutes in boiling, salted water, and then to pick them out of their shells with a pin. The cooked winkles can be eaten thus; but in some places they are dressed with a sauce, and in Wales they may be fried in bacon fat and then have an egg or two cracked over them to be left to fry or else scrambled.
a uniquely French product, with a superficial resemblance to TAPIOCA but based on potato starch. The small pearly grains, of regular size and round shape, are rehydrated before being cooked.
This product developed in a sidelong manner from tapioca. It became apparent that if the manner of producing tapioca was modified to make it come out in regular round ‘pearls’, the product had more attraction. So tapioca in pearl form competed with regular tapioca, both being made from CASSAVA starch, as tapioca still is. Then, towards the end of the 19th century, the pearls began to be made from the native product, potato starch, instead of the imported cassava starch. Thus the two products parted company.
Perle Japon is used in the west of France, for soups and for pâtisserie, especially on festive occasions. The one factory making the product is located at Nantes.
or American persimmon Diospyros virginiana, a fruit which used to be valued in eastern N. America but is now little eaten, partly because it has been eclipsed by a superior relative from the Orient, the KAKI (D. kaki). The DATE PLUM (D. lotus) is another close relative.
The name persimmon comes from ‘putchamin’, a phonetic rendering of the name used by the American Indians of the Algonquin tribe. They ate them when they were ripe and had fallen from the tree and dried them to be eaten in the winter. The first European to write about the fruit was probably the Spanish explorer Don Fernando de Soto, who learned about it from the Indians of Florida in 1539. Captain John Smith, in the 17th century, likened it to the MEDLAR, noting: ‘if it be not ripe it will drawe a mans mouth awrie with much torment; but when it is ripe, it is as delicious as an Apricock.’ Ripe persimmons were eaten by the settlers, or used in puddings, breads, preserves, etc. But the production of persimmon (or ‘simmon’) beer and wine and other alcoholic drinks was an equally important use.
A ripe American persimmon is usually yellowish-pink or orange to red in colour, but may be darker. In size it may be as small as a cherry or as large as a big plum. Shape varies, as does the degree of astringency (for a discussion of which see KAKI).
During the 19th century and the early years of the 20th there was considerable interest in the development of improved persimmons, based for example on the Early Golden cultivar which originated in Illinois; but this was largely stifled by the introduction of the kaki to California.
Artemas Ward (1923) has an interesting passage on the persimmon. Besides dismissing the ‘old theory’ that a touch of frost is necessary if the fruits are to achieve perfection, he has this to say:
As might be expected in a wild fruit, the specimens marketed vary greatly in value. The average fruit—though excessively astringent when green—is edible when ‘dead ripe’, but some trees produce fruits which never become edible—their powerful astringency resisting every effort of the warmest southern sun. On the other hand, the best types become veritable sugar-plums at maturity. Among commercial fruits they are exceeded in sugar content only by the date. Their sweetness has indeed earned for them the nickname of the American ‘date-plum’, and the oddly wrinkled lumps of richly concentrated sugar-flesh hanging among the varicolored leaves of autumn are as eagerly sought by ‘possums’ and other wild creatures as by human beings.
The American persimmon is particularly good for preserves and fresh cooked in many ways—in cakes, puddings, and muffins. Those who are not sufficiently familiar with the fruit to be sure that it has lost its astringency will do well to add half a teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda (baking powder) to each cupful of persimmon pulp, as heat accentuates the astringency.
There is one other persimmon native to America, D. texana, known as the chapote, or black or Mexican persimmon. Its range includes C. and W. Texas and parts of Mexico. The fruits, which are small, hairy, and black, are sweet when ripe but of no great merit. Since they leave an indelible black stain on everything they touch, they are perhaps best reserved for dyeing sheepskins black, as in the Rio Grande Valley.
D. digyna is another ‘black persimmon’, often called ‘black sapote’ (zapote negro in the Philippines), but no relation of the true SAPOTA. It is native to Mexico, where it is popular in the markets; and has been introduced elsewhere, but without noticeable success. The fruit is round, about the size of an orange, and ripens from a shiny green to a brownish-green colour. Inside, the flesh is glossy, dark brown in colour, soft, mild, and sweet. It can be made into desserts (the addition of orange or lemon juice is advised), milk shakes, and fruit drinks.
like its neighbour, ECUADOR, is divided into three natural zones which have become cultural frontiers. The arid coastline, fertile only in oases of irrigation, washed by the cool Peru current, is largely mestizo with the small minority of Europeans concentrated on the capital Lima. Here has developed Peruvian criollo (creole) cooking. The Andes, home of the Incas, remain predominantly Indian, the language Quechua spoken more often than Spanish. Beyond, is the montaña (jungle), thinly populated, its borders disputed with Ecuador, its wealth on the increase with the discovery of oil.
The country is large enough, and communications have been tenuous enough, for marked regional differences to arise. Hence dishes from Arequipa are often extremely fiery, and the cooking of Piura leans much on BANANAS, PLANTAINS, and peanuts, see GROUNDNUT.
On the coast, the Spanish Conquest may have destroyed much of the careful agricultural infrastructure of irrigation and terracing, but ultimately the colonial haciendas, maintained by slaves, replaced the Indian achievement and supported an expressive cuisine that combined produce from a fertile soil and equable climate, recipes and foodways from Spain and the Mediterranean, and Inca ingredients such as POTATO and CAPSICUM fruits.
Indian culture was more resistant to Spanish influence in the mountains, where the population had survived in greater number, though reduced to serfdom either on haciendas or in copper and silver mines. In food terms, pre-Columbian survivals are more common. The montaña has had relatively less impact on Peruvian diet and cooking methods.
The clearest Indian survivals are dishes involving potatoes, for instance papas a la huancaina, from the mountain city of Huancayo, which consists of boiled yellow-fleshed potatoes sauced with cheese, cream, olive oil, and ají, served with hard-boiled eggs, olives, and corn. The dish is coloured yellow with the flavourless herb PALILLO whose leaves are dried and powdered. Ají, the Peruvian term for CHILLI (also used in Ecuador and Chile), is complex in meaning and use, both elucidated by Jean Andrews (1984), in dealing with Capsicum baccatum var pendulum. Here it will probably indicate the fresh yellow Ají Amarillo pepper, of which the dried form (Cusqueño) is the principal condiment for many traditional Peruvian dishes. The predominance of yellow in such dishes led Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz (1979) to draw parallels with Inca sun worship. Other potato dishes—some called ocopa, others causa—where the potato is often mashed, often qualified by the town of origin or currency (e.g. causa a la Limeña, ocopa Arequipeña) take the basic material and dress it with more or less elaboration. Complexity is not invariable: in mountain districts a plate of boiled potatoes with nothing more than ají will often suffice.
Corn (see MAIZE) is an important staple, just as RICE has become through Spanish influence. Peruvian TAMALES are wrapped in banana leaves and given a slightly sweet edge with ingredients such as meats, boiled peanuts, or olives. A porridge of corn is added to fried meat, onions, and ají to make tamal en cazuela (casseroled tamale) which solidifies on cooling and may be sliced.
The Humboldt or Peru Current has the same beneficent effect on seafood here as in Chile and Ecuador. Seviche (see CEVICHE) is as commonly encountered as further north, often using the corvina, a relative of the sea bass, or conchitas (Peruvian scallops), ABALONE, or large and succulent prawns. The irrigation ditches and small rivers of the coastal region also support a healthy population of freshwater CRAYFISH. These are also made into chupe, a soup-stew containing potatoes and cheese or cream, which is popular along the whole Pacific seaboard, or a Mediterranean-influenced Arroz con mariscos where a variety of shellfish is cooked with rice in a shrimp stock and finished with fresh coriander. Fish may also be more simply fried, using ANNATTO oil or a dressing of peanut oil, and served with onions and ají.
Peru is less pastoral than, say, URUGUAY; thus large joints of meat (which will be roasted with a crust of lard, garlic, pepper, and herbs) are less common than dishes involving rich sauces and shredded or small cut meat. Unless, of course, the people eat cuy, the Quechua word for GUINEA PIG, widely available in the sierra, and most commonly either roasted over charcoal, or stewed with potatoes, garlic, and ají.
Another Quechua word is anticuchos, meaning ‘a dish from the Andes cooked on sticks’, which refers to the common Peruvian entrada, often served as street food, of ox heart marinaded in vinegar, skewered over charcoal, and brushed with a hot sauce of chilli and ground annatto seeds. Other meats, offal, and seafood are treated in like manner.
The colonial diet of Spanish Lima and the haciendas was rich, and mealtime customs elaborate. The piqueo is a preliminary buffet served before either banquet or pachamanca (the Quechua word for earth oven, similar to a clambake, called curanto in Chile), which is the most enduring form of public feast. The main midday meal was many-coursed, from entradas, through soup, a potato dish, meat or roast, before sweet dishes that joined once more indigenous ingredients with Spanish techniques. The reduction of milk, sugar, and vanilla, called dulce de leche in Argentina, is manjar blanco (meaning BLANCMANGE) here. A variant, natillas Piuranas, from the city of Piura, has an addition of indigenous ground walnuts. Mazamorra morada is a fruit compote, the syrup thickened with purple corn, maíz morado, to give it an unexpected hue. This corn is also used to colour a fruit drink, chicha morada. Picarones, sweet fritters of pumpkin and sweet potatoes, flavoured with aniseed, are also popular.
See also CEVICHE.
the pride of the Italian province of Liguria, often particularly linked to Genoa, its chief city, is a thick sauce which is excellent with pasta or fish. It does not require cooking, but you add olive oil gradually to a mixture which you have pounded with a mortar; the pounded ingredients are garlic, PINE NUT kernels, grated PECORINO and PARMESAN cheeses, salt, and fresh BASIL leaves. The flavour of basil is dominant and better grown in Liguria, they say, than elsewhere. Sometimes other nuts are used: walnuts, perhaps, or, in the small port of Camogli, hazelnuts. The sauce may be extended with RICOTTA when it is used with lasagne. A full discussion may be found in Plotkin (1997). The rage for pesto has spread far beyond its birthplace and manifold have been the variations, employing every sort of greenstuff, cheese, and piquant flavouring. In Provence it is called pistou and is added to a soup of that name. They may add grilled tomato to the mix and neither include cheese at the outset (merely stirring it into the soup at the end of preparation), nor have any nuts.
the Indonesian and most commonly used name for the edible seeds of Parkia speciosa, a tree native to Indonesia and Malaysia. It is cultivated, e.g. in Java.
The seed pods are long, up to about 30 cm (12″) or even more, and characteristically twisted. The seeds vary in size, but may be 3 cm (1″) long. Because of their strong aroma, which lingers on the breath like that of garlic, the Dutch gave them the name stinkboon (stink bean). For Indonesians, however, they are among the most prized vegetables and demand usually outstrips supply.
The seeds, young or ripe, raw, cooked, or roasted, are eaten in many ways, with rice. They can be conserved by drying them in the sun either in the raw state or after steaming them.
Fresh peté is taken out of the pod and the skin peeled off each bean before cooking. However, as Sri Owen (1986) explains:
A favourite way to cook young ones is to top and tail the pod, trim off the stringy edges and slice the pod very thin with the beans still in it. Crisp-fry the pod, and the beans remain soft in the middle of the slices.
Mature beans are pickled in brine and known as peté asin (salted peté). They have a flavour which is bitter and nutty, rather than salty, and slightly reminiscent of garlic. This product is exported and is available in food speciality shops in the West, usually spelled peteh asin. The pale green beans look rather like shelled broad beans.
A related tree, P. javanica, is larger but yields peté of inferior quality. For trees of the same genus in Africa see LOCUST TREES.
any of the little biscuits and cakes to which this name is applied; for example, cigarette russe, langue de chat, miroir (for all of which see BISCUIT VARIETIES), MERINGUE, MACAROON, and TUILE. The name means ‘little oven’. Robert states the term was first used in 1807. Larousse opines that CARÊME (a big advocate of them) named them thus because they were baked in a low-temperature oven (à petit four) but, like the German usage klein Gebäck, it more likely indicates ‘small items from the oven’. One may distinguish petits fours secs and petits fours frais. The first are biscuit-like, the second are miniature tarts and flans. The habit of serving petits fours with coffee has been universalized in upper-crust French restaurants. They may be called friandises or mignardises.
author of a picaresque Latin novel called Satyricon. In medieval Europe this was a secret Latin classic, known to a few fortunate scholars. Even fewer boasted of knowing it, for this work was sexually explicit and amoral in tone. By the 15th century, when classical texts began to be printed, no complete manuscript of the Satyricon survived, but there were several collections of extracts from which modern editions have been lovingly pieced together. What we can read today seems to come from books 14 to 16 of an original of considerable, but unknown, length.
It tells of the escapades of a group of disreputable friends as they travel from city to city in the Roman Empire. The rediscovery and excavation of Pompeii gave added interest to the Satyricon, for most of the surviving episodes are set very close to Pompeii not many years before it succumbed to the eruption of Vesuvius.
The longest scene, the one that makes the Satyricon so fascinating to the food historian, is the ‘Dinner of Trimalchio’. A rich, boastful former slave is the host: his slaves, his guests, their conversation, their behaviour, are seen through the cynical eyes of the narrator Encolpius. Amusing details of the novel, such as the mosaic of a barking dog that startled Trimalchio’s guests as they crossed his threshold, can be illustrated from actual finds at Pompeii. The menu, showy rather than elegant, gives Trimalchio the opportunity to display his vast wealth and allows the author to satirize the pretensions of 1st-century AD Roman society. Thanks to this scene, dormice rolled in honey and sesame seeds will forever be associated with Roman cuisine. Trick dishes, such as the eggs that turn out to be pies and the pig stuffed with birds, evidently formed conversation pieces at lavish dinner parties such as this.
The author, Petronius Arbiter, is generally thought to be the same Petronius who was the Emperor Nero’s courtier and ‘Arbiter of Elegance’. His fame and suicide (in AD 66) are described in two brilliant chapters of Tacitus’s Annals. Whoever he was, the author of the Satyricon was not only able to write urbane, stylish, witty Latin but also—in the conversation at Trimalchio’s table—to recreate the ‘Vulgar Latin’ of slaves and freedmen, the colloquial language of the Empire.
There has, however, been at least one instance of major confusion over the identity of Petronius. Mary Ellen Meredith (1851), after making some thoughtful comments on the feast of Trimalchio, recorded an amusing tale:
Petronius was held in such esteem by the learned German Meibonius, that seeing in a letter from Bologna the words Habemus hic Petronium integrum (‘we have here Petronius, entire’), he took it for granted the complete manuscript of Petronius was there, and posted off in search of it; when he arrived, he asked where Petronius was to be found, and on being informed he was kept in the church, he expressed surprise at such a place being chosen to deposit him in; upon which his informant asked what fitter place could be found for a sacred body than the church; and the discomfited scholar found he had travelled with such infinite diligence only to discover the mummy of Saint Petronius!
Grewia asiatica, a large, scraggy shrub of the Indian subcontinent, which is cultivated commercially in the Punjab and around Bombay, also on a small scale in the Philippines.
In the spring the shrub bears small berries in pendulous clusters from slender, drooping branches. These need to be continuously harvested as they ripen at different times. As they ripen, the outsides change from green to almost black, and the flesh from whitish-green to purplish-red. They have a sweetish acid taste, can be eaten as a dessert, and are used for fresh drinks and in the soft drink industry.
a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of a solution. It is always spelt with a small p, which stands for ‘potential’, and a capital H, the chemical symbol for hydrogen. ACIDS are substances which liberate hydrogen ions (charged atoms) when they dissolve in water. pH was originally defined as the logarithm to base 10 of the reciprocal of the concentration of hydrogen ions; now, however, it is defined by comparison with a standard solution. What all this means in practice is that pH values lie on a scale from 0 to 14. Values from 0 to 7 represent acidity; 7 is neutral; from there up to 14 the solution is alkaline.
Foodstuffs are slightly acidic or neutral; even the slightest alkalinity causes an unpleasant ‘soapy’ sensation in the mouth as the ALKALI reacts with fats. The gastric juice in the stomach is extremely acid, and makes food acid as it is digested; this acidity is neutralized when food passes out of the stomach into the duodenum, where the pancreatic juice is slightly alkaline.
Foodstuffs are variable, so the pH values given here for foods are approximate.
| human gastric juice | 1.5–3.0 (strongly acid) |
| lemon juice | 2.1 |
| wine vinegar (weak) | 2.5 |
| orange juice | 3.0 |
| yoghurt | 4.0 |
| fresh milk | 6.6–6.9 |
| pure water | 7.0 (neutral) |
| human blood | 7.4 |
| human pancreatic juice | 8.0 |
| 1% bicarbonate of soda solution | 8.0 |
| 1% caustic soda solution | 13.0 (strongly alkaline) |
Phasianus colchicus, a GAME bird indigenous to the Caucasus and Caspian region. The name colchicus refers to Colchis in the Caucasus from which Jason and the Argonauts returned with the Golden Fleece, bringing back also, according to the legend, the pheasant. This historic site is now in Georgia, where there are even now particularly good dishes of pheasant braised with walnut, orange, grapes, pomegranate juice, etc. (cf. FESENJAN).
The pheasant’s range extends eastwards to Siberia and China, and it has been widely introduced in Europe since early times. There is a recipe for boiling it with spices in the FORME OF CURY (14th century). It was introduced into Britain by the Romans and it was probably the English who took it to N. America.
The pheasant, with its close relations, is possibly the most important game bird of the world and great efforts have been made to maintain artificially large populations in those parts of Europe where natural conditions are favourable to the species. Without human help, the pheasant’s presence in Europe would dwindle greatly. The hecatombs of Victorian and Edwardian sportsmen are the most eloquent testimony of the place of pheasant on earlier tables, although authors as far back as Robert MAY (1685) were advocating rearing and fattening the birds.
Pheasants are handsome birds, especially the cocks, which are larger than the hens. The cock’s long tail accounts for just over half its average total length of 30–5 cm (12–14″); and its coloration defies description, although the red wattle round each eye is a standard feature. The hen tends to be of a more uniform brown.
Although smaller, hens are likely to prove more plump and tender than cocks. Birds should anyway be hung before being cooked. Roast pheasant is generally the preferred dish, the bird being first equipped with what one author calls a tight waistcoat of bacon, to make up for the dryness of the flesh. Older and tougher birds are best braised (to be served with green cabbage as in France) or in stews, while very old birds will make a delicious pheasant soup. The preference nowadays is for birds to be hung a shorter time than was the case. BRILLAT-SAVARIN has a meditation on the pheasant in which he urges lengthy hanging to attain a high flavour (the French verb faisander means to hang meat). He also advocated stuffing the pheasant with woodcock, a Pelion upon Ossa of game consumption.
Dorothy Hartley (1954), with dry wit, recommends ‘poached pheasant’ as a dish, explaining that a cottager can poach the pheasant by smearing the inside of a paper bag with treacle, adding a few raisins and then propping the bag up among a row of peas. A cock pheasant will come along in search of the peas, stick his head in the bag, be unable to see where to go next, and stand patiently waiting until the cottager comes out to snaffle him.
Several pheasants, including one known as silver pheasant, are prized in the Indian subcontinent.
Other birds which are grouped with the pheasant include PEACOCK-PHEASANT and PEAFOWL.
an exemplary melting pot of cuisines.
Philippine cookery draws from definite and visible roots set in history. The Malay matrix goes deepest, and from it come dishes with native names (laing, sinigang) quite similar to those in other SE Asian cuisines. The Chinese influence, brought by traders from about the 11th century, is responsible for pansit (see NOODLES OF ASIA), LUMPIA, and other dishes also found elsewhere in SE Asia in a similar process of acculturation. The Spanish colonial regime brought with it as well Mexican inputs like TAMALES (since the islands were under the administration of the vice-royalty of Mexico), and the dishes now enshrined as fiesta food (PAELLA, morcon), and a name that came to be attached to a native dish: ADOBO. The American influence is chiefly felt in convenience and fast foods, such as sandwiches and salads, hamburgers and pizza. There are also strands of Indian and Arab influences, especially among the Muslim peoples of Mindanao.
The indigenous food pattern, however, is what nutritionists consider eminently healthy: a lot of rice (high carbohydrate) with some fish or seafood and vegetables, or a noodle dish with meat and vegetables. Meat is expensive, and often featured in the dishes derived from Spain, thus part of élite or special cuisine.
RICE is the basis of all meals, the assumed accompaniment of all food, and its mildness is shaper and foil to the tastes of viands (salty, sour, spicy, bitter). The Filipino preference is for rice to be halfway between the ‘sticky rice’ of, for example, Laos and the hard rice of India. It is usually washed in several changes of water, then water is added to the pot (the native way of measuring is to put the middle finger in, and add enough water to reach the knuckle) and brought to a boil. The heat is then lowered and the pot kept simmering till the rice is cooked. A little crust which often forms on the bottom of the pot called tutong is desired, and is eaten, or moistened and fried the next day for breakfast. Lining the bottom of the cooking pot with banana leaves is used as a means of preventing the formation of tutong and also adds a flavour which many Filipinos like. The clay pot (palayok) may be lined with banana leaf or screwpine for aroma and flavour. In the Visayas and Mindanao, rice is cooked in little handwoven leaf baskets, called pusu, which hang in bunches in the markets for sale and for taking on journeys.
Of the many native varieties of rice (including the sticky malagkit, the violet pirurutong, etc.), the ones most valued are those that are aged (and thus fluff up when cooked), fragrant, or have tiny grains (e.g. milgrosa). Wag-wag is another popular variety. Immature rice is pounded and roasted into pinipig, which is used in cakes, or sprinkled on drinks or on hot chocolate. Mature rice grains are soaked overnight and ground into a wet flour called galapong, which is the basis of the many rice cakes (see RICE CAKES OF THE PHILIPPINES) and snacks (palitaw, bilo-bilo) for both daily use and festive occasions.
The COCONUT is another Filipino dietary constant. The pith is used as a vegetable, as is the blossom. The florescence yields a sap that is fermented into a toddy (tuba) or into vinegar, or distilled into a coconut brandy called lambanog. The translucent flesh of the young coconut (buko) is scraped into the water for a drink; when it is slightly more mature (malakanin, or like the texture of rice) it is made into sweets and pies. The mature flesh is grated and squeezed for coconut milk/cream or used in cakes and sweets. The leaves wrap many of the rice cakes in every region. The Philippines are the largest producer in the world of coconut oil, which is the edible oil most used in their cookery, and of margarine, shortening, etc. The meat of the coconut, copra, is used in a very large number of Filipino recipes.
Seafood is dominant in the diet, for one because the 7,100 islands have a lot of shoreline as well as a lot of rivers, brooks, canals, and flooded ricefields that are sources of fish, crustaceans, and other sea animals. All kinds of seafood are eaten—rays, sharks, annelids, sea cucumbers, sea urchins—though sometimes not in all regions. Among the favourites are the lapu-lapu (GROUPER) and banqus (MILK FISH), the latter most available because commercially raised. A marine fish, its fry are transferred to fish ponds and reared in protected conditions. It is a bony fish, but is now often deboned by hand, although the bones ‘dissolve’ in certain cooking processes. Commercially ‘farmed’ seafoods include oysters, prawns, and certain seaweeds.
The availability of fresh seafood (because of the proximity of sources) is responsible for KINILAW, which is fish/shellfish/crustacean/annelid (or, less often, meat) briefly marinated in vinegar or lime juice to transform it from its raw state, then seasoned with onions, ginger, chilli peppers, etc. to retain its original translucent freshness. It is one of the oldest of Philippine dishes, archaeological evidence showing it to be at least 1,000 years old.
Two especially important seafood products are patis and bagoong. Each is a fermented FISH SAUCE, the latter being prepared mainly from anchovies or shrimps.
PORK is the most popular meat, and the spit-roasted pig, lechon, the most popular fiesta food. GOAT is popular in certain provinces, and many special dishes are made of its flesh, especially the Spanish caldereta and the Ilocano pinapaitan, which is flavoured with bile, to give it a bitter-sweetness. Chickens and ducks are raised for the table, the latter especially for the eggs. The native ducks, known as itik, are smaller than imported breeds but lay relatively large eggs. But they are not good mothers and do not hatch their own eggs, which must be done in a home-made batchery called balutan. BALUT is a fertilized duck egg with a partially grown chick inside, and is considered by Filipinos as a highly nutritious and tasty snack, although foreigners do not take to it readily. The native ducks eat seafoods and consequently their eggs have a fishy taste. For this reason they are often mixed with other ingredients or salted (in brine, in mud or clay jars) and coloured bright red.
Filipino ways of preserving eggs, making ‘century’ eggs, ‘mosaic’ eggs, etc., are numerous and interesting.
Vegetables, which are varied and abundant throughout the year, include leaves, tendrils, seeds, roots, flowers, fruits (e.g. young jackfruit, bananas). Many regions have all-vegetable stews that combine different textures: a leaf, a bole, a pod, a fruit, etc. Many dishes combine meat/fish and vegetables, most prominently SINIGANG, tinola, nilaga, and putsero (from the Spanish pochero).
Mushrooms gathered from the wild include tengang daga, WOOD EARS (literally mouse ears); and the kinds now cultivated, besides the ubiquitous ‘button mushrooms’, are SHIITAKE, STRAW MUSHROOMS, and abalone mushrooms (see OYSTER MUSHROOMS).
The abundance of fruits is especially remarkable in Mindanao. The BANANA is the most common fruit in the Philippines and the Filipinos are great connoisseurs of the different varieties. The favourite ones are: lakatan (yellow, also called ladyfingers); latundan (white); and saba (cooking bananas, used in stews and sweets). Cavendish bananas, grown for export, are not favoured by Filipinos. Mangos and durian are perhaps the most prized fruits, pineapple one of the most easily available. The range of citrus fruits includes many varieties of orange, pomelo, mandarin, and CALAMANSI (a limelike fruit, a frequent ingredient in Filipino recipes).
Filipinos eat noodles of the Chinese type on quite a big scale. The word for noodle is pansit. Any dish beginning with that word is a noodle dish. This is a large subject; see NOODLES OF ASIA.
Although rice is the staple food, wheaten bread has been established since the Spanish regime, and the typical bun, called pan de sal (bread of salt), is the usual breakfast bread. Many local breads have Spanish names: pan de leche, pan de coco, etc. The western-type loaf is called pan Americano, indicating its origin.
Evidence for the Filipino sweet tooth is seen in the sweet rice and cassava cakes cooked daily and for feasts. There are few native desserts, however, except for fruits cooked in syrup. Most of the candies, cakes, and desserts are Spanish in origin, and often retain the Spanish names: leche flan (crème caramel), pastillas de leche (milk pastilles), brazo de Mercedes, mazapan de pili, ensaymadas, tortas reales, etc. HALO-HALO may be had as dessert, but is more usually eaten in the afternoons, as a refreshment.
Alcoholic drinks are made from rice (tapuy, baya), sugar cane (basi), nipa palm (laksoy, tuba), and coconut (tuba, lambanog). These do not usually accompany meals, but have distinct importance in connection with food, since they are accompanied by pulutan (literally, food that can be picked up) in great variety; see Alegre (1992).
Outside authorities have pointed out (what could less easily be said by a Philippines author) that the Philippines are blessed with a culinary literature, mostly in English, which is remarkably extensive, lively, and well researched. This literature is infused by a spirit combining an attractive mixture of enthusiasm and lightheartedness (unmatched elsewhere in Asia and perhaps owing something to American influence) with an underlying seriousness of purpose. The national heroine Maria Y. Orosa (1970) must be mentioned as one of the earliest of these writers, who exemplifies particularly the last aspect.
a genus widely represented in the northern temperate zones. One, the NAMEKO, is a well-known edible. Of the remainder, none has acquired a genuine English vernacular name, although ‘pholiota’ is used, and few are regarded as worth eating.
Most Pholiota mushrooms grow on trees or stumps or buried pieces of wood. The edible species in N. America include P. squarrosa, which won praise from McIlvaine (1902) and others, and which appears in Michigan in a form which has an aroma of garlic; but it enjoys less esteem in Europe, and recent American authors rate P. squarrosoides as better. Both have markedly scaly caps, the former dry and the latter slimy.
The genus used to be of greater gastronomic interest. At least three edible species formerly assigned to it have now been reclassified; these are Kuehneromyces mutabilis, Rozites caperata, and Agrocybe aegerita. The first is considered good enough for cultivation, for example in Japan (commercially) and Germany (privately). The second is treated under GYPSY MUSHROOM. The third is common in Spain (seta de chopo) and the south of France (pivoulette). It has a preference for poplar trees (hence another French name, pholiote des peupliers); a long season from early spring to late autumn and even winter; and firm flesh with an almond-like flavour.
a chemical element essential to life. In every cell of every living creature, a substance known as ATP (adenosine triphosphate) acts as a store of energy. In vertebrates, bones and teeth are a network of calcium phosphate and protein.
Pure phosphorus is a non-metallic solid which exists in three forms, one of them highly poisonous and spontaneously inflammable. In living things it is always in the form of a compound, usually a phosphate—a combination with one atom of phosphorus and four of oxygen.
Phosphates are plentiful in foods: dairy products, eggs, and cereals contain substantial amounts. There is a traditional belief that eating fish is good for the brain because it contains phosphorus. So it does, but since phosphorus deficiency is almost unknown, no amount of fish will have any effect on brain function.
Phosphoric acid is used as a preservative.
sometimes used as an English name to refer to the various fruits borne by plants of the genus Physalis. These fruits are enclosed in a papery husk or calyx, resembling a Chinese paper lantern, which accounts for the occasional use of ‘Chinese lantern’ as a name (at least for P. alkekengi, the species which is familiar as an ornamental).
Of the eight or so species, distributed round the world in temperate and tropical zones, the following are most prized for their fruits and have their own entries:
an English name which serves for two Mediterranean fish of the genus Spicara: S. maena and S. smaris. Almost all Mediterranean languages have separate names for them, e.g. Spanish chucla and caramel, French mendole and picarel.
These small torpedo-shaped fish have a maximum length of 25 and 20 cm (10″/8″) respectively. S. maena has a deeper body than the other, but in those places where picarel are eaten with enthusiasm (notably Greece, Yugoslavia, and SE Italy) it seems to be S. smaris which is preferred. Both species have a range which extends a little way out into the Atlantic.
Picarel may be fried. Salted young picarel are a delicacy, known as slana gira on the Dalmatian coast from Dubrovnik north to the island of Hvar. Yet Faber (1883) recorded that at Venice it was an insult to call someone a picarel-eater. And the reputation of S. maena, further west in the Mediterranean, seems to be equally poor; it is called mata-soldat (kill-soldier) at places such as Port Vendres.
as a verb, to preserve foods, especially vegetables, fruits, meat, and fish, in a preserving medium with a strong SALT or ACID content; as a noun, either the product of the process or the liquid or paste which is the preserving medium.
Immersing foods in VINEGAR or brine, or a mixture of the two, is a long-established way of preserving foods. Highly acidic solutions and strong salt solutions prevent micro-organisms from growing and enzymes from working (see PRESERVATION). The acetic acid in vinegar has a disinfectant effect, so that vinegar is a better preservative than other acid liquids of the same strength.
Most pickled foods use vinegar, but there are exceptions. A few recipes use lemon or lime juice. Pickled cucumbers (‘dill pickles’ in the USA) are often prepared in brine alone, and fermented by bacteria naturally present which produce LACTIC ACID. A similar method is used for pickled OLIVES (among the pickles appreciated by Greeks and Romans in classical times), for the beetroots used for making Russian BORSHCH, and also for Chinese ‘Sichuan preserved vegetable’, Japanese pickled daikon (see RADISH), Korean KIMCH’I, and some other oriental pickles. SAUERKRAUT, not usually thought of as a pickle, also depends on lactic fermentation. The noun ‘pickle’ is also applied to the mixture of salt, saltpetre, and spices used to cure meats such as ham and bacon. ‘Pickled herring’ is a vague term that can apply to salted herring or to recipes in which vinegar is used, usually for immediate eating rather than keeping.
Any type of vinegar may be used. British pickles are usually put up in malt vinegar; strong distilled vinegar is used for watery foods which would otherwise dilute the acid excessively (acidity must not drop below pH 4.0), or for light-coloured mixtures whose appearance would be spoilt by the brown tinge of malt vinegar. In wine producing countries wine vinegar is used. Oriental pickles are made with rice vinegar.
Fruit preserved in alcohol or purely by sugar, as in jam, is not thought of as constituting a pickle, but there are many borderline cases in which sugar plays an important part as a preservative, e.g. sweet pickles and CHUTNEYS or RELISHES. Sugar is in any case often added to pickling solutions, both for its flavour and for its preservative effect. Mustard, ground or as whole seeds, is another common addition which helps to preserve the pickle. Piccalilli, a sweet mustard pickle of mixed vegetables, is an example (British piccalilli is much more chutney-like than the US variety, but both contain large amounts of mustard). The Italian MOSTARDA DI FRUTTA DI CREMONA is a curious sweet fruit pickle largely preserved by mustard.
Almost any spice may be used in pickling. A typical British mixture consists of whole black and white peppercorns, mustard seed, allspice, coriander seed, mace, and a clove, perhaps with a chilli pepper for extra bite. In continental Europe garlic is often added. Some pickles contain turmeric, as much for its colour as for its flavour. A small amount of alum is sometimes added to pickled vegetables to keep them from softening.
Most pickles, except for lactic varieties and a few others meant for immediate use, are heated to boiling point to sterilize them. Pickles intended to be kept usually need time to mature, typically six months. During this time the flavours of the spices infuse and blend.
In the Near East the pickle table features pickled turnip among many other items. Pickled eggs are a traditional speciality in Britain and elsewhere. There is an American watermelon rind pickle. In India, limes are pickled in their own juice. And so on. But the top country for pickles is generally accepted to be Japan.
(or brined cheeses) are those which are matured in their own WHEY, mixed with salt, so that they remain moist and are very salty. These simple white cheeses, traditionally made from ewe’s milk, are of great antiquity. The two best known are the Greek (and Bulgarian) FETA, which is now made in many other countries, and the Egyptian domiati; but ‘pickled’ cheeses are widely made and consumed all over the Balkans, the Near East, and N. Africa. The HALOUMI cheese of Cyprus and the Lebanon and brinza in Romania are two more examples. Russians call this type of cheese brynza.
Domiati is made from whole or partly skimmed cow’s or buffalo’s milk that is salted at the very start of the process, which otherwise resembles that for feta. The cheese may be sold at once or matured for up to a year, during which time it darkens and its mildly acid taste becomes strong and sharp.
Yerevansky syr (cheese from Erevan, capital of Armenia) is a pickled cheese, ripened in cans with removable stoppers to allow topping up with brine.
Lesley Chamberlain (1989) remarks that cheese of this kind is ideal for salads, for pie fillings, and for combining with spinach, potatoes, courgettes, and other vegetables.
are of various kinds. They may be small round onions (see ONIONS), or SHALLOTS, or rakkyo (see ORIENTAL ONIONS).
The bunching pearl onion is a variety of A. ampeloprasum, the species which is better known as that of the cultivated LEEK. Rather than having a leek’s thick stem, this variety has a cluster of little round bulbs which are used for pickling: they are the small, mild-flavoured, pure white ‘pearl’ pickled onions which are used as a garnish for food and also as a constituent of the ‘Gibson’ cocktail (a martini containing a pearl onion instead of the usual cocktail olive or lemon zest).
according to the NSOED, originally meant a social event for which each guest provided a share of the food. It derives from the French pique-nique (late 17th century) and early English usage almost invariably relates to descriptions of foreign affairs. See POTLUCK for the US version of such a meal. Later it was linked to an excursion, for example to a beach, or the countryside, where food would be taken to eat out of doors. For many people, contemporary picnics involve an element of simplicity, where uncomplicated food such as hard-boiled eggs, sandwiches, pieces of cold chicken are eaten without ceremony.
But there is considerable variety. Claudia Roden (1981) describes the Japanese picnic which is frequently an aesthetic experience, organized to celebrate and admire such things as the blooming of chrysanthemums, or cherry blossoms, or viewing the moon.
The Chinese are, in general, no picnickers, but do feast by the graveside, to honour their ancestors. Here the food may include ‘100 year eggs’ and whole previously roasted or boiled pigs which are consumed after the ancestors have extracted the spiritual content from the offering.
The earliest picnics in England were medieval hunting feasts. Hunting conventions were established in the 14th century, and the feast before the chase assumed a special importance. Gaston de Foix, in a work entitled Le Livre de chasse (1387), gives a detailed description of such an event in France. As social habits in 14th-century England were similar to those in medieval France, it is reasonably safe to assume that picnics in England would have been more or less the same. Foods consumed would have been pastries, hams, baked meats, and so on. George Tubervile (1575, in a work which echoes that of Gaston de Foix) records a new development. At the end of the hunt, the deer would be dismembered and cooked, thus providing the excuse for a duo of picnics on the same day.
Picnicking really came into its own during the Victorian era, and enters into the literature of that period. Dickens, Trollope, Jane Austen all found pleasure in introducing this form of social event into their fiction. One can see why: a rustic idyll furnished an ideal way of presenting characters in a relaxed environment, and also provided an opportunity to describe a particularly pleasant rural spot.
Painters have also been drawn to the subject. As Gillian Riley (1993) shows us, the Impressionists constituted one such group. Monet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe is dominated by a raised pie and bottles of wine. Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party again features wine bottles as well as fruit. Cezanne’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe conveys the mood of the picnic without dwelling on the food, although again the near-ubiquitous wine bottles are centre stage.
The picnic as such does not appear to have fired the imagination of the musician greatly, unless one wishes to recall the tiresomely haunting 1930s ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ which can still occasionally be heard on the radio. In order to give a balanced view of this sort of gastronomic event, the reader may need to be reminded of the possible inclemency of the weather (rain or excessive heat), the presence of flies, bees, wasps, and gnats, sand in the food, uninvited dogs, and (in N. Africa sometimes) intrusive and curious children.
The word picnic is suggestive of simplicity and ease. Thus it is fair to use the negative to demonstrate the opposite, as in the sentence: ‘To write the Oxford Companion to Food has been no picnic.’
Jane Davidson
READING:
the common name for a group of BIVALVES, of the family Pholadidae, which bore their way into hard mud, clay, or soft rock. This habit protects them from any commercial fishery. However, many species are edible and some justify the trouble of extricating them from their burrows.
Most piddocks are large. The shell of Pholas dactylus, a European Atlantic species, may measure 15 cm (nearly 6″). The creature is luminous, to such an extent that one observer found that the immersion of a single piddock in half a pint of milk created a luminous glow sufficient to make faces recognizable in the dark; and that someone who chewed a piddock and kept it in his mouth would have luminous breath, as though breathing fire. The shape of the shells has produced some interesting local names, e.g. religieuse and bonne-sœur at Brest, where a resemblance was presumably seen to the headgear of certain nuns. Consumption of this piddock is desultory in most areas, but it has been eaten with enthusiasm in Brittany and the Channel Islands.
P. orientalis, a SE Asian species, is similar in size but black and white in coloration. It prefers burrowing into hard mud.
Of the several species on the Pacific coast of America, P. chiloensis (from the Gulf of California to Chile), is large enough (12 cm/5″) to be of interest, and snow white. The equally large wart-necked piddock, Chaceia ovoidea, whose siphons are united into a single and lengthy protuberance with flecks of hard material scattered over it like the marks on a carrot, is worth eating (not ‘warts and all’, but after removing the skin of the siphons).
In SE Asia piddocks may be boiled and eaten with sauce and rice, or sautéed with shallots, or made into a curry.
a word whose meaning has evolved in the course of many centuries and which varies to some extent according to country or even to region. Many languages lack a truly equivalent word, since pies, in the Anglo-American sense of the word, are indigenous to Europe, especially C. and N. Europe, and occur elsewhere only as introduced dishes. It is in N. America that their introduction has been most extensive.
The derivation of the word may be from magpie, shortened to ‘pie’. The explanation offered in favour of this is that the magpie collects a variety of things, and that it was an essential feature of early pies that they contained a variety of ingredients. So they did. But this aspect of the meaning has been lost, and nowadays one can have pies with only one important ingredient, e.g. the Scotch pie which contains just minced meat; a chicken pie; an apple pie, etc.
Early pies were large; but one can now apply the name to something small, as with small pork pies or mutton pies. However, shape governs usage, and terms like ‘pasty’ remain in use to distinguish things which do not have what is regarded as the correct pie shape.
Early pies had PASTRY tops; but modern pies may have a topping of something else (e.g. the mashed potato topping of SHEPHERD’S PIE or cottage pie) or even be topless (as in the USA).
If the basic concept of ‘a pie’ is taken to mean a mixture of ingredients encased and cooked in pastry, then proto-pies were made in the classical world and pies certainly figured in early Arab cookery. But these were flat affairs, since olive oil was used as the fat in the pastry and will not produce upstanding pies; pastry made with olive oil is ‘weak’ and readily slumps.
The Egyptians have some claim to the greatest pie of all time. Emerson (1908) remarks that they have always been proud of their ability to prepare very large dishes, and goes on to quote the following description by Abdallatef (or Abd el-Latif), a physician and traveller who was born at Baghdad in 1162, of a pie which he saw while travelling and studying in Egypt towards the end of the 12th century. This enormous pie was made thus:
Thirty pounds of fine flour, being kneaded with five pounds and a half of oil of sesame, and divided into two equal portions, one of these was spread upon a round tray of copper about four cubits in diameter. Upon this were placed three lambs stuffed with pounded meat fried with the oil of sesame and ground pistachio nuts and various hot aromatics, such as pepper, ginger, cinnamon, mastic, coriander-seed, cumin-seed, cardamom, and nutmeg, etc. These were then sprinkled with rose-water infused with musk; and upon the lambs, and in the remaining space, were placed twenty fowls, twenty chickens, and fifty smaller birds, some of which were baked and stuffed with eggs; some stuffed with meat, and some fried in the juice of sour grapes, or that of limes or some similar acid. To the above were added a number of small pies, some filled with meat and others with sugar and sweetmeats; and sometimes the meat of another lamb, cut into small pieces, and some filled with cheese. The whole being piled up in the form of a dome, some rose-water infused with musk and aloes-wood was sprinkled upon it; and the other half of the paste first mentioned was spread over so as to close the whole; it was then baked, wiped with a sponge, and again sprinkled with rose-water infused with musk.
However, although the calculations are difficult, it seems that this pie was outdone in size by at least two examples of the famous Denby Dale pie, a giant version of the meat and potato pie made by housewives in the industrial areas of W. Yorkshire and E. Lancashire. The giant is made only for special occasions (e.g. the Repeal of the Corn Laws Pie (1846) and the Bicentenary Pie (1988)). This last example weighed 9.03 tonnes. See Laura Mason (1996).
See also TART, which may be regarded as a sort of topless pie.
Sus scrofa, is the domesticated animal. The wild form of the species is WILD BOAR. For ‘wild pigs’, other than feral specimens of the domestic breed, see also BUSH PIG and WARTHOG. Originally, the word pig denoted the young animal, but that is now a distinction maintained only in the USA, where the adult is universally termed a hog. In England, a hog is a castrated male.
The natural habitat of wild pigs is woodland. They are omnivorous, capable of living on anything from acorns to carrion, and were no doubt attracted to the crops and refuse heaps of early farming settlements. Piglets are easily tamed, and domestication of pigs may have begun as early as that of sheep and goats (the 8th millennium BC), in the same area; the bones of domesticated pigs are found at sites from 7000 BC onwards in the ‘fertile crescent’ of SW Asia. Domestication may have taken place in the Orient at something like the same time.
Pigs are found throughout Europe and the Americas, and in many parts of Asia, but are not kept by Jews or Muslims, for whom they are unclean. They are important meat animals in China, SE Asia, and Polynesia.
The true usefulness of the pig lies in its ability to forage anything from household waste to grass, and thrive. Growing and breeding fast, it yields a substantial carcass all of which can be used, except, in the old country saying, ‘the eyes and the squeak’. For poor people in many parts of Europe and China the annual pig killing was their only real source of meat.
A certain ambivalence in attitude runs through the history of the pig. In religion it often has sinister connotations; for instance one manifestation of the Indian goddess Kali is as a black sow which consumes her young. Some peoples now refuse absolutely to touch it; but in prehistoric times, pigs were used as food animals in areas in which they are now strictly taboo. Their remains have been found at sites in Mesopotamia, where the Sumerians were keeping pigs and eating pork during the 3rd millennium BC. Similarly, pigs were used for food at the Indus Valley site of Mohenjo-Daro, disappearing after the arrival of Indo-European invaders. Egyptian peasants continued to keep pigs as late as 1350 BC, and pork was allowed as food on certain holy days. Yet only about 800 years later Herodotus remarked of the Egyptians: ‘The pig is regarded among them as an unclean animal, so much so that if a man in passing accidentally touch a pig, he instantly hurries to the river, and plunges in with all his clothes on.’ The Jews (see JEWISH DIETARY LAWS) and Muslims (see MUSLIMS AND FOOD) have shared this prohibition for many centuries, but not since the very earliest times, as archaeological remains testify.
Various attempts have been made to find a rational explanation for the institution of the pork taboo in much of the Near and Middle East. Thus some have argued that hygiene was the underlying reason (they variously point to the pig’s indiscriminate eating habits, to the fact that pork taints quite quickly in a hot climate, and to the problem of trichinosis—although this was not identified and understood until the 19th century AD). Others have suggested that economic reasons were at the root of the matter, pigs being seen as competitors with humans and with more appropriate domestic animals such as sheep and goats for limited resources. In one of the best-balanced discussions of this subject, Simoons (1994) has demonstrated the difficulties which beset these ideas and has suggested that the simplest solution is to suppose that the taboo is no more nor less than an instruction from the Supreme Being, whose commands are not susceptible to analysis.
In prehistoric Europe, pigs flourished in the woodland environment. Whether domestic pigs were introduced to Britain by early farmers or tamed from native stock is unknown; at any rate, there must have been much interbreeding between domestic and wild pigs, as they roamed the woods and were only caught when their meat was required. Under Celtic law, a herd consisted of twelve sows and a boar.
Archaeological finds show that two types of pig developed in Europe: the ‘sty’ pig, short legged and bred for keeping in small spaces; and longer-legged pigs roaming the woods with a swineherd, living on ‘pannage’ (wild foods, especially acorns and beech mast). Sty pigs were kept by the Romans, who studied their breeding, rearing, and fattening, cramming them with dried figs and honeyed wine. Pigs provided various luxury foods for Roman tables, including cured products. Hams were exported from Gaul (modern France) to Rome.
Similarly, in China, during the Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220), the pig had great status. Poorer households were encouraged to raise pigs, and pottery models of pig houses are found in tombs from this date. Butchering took place annually, just before Chinese New Year (a practice which survived until the 20th century).
Pigs continued to be important meat animals in W. Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. Country pigs lived on pannage; indeed, in the Domesday Book, woods were valued according to the number of swine they could support. In towns, pigs lived in sties, or even in people’s houses, scavenging domestic rubbish in the streets. In England, bacon was a popular food of the Anglo-Saxons. The Normans, as with cattle and sheep, appropriated the best parts of the pig, calling the meat by the French word porc, giving the English language PORK.
In Britain, pannage gradually declined and new foods were introduced for fattening, including waste from distilleries and potatoes grown for the purpose. Skimmed milk and whey were also used, and pigs were often kept by dairy farmers to consume these waste products from BUTTER- and CHEESE-making. Most people continued to keep a few pigs to provide their households with pork, BACON, and HAM, feeding them on household waste.
Pigs of Spanish, French, African, and English stock were all imported to the New World. British settlers introduced pigs to Virginia, where they adapted well. For a short time the settlers at Jamestown kept them confined on an island still known as ‘Hog Island’, eventually allowing the animals to roam freely in both country and town. They spread westwards with 19th-century settlers, and the Midwest became an important pig-farming area. Pigs were introduced to Caribbean islands by the Spanish, and escaped to become feral; on Jamaica, these ‘wild’ hogs were caught for their LARD which was sold to Cuba. Feral pigs of Spanish stock are also found in Mexico, where they are known as javalinas.
Pigs of the Chinese type have been present in Polynesia as long as humans. Sailors left pigs to breed on islands, to establish living ‘larders’ for future use.
Numerous depictions of killing and butchering pigs appear in W. European art of the 15th and 16th centuries, often as symbols of November or December in books of hours. Midwinter, when the weather was cold, was the season to kill pigs and preserve hams, bacon, sausages, and salt pork. This was the habit in much of Europe.
The poor had two general objectives in keeping pigs. The first was to rear, economically, an animal which they would kill to provide meat for the household. The second was to sell some of the meat and use the money to buy another pig and perpetuate the cycle. ‘There is no savings bank for a labourer like a pig,’ observed Samuel Sidney (Youatt, 1860), who expounded his theory of cottage pig-keeping thus: a piglet, bought for a sovereign in early summer and fed on household waste, which, when it reached adult size, was supplemented with potatoes, grains, or buttermilk to aid fattening, was killed at Christmas. ‘The hams he can sell to buy another pig, and the rest will remain for his own consumption, without seeming to have cost anything.’
Pig-killing entailed much excitement, hard work, and a welcome feast. Flora Thompson (1945) describes the killing (which in her village always took place at night, since the ‘pig sticker’ was a thatcher by day) as ‘a noisy, bloody business’.
After the pig had been bled, it was scalded or singed to loosen the bristles, which were scraped off. The offal was removed, and, said Cobbett, ‘if the wife be not a slattern, here, in the mere offal, in the garbage, there is food and delicate food too, for a large family for a week; and hog’s puddings for the children … The butcher, the next day, cuts the hog up; and then the house is filled with meat! Souse, griskins, blade-bones, thigh-bones, spare-ribs, chines, belly-pieces, cheeks, all coming into use one after the other, and the last of the latter not before the end of about four or five weeks.’ The pig was cut so that two sides of pork, flitches, remained; these were cured for bacon.
Pig-killing remained an event in the English countryside as late as the Second World War, and is still important in parts of continental Europe. The pannage system is also still used in some parts of Spain and Portugal, where the lean Iberian pig feeds in woods and produces a particularly fine kind of ham.
The Iberian pig mentioned above is an interesting example of an ancient breed (perhaps descended from the original Mediterranean wild boar) which has survived into modern time and is prized for its characteristics.
The origins of breeds of pig further north in Europe are less clear, and few can claim great antiquity. In 18th-century Britain, pigs, like other domestic livestock, attracted the attentions of agricultural improvers. Two distinct types of pig existed at that time: a small foraging type, principally found in Scotland, and a larger, lop-eared English type which had developed into several breeds. These shared the general characteristics of being long in the leg and body, covered in wiry hair, and slow to fatten; similar pigs roamed in France and Germany, still kept at pannage with a swineherd. For crossing with English stock, the Neapolitan pig from Italy, dark, almost hairless, and swift to fatten, and the Chinese pig, which was small, quick maturing, and light boned, were used.
Pigs have been bred to be fat or meaty, heavy or light, according to changing requirements at different periods. Two hundred years ago, pigs were fat and heavy on sturdy legs. At the end of the 20th century, the trend is towards lean animals.
British breeds which evolved from 18th- and 19th-century experiments were divided into white pigs, ‘large’, ‘middle’, or ‘small’ in size, named according to their county of origin, Yorkshire or Cumberland; and black pigs, of middle or small size, which were the Berkshire and the Essex. The similar Wessex pig evolved in the late 19th century, and the two were crossed to produce the British Saddleback, black pigs with white belt. Distinct breeds of white pig also evolved in Cornwall and Wales. Finally, there were red pigs, represented by the Tamworth, covered with ginger bristles, a hardy but slow-maturing pig.
Essex pigs were exported to the USA in the early 19th century and gave rise to the Hampshire breed. Other notable USA breeds are the Duroc, a red breed from New Jersey, and the Poland China from Ohio. In Denmark, native Landrace pigs and imported British stock were used as the basis of the Danish bacon industry during the latter half of the 19th century. This was scientifically developed to serve as a profitable by-product of the Danish dairy industry (itself producing butter for Britain); the pigs were fed on the excess skim milk. The Landrace was intensively selected for leanness and length of body specifically for bacon production. The basic difference between pigs destined for pork and those for bacon is the weight at which they are killed; bacon pigs are much larger.
In China, because of the topography and climatic variability, many different breeds exist, from those adapted to the cold and high altitudes of the Tibetan plateau to the roly-poly pigs of the subtropics. Various types have specific uses for products such as pork, salt pork, lard (which, used as a frying medium, is more important than the meat in some areas), and ham (especially in Yunnan).
READING:
a term largely interchangeable with dove, although usually referring to the larger species of bird in the genus Columba, while dove is more commonly used of the smaller ones in that genus and in the genus Streptopelia. All are plump birds which make characteristic cooing noises.
There are numerous species around the world. Of those commonly found in Europe, the woodpigeon, Columba palumbus, is the largest (up to 40 cm/16″) and the best to eat. It used to be called ring dove, for the clasp of white feathers on its neck. Its range, including the subspecies, extends to N. India and N. Africa.
The stock dove, C. oenas, and the rock dove, C. livia, enjoy less esteem as table birds. The latter is the ancestor of domestic pigeons, and all those semi-tame pigeons which throng European cities.
The turtle dove, Streptopelia turtur, is smaller than the others and has the most melodious song.
A squab (pigeonneau in French) is a young pigeon—and among the most expensive meats available in French restaurants and poulterers. The dish called squab pie is a pigeon pie (although the name is occasionally applied to a different pie, of mutton or pork—Devonshire squab pie is a pie containing mutton cutlets and apple). If a pie is to be made of older pigeons, and a really filling dish is required, the recipe given by Dorothy Hartley (1954) for Pigeon Pie with Dumpling Crust (‘very substantial’) is appropriate.
It is in Egypt that the arts of raising and cooking pigeons have been most developed, though the vast numbers of dovecotes throughout Europe shows how great was their value as a ready source of meat in these countries. Indeed, the depredations of the seigneurial pigeons were a frequent source of conflict between landlord and tenant until quite recent times. Generally speaking, pigeons may be treated like small chickens. Their breasts need to be protected with strips of bacon or the like if they are grilled or roasted.
Cajanus cajan, a LEGUME which is probably native to tropical Africa, although India is the centre of diversity. Wherever it originated, it is now grown throughout the tropical regions of the world. Its resistance to drought and its generally hardy nature make it suitable for being grown on poor land by small farmers.
The botanical name comes from kacang, the Malay word for a pea or bean of any kind.
Over 90% of the world crop of the pigeon pea is produced in India, and it is there that it has most importance as food. Some seeds are consumed as green peas, but most are turned into DAL (split pulse). More dal is made from pigeon peas than from any other legume except channa (CHICKPEA).
The Indians distinguish two main varieties, var flavus and var bicolor. The former is known as tur (also rendered as tuar, tuvar, etc.) and the latter as arhar. Old Sanskrit names for the pigeon pea are tuvari and adhaki so it seems likely that the distinction is of long standing. Tur plants are relatively small, mature quickly, have yellow flowers, and bear pods containing only a few light-coloured seeds. They are usually grown as annuals. Arhar types, which are larger and grow further north, take longer to mature but bear heavier crops and are perennials. They have flower petals with red stripes, and maroon pods containing four or five darker or mottled seeds. These are referred to as red gram.
The distinction between the two varieties is maintained in the W. Indies, where tur is called gungo or Congo pea and arhar is no-eye pea. The name Congo pea may be a distortion of gungo, adopted because the pigeon pea was taken to the W. Indies from Africa. The crop is now called pois de Congo and ervilha do Congo respectively in French- and Portuguese-speaking countries of non-equatorial Africa.
Pigeon peas have a slightly acrid taste, which resides mainly in the seed coat. Removing this improves the flavour.
In W. Africa, as in India, the immature green seeds are sometimes eaten as peas, or the whole young pods cooked like green beans. Ripe seeds are soaked and then boiled, after which they are used in e.g. soups.
a name applied to certain true nuts, especially one of the HICKORY NUTS; but also to some edible, tuberous roots with a resemblance to nuts (see CHUFA; JOJOBA).
In Britain the name is applied to the nutlike tubers on the roots of the N. European herb Conopodium majus. These are about the size of a chestnut and can be peeled and eaten raw, or cooked; but, although many authors refer to schoolchildren eating them, there is little evidence of this now.
a name commonly applied to various plants, normally for the obvious reason that pigs eat them even if human beings do not.
In Australia the name has been used for wild PURSLANE. In N. America it has applied to various species of GOOSE-FOOT, but especially Chenopodium album (see FAT HEN). Elsewhere in the Americas it is one of the names used for EPAZOTE.
Esox lucius, a freshwater fish of circumpolar distribution in the northern hemisphere. A voracious carnivore, it lives among the marginal vegetation of lowland rivers and lakes and attains a considerable size; females, which grow larger than males, may reach 1.5 m (60″) and a weight of around 35 kg (84 lb) in continental Europe. The body is greenish-brown with speckles or curved lines of lighter green.
The pike is prized as a game fish—the larger the better—and as food, when those of medium size are preferred. A pleasant passage in A Description of the River Thames etc. (1758) tells us that:
The great Lord Bacon, in his History of Life and Death, observes the Pike to be the longest lived of any of the fresh Water Fish, and yet he computes his Age not to be usually above Forty Years; others think it not to be above Ten Years. It is observed, that the very old and great Pike have in them more of Grandeur than Goodness; the smaller, especially the middle sized, being esteemed the best meat, and the thicker, the firmer is the Flesh.
Modern scientists would say that Lord Bacon was closer to the truth than the ‘others’ on age; a pike over 30 years old has been recorded.
Smaller members of the genus in N. America are known as little pickerel. The chain pickerel (with black, chainlike, markings on its sides), Esox niger, is larger. It has a patchy distribution across the USA, tending to occupy regions where the pike is absent. Although it has value as a game fish, it is outclassed by a far larger member of the genus, the muskellunge (maskinonge in Canada), E. masquinongy, of which the principal subspecies inhabits the Great Lakes region.
The Amur pike, E. reichertii, is an important food fish in what was the eastern part of the Soviet Union. For the fish often called pike-perch, see ZANDER.
nowadays, in England, a yeasted PANCAKE with a holey surface, like a thin CRUMPET cooked without a containing ring. This has probably always been the main use of the word; but in some parts of England, it is applied to other yeast-raised, griddle-baked products (including MUFFINS).
The name pikelet, which only appeared in print at the end of the 18th century, is thought to have come from a W. Midlands corruption of the Welsh term bara pyglyd, ‘pitchy bread’, breadcakes formed from a leavened batter of flour and milk and baked on the GRIDDLE.
In Australia and New Zealand, pikelet means a DROP SCONE.
Laura Mason
or pilau, a Middle Eastern method of cooking rice so that every grain remains separate, and the name of the resulting dish. Usually a flavouring such as meat (usually lamb) or vegetables is cooked along with it, but plain rice, known as sade pilav (Turkish), ruzz mufalfal (Arabic), or chelo (Farsi), can also be cooked by this technique.
The word comes from the medieval Farsi pulaw, now pronounced polo. Most European languages have borrowed the Turkish form pilav, which is clearly related to the Russian and C. Asian plov (a term which coexists in the C. Asian Republics with palaw). Since the word has no credible Persian etymology, it might be Indian. However, there is no evidence that rice was cooked by this technique in India before the Muslim invasions, and Indians themselves associate pilaf-making with Muslim cities such as Hyderabad, Lucknow, and Delhi.
In order for the rice to cook as perfectly separate grains, it is very thoroughly washed of all surface starch, often even soaked all night. Then it is cooked in an open pot until nearly done, whereupon the fire is reduced and the pot is covered, and the rice is steamed for half an hour or longer. Careful cooks place a cloth over the pot before putting on the lid to protect the rice from drops of condensed steam, which would spoil the fluffy texture (the same technique used in Ireland to ensure mealy potatoes).
The first descriptions of the pilaf technique appear in the 13th-century Arabic books Kitab al-Tabikh and Kitab al-Wusla ila al Habib, written in Baghdad and Syria, respectively. They show the technique in its entirety, including the cloth beneath the lid, and describe still-current flavourings such as meat, pulses, and fruit. The Arab name, ruzz mufalfal, means ‘peppered rice’, but not with any implication that it is flavoured with pepper. The 13th-century recipes say to cook the rice ‘until it is mufalfal’, showing that the word refers to the appearance of the rice, plumped up in grains as separate as peppercorns. The pilaf technique is not mentioned in the 10th-century Arabic recipe collection, so presumably it spread in the Near East after the 10th century, and possibly as late as the 12th, because it is also unknown to the 13th-century Arabic books written in Spain and N. Africa.
One of the oldest recipes is qabuli pulaw, which means ‘hospitality pilaf’. The original recipe is said to have been just meat and chickpeas, but almonds and raisins are found in most recipes today, from the Afghan Qabuli palaw to the Albanian Kabuni. There is also an Indonesian dish of chicken with rice cooked in its broth called Nasi kebuli, but it is not cooked by the pilaf method.
In Iran, the rice is removed from the pot and drained after its first cooking. Butter is then melted in the pot; sometimes bread or eggs (and often yoghurt) mixed with onions join the butter. The cooked rice is sprinkled over this, and the flavouring, usually a stew of meat with vegetables, fruit, or pulses, is added with the rice to steam along with it. The aim of this procedure is a golden brown crust called tah dig (literally the ‘bottom of the pot’), which is highly relished, and ceremoniously offered to guests. A sort of tea is sometimes made by steeping tah dig. Curiously, given the cult of this crust in contemporary Iran, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, tah dig is not mentioned in the dozens of pulaw recipes given in the 16th-century Persian books Karnameh dar Bab-e Tebakhi and Maddet ol Hayat. The 16th-century recipes already show the Persian taste for elegant and imaginative fruit-flavoured pilafs, such as quince, barberry, sour cherry, pomegranate, and mulberry.
The C. Asian palaw (plov) is heartier and less elegant. According to the canonical recipe, a stew (zirwak, from the medieval Persian zirbag: ‘that which is cooked underneath’) is cooked in the cauldron-like pot qazan. When it is done, the soaked rice is sprinkled over it, covered with water to the depth of one finger joint, and boiled and finally steamed as usual. The stew always contains meat, onions, and the stubby yellow local carrot, which may be augmented with other ingredients such as pulses, vegetables, or dried fruits, but rarely are the added flavourings as flamboyant as one finds in a Persian or Indian pilaf. C. Asia is alone among pilaf-making regions in preferring short-grain rice.
In C. Asia, palaw is traditionally cooked by men, and burners for qazans are often provided at outdoor teahouses (chaikhanas), where parties of men sometimes even organize palaw contests. The dish is common at any meal, and essential for a banquet. The palaw-masters who cook for Uzbek weddings use gigantic qazans a metre and a half in diameter, because the ideal guest list for a wedding party is yetti mahalla, ‘seven neighborhoods’.
In India pulao is associated with the cookery of the Moghul courts (see MOGHUL CUISINE) and extremely elaborate recipes with flowery Persian names (such as Hazar pasand, thousand delights) are current. The flavourings are such things as whole game birds, the yogurt- and cream-enriched stews called KORMA, and many combinations of fruits and nuts. Much about the spicy and extravagant flavourings may be characteristically Indian, but the pilaf cooking method contrasts with the local traditions of S. India, where the recipes do not aim at keeping the grains of rice separate. The typical indigenous rice dishes are porridges, puddings, and cakes made from ground rice.
There are some elaborate pilafs in Turkey, such as perde pilav, cooked with chicken, carrots, almonds, and currants and finally covered in FILO pastry and baked, and the C. Asian meat-and-carrot recipe (Buhara pilavi) is known. But these are not characteristic. In modern Turkey pilav is essentially a side dish, accompanying meat but not usually incorporating it. The common flavourings are pulses and vegetables (very often including the tomato, elsewhere in Asia quite rare in pilaf). The usual recipe is to cook the rice and any other ingredients together and then cover and steam, meaning that a Turkish cook must estimate how much liquid the rice will absorb more carefully than other pilaf cooks. The Turks are practically alone among Asian pilaf-makers in using fish and shellfish in pilaf, and, like their immediate neighbours the Syrians and Armenians, often make pilaf using bulgur wheat (see BURGHUL) instead of rice.
In the last 200 years, an interesting new school of pilaf has grown up in the Caribbean, based on the recipes brought by Indian labourers and merchants but much altered by the European and African culinary traditions of the region. A Caribbean pilaf may incorporate pork or bacon (unthinkable in the Muslim world), Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, and olives or peanuts.
Charles Perry
the best known and commercially the most important of a group of nuts borne by trees of the genus Canarium. Most of these grow in or near SE Asia. Wild trees have three kernels in the stone. In the trees which are cultivated for their nuts, only one kernel develops, providing a large nut. Some species are grown for their edible fruits, but these are less important.
Pili nuts proper come from C. ovatum, native to the Philippines where ‘pili’ is the local name. They are rarely cultivated, but are an important food for Filipinos, who have a near monopoly in processed pili products. Production is centred in the Bicol region. They have also been introduced elsewhere in SE Asia and to C. America.
The entire nut with its shell is almond shaped, slender, pointed, and up to 6 cm (2.5″) long. The shell is thick and hard to crack. The kernel is seldom more than 2.5 cm (1″) long. It has the highest oil content of any nut (well over 70%), and a texture and flavour not unlike that of an almond but considered by some to be better. Doreen Fernandez (1997) has described uses as follows:
The nut is tender and crisp, its flavor mild and nutty. Most people know it only in the ways Bicolanos prepare it and sell it outside the region: nuts toasted, or toasted and salted, or fried, or sugar-coated or glazed; pastillas de pili; turrones de pili, mazapan de pili, suspiros de pili; pili brittle, chocolate-covered pili candy, sugar-coated candy with sesame seeds.
Bicolanos, however, also like the pulp, boiled and seasoned with salt, pepper, or patis [fish sauce], and the young shoots in salads. They also extract oil from the nut and use it for cooking.
In Malaysia and Indonesia C. commune (formerly C. indicum), the Java almond or kenari nut, is the most important species. It is native to the Moluccas, from which the name ‘kenari’, now used throughout these countries, originates. It reached Java through local enterprise before the 17th century, and in the 18th the British took it on to the Malay peninsula. It is now also cultivated in Sri Lanka where its name is kekuna and in the Pacific islands, where it is called galip nut in Papua New Guinea and ngali in the Solomons. The kernel is similar to that of the pili nut, but smaller. It has an equally high oil content and delicate flavour, and is used in similar ways, especially in baked goods and for cooking oil. Its flavour has been likened to a cross between a BRAZIL NUT and a MACADAMIA NUT.
The chief Canarium species cultivated for its fruit is C. album, grown in S. China and Indo-China. The sour, bitter, oily fruit, which is rather similar to pickled olive, is known as Chinese olive, or kan lan in China; it has been used there, sometimes preserved in honey, since at least the T’ang dynasty (AD 618–907), and valued as a breath freshener.
Naucrates ductor, a cosmopolitan fish of tropical and sub-tropical waters which wears six or seven broad black vertical bands on its silver sides and has a maximum length of 60 cm (24″). This fish takes its name from its habit of accompanying ships, and large sea creatures such as sea turtles and sharks, as though piloting them. Wheeler (1979) writes:
The association has not been explained satisfactorily; amongst the suggestions advanced are shelter in the shade of the larger object, increased possibilities for foraging on waste scraps from meals, and even the shark’s excrement. It is possible too that the pilot fish acts as a cleaner of parasites from its host. In any event the bond is evidently a strong one for Naucrates have accompanied turtles wandering as far as the inhospitably cold waters of England, far outside their normal range.
Pilotfish are not found in many fish markets. The Balearic Islands and Malta are two regions where they are obtainable. Their white flesh is suitable for grilling.
In its natural state pineapple contains bromelin, an enzyme which breaks down protein. It is similar to the enzyme papain (made from PAPAYA), which is used commercially as a meat tenderizer. The enzyme in the pineapple is so abundant and powerful that plantation and cannery workers have to wear rubber gloves to avoid their hands being eaten away. Meat marinated in fresh pineapple juice is not merely tenderized but likely to fall apart. Its activity is also responsible for the fact that a JELLY made with fresh pineapple juice and GELATIN will not set unless a gelling agent such as AGAR-AGAR is added. Bromelin is quickly destroyed by heating, so cooked or canned pineapple and juice have no active effect.
also pili-pili and piri-piri, terms belonging originally to Africa, especially Mozambique (see ANGOLA AND MOZAMBIQUE), which refer to a small hot CHILLI pepper or to sauce or other preparation made from such peppers.
In francophone countries the versions with an ‘l’ are usual; the spelling piri-piri seems to belong rather to Portuguese-speaking countries.
Dishes which incorporate in their names any of these terms are likely to be very hot.
is a name used for ALLSPICE and Jamaica pepper. Ayto (1993) explains that:
Latin pigmentum meant first and foremost ‘colouring matter’ (it has given English pigment). But it also came to be used for a ‘spiced drink’ (English borrowed it with this meaning too, in the 13th century, in the form of piment), hence for any ‘spice’ and in particular for ‘pepper’. From the Latin root was descended Spanish pimiento ‘pepper’, which was borrowed into English in the 17th century as pimento and used first for ‘cayenne pepper’, then for ‘allspice’ and, most recently (in the twentieth century), as a synonym of pimiento. Pimiento is another name for the red sweet pepper or bell pepper (Capsicum annuum) and also denotes the slivers of red pepper marinated in oil which are used for stuffing olives.
Helen Saberi
Ananas comosus, a tropical fruit of impressive appearance and attractive flavour, now grown in hot regions all round the world. The main producers are Hawaii and Malaysia. The bulk of the crop goes for canning.
This is a composite fruit formed of 100–200 berry-like fruitlets fused together, giving its outside a tessellated appearance. It grows on a short stem springing from a low plant with large swordlike leaves, small versions of which form the crown of the fruit. Fruits of normal size (there are miniature forms) average about 15 cm (6″). Weight ranges from around 1 or 2 kg (2 to 5 lb) to an extreme of 10 kg (over 20 lb); but only the Giant Kew variety reaches this extreme.
The original home of the pineapple was the lowlands of Brazil, where several Ananas species grow wild. Some of these bear edible but seedy fruits. No primitive form of the modern pineapple, which is almost invariably seedless, has been found, and the evolution of the fruit we know remains a mystery; but cultivation had certainly spread from Brazil to the W. Indies before the Europeans arrived. Despite being seedless, the plant is easily propagated by cuttings which may be taken from several places on the plant, including the crown of the fruit, and which remain viable for a long time even if they become dry.
In 1493 Columbus’ expedition discovered the pineapple on Guadeloupe, and were astonished and delighted by its qualities. Later explorers were equally struck by what Sir Walter Ralegh called ‘the princesse of fruits’. As Columbus returned to Spain, he brought with him a load of pineapples, all of which had perished by the time he made land save one, which he presented to King Ferdinand, his sponsor. The royal reaction was immediate and positive, although when a fruit was presented to his successor, the Emperor Charles V (reigned 1519–29), he refused, with characteristic hesitancy, to touch it. Most people were more enthusiastic in their response, and pineapple cultivation spread quickly throughout the tropics. The main influence was that of the Portuguese sailors who traded to and from Brazil. This is why in most languages the word for the fruit is descended from the Brazilian Tupi Indian word nana or anana (excellent fruit), and not from the name pina (pine cone) which its first Spanish discoverers gave it because of its appearance. This double naming has given rise to some spectacular misunderstandings by culinary historians. Until the end of the 17th century, most mentions in English cookery books of ‘pine apples’ referred in fact to pine kernels. The enthusiasm with which early documentary references to ‘pine apples’ have been greeted as indisputable proof of adoption of the fruit by Tudor fashionistas is thus entirely misplaced.
By the middle of the 16th century the pineapple was being grown in India, and not long afterwards it had reached Java and China. But it was much later, in 1777, that the fruit was introduced to Pacific islands by Captain Cook.
Europeans, meanwhile, were captivated by the fruit but Beauman (2005) makes clear that they were unable to grow it from scratch until the Dutch had developed hothouses with hot beds in the 1680s. The first to be grown from a cutting in England was by a Dutch gardener, Henry Telende, for Sir Matthew Decker in Richmond, Surrey, in about 1714. Earlier examples, such as that produced by John Rose for Charles II in 1661, were merely whole plants brought from the W. Indies and ripened in England. The celebrated and mysterious painting of Rose presenting the fruit to the King alludes to his achievements with at least two pots containing young pineapple plants. Charles is said to have consumed it with relish, showing better judgement than his Spanish namesake. Fashionable enthusiasm for pineapples can be seen in the frequency with which they appear as a decorative motif in the buildings and furniture of the next hundred years.
Hothouse cultivation of pineapples as an expensive luxury continued in several European countries into the 19th century, and was developed into a fine art by the great Victorian gardeners of the 19th century in England. But when the varieties which they developed (Cayenne and Queen) were introduced to the Azores, which were just near enough for the perishable cargo to survive the voyage to W. Europe, the reason for hothouse cultivation disappeared.
Pineapple canning began in Hawaii in 1892 and in Malaya/Singapore at about the same time. It is now a big industry. It also became possible to send fresh pineapples for considerable, but limited, distances in refrigerated ships.
Of the main varieties grown for eating fresh the two listed first are long-established ones, both of which are also used by canners:
In recent years several small varieties, whose core is edible, have come on the market.
A pineapple, unlike many other fruits, does not continue to ripen or sweeten after picking, since it has no reserve of starch to be converted into sugar. On the contrary, it will start gradually to deteriorate; and, at best, may be stored for no more than 4–6 weeks. So the trade in fresh pineapples, other than those consumed locally or exported by air, is a matter of nice calculation; fully ripe fruit cannot be used, but the fruits picked must be as near ripe as possible.
A fully ripe pineapple can be identified by pulling out a leaf from the crown; it will come away fairly easily. The smell should be pleasantly aromatic, not suggestive of incipient fermentation. When pineapple is canned, the fruit is trimmed severely to make the rings fit the can, and also to ensure that no little bits of skin are left in the flesh. The offcuts are used for juice. The harder core is also removed, and may be made into candied pineapple.
Another pineapple product is the jelly-like NATA made in Latin America by bacterial fermentation of the trimmings. Vinegar is sometimes made from cannery waste.
See also CANNED FOODS.
(or pi ñon, pinyon, pignolia) the names applied to the small edible seeds of many species of pine tree.
The finest pine nuts, which are most in demand for Arab, Spanish, and other dishes and confections, belong to the genus Pinus and to the northern hemisphere. Evidence of their use in the Middle East goes back to biblical times. The Mediterranean stone pine, P. pinea, grows at quite low altitudes, as anyone familiar with the landscapes of Provence, Italy, and the Middle East will be aware. Its nuts, imported to the USA, are the second most expensive nut on the market there, after the MACADAMIA NUT and in front of the PISTACHIO.
However, the pine nut trees of N. America are important too; the most important are Pinus edulis, P. monophylla, and the Mexican pinyon, P. cembroides. Lanner (1981) gives a masterly account of the first two, including history, distribution, and uses; but his book has a wider scope, since it offers an explanation of how in the course of 180 million years the original tall pines of N. Asia arrived as little desert trees in Mexico and the south-west of the USA. He also provides an illuminating account of how the piñon tree and a bird, the piñon jay, aid each other’s survival, and indeed evolutionary progress. The nuts have no seed wings, with which to travel, and are not viable if they simply drop to the ground. The jay is an intelligent bird which harvests the nuts and stores them under the surface of the soil in a manner which permits those which it does not eat to germinate. The other side of the coin is that the jay is dependent on the nuts for food, and also for the stimulation of its courtship and mating procedures.
Pine nut trees have also evolved closer to the area where the first pines grew. P. cembra, the Swiss stone pine, has a range which extends eastwards from the Alps; and P. gerardiana is a native of the Himalayas. P. koraiensis bears nuts in Korea, as its name indicates, and in the north of Japan and China. The Chinese export its nuts, which cost less than the European ones.
The best pine nuts are of high value, but are difficult to cultivate commercially. As Woodroof (1979) puts it, the trees ‘grow only under conditions that defy cultivation, fertilization, irrigation, and all kinds of mechanical spraying, harvesting and shelling. All operations are done by hand, in competition with rats, birds and insects.’ This is still true for many species and regions.
Most pine nuts are sweet, with an attractive flavour and good nutritional and keeping qualities. The European nuts contain about 30% protein, of an easily digestible kind; American ones have less protein and more oil. The size is variable; 1,500 to the pound weight is normal in New Mexico and Arizona, but pine nuts of the southern hemisphere tend to be larger.
Spanish explorers in the 16th century found American Indians making meal from the nuts, besides eating them raw or roasted. They also mashed them up to make a nut butter, or for soups. The pattern continues. Some pine nuts are still eaten out of hand, raw or roasted, but most are used as ingredients in cooking, especially in the Middle East and the Mediterranean region. They make a good ingredient for stuffings, both savoury and sweet. The famous PESTO of Genoa cannot be made without them. Many sweet confections incorporate them; and the Tunisians, for example, add a few to their glasses of mint tea.
A product called pine milk is prepared by adding a little water to the kernels and pressing them. This keeps well and provides a fair substitute for meat in the diet.
The Araucaria pines, trees of the southern hemisphere, also bear edible nuts, e.g. A. bidwillii, the bunya-bunya pine of Queensland; A. araucana, the Chile pine or monkey-puzzle tree; and A. augustifolia, the para pine of Brazil.
See also KEDROUVIE NUT.
a meal (flour) made from the seeds of certain wild and cultivated plants, including parched MAIZE. The meal, which can be eaten dry or mixed with water to make a mush, was used by the Indians of Mexico and the south-western USA. Pinole made with CHIA seed is still famous in Mexico and was described by one author as ‘the staff of life of the common people’. The bean of the MESQUITE tree is also made into pinole, and so are MADIA seeds.
Anas acuta, a surface-feeding duck with a slender long neck and pointed tail. The average length of the male is 66 cm (26″). It is one of the most widely distributed and possibly the most abundant (but not in Britain) of all the Old World migratory ducks. It is one of the best for eating, for despite its maritime habitat, much of its feeding is on fresh water.
Being so widely distributed, the pintail is called by a number of different names both in the British Isles and in America (e.g. sea pheasant, cracker, lady-bird, Harlan).
A related species, Anas spinicauda (known as Chilean, brown, or South American pintail), is among the commonest ducks of S. America, and one of the chief game birds in Argentina.
Amphidesma australe, a common edible BIVALVE of New Zealand. It is related to but smaller than the TOHEROA and TUATUA, and has smooth oval shells measuring up to 8 cm (3″) across. It is widely consumed, although less esteemed than the New Zealand ‘cockle’ (see VENUS SHELLS) which often occurs on the same sandy shores, but lower down.
The name pipi (alternatively ugari) is also used in E. and S. Australia for Plebidonax deltoides, a kind of WEDGE SHELL which reaches a length of 5–6 cm (2″).
the Russian word for PIE, together with its diminutive pirozhki (plural), comes from the word pir (meaning feast) and denotes something which, in the words of Darra Goldstein (1983):
is as ubiquitous in Russian life as it is in literature. Street corners are dotted with hawkers selling their pies hot from portable ovens; cafés offer meat pies along with bowls of soup. The importance of the pirog cannot be underestimated: in one of Gogol’s Dikanka tales the narrator is alarmed to find that his wife has made off with half the pages of his book to use as baking paper for her pies, which, he confesses, are indeed the tastiest around.
The practice of enclosing all sorts of fillings, both savory and sweet, in an envelope of dough is an old one, and very characteristic of the Russian cuisine. The pies range from the complex and extravagant (the many-layered salmon kulebyaka, for instance) to the simple and plain (deep-fried half-moons of dough stuffed with leftovers). The large pies are called pirogi. They are usually square or rectangular in shape. Their diminutive cousins, the pirozhki, are pocket-sized and oval. All can be made from a variety of doughs—yeast, short or flaky pastry—depending on which suits the filling best.
Pirozhki (pierogi in Poland) come in a variety of shapes including small half-moons, and may be either fried or baked. They are a popular accompaniment to soups, especially clear broths and BORSHCH, or as part of ZAKUSKI.
Pyshki and ponchki, ‘crisp-fried little patties with their endearing diminutive names’, as Lesley Chamberlain (1983) says:
are made with the same raised dough used for pirozhki and using any of the fillings, but are always deep-fried and in the form of a square of dough containing a small quantity of stuffing …. Pyshki should be swollen, well browned and as light as air. Those filled with brains are considered the lightest and most delicate.
Helen Saberi
Tivela stultorum, one of the best-known and most highly prized edible BIVALVES of the Pacific coast of N. America, occurs only in California. Its shells are triangular in shape; large, measuring up to 18 cm (7″) across; and so thick that a big specimen can weigh almost 2 kg (4.25 lb); varying in colour ‘from pale buckskin to deep chocolate’; and with a varnished appearance.
The clam takes its name from Pismo Beach. There, and at Moro Bay and in part of Monterey Bay, it is most abundant. Its preferred habitat is the intertidal zone of a flat sandy beach exposed to the Pacific surf. Its range does not extend beyond California.
Although a Pismo clam may lay 75 million eggs in one spawning season, very few of these survive and the tendency has been for the population to diminish under the impact of a heavy fishery, an impact which has for some time been ameliorated by various protection measures.
Weymouth (1920) describes the traditional procedure for digging:
At low tide the clam digger, in old clothes, slicker coat and pants and ‘sou’wester’ and armed with a potato fork, wades out to the [sand] bars. Here, he ‘feels’ for the clams, thrusting the fork into the sand very much as in spading with a spading fork and when a shell is struck it is lifted out. As the beaches are pure sand with very seldom a dead shell or stone, anything struck is pretty sure to be a clam. In order to leave the hands free, the clams are carried in a sack fastened to the belt or over the shoulder, or what is now more common, a long netted bag or ‘drag’ with a light wooden hoop to hold the mouth open. This is usually fastened to the belt with a ‘snap’ as there often arise occasions where fifty to eighty pounds of clams are a distinct embarrassment and must be quickly cast off … it is not uncommon to see the combers break over the shoulder or even the head of the digger, although at other times he may be only waist deep.
The Pismo clam belongs to the family Veneridae, as do other clams or cockles of the same region, such as the WASHINGTON CLAM.
Most Pismo clams finish up in city restaurants, where they are a popular dish; in chowders, fritters, or baked in the half-shell.
Pistacia vera, a small tree native to Afghanistan, bears nuts which have for long been highly prized. The species was introduced to the Levant, Turkey and Greece after the campaigns of Alexander the Great (d. 323 BC), and to Italy and Spain soon after.
The genus Pistacia also includes the trees which produce MASTIC (an edible resin) and the terebinth tree (P. terebinthus). These trees bear small fruits whose seeds (nuts) were used as food in the E. Mediterranean and Iran as early as 7000 BC. They were familiar to ancient Mesopotamia, and the classical Greeks regarded them as a typical food of the imperial Persians. The seeds are still sometimes eaten and are the source of an edible oil. They have a resinous flavour of which there is also a trace in some varieties of P. vera, especially wild trees.
Cultivation of pistachios in the Old World now takes place mainly in Iran; countries such as Syria in the Middle East; S. Europe, from Turkey to Spain; and N. Africa. Crops are also gathered from wild trees in other countries, such as Afghanistan.
Cultivation began to be important in California in the 1950s, after the introduction of the cultivar Kerman, named after a district in Iran, but was only developed on a large scale in the 1970s. Australians grow pistachios on a smaller scale in Victoria, using the Kerman variety or an Australian selection, Sirora.
The pistachio tree generally produces a good crop only in alternate years. The nut is the kernel of the stone of a small, dry fruit which looks rather like an olive and grows in clusters. When the fruit is ripe, the shell usually gapes open at one end to expose the kernel, a condition which in Iran is termed khandan (laughing).
The kernel, which is about 15 mm (0.5″) long in cultivated nuts, is unique among nuts in being green, not just on the surface but all through. The green is due to the presence of chlorophyll, and varieties of pistachio differ markedly in this respect. Some kernels are more yellow than green, and some ivory. The dark green are the most highly valued. The shell of the nut is not green, but reddish. In the USA it is customary to dye imported nuts properly red, to mask blemishes and make them more attractive. But Californian pistachios, which are harvested and processed by more sophisticated means, are usually unblemished and left undyed.
The pistachio, with its unique colour and mild but distinctive flavour, has always been a luxury, costing three or four times as much as other nuts. It is generally eaten roasted and salted as a dessert nut. In cooking it is often used as a garnish or decoration, both in sweet and in savoury dishes. For example, it figures in some of the finest PILAF dishes and in European PÂTÉS and BRAWNS which are served in slices, so that the nuts appear as attractive green specks or slivers.
Pistachio ice cream is a beautiful green colour and, if made with genuine pistachio nuts, necessarily expensive. The green part of a correctly prepared CASSATA is made with pistachios.
or Surinam cherry the fruit of Eugenia uniflora, native to a region extending from C. America to S. Brazil. The shrub, or small tree, bears flowers singly or in groups of up to four, and these produce ribbed fruits up to 4 cm (1.5″) wide, progressing in colour from green to orange to crimson and dark purple when ripe.
A number of cultivars have been developed, yielding delicious fruits with juicy, aromatic flesh. They are eaten out of hand or made into jams and jellies etc. Unripe fruits can be made into chutneys and in Brazil the juice is fermented to produce a vinegar.
the Spanish name for the fruit of Hylocereus undatus and some other closely related cacti, is spelled in various ways and sometimes acccompanied by an epithet (e.g. pitahaya roja or blanca in Mexico and pitahaya de cardón in Guatemala). In English the fruit may be called ‘strawberry pear’ or, more recently, ‘dragon fruit’.
The cacti bearing these fruits are indigenous to C. America, but are now cultivated also in the W. Indies, Florida, and the tropical regions of the Old World.
The oval fruit, up to 10 cm (4″) long, may be bright red/crimson, peach coloured, or yellow. The pulp, which is sweet, usually white, and juicy, contains numerous tiny black seeds which give the impression of being scattered at random through it and which are eaten with it.
The juice makes a refreshing beverage. The fruit can be cut in half and chilled, then eaten with a spoon; the pulp is very faintly sweet, but so unassertive in flavour that the most favourable epithet which can be given to it is ‘refreshing’. A syrup made from the fruit is used to colour confectionery.
READING:
the Israeli and western name for the Arab BREAD called khubzʿadi (‘ordinary bread’) or names meaning ‘Arab, Egyptian, Syrian bread’ or kumaj (a Turkish loanword properly meaning a bread cooked in ashes), baked in a brick bread oven. It is a slightly leavened wheat bread, flat, either round or oval, and variable in size. Typically the bread puffs up in baking leaving it hollow inside like an empty pocket, making it particularly suitable for stuffing to form a sandwich. The bread has a soft chewy crust and its interior is relatively absorbent.
The name has a common origin with PIZZA (see the next entry). In the early centuries of our era, the traditional Greek word for a thin flat bread or cake, plakous, had become the name of a thicker cake. The new word that came into use for flat bread was pitta, literally ‘pitch’, doubtless because pine pitch naturally forms flat layers which many languages compare to cakes or breads (English, ‘cakes of pitch’; French, pains de poix). The word spread to S. Italy as the name of a thin bread. In N. Italian dialects pitta became pizza, now known primarily as the bearer of savoury toppings but essentially still a flat bread.
Ironically, in Greece the word pitta eventually followed exactly in the footsteps of the word plakous, which it had replaced, becoming the name of a thick cake (e.g. spanakopitta, tyropitta). It retained its old sense in Turkey (pide) and Romania (pita). When Ben Yehuda was devising a modern vocabulary for Hebrew, a precondition for its revival as a spoken language, he borrowed the word pitta either directly from Romanian or via the Judaeo-Spanish spoken in Romania to refer to the bread he found being made in Palestine.
Pitta bread is eaten in a variety of ways. It is dipped in sauces or broken up in soups. Very often the pocket or flap is stuffed with any of various fillings. Small pieces of pitta are used for scooping up food.
In Lebanon and Syria, stale or toasted pitta is the basis for fattoush, the peasant bread salad, and for fatteh (see THARID). Arais is another Middle Eastern dish where the pitta bread is stuffed with savoury mince. Khubz Abbas is a special type of pitta where minced meat is incorporated into the bread dough before being baked. The book called Recipes from Baghdad (ed. May H. Beattie, 1946) explains that:
A vow to make khubz Abbas as a thanks offering on the fulfilment of one’s wish is generally taken at the time of acute anxiety, such as the illness of a beloved relative. In the event of recovery this savoury bread is prepared in vast quantities. Hot melted butter is also poured over rounds of plain khubz which are then sprinkled with sugar. The rounds of bread are arranged in great piles and are distributed in hundreds to the poor.
Khubz exists in many forms and with many epithets. Thus khubz mbassis is a Tunisian bread made of semolina, leavened, enriched with egg, fat of the FAT-TAILED SHEEP, and oil, flavoured with sesame seed and aniseed. In Morocco the name comes out as khboz. Khubz arabi is two-layered pitta bread, at least in the Lebanon.
The early Arab cookery texts do not refer to khubz, since it was bought from specialists, not made in the home. However, it is safe to assume that its history extends far into antiquity, since flatbreads in general, whether leavened or not, are among the most ancient breads, needing no oven or even utensil for their baking.
Charles Perry
a simple Italian dish associated especially but not exclusively with Naples, has become almost ubiquitous. After it had been taken to America by Italian emigrants it developed into an international food, and pizzerias have sprung up all over the world.
The name has a common origin with, and an obvious connection with, PITTA. A pizza consists mainly of a flat disc of bread. This is normally the base for various toppings, and it is safe to assume that since early classical times people in the general region of the Mediterranean were at least sometimes putting a topping on their flat breads (see FOCACCIA). Burton Anderson (1994), pointing to these precursors of pizza, goes on to say that the word pizza itself ‘was used as early as the year 997 AD at Gaeta, a port between Naples and Rome’. He continues:
Abruzzi had something called pizza in the twelfth century. Calabria made pitta or petta, Apulia pizzella or pizzetta, Sicily sfincione. Tuscany’s schiacciata (for squashed) was first roasted on stones by the ancestral Etruscans. Romagna’s antique piadina is slim and crunchy like the crust of pizza romana, which also seems to have preceded the napoletana.
The napoletana, i.e. the pizza of Naples, can indeed be seen, and has been so seen for well over a century, as the archetype of modern pizzas. However, even in Naples itself one would not find complete agreement about what constitutes an authentic Neapolitan pizza. To follow Anderson again:
The most basic may be called pizza all’olio e pomodoro, though it is better known as marinara because its toppings of oil, tomato, garlic, and oregano could be stowed on voyages so that sailors (marinai) of this seafaring city could make pizza away from home. The more glorified Margherita, named in honor of Italy’s queen on a visit to Naples just over a century ago, combines tomato with mozzarella cheese and fresh basil leaves to symbolize the red, white, and green tricolore of the Italian flag.
Defenders of these archetypes include the twenty-six pizzerie of the Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana, whose members are pledged to uphold statutes that define ingredients, making of dough, and cooking. Each house carries a sign with an image of Pulcinella, the masked Punch of Neapolitan comedy, wielding a pizzaiolo’s paddlelike peel.
To be authentic, pizzas should be made in a special wood-fired brick oven heated to a blistering 400 °C (750 °F). They have to be inserted and retrieved with a long-handled wooden peel (paddle). The sudden heat is necessary to melt and blend the topping, which very often includes mozzarella cheese, and to make the base puff up properly. This applies especially to versions with a thick topping, which acts as a barrier to heat.
Some pizzas have a filling enclosed in a folded over circle of dough. Such a pizza is properly called pizza ripieno or calzone (see CALSONES), although a Palermo version, with a filling of meat sauce and salami as well as a cheese and onion topping moistened with wine, retains the name pizza (di San Vito). Pitta maniata (‘kneaded’) has a dough enriched with eggs and fat, thoroughly kneaded, and enclosing a filling of hard-boiled eggs, ricotta cheese, salami, and chilli pepper. Small, individual-sized calzoni are made by folding circles of dough in half over the filling.
Pizzette are miniature pizzas which are often fried rather than baked. They are served as part of the ANTIPASTO table in Italian restaurants. Extra-large pizzas are often made rectangular and cut into portions of the same shape.
There are versions of pizza with no topping, sometimes called pizza bianca (white pizza). One such, the Tuscan pan di ramerino (rosemary bread), has no garnish save for a little rosemary. Other severely plain versions are found in Liguria, and there is a sweet but topless Easter pizza made in fancy shapes which is traditional in the Abruzzi. Such things are very close to pitta bread.
Other Mediterranean countries have traditional dishes resembling pizza. The pissaladière of Provence, topped with an onion-and-tomato mixture, a latticework of salt anchovy fillets, and olives, is sometimes made with pastry, but properly has a bread base. Incidentally, many recipes for QUICHE, which nowadays have a pastry base, began with one of bread. The Middle Eastern lahma bi ajeen has a base of a typical pizza dough, topped with a rich sauce of minced meat, onions, and various Middle Eastern flavourings.
In conclusion, it may fairly be said that the pizza of Naples has proved to be a world conqueror in the 20th century. It is, for instance, the most important FAST FOOD in France. To give the last word to Burton Anderson: ‘It has been said that if Naples had managed to patent the pizza it would now be among Italy’s wealthiest cities instead of one of its poorest.’
READING:
Pleuronectes platessa, the most important flatfish of the European fisheries, has a range from the extreme west of the Mediterranean up to Iceland and Norway. The large red or orange spots on its brown ‘back’ (i.e. eyed side) make it instantly recognizable.
The maximum length is 90 cm (just 3′), but it is unusual to find a fully grown plaice measuring more than 50 cm (20″).
The esteem in which this fish is held varies considerably, no doubt reflecting the fact that its quality as food depends not only on the season (spring is best) but also on the ground from which it is taken. Plaice from sandy bottoms are excellent, with firm and sweet flesh, while those from mud or gravel are likely to be poor fare. Danes and Swedes are among the greatest enthusiasts for plaice, and the former at least prefer to buy their plaice alive. It happens that the plaice is very tenacious of life (Day, 1880–4, records that one remained alive for 30 hours after being removed from the water), so this is not as difficult as one might think.
Plaice can be poached, or fried, or grilled.
a term for cooking fish in various ways which involve having it fastened to or placed on a suitable small wooden plank. A fish can be nailed to a plank which is then tilted up over an open fire; or nailed down (to prevent the heat making it curl upwards) to a plank under a grill; or cooked on a plank in the oven. The technique was brought to the highest proficiency by Native Americans in the Pacific NW especially for cooking salmon over a fire. They used cedar or alder planks, although other hardwoods, maple, and fruitwoods such as cherry and apple work equally well. The plank may have a declivity to hold the juices. It should be soaked for hours before exposure to the fire. The delight is in the slight taste of smoke gained from the wood charring as the fish slowly cooks. Joints of meat, chicken, and so forth are equally susceptible to this treatment.
Planked SHAD is another well-known dish in the USA. For planked steak, see STEAK.
the name given to varieties of the BANANA which are only suitable for cooking. They are not botanically distinct, but for the consumer they are entirely different from eating bananas. They are most important as staple foods in E. and C. Africa, and to a lesser extent in SE Asia and the islands, S. India, and the W. Indies. Most varieties are longer and thicker than typical eating bananas, often rather angular in cross-section. There are pink, green, red, blackish-brown, and black-spotted yellow varieties.
A W. Indian plantain of unusual size is called the ‘hundred pound plantain’; an exaggeration, but it can be about 60 cm (2′) long.
The bluggoe, apple, or frog plantain is short, thick, and boxy. The horn plantain is long and pointed. All kinds are rigid and starchy, and only faintly sweet; they would be no more pleasant to eat raw than a potato. Cooked, however, they suit all kinds of savoury dishes, and some of them may be used in desserts. There is an expanding export trade in plantains to meet the needs of migrants from tropical countries to temperate ones.
Plantains are used much in the same way as any starchy vegetable. In E. Africa they are pounded and boiled to make FOO-FOO, a bland porridge, which may also be made with sun-dried plantain slices. But there and elsewhere they are also roasted or baked with more rewarding results. An excellent speciality of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean is tostones, for which slices of slightly unripe plantain are gently fried, squashed flat, and fried further until crisp. Plantain also makes successful chips (US French fries).
Plantains are often dried and powdered to make a light, digestible starch, which in the E. Indies is called pisang (Malay for banana) starch. This starch, and the otherwise useless fruits of a wild banana called teparod (‘angel’s food’) in Thai and anglicized to ‘tiparot’, can be used in preparing sweetmeats.
a name given to a group of small leafy plants, of the genus Plantago, long before it was applied also to the cooking varieties of BANANA (with which there is no connection, see previous entry).
The name comes from the Latin plantago, which itself comes from planta, meaning the sole of the foot and referring to the foot-shaped leaves. Another group of names, including the German name, is descended from the Anglo-Saxon wegbreed, meaning ‘growing by the wayside’, which turned into ‘waybread’ in the sense of food for travellers. Travellers would soon weary of a diet of plantain, although there are several species whose leaves, gathered when young and tender, are edible. One of them, P. coronopus, buckshorn plantain, qualifies as an element in the mixed salad of wild greens known as misticanza in Italy and has indeed been cultivated on a small scale in some European countries. Couplan (1984), the optimistic French authority on edible wild plants, avers that more than one species can be used either fresh in a salad or cooked in a soup.
Lovelock (1972) devotes a long and interesting passage to plantain, its local names and lore, and games played by children with it: the locus classicus for such information.
Bartolomeo (1421–81) Platina was appointed Librarian at the Vatican in 1475, and in the same year published and dated the first printed cookery book, De Honesta Voluptate (a title which cannot be translated into either English or French without resort to a whole paragraph of explanation).
Platina was born Bartolomeo Sacchi, of an obscure family, and took the name Platina from his birthplace, Piadena, in the plains of Lombardy. He is known to have served for several years as a soldier and to have been tutor to the children of Ludovico Gonzaga, who gave him a letter of recommendation to the famous Cosimo de’ Medici in Florence, when he went there to study Greek. It was probably in 1462 that he arrived in Rome, where he aroused papal wrath for supposed impieties and served two terms in prison before bouncing back into favour, and obtaining his librarianship, after writing some papal biographies.
That part of De honesta voluptate (books 6–10) which incorporates recipes came directly from the important Libro de Arte Coquinaria of Maestro Martino of Como. Of Martino’s 250 recipes about 240 reappear in Platina, mostly in the same order but with some additional articles on fish, cereals, and vegetables. Platina’s debt to Martino was acknowledged in the recipe for biancomangiare (a most important medieval dish, represented by BLANCMANGE in the modern world) in the following terms: ‘What cook, oh ye immortal gods, could compare with my Martino, from whom I have learned most of what I write.’
Martino wrote his recipes in the vernacular, whereas Platina used Latin. He was one of the ‘Roman humanists’, who, as Gillian Riley, in her study of ‘Platina, Martino and their Circle’ (1996), puts it:
took a delight in conversing in the language of Horace and Virgil, of Cicero and Martial for its own sake; Latin tripped pleasurably and effortlessly off their tongues and pens, celebrating pagan themes and pagan activities. Dressed in togas, crowned with laurel wreaths, they re-enacted ancient ceremonies, of which feasting was one.
In line with this general approach to life, and with his own Epicurean beliefs (to be contrasted with those of the Stoics and the Peripatetics), Platina recommended moderation in the enjoyment of good things, and due regard for context. It was Epicurus who said: ‘Before thinking what you have to eat and drink, seek around you with whom to eat and drink.’
Platina’s book ran to a second printing in the same year as its first and subsequently appeared in at least 14 other Latin editions. The first French edition was published at Lyons in 1505. Meanwhile, the first two Italian editions had come out in 1487 and 1494 (from the hands of translators who did not realize that the recipes had originally been in Italian, in the Martino manuscript, and who consequently made some comical errors). The first English translation did not appear until 1967, when the Mallinckrodt Chemical Corporation in Saint Louis, Missouri, surprised its customers by giving them as a Christmas gift an English translation which was by, although not attributed to, Elizabeth Andrews. It was on paper stained by one of their chemicals to simulate antique parchment. Since then the authoritative translation by Mary Ellen Milham (1998) has appeared, with a full biographical essay on Platina.
Platina’s work was of exceptional importance, and not only in transmitting to a very wide audience the admirable recipes of Martino. In the words of Leonard Beck (1984): ‘The reader of De honesta voluptate is looking into the cocoon in which the modern cookbook is struggling to be born.’ One could add a claim on Platina’s behalf that he was the very first scholarly writer on food and cookery.
the Roman author of the Natural History, in full Gaius Plinius Secundus, is traditionally known in English as simply Pliny, or as ‘Pliny the Elder’ to distinguish him from his nephew and namesake. His vast work is a unique compilation from Greek and Roman sources, a kind of encyclopedia of the branches of knowledge now called ‘scientific’ and ‘technical’.
Pliny was born in Como in AD 23/24 and had a distinguished military career, serving for some years on the Roman frontier in Germany, where he had the opportunity to explore the source of the Danube. His last posting was as commander of the Roman fleet at Misenum near Naples. From here, when Vesuvius erupted in 79, Pliny sailed to the aid of the people of Pompeii. Others escaped, but Pliny himself was overcome by fumes and died on Stabiae beach.
His death is described in a letter (6. 16) of Pliny the Younger addressed to the historian Tacitus. In another letter (3. 5) he lists his uncle’s writings and describes his methods of work. He read, or was read to by a slave, during almost every leisure moment, even at meals and when being rubbed down after a bath. He went about Rome in a sedan chair so that he could go on reading. A second slave was always at hand to take notes. ‘He left me’, says his nephew, ‘160 scrolls full of extracts, written in a minute hand on both sides of the paper.’
From Pliny the Elder’s only surviving work, the Natural History, both good and bad results of his research methods are evident. Astronomical numbers of ‘authors consulted’ are listed, classified, and totalled in a preliminary bibliographical section. Most of the statements that Pliny makes in his very long work evidently do go back to some one of these authors—but which author? How reliable? There is usually no way of knowing, for nearly all the texts he used are now lost. However, in botany, one of Pliny’s major sources was the Greek scientist Theophrastus, whose work survives. Comparing Theophrastus’s original with Pliny’s (mostly unacknowledged) Latin versions, we can see that Pliny read too fast, often misunderstood difficult Greek turns of phrase, and tended to slant his report to fit a particular line of argument.
In spite of these problems the Natural History is a remarkable achievement in recording and classifying the knowledge available to an intelligent and inquisitive Roman in the 1st century AD. To the food historian the most useful divisions are books 8–11 (animals) and books 12–19 (plants), for Pliny gave special attention throughout to their uses to man. Book 14 deals with the vine and with wine; book 16 is devoted largely to the olive, and book 17 to fruit trees. The next major division, books 20–32, is also noteworthy: it deals with substances useful in medicine and diet, including important foods such as honey (22. 107), fruits again (book 23), milk, cheese, and butter (28. 123). Pliny is particularly informative on the spices, drugs, and other luxuries, many of them imported from the East, which were in so much demand on the Roman market. He, or an informant, had made detailed enquiries on prices and practices in this lucrative trade.
The Natural History was very popular in the Middle Ages. Its moralizing style has been less appreciated in modern times, but it remains an indispensable fund of information on many aspects of the Greek and Roman world.
Andrew Dalby
the name generally applied to birds of the genus Charadrius, which also includes the dotterel. The family Charadriidae includes the lapwing.
The subject of plovers has been admirably dealt with in Kettner’s Book of the Table by Dallas (1877), as follows:
The best are the golden plovers. They used to be, and often still are, roasted without being drawn—as were also turtledoves and larks; ‘for,’ says an ancient author, ‘larks eat only pebbles and sand, doves grains of juniper and scented herbs, and plovers feed on air.’ Later, the same rule was extended to the woodcock; and the general rule now is to dress the plover as a woodcock.
Plovers’ Eggs must not be forgotten—delicious little things hard-boiled, exquisite in a salad, perfect in sandwich, most admirable of all set like large opals in the midst of aspic jelly. The chief supply comes from Holland. The first eggs that come over are sent to the Queen, and are worth 7s. 6d. apiece.
The golden plover preferred by this author is C. apricarius, whose names in various languages likewise refer to the gold spots on the upper part of its plumage (e.g. French pluvier doré). There is also the Asiatic and N. American golden plover, C. dominicus, which appears as a vagrant in W. European countries.
Plovers’ eggs were in fact from the green plover or peewit, most commonly called the lapwing (Vanellus vanellus). Their gathering was forbidden in Britain by the Lapwing Act of 1926 and the Dutch population is largely protected as well. Those of the common tern, Sterna hirundo, count as a tolerably good substitute, but many other species of gulls have long been valued for their eggs. Gathering of even the most common sorts is now controlled in Britain under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.
a term usually taken to mean the HEART, LIVER, LUNGS, and windpipe (or most of these) of a slaughtered animal, to be used as food.
See also the similar term GIBLETS.
the fruit of Prunus domestica and other Prunus spp. Other members of the genus include the APRICOT, PEACH, SLOE, and CHERRY. The relationship between plums and cherries is particularly close, the distinction being mainly one of size.
The word ‘plum’ has a long history of often ill-defined use. In the Middle Ages it seems to have meant virtually any dried fruit, including RAISINS, and this usage underlies names such as ‘plum pudding’ and ‘plum cake’. Francesca Greenoak (1983), in her highly readable chapter on the plum family, discusses this point in relation to Christmas (plum) pudding, and suggests that raisins had already supplanted plums before Little Jack Horner (whose rhyme dates from the 16th century) ‘stuck in his thumb’; so that what he pulled out was in fact a raisin.
Wild plums of several kinds are common throughout the temperate parts of the northern hemisphere. The earliest cultivation of plums, which took place in China, was of the species P. salicina, usually called ‘Japanese plum’ because it first came to the notice of western botanists in Japan.
It seems likely that P. domestica, the most important source of modern commercial cultivars, is indigenous to C. Europe; but the time and manner of its origin are uncertain. The plum does not seem to have been noticed by classical Greek authors, nor by Roman authors in the centuries BC. Pliny the Elder (1st century AD) commented with surprise that the earlier writer Cato (for example) had not mentioned plums and explains that by his own time there was a ‘vast throng’ of them; he enumerated a dozen distinct types.
Records survive which indicate that plums were cultivated in the gardens of medieval monasteries in England. Chaucer refers to a garden with ‘ploumes’ and ‘bulaces’. The number of varieties had increased considerably by the time of Gerard (1633), who mentions having ‘three score sorts in my garden and all strange and rare’. Two of his main groups are the common damson and the ‘Damascen Plum’ (see DAMSON; PRUNE). His account shows that new varieties were being imported from many European countries. Some of the best came from the Balkans and S. Europe; he praises those of Moravia in particular.
Plum cultivation became increasingly important in the 17th and 18th centuries, during which period the GREENGAGE was given its English name and the mirabelle plums so well liked in France were becoming firmly established. The most significant advances in the development of new varieties in England during the 19th century were made by Thomas Rivers. Early Rivers and Czar are two results of his work which are still esteemed. Many local varieties came into prominence during this period. Pershore was named after its place of origin and retains its importance in the Evesham area, where it is processed. Good marketing rather than inherent distinction assured the fame of the Victoria plum when it was first sold in 1844.
American native plums are a mixed collection. Several good varieties of indigenous wild plum, which were eaten by the Indians before the arrival of white men, are still common and are often made into jam or jelly. Along the east coast, the BEACH PLUM is predominant. Inland the American wild plum, P. americana, sometimes called ‘sloe’ although the fruit is usually red or yellow, is widespread. In the south-east the chickasaw plum, P. angustifolia, often produces large, red fruit of good flavour. This and the previous species have sometimes been cultivated. In the north the hardy Canadian plum P. nigra is common.
Several of these native plums of N. America, edible even in the wild, have been the source of cultivated varieties, especially for the southern states of the USA where P. domestica will not thrive. However, the early colonists brought European plums with them to the east coast. The first kinds grown were a mixture of European and native plums, and some of these persist.
William Prince, in 1790, planted the pits of 25 quarts of Green Gage plums. These produced trees yielding fruit of every colour, and out of them came the Imperial Gage (later brought to England as Denniston’s Superb), Red Gage, Prince’s Gage, and the Washington plum. In 1828, the Prince Nursery offered for sale 140 different kinds of plums and to this nursery belongs the credit of having given plum-growing its greatest impetus in America.
During the 19th century, the growth of the plum industry (now fourth in importance of the tree fruit crops) began in earnest. The opening up of California coincided with the introduction of P. salicina varieties from Japan. Thus the Californian crop, by far the largest in N. America, is dominated by plums of oriental origin, among which the most important are the Burbank plums, named for their breeder, Luther Burbank. The most important variety in this group is Santa Rosa. Most Burbank plums are large, juicy, and red or purple.
Besides Santa Rosa, El Dorado and President, a large, purple, late dessert plum of good flavour, are major varieties. European species suitable for producing prunes are grown on a smaller scale.
Plums can be picked slightly before they are ripe and will then reach perfect ripeness in a warm room. Refrigeration slows the process but does not stop it.
The best way of preserving plums is to dry them naturally, as with PRUNE varieties and also the Bokhara plum (Prunus bokhariensis), used in the cuisines of C. Asia and the northern fringe of the Indian sub-continent.
Plums are also candied to make ‘sugar-plums’, the most notable kind being Portuguese Elvas plums. Jams and jellies made from sour, wild varieties such as damsons are better than ordinary plum jam.
Apart from obvious uses in desserts, sharp-flavoured plums go well with fatty meats. They are used as a stuffing for goose and with pork in stews in C. Europe.
Brazil, Hog, Jew, and Spanish plum are all names for the AMBARELLA and related species. Java plum and Malabar plum are fruits of the genus Eugenia. Date plum is an alternative name for the PERSIMMON.
See also DAVIDSON’S PLUM; and for Governor’s plum see RAMONTCHI; LOVI-LOVI; RUKAM.
Japanese ‘pickled plums’ are really a kind of apricot (see UMEBOSHI), not connected with the species P. salicina, although that is often referred to as Japanese plum.
and gandaria are names applied to the fruits of two trees of the genus Bouea, native to the region of Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. These fruits are like miniature mangoes. The better known of the two, B. macrophylla, is cultivated for its oval or round fruits, 4–6 cm (1.5–2.5″) long, some of which have sweet, edible pulp. They are pickled and used in curry-type dishes, and can also be made into chutneys or jams.
(and pocher in French) a verb which indicates a method of cooking which is generally taken to be in a liquid which is simmering (see SIMMER), i.e. just below boiling point, in the area of 90–96 °C/195–205 °F. But not all authorities agree on this. Some would keep the temperature markedly below boiling point—low enough to ensure that the surface of the liquid betrays no signs of movement, not even ‘shivering’; others would permit some such motion (if only to ensure that the temperature does not fall too low, which it can easily do in the absence of any visible marker); others refer to ‘a gentle boil’.
McGee (1990) has an interesting discussion of temperatures in relation to terms such as poach and simmer, bringing out the point that western kitchens are not well equipped for cooking at temperatures which might otherwise be seen as the most appropriate, e.g. 71 °C/160 °F or 82 °C/180 °F; ovens cannot be set low enough (one has to prop the oven door open with objects of varying thickness, having first carried out a calibration exercise), while cooks working on top of the stove have no surface motion to guide them and must resort to a thermometer or guess.
Poaching is normally applied to fish (in a COURT BOUILLON), dumplings, delicate meat products or offal, eggs, fruits (in a SYRUP), and anything else which it would be undesirable to subject to violent agitation, as when boiling. The lack of a precise and agreed-by-all definition of poaching is not a real problem, so long as one accepts that it is not the sort of term which can be defined exactly (as ‘boil’, for example, can be) and that the range of meanings which have attached themselves to it is a useful spectrum on which the cook, aided by common sense and experience, can draw. And the cook can recall that poach comes from pocher, which means pocket, referring to the ‘pocket’ of coagulated white within which the yolk of an egg is retained while it is being poached, so that the manner of poaching an egg (starting with boiling water and reducing at once to a simmer) may be treated as the archetypal act of poaching, from which other such acts are derived.
Aythya ferina, a diving DUCK of Europe and Asia which favours still inland waters and has a largely vegetarian diet. Size is moderate (average total length 45 cm/18″). It is regarded as good table fare.
The pochard has close relations in N. and S. America, E. Africa, and elsewhere.
seem made for each other, yet the remarks that open the entry on LITERATURE AND FOOD have a bearing here also, so that any examination of the relationship needs to distinguish between the metaphorical deployment of good things to eat, or even of things which repel, and poems which thrust food and feeding centre-stage as the main topic in view. Robert Palter’s (2002) extended contemplation of the symbolic and allusive use of fruit in poetry of all ages and cultures cannot be bettered, and may permit more attention to work that might be literally described as food poetry.
Food, unlike drink, has not attracted its own literature of accompaniment, although Anglo-Saxon feasts, such as Hrothgar’s in the poem Beowulf, were evidently punctuated by songs, ballads, and epic tales. As the meal might last a day, if not two, punctuation might be welcome, but much later, Louis Untermeyer saw fit to ask:
Why has our poetry eschewed
The rapture and response of food?
A Renaissance Italian wedding banquet served to the rhythm of poems and songs (Carlin and Rosenthal, 1998) might seem a clear denial of his assumption, as too the many and ancient Chinese poems quoted by Silvano Serventi and Françoise Sabban (2000) in their history of pasta. Denial, too, from the remarkable collection of food poems that arose from the gastronomic enthusiasm of the 9th-and 10th-century Abbasid court of Baghdad, poems graphic enough to let scholars reconstruct the appearance and character of dishes otherwise no more than names in a manuscript (Perry, 2000).
The more one looks, the more appears, from the mock heroic lines of The Life of Luxury by ARCHESTRATUS of Gela written in the 5th century BC, of which fragments were preserved by ATHENAEUS, to the pseudo-Virgilian account of the ploughman’s lunch in another heroic pastiche, Moretum. Careful recording and graceful expression of the tastes of late 17th-century Italy are finely expressed in verse by Lorenzo Magalotti and his friend the scientist Francesco Redi, whose long poem Bacco in Toscano (1685) describes the wines of Tuscany just as in England John Philips celebrated Cyder (1708), a poem that surprisingly was translated into Italian by Magalotti himself. These, of course, are straying from food to drink, though the reworking of Horace’s Ars Poetica as The Art of Cookery by William King (1708) brings the poetic firmly back into the kitchen with his rumbustious satire on Martin Lister’s translation of Apicius.
While epicurean delight might seem a natural subject for poetic discourse, the working of the digestive tract, or the benefits of sound diet, seem less attractive. Nonetheless, the Scottish doctor and poet John Armstrong managed in excess of 4,000 lines in 1744 on The Art of Preserving Health, book II of which was on diet, containing such deathless couplets as:
The’ irresoluble oil,
So gentle late and blandishing, in floods
Of rancid bile o’erflows: what tumults hence,
What horrors rise, were nauseous to relate.
Choose leaner viands, ye whose jovial make
Too fast the gummy nutrient imbibes:
This was translated into Latin in 1771 by the French poet and naturalist Étienne-Louis Geoffroy. Armstrong’s 19th-century editor was moved to comment on the dietary section, ‘he seems to be aware that the subject had a natural tendency to lower his tone’.
The art of cookery has sometimes, alas, attracted bad poets. None worse, perhaps, than Joseph Berchoux whose long poem La Gastronomie, published in 1801, was notable for its reintroduction into the language of the word ‘gastronomy’. Wholly didactic, it assessed the role of the table in the bien pensant world of the country gentleman. It had great success: repeated editions in France, translation into English (in 1810), and at least three translations into Spanish (one of which returned to print in 1993).
The table might often prompt less epic, more occasional verse: a recipe perhaps, or nicely turned description of a feast; and nimble-footed versifiers could turn a culinary image to the service of wit, as did Richard Jago (1715–81) in his lines On Mr. Samuel Cooke’s Poems,
Though your satire you spit,
’T isn’t season’d a bit,
And your puffs are as heavy as lead;
Call each dish what you will,
Boil, roast, hash, or grill,
Yet still it is all a calf’s head.
Wit is never absent from Ogden Nash’s deceptively everyday poetry which finds ample resource in the affairs of the stomach, exemplified in his The chef has imagination, or It’s too hard to do it easy which excoriates those who concoct elaborate salad dressings:
A dressing is not the meal, dears,
It require nor cream nor egg,
Nor butter nor maple sugar,
And neither the nut nor the meg.
A lesson well learned, just as Dean Swift might have taken Alexander Pope’s instruction in making a soup which closed:
So skimming the Fat off,
Say Grace with your Hat off;
And then with what Rapture,
Will it fill Dean and Chapter?
Poetry has, pace Louis Untermeyer, often delighted in visiting the laden table, though its attractions may be more tricky to summon to the service of imagery than the brimming cup or uncorked bottle. Ben Jonson could do it:
Th’ Ionian God-wit, nor the Ginny hen
Could not goe downe my belly then
More sweet then Olives, that new gather’d be
From fattest branches of the Tree:
with rhyme and happy rhythm which make memorable the event, or fix truly the character. So, today, those who wish to sell goods and services, snacks and sweetmeats, realize the power of verse to condition our synapses and assault them with jingles, just as in earlier centuries, if recipes would be memorized, how better than by means of a poem?
If you want a good pudding, to teach you I’m willing,
Take two penn’orth of eggs, when twelve for a shilling,
And of the same fruit that Eve had once chosen,
Well pared and well chopped, at least half a dozen…
Tom Jaine
a favourite drink of American Indians, prepared wherever hickory trees grew. According to Emerson (1908), Governor’s Island in the upper New York Bay was famous for its HICKORY NUTS, which were of the shellbark kind and well suited to making pohickory:
The method pursued by the Indians in making pohickory was to pound the nut, shells and kernels, in a mortar with a proper amount of water until a milky liquor was produced, when it was ready for use …. The Indians of New England as well as of the South used it freely and plentifully, for owing to the nature of the nut, which could be kept for two or three years without deterioration, the beverage could be made at any season of the year.
a sour, fermented paste made from the corms (underground swollen stems) of TARO (Colocasia macrorrhiza) in the Hawaiian Islands. It is the staple food of the region although it contains very little protein. The taro is boiled and pounded to a paste with water. Lactic acid bacteria from the natural environment invade it and cause a fermentation like that of any other vegetable pickle. Few non-Hawaiians find poi particularly appetizing.
a wild plant of the genus Phytolacca, which has edible, spinach-like leaves, wholesome and delicious when they are young. The plant is best known in N. America and its name derives from its common American Indian one, pocan.
The best species for use as a green vegetable is the American pokeweed, Phytolacca esculenta (formerly americana), which now grows wild in Europe. It thrives in adverse conditions. In the USA its distribution extends from the eastern states to Texas, and it has a special place in the folklore and gastronomy of several regions. Krochmal and Krochmal (1974a) write:
For generations, people of Appalachia have looked forward to the early spring harvest of poke greens or ‘poke sallet’. Boiled in three or four changes of water, they are one of the first spring vegetables available for the taking. Ambitious youngsters in Kentucky used to earn a few cents of spending money by harvesting and selling poke greens. Now a poke sallet canning industry flourishes in northern Kentucky and southern Ohio.
Saunders (1976) remarks that the second water for boiling can have a bit of pork fat added and that the pokeweed is served with a dash of vinegar. Kavasch (1979) gives an Indian recipe from New England for the young sprouts; wood ash, wild garlic, and bacon fat are added to the second water and the sprouts are served hot with nut oil or nut butter.
The whole young shoots may also be cooked as a substitute for asparagus. In Delaware some people preferred these to asparagus as an accompaniment to shad. In the creole cookery of Louisiana pokeweed is called chou gras, and is used in soup. The young shoots are also made into pickles. An unlikely British advocate of the plant was the gourmet André Simon (1983) who, during the post-war years of food shortage, urged gardeners to harvest the young shoots, ‘a missed opportunity’.
The purple berries are used to produce a red colouring, sometimes added to foodstuffs. In the 18th century certain Portuguese were found to be adding it to red wine, a practice which was viewed with such alarm that the King ordered all pokeweed to be cut before it produced berries.
Other species of the genus are leaf vegetables of minor importance in tropical America, India, China, and E. Africa. P. octandra or Spanish callaloo, for example, is used in the West Indian version of the soup CALLALOO.
READING:
has changed shape and size to a bewildering extent. At one time in the distant past the Polish-Lithuanian ‘Commonwealth’ stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea and was larger than any other country in Europe. In 1831 what was left of this vast area was ceded to Russia; and then reduced to zero in the First World War. What is now Poland represents a mean between these two extremes and does correspond fairly closely to the area occupied by speakers of the Polish language. Its cuisine is best introduced in the wise words of Mary Pinińska (1990):
The shape and form of a nation’s cuisine is at first wholly dependent on its soil and climate. In later years it may also be moulded and polished by its proximity to trading routes, and by war, foreign influences, economic prosperity, religion and so on, but its basic characteristics remain. The elementary ingredients of Poland’s cuisine were dictated by the rich, dark soil and the harsh northern climate, which yielded cereal crops such as rye, wheat, millet, barley and buckwheat. From these came bread: from rye the beautifully dark, dense, moist loaves so typical of this part of Europe; and, from other grains, white bread with which soups were made and whose stale crumbs were used to thicken and bind stuffings and sauces. Fried breadcrumbs have long been used as a garnish in Polish cooking, and à la Polonaise, which means a garnish of fried breadcrumbs, often with diced hard-boiled egg, is part of international gastronomic vocabulary.
The basics also include the vegetables which grow readily in Poland, often in pickled form (SAUERKRAUT, pickled beetroot, cucumber, etc.). Hearty soups incorporating cereal and vegetable are important, e.g. Grochowka, yellow-pea soup with barley. Other soups are reminiscent of Russian or Lithuanian ones (sorrel soups; CHŁODNIK, cold beetroot soup). There are even dill soups, reflecting the position of DILL as the favourite flavouring. FRUIT SOUPS eaten in the summer in the north-west of Poland may well reflect an influence from Denmark and Germany.
Among the cereals, BUCKWHEAT ranks first in esteem; it appears in numerous forms, including an important role as a side dish for game or meat. Other staples include two dairy products. One is curd cheese, used for many purposes including zakuski, the Polish counterpart of the Russian ZAKUSKI; as a stuffing for pierogi (see PIROG); and for cheesecake. The other is smietana (like the Russian smetana, this product is usually translated as ‘sour cream’, although it is not quite the same: see SOUR CREAM).