the small mammal Oryctolagus cuniculus. Native to Morocco and the Iberian peninsula, rabbits are now found throughout W. and C. Europe, and have been introduced to the Azores, Madeira, S. America, Australia, and New Zealand. They inhabit grassland or open woodland, are mostly nocturnal in habit, and eat herbage and bark.
Rabbits belong to the family Leporidae, which includes the various species of HARE. Considered with reference to N. America, confusion arises. The cottontail rabbit (Sylvilagus floridanus) and marsh hare (S. aquaticus) would be considered rabbits by Europeans. On the other hand, the jackrabbit (Lepus californicus) would be thought a hare in Europe. From the cook’s point of view, the important difference is that the flesh of rabbit is pale and mildly flavoured, while that of hare (the larger animal) is dark and often very strong. The two are treated differently in the kitchen.
Rabbit meat for the table can be derived from either wild or domesticated animals. Domesticated or ‘hutch’ rabbits are bred to be larger than wild ones; there are several varieties. Currently, the word ‘rabbit’ is applied irrespective of age. In the past, the animal was a rabbit up until the age of a year, and subsequently referred to as a coney.
The range of rabbits was restricted to the countries of the W. Mediterranean until about the 3rd century BC, when the Romans began importing live rabbits to Italy as a source of meat. They are said to have fattened rabbits in warrens or yards known as leporaria, using ferrets to catch them.
Most authorities support the theory that it was the Normans who brought the stock from which the modern British and Irish population is descended, some time after the conquest. Records for them in the Scillies and on Lundy Island date back to the late 12th century. Walled and paved courtyards, which forced the animals to breed above ground, were used, so that the young could be easily removed. This was important to the medieval dietary regime as laurices, unborn and newly born rabbits, were not considered ‘meat’ and could be eaten on fish days. They were also kept in warrens, enclosed areas of land in which they could feed and burrow, and from whence they were conveniently caught. But they began to escape and establish feral colonies shortly afterwards, being caught with nets and ferrets.
In the late 14th century in England, rabbits were an expensive luxury. Medieval cooking methods included serving them roasted, with the heads on, sauced with ginger and VERJUICE, or made into highly seasoned dishes known as civey or gravey, ancestors of odern French CIVET.
During the early modern period, the sailor’s habit of releasing breeding pairs onto islands to provide supplies of fresh meat aided the spread of rabbit around the world. In Britain, the custom of keeping rabbits in warrens persisted well into the 18th century. A device called a ‘tipe’ (a trap sunk into the ground between two fields) was used to catch them. Warren-bred rabbits, and the carcases of animals used for fur, were readily available and cheap. The cook stuffed and roasted, or stewed them, or baked the meat in pies.
Although feral rabbits were known in central Scotland in the Middle Ages, they only reached the Western Highlands and Islands in the 19th century. At about the same time the warrens in England were abandoned in favour of other land uses. This and the development of sporting estates benefited the feral rabbit population, as the expansion of cultivated land provided more food, and their predators were now being hunted ruthlessly.
The rabbit population exploded in the 20th century; it was put at 100 million in the early 1950s, and regarded as vermin. Myxomatosis, a disease first noted in S. America, was then deliberately introduced into Australian and European rabbits, proving lethal. In Britain, the rabbit population fell to about 5% of its previous estimate and has remained at a reduced level ever since, despite a partial recovery from the mid-1970s onwards.
Domestic rabbits are killed for the table at about the age of three months. A young rabbit has ears which tear easily, and sharp teeth and claws. They require no hanging, and the meat is pale and tender; that of does (females) is considered better than that of bucks (males).
A MARINADE is sometimes used, e.g. for wild and older animals, which are less tender and have a stronger flavour. Barding (see BARD) or LARDING helps to keep the flesh moist during roasting.
Among the ingredients which are considered fitting to go with rabbits are mustard (widely used) and prunes (in Belgium and France). In general, recipes for rabbit are similar to those for chicken and reflect the various styles of national and regional cuisines (thus casseroles with ham, wine, brandy, and garlic in Spain and Portugal; and the use of sour cream sauces in C. and E. Europe). In S. America, where rabbits have superseded indigenous animals such as AGOUTI or PACA, they appear with e.g. peppers and coconut (Colombia) or peanut sauce (Chile) or other locally popular accompaniments.
Recipes for using rabbit meat in cold dishes such as BRAWN (England) or RILLETTES and GALANTINES (France) are also encountered. The meat is often augmented with pork.
Laura Mason
of the family Siganidae, were formerly described as belonging to Indo-Pacific waters where numerous species were listed. Now, however, following the gradual fall in the salinity of the Bitter Lakes which punctuate the Suez Canal, some Indo-Pacific fish have been able to swim through the Canal and establish themselves in the E. Mediterranean. Foremost among these is Siganus rivulatus, which has acquired local Mediterranean names as far west as Malta; but its path has been followed by S. luridus, so two of them are now part of the Mediterranean fauna.
A rabbit fish, so called because its rounded head and general appearance is thought to resemble a rabbit, may also be called spinefoot. This is because it has sharp spines not only at the front of the dorsal fin, and in the pelvic fins, but also underneath in the anal fin. These spines can inflict painful wounds.
Procyon lotor, a furry animal of N. America which belongs to the same family, Procyonidae, as the pandas of China. Typical measurements for a raccoon would be 75 cm (30″) for head-plus-body length and 12–15 kg (27–34 lb), so there is plenty of it to be eaten. The bushy tail is marked by black rings, and the face by a black ‘mask’. Indeed, the animal has an engaging and striking appearance, and it is not surprising that it quickly attracted the attention of early white settlers. Thus Captain John Smith, he whose life was saved by the Indian princess Pocahontas, referred to it as ‘a beast they call aroughcun, much like a badger … living on trees, as squirrels do’.
The raccoon is well known for its habit of washing its food before eating it. In the absence of water, it will clean the food by rubbing it. Its largely nocturnal diet of both plant and animal matter is wholesome and it in turn provides good eating for human beings. The fat, however, is strong in flavour and smell and best removed before cooking. The lean meat is dark. Roasting is recommended and a number of recipes suggest sweet potatoes as stuffing or accompaniment.
Although raccoons are found just about all over the USA, often in the vicinity of water, their popularity as food and as the quarry in ‘coon hunts’ is most apparent in the southern states. They show ingenuity in devising ways of throwing pursuing dogs off their scent.
is the name of both a cheese and of a dish made from it, the speciality of the Swiss canton of Valais; see SWITZERLAND.
The cheese is high in fat and semi-soft, making it particularly suitable for melting. The flavour is mild and rich. A whole cheese is a flattish disc weighing about 6 kg (13 lb), with a reddish rind. It is matured for four to seven months.
Racler means ‘to scrape’. The dish is traditionally made by exposing the cut surface of half a cheese to a fire and progressively scraping off the melted cheese onto a hot plate, to be eaten with baked potatoes and pickled white onions (and other accompaniments, as desired). Nowadays there are special electrical devices which permit those who do not have blazing log fires in Alpine shelters to prepare the dish in the comfort of their own kitchens or on a restaurant table.
Raphanus sativus, a cruciferous plant related to, for example, TURNIP and HORSERADISH. The swollen upper part of its root has been used for food since prehistoric times over such a vast area of the Old World, from W. Europe to China and Japan, that the place and manner of its origin are obscure. Most botanists believe the place to be W. Asia and the main ancestral wild plant to be Raphanus raphanistrum, a type of charlock (see MUSTARD GREENS), but it is likely that other wild ancestors would have crossed with this.
The 5th-century BC Greek writer Herodotus, who had a weakness for tall stories but may here be relating the truth, said that there was an inscription on the Great Pyramid in Egypt recording the enormous amount of radishes (and also of onions and garlic) eaten by the slaves who built it. The inscription has not survived, but there are many pictures and records of radishes in slightly later Egyptian remains.
The Greeks knew three kinds of radish, corresponding to the modern long and round radishes, and to the Round Black Spanish variety. The ordinary Greek term for any radish was raphanos and the Latin name raphanus. The modern name radish is derived not from this but from the Latin radix, root. In the 1st century AD the Latin writer Pliny described a further kind of radish of immense size, as big, he said, as ‘a boy baby’ (boys were supposed to be larger than girls). Since radishes have about the same density as babies, this would have weighed about 3 kg (7 lb). Accounts of huge radishes continued to be told by later European writers, the largest weight claimed being 45 kg (100 lb) by the famous herbalist usually known as Matthiolus (1544, see Mattioli in the Bibliography). However, the home of the large radish is really in the Orient, as explained below.
The radish disappeared from European literature with the fall of the Roman Empire, though presumably it was still grown, and is not mentioned again until the 13th century, by Albertus Magnus. He described several types, including a giant radish, which he said had a tapered shape and a rather sharp taste. Large, elongated, but mild radishes became the most popular kind in Europe in succeeding centuries. These were slow-growing types which kept well after lifting in autumn, and provided a useful winter vegetable.
The radish did not reach Britain until the mid-16th century, only a short time before Spanish and Portuguese colonists introduced it to the New World, where nowadays Florida is the major producer. In Britain, Gerard (1633) mentioned four varieties, mainly ‘used as a sauce with meates to procure appetite’, but also ‘eaten raw with bread’. This last phrase serves as a curtain-raiser for a later development, when the small, young, spring radish, with its slightly hot taste due to a glucoside substance similar to that in the related plant mustard, became the dominant kind, for salads or as a piquant hors d’œuvre. Perhaps the most satisfactory way to eat them is to hold what is left of the green stalk between one’s fingers, rub the radish over a piece of butter, dip it in salt (as Evelyn, 1699, remarked, it brings its own pepper with it!), and eat it with bread and butter.
Radishes vary in shape–oval, round, turnip shaped, olive shaped, tapering from the top, and even tapering from the bottom; and in external colour–white, pink, red, purple, black. Internal colour also varies, most strikingly in the flamboyant fuchsia hue sported by some varieties such as Beauty Heart–see below.
The black radishes favoured in many E. European cuisines are of a more earthy, robust character. A full account of their uses is given by Elizabeth Schneider (1986), who explains among many other things that the use of a zester to pare off strips of the black skin will produce remarkable black and white striped effects, which even survive cooking.
There is also a wide variation in the size of radishes. The oriental radishes, also known by their Japanese and Hindi names, daikon and mooli, may reach a length of 45 cm (18″) or more, and really constitute a different vegetable, almost omnipresent in oriental cuisines. Grated daikon is a garnish for SASHIMI in Japan. Ribbons and slices of daikon also make an attractive garnish; and slices are often included in stir-fry dishes. Pickled daikon is widely used, especially in Japan and Korea (see KIMCH’I).
Joy Larkcom (1991) draws attention to some Chinese radishes which have dramatically coloured flesh. One example is ‘Xin Li Mei’ (which translates as ‘Beauty Heart’–see above) with red flesh, and others with green or purple flesh or internal crimson striping, suitable for oriental vegetable carving. She explains that in N. China the Beauty Heart radishes are treated as fruits, crisper than an Asian pear.
Elizabeth (1733–81), author of one of the finest 18th-century ENGLISH COOKERY BOOKS, The Experienced English Housekeeper. She was also a professional housekeeper, confectioner, shopkeeper, innkeeper; and she compiled and published the first three Manchester Directories.
She was born in Doncaster. Her father had been a schoolmaster and, after a reasonable education which included a little French, she entered service at the age of 15, gaining experience and skills in several Yorkshire families.
She wrote: ‘the common servants [being] so ignorant in dressing meat, and a good cook so hard to be met with, put me upon studying the art of cookery more than perhaps I otherwise should have done.’
In 1759 she became housekeeper at Arley Hall, Cheshire, the seat of Sir Peter and Lady Elizabeth Warburton. It was a prosperous, well-managed estate and Lady Elizabeth was considerate and helpful to her housekeeper at a time when the house and gardens were undergoing considerable rebuilding and alterations.
The Head Gardener was John Raffald of the Stockport family of horticulturalists and he and Elizabeth married in 1763. They left for Manchester and opened a confectionery shop in Fennel Street which also sold made dishes, cold suppers, and elaborate centrepieces for the dinner table. The shop catered not only for the local gentry but also the growing numbers of manufacturers and merchants attracted by the business and trade of engineering and textiles. She added to her business a Register Office (an employment agency), and in 1766 moved to the Market Place where the goods on sale now included perfumes, cosmetics, and seeds. John Raffald’s family had a stall in the Market Place supplied with produce from their own market gardens.
This apparently indefatigable woman was also during this time writing her cookery book and in addition had the responsibilities of a mother. Many accounts, copying the same erroneous source, state that she had sixteen children, all daughters; the church registers reveal six.
She made regular use of the advertising columns in, notably, the Manchester Mercury. In 1768 the goods for sale at her shop included
Canterbury, Shrewsbury and Derbyshire Brawn, Newcastle Salmon, Yorkshire Hams, Tongues and Chaps, Potted Woodcocks, Char and Potted Meats, Portable Soups for Travellers … fresh Mushroom Catchup, Walnut Catchup, Lemon Pickle and Browning for made Dishes, Pickled Mushrooms, Barberrys, Mangos, and other sorts of Pickles; dry and wet sweetmeats, Plumb cakes for Weddings and Christenings, and all sorts of Cakes, Mackroons and Biskets, Jellies, Creams, Flummery, Gold and Silver Webs for covering Sweetmeats, and all other decorations for cold Entertainments.
The list continues with what are clearly bought-in spices, imported foods, and fruit and goods for gardeners.
In 1769 she advertised her book,
an entire new Work Wrote for the Use and Ease of Ladies, House-keepers, Cooks, & c. entitled The Experienced English House-keeper By Elizabeth Raffald. Wrote purely from Practice, and Dedicated to the Hon. Lady Elizabeth Warburton, Whom The Author lately Served as House-keeper. Consisting of near 800 Original Receipts, most of which never appeared in Print.
First Part, Lemon Pickle, Browning for all Sorts of made Dishes, Soups, Fish, plain Meat, Game, made dishes both hot and cold, Pyes, Puddings, & c.
Second part, All kinds of Confectionery, particularly the Gold and Silver Web for covering of Sweetmeats, and a desert of Spun Sugar, with directions to set out a Table in the most elegant Manner, and in the most modern Taste, Floating Islands, Fish Ponds, Transparent Puddings, Trifles, Whips, & c.
Third part, Pickling, Potting and Collaring, Wines, Vinegars, Catchups, Distilling, with two most valuable Receipts, one for refining Malt Liquors, the other for curing Acid Wines, and a correct List of every Thing in Season in every Month of the Year.
The book was subscribed in NW England, Yorkshire, and London, five shillings to subscribers. She was encouraged by receiving over 800 subscriptions. In her preface she assured readers that the recipes were ‘not borrowed from other authors, nor glossed over with hard names or words of high style but wrote in my own plain language and every sheet carefully perused as it came from the Press, having an opportunity of having it printed by a neighbour, whom I can rely on doing it the strictest justice, without the least alteration’.
The book sold swiftly, and a second edition soon appeared, including about 100 additional receipts, some from the collections of a ‘noble generous-minded lady’ and other ‘worthy ladies’. She wrote ‘Those I have tried, I found really valuable and those which I have not yet had such an opportunity of proving the goodness of, I have weighed them the best I could, and carefully examined their probable goodness, before I ventured to publish them. These are given genuine as they were purchased at a considerable expence from the inventers.’
Seven editions of the book were published in her lifetime when she sold the copyright to R. Baldwin of Paternoster Row for the reputed sum of £1,400. He asked that some northern words be changed but she refused; the ‘wooden garth’ or hoop in which she advised cakes to be baked was, and remains, nostalgically, a Manchester word for a child’s hoop. The book continued in print well into the 19th century.
In 1772 she compiled and published her ‘Manchester Directory’, the town’s first Directory and a necessary guide for the rapidly developing commercial and manufacturing centre. She produced a second Directory in 1773 by which time the Market Place shop was sold and the Raffalds had moved across the river to the King’s Head, Salford, a commodious coaching inn. There they established various businesses (Florists Feasts, restarted the Card Assemblies, hired out chaises and funeral coaches) but adverse trade and pressing creditors compelled them to leave.
To maintain the family Elizabeth started a refreshment business ‘during the strawberry season’ at the racecourse on Kersal Moor, selling coffee, tea, chocolate, strawberries, and cream. John Raffald, who had been a good gardener and able botanist but was something of a spendthrift, then became Master of the Exchange Coffee House in Manchester and Elizabeth took over the catering, mainly soups. With unremitting industry she compiled and issued a third Manchester Directory and continued to sell her cookery book.
She died, ‘of a spasm’, in April 1781, ‘lamented by a numerous acquaintance’ (Manchester Mercury), and mourned by her husband and three surviving daughters.
Roy Shipperbottom
READING:
the Indonesian name for the fermented and dried greyish balls of roasted rice flour which serve as a starter culture for many of the various fermented foods in which the region of E. and SE Asia is rich. There are special ragi for MISO, TEMPE, and TAPÉ and for rice wines as well as for NAN (bread).
Ragi includes MOULDS, YEASTS, and BACTERIA of the types required for a particular fermentation. It has been suggested that the name comes from the Hindi word ragi which means ‘millet’ and that this was the grain first used. Nowadays most ragi is made on a base of rice flour. The flour is mixed with garlic, pepper, galangal, and chillis, which help to discourage unwanted organisms. The mixture is moistened, and then inoculated by sprinkling previously made ragi on it (although sometimes natural infection from the surroundings is sufficient). It is dried slowly to a crumbly ball or cake which keeps for several days.
Other starch crops may be used as the basis; versions of ragi in Africa have been prepared with MILLET or CASSAVA flours.
For a different although somewhat similar starter which is widely used in Japan, see KOJI.
a French term, adopted into English as ragoo in the 17th century, which indicates a stew of meat and vegetables, especially if a highly flavoured sauce is added to it towards the end of the cooking time. The verb ragoûter, from which the noun is derived, means ‘to revive the taste of’, i.e. ‘to perk up’, e.g. by this addition.
In the 18th century, when many English cookery writers held fancy French dishes in scorn (or professed to do so), the ragoo became a sort of symbol of what they disliked. Thus Thacker (1758), explaining why his own book was so good, contrasted it with some other books which were:
stuff’d with ragoos, and other dishes a-la-mode de France, as they call them; in which the mixture of spices is so great, and the expence so extravagant, that it frightens most people from using them; or, if any be so curious as to try them, and follow their rules punctually, instead of meats that are healthful, and agreeable to the palate, they will find a hotch-potch, destructive to an English constitution.
The term lingers on in French restaurant parlance, and one edition of the Larousse gastronomique, perhaps in a desperate attempt to counter English criticisms in earlier centuries, states that there is such a thing as a ragoût à l’anglaise, in which liaison is effected by the introduction of potatoes, the result being supposedly the same as what is called IRISH STEW!
the true name for the Bolognese sauce which has acquired international currency, especially in Spaghetti alla bolognese. In Bologna, the home of this sauce, it was first used for a baked pie of LASAGNE, not as the sauce for spaghetti or other pasta asciutta which is its commonest form today. The original ragú was made without benefit of the meat mincer, and the meat was chopped into smallish chunks. Nor did it contain tomato, which did not arrive in Italy from America until later, and even then was only grudgingly accepted; even now a correct ragú bolognese has only a light tomato flavour.
The principal ingredient is always minced meat, usually beef, cooked with chicken livers, unsmoked bacon, onion, celery, tomato purée, and wine. Debased forms of the sauce are frequently met; these lack the subtlety and roundness of flavour which characterize the authentic versions.
(or just runner, as in Australia), Elagatis bipinnulatus, a fish of the carangid (JACK) family which is found in tropical or near-tropical waters in the Atlantic (both sides, but not in the Mediterranean) and many areas in the Indo-Pacific region. A pelagic fish, rarely found in coastal waters, it has a maximum length of just over 1 m (4′). Its back is the greenish-blue typical of deep-sea species; and it has a few blue and yellow stripes running along its sides, which account for ‘rainbow’ in its name, but tend to fade after death.
This fish is sought by anglers, and makes good eating, but is rarely available in quantity in the markets.
(also called vin cuit, but that term may describe table wines made by reducing the must in order to strengthen and sweeten them), a speciality of two Swiss cantons, Vaud and Fribourg, made out of old varieties of apples or pears or a combination of both. In the countryside, it is a tradition to make raisiné every two years (the preferred varieties of pears or apples give a substantial harvest only every second year), after the fruit harvest in autumn. First the juice is extracted by squeezing and then put into a large copper cauldron and simmered for about 48 hours. As it has to be constantly stirred–to caramelize, but not burn–it provides the occasion for a social gathering in the evening. Each member of the party takes their turn in stirring the raisiné until it has reduced to a tenth; the remaining liquid is very dark brown, with a thick consistency. It can be kept for a long time, and eaten as a dressing for boiled potatoes, as they do in rural areas, or mixed with some cream and eggs and used to fill an open tart. Ice cream is also made with this product.
Raisiné, made from grapes or a mixture of grapes and other fruits, is also known in parts of France. See also PEKMEZ for the grape concentrate of Turkey and the Balkans, which is also similar to the vincotto (or vino cotto) of Italy and Sicily.
all terms meaning a dried GRAPE. Raisin can be used in a general sense, to apply to all such items, but is usually taken to mean a dried grape which is not a sultana or a currant. Sultana is sometimes a noun, sometimes a variety name (Sultana grapes), and sometimes an adjective (sultana raisins). Currant is a plain noun.
Raisins of most kinds originally came from the Mediterranean region, the Middle East (especially Turkey), and W. Asia (notably Afghanistan). They are still produced in these regions, but the leading producer is now California, where the main raisin varieties of grape are the following:
Other varieties are: Spanish Malagas (or Muscatels), large and delicious; Smyrna Sultana, seedless, pale yellow with a fine flavour; Corinthian raisins, a separate grade of sultanas, usually a little larger and darker than Smyrnas, but not to be confused with currants.
Sultanas are usually larger and paler than ordinary raisins.
Currants are tiny raisins made from drying a small, black variety of grape which was first grown at Corinth in Greece. Such currants have been used by cooks since classical times, sometimes in savoury dishes but most consistently in bakery goods and sweet foods. They often figure in English recipes of the 17th and 18th centuries as ‘currans’. They continue to be indispensable ingredients for such items as SPOTTED DICK, ECCLES CAKES, and Scottish BLACK BUN. Cultivation of grapes for currants has spread to Australia and the USA.
Zante is a small, black grape originally grown in the E. Mediterranean area for drying into currants.
The so-called raisin-tree, Hovenia dulcis, does not bear raisins. It is a deciduous shrub grown from the Himalayas to Japan (where the name is kenponashi), whose thickened fruit stalks, when dried, bear some resemblance to raisins and can be used in similar ways.
the Norwegian name for fermented TROUT (or other freshwater fish), notorious for their smell but well loved in rural communities where they have been an established tradition for centuries, and now also acquiring ‘chic acceptance in urban society’. The phrase is from Astri Riddervold (1990a) whose book on this and similar Scandinavian fish products is as readable as it is authoritative.
Riddervold explains that the more famous product GRAVLAKS, when prepared in the old traditional manner, involves burying salmon for a short period. Rakefisk is made by the same technique, but the fish are buried for longer. So, whereas gravlaks has never had an offensive smell, the more fully fermented rakefisk is quite different in this respect. Riddervold cites an 18th-century Norwegian clergyman as writing ‘that you would not dare ask a lady for a kiss when you have eaten this wonderful fish’, but observed that despite this handicap farmers in some regions would eat it every day. It is perfectly wholesome.
The Swedish name for rakefisk is surfisk. A Swedish writer cited by Riddervold points out that the tradition of preserving fish by burying it in the ground is found all over the world in circumpolar areas, and that in the Nordic countries the practice is found mainly in those regions where the winter is longest and coldest. For an example of a very large sea fish being so treated, see hákarl, under ICELAND
the ninth month of the lunar Muslim calendar. During these 29 or 30 days, from one new moon to the next, the faithful fast from dawn to dusk, abstaining from food, drink, tobacco, and sexual activity as long as there is sufficient light to enable the eye to distinguish between a black and a white thread held at arm’s length. In practice, the fast is governed by the morning and evening calls to prayer. Suhur, the early morning meal, must be finished before dawn; most Islamic countries have traditional foods for suhur, but city dwellers nowadays tend to eat a normal breakfast, often made up from the previous evening’s leftovers. Towards the hour of maghrib, the sunset prayer, food is made ready; cooks may taste, as long as they do not swallow. When the signal is given, by beating a drum, firing a cannon, or an announcement on radio and TV, everyone drinks a glass of water and eats something sweet before attending household or communal prayers and then launching into the evening meal.
Fasting is one of the five ‘pillars of Islam’ and is enjoined on everyone who has reached puberty. Certain groups are excused, notably travellers (which includes soldiers on active service), the very aged, and the sick (which may include pregnant women and nursing mothers). The very devout will not swallow their own saliva, but spit it out. Anyone who breaks the fast on one or more days can ‘pay back’ by fasting for an equal number of days after Ramadan is over, or make good the fault by distributing food to the poor, but this concession is intended principally for involuntary fast-breakers, for example women during menstruation.
The fast is a commandment of God, but it is not a penance or a commemoration of past events. The individual benefits by remission of sins and spiritual training, but a prime purpose is to strengthen the solidarity of the Muslim community. Fasting is not compulsory for anyone, but social pressures to observe it, for rich and poor alike, are strong.
The rules, of course, do not prevent people from eating as much as they like (or can afford) during the hours of darkness. During the day, lack of sleep and dehydration probably hit people hardest. Whatever apologists say, efficiency and productivity suffer. Because the lunar year is about 10 days shorter than the solar year, Ramadan moves gradually backwards against the cycle of the seasons, and daytime fasting is a severer challenge to Muslims in northern latitudes in June than it is in December.
Zubaida (1991), in a brilliant essay on Ramadan, points out that only a few special dishes for the occasion are common to all Muslim communities. Each region has its own Ramadan specialities. A tradition of the Prophet favours breaking the fast with dates, and this is widely observed in the Arabian peninsula and the Persian Gulf countries where dates are extensively cultivated. The drink called gamar-eddin, which is made from sheets of APRICOT paste (or apricot ‘leather’), is also important as something with which to break the fast in many parts of the Arab world.
A popular feature of the Ramadan evening meal is a rich soup. Zubaida remarks:
There is the famous harira of Morocco, a soup of lamb broth with a variety of pulses, vegetables, fragrant herbs and/or meat, depending on season, region and level of prosperity. It is paralleled in Iran by a very similar ash, with the addition, for Ramadhan, of dried fruit.
A common genre of Ramadan dishes for breaking the fast is a paste of pounded meat and cereals with various flavourings: in Iraq, Syria, and Arabia it is known as harissa, in Iran, Afghanistan, and India it is HALEEM, and in Anatolia keshkek. There were formerly, in some countries, traditional dishes such as khleiʾ (mutton and/or camel meat preserved in fat) in Fez in Morocco to be eaten for suhur, but the trend has been to replace these by a normal Arab breakfast.
Consumption of sweetmeats is universal and may be carried on through the night. Popular items include BAKLAVA, QATAʾIF, HALVA, with nuts, dried fruits, syrups and honey, sweetened cheeses, and often the ‘clotted cream’ known as KAYMAK in Turkey.
Ramadan is certainly not a feared or gloomy month–just the opposite. Most Muslims fully appreciate its spiritual, social, and physical benefits. It is a time for mutual forgiveness and the settlement of debts and differences. And quite apart from the good food that can be enjoyed at night, usually in a celebratory atmosphere, there are the preparations for the feast of Eid or Idul Fitri that immediately follows.
To eat on the three days of this feast is a religious as well as a social obligation. A good supply of titbits is kept handy for visitors. Alms are given to the poor; this zakat is another of the five pillars of the faith. Entertaining is lavish and meals tend to be heavy.
In SE Asia, to draw examples from another region, rice made yellow with turmeric is served, because yellow has been the colour of royalty and celebration since long before Islam arrived there. Sticky rice, or rice that has been compressed so that the grains stick together, is also associated with the festival; in Malaysia and Indonesia people make ketupat, little packets woven from strips of coconut leaf in which rice is cooked. In Java a popular dish for Idul Fitri is sambal goreng daging, a highly spiced beef dish. In Sumatra they eat RENDANG (buffalo meat long-cooked in spiced coconut milk) with sticky rice. However, there is no ‘classic’ meal for Eid; what matters is that there should be the very best food and plenty of it.
See also MUSLIMS AND FOOD.
Roger Owen
the Malay name, also used in English, for the fruits of several trees of the genus Baccaurea, most of which are native to Malaysia and Indonesia. Two, which have sweeter and better fruits than others, are cultivated there, and a third in India, Burma, and Thailand.
B. motleyana, the most important of these, produces abundant clusters of fruit hanging in long strings. Each fruit is oval, about 4 cm (1″) long, with a thin, velvety, pale brown skin. When ripe this skin becomes soft and wrinkled, which is one way of distinguishing rambai from the DUKU AND LANGSAT fruits which it closely resembles. A soft, translucent, whitish flesh surrounds a few flat, brown seeds. Cultivated varieties have a sweet, mild flavour and are refreshing when eaten raw. Wild trees produce fruits which are too acid to be eaten thus, but are suitable for cooking, making preserves, and alcoholic drinks. The sweet varieties are also used in these ways.
B. dulcis, with similar fruits, is grown in Sumatra and Java, and its large sweet fruits, called tjoepa, are sold in local markets.
B. sapida is cultivated for its fruits in India (as lutuqa or lutqa) and Burma, and in Thailand (where it is mai fai farang).
Nephelium lappaceum, a fruit native to the western lowlands of Malaysia, is now cultivated in many parts of SE Asia, where it is highly popular; in Sri Lanka; and in Zanzibar, where it was introduced at an early date by Arab traders. It is closely related to the LYCHEE.
Fruits vary in quality and type; there are crimson, greenish, and yellow or orange varieties. The inner part of the fruit is smaller than a lychee, but the outside looks larger because of the long hairs which give it its name, rambut being the Malay word for ‘hair’. It looks slightly like a sweet chestnut. The flavour is usually more acid than a lychee, but highly aromatic, and the seed has an almond-like flavour.
and the corresponding French word ramequin are both derived, according to Graham (1988), from the Flemish rammeken, the diminutive of ram, meaning cream. Thus the basic meaning of the term is ‘a little cream’. It seems always to have involved cheese, but Graham points out that it has:
been used over the centuries to describe almost anything from Welsh rabbit or a melted cheese sandwich to a cheese-flavoured egg custard, tartlet, soufflé, pudding or puff. It later came to be applied also, by metonymy, to the receptacle in which some types of ramekin were cooked.
This last is probably the sense most familiar to English-speaking cooks nowadays. A typical ramekin is of pottery or porcelain, round, small (about 5–8 cm/2–3″ in diameter), straight sided, and able to accommodate a small CUSTARD or MOUSSE or SOUFFLÉ or PÂTÉ.
In France likewise, ramequin generally refers to the small pot, but Larousse gastronomique (1997) mentions two surviving examples of its meaning a savoury mixture such as could be served on toast.
Flacourtia indica, also known as Governor’s plum, is a shrubby tree of the same genus as LOVI-LOVI and RUKAM. Native to India, it was introduced in the distant past to islands of the S. Indian Ocean and is now planted throughout the tropics.
The fruit is like a small red plum in shape, size, and colour. The pulp is yellowish-white, juicy, and usually acid; but some cultivated varieties are sweet enough to be eaten raw. Unripe fruits are good for making jellies, preserves, syrups, and similar products.
Campanula rapunculus, was a popular vegetable in many European countries, including Britain, in the 16th and 17th centuries; Evelyn (1699) remarked that its tender roots, eaten in the spring, were comparable to the RADISH but much more nourishing. However, like many other root vegetables, the rampion lost popularity as the POTATO gained acceptance. It is still occasionally used in France and Switzerland, but is now largely forgotten. Indeed, some English-speaking people are likely to know of it only by its German name, because of the Grimm brothers’ fairy story ‘Rapunzel’. In this tale a witch imprisoned the daughter of a woman who stole rampion (Rapunzel); a sign of the regard in which it was once held.
Rampion is closely related to the harebell and resembles it when in flower. The root, which may be as long as 30 cm (1′), is tapered and narrow, with an agreeable nutty flavour. Both roots and leaves may be eaten raw in salads. Old recipes call for cooking either of them.
The BELLFLOWER ROOT of Korea (toraji), Platycodon grandiflorus, is a close relation.
Brassica napus, one of the most ancient members of the CABBAGE tribe, is a coarse but useful green vegetable.
Its main importance, however, is that its subspecies oleifera is the source of rapeseed oil, a product which is very widely used in cooking. There had been a problem which discouraged its use; it was high in erucic acid and glucosinolates, which have anti-nutritional properties. However, plant-breeders in Canada have in the last decades of the 20th century developed the variety Canola, which does not suffer significantly from this handicap. Some rapeseed oil is now sold as Canola oil. The names rapeseed oil or colza oil are, however, more common.
Tiny rape seedlings mixed with CRESS are sold for salads; a cheap alternative to the traditional mustard and cress, but one which lacks the sharp taste of the other. At a later stage of growth, young rape thinnings are sometimes sold as spring greens. Later still, the leaves can be used as a pot-herb, and the inflorescences cooked like BROCCOLI.
an important SPICE MIXTURE (the name means, literally, something like ‘top of the shop’) found in varying forms in Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. It is one of the most complex such mixtures. Mme Guinaudeau (1958 and later editions) gave a list of 27 ingredients which has conveniently been echoed in an annotated English version by Paula Wolfert (1973, also with later editions). What seems clear is that standard ingredients are CUMIN SEEDS, CORIANDER seeds, TURMERIC, GINGER, CARDAMOM, and NUTMEG, but that many others, such as CINNAMON, CAYENNE PEPPER, rosebud (of the damask ROSE), OREGANO, are usually included, all in powdered form. Wolfert (1973) points out that certain supposed APHRODISIACS, including the ‘green metallic beetles’, cantharides, which are called ‘Spanish fly’ (Lytta vesicatoria) and are notoriously dangerous, have appeared in many Moroccan prescriptions; but these seem to be irrelevant for flavouring purposes. This last point is among those wittily brought out by Levy (1986) in a major essay on ‘Spanish fly’, based on research at Taroudan and Marrakesh in Morocco.
The ras-el-hanout of Tunisia typically includes rose petal and is relatively mild. That of Morocco is more pungent. Both are often used to flavour the accompaniments of COUSCOUS. In Morocco the mixture is often used in sweet lamb dishes such as mrouziya and always in the cooking of game. Guinaudeau explains that it is the spice for the festival Aid el kebir and also for certain winter dishes which heat the blood.
(Hindi), or rasagolla (Bengali) or rasbari (Nepali), a Bengali sweet popular throughout India. Essentially it is a small DUMPLING made of a mixture of chhenna (CURD: see also INDIAN SWEETS) and a little semolina which is boiled in syrup, and kept submerged in syrup until it is needed, so that it becomes soft and spongy. They are eaten cold, and can be served ‘wet’–with syrup, or a creamy sauce–or ‘dry’, coated with sugar or nuts. The finest recipes omit the semolina, giving an extra spongy result. They have a curious ‘squeaky’ texture, derived from the curd. Rasgullas and related confections form the basis of a whole ‘family’ of Indian sweets. They may be filled with nuts and raisins; or stuffed with candied peel. There are giant stuffed versions, filled with pistachio BARFI, called ‘rajah’s dish’ (double size) and ‘nawab’s dish’ (four times ordinary size, with four different fillings).
Dry sweets based on rasgullas removed from the syrup include raskadamba, which are coloured red or yellow, and coated with powdered, dried curd; rasamundi, rolled in sugar; and danedhar, heavily sugar coated so as to appear like crystallized fruit. Other dry versions are chum-chums, which are diamond shaped, and filled or piped with an icing of reduced milk and almonds.
Rasmalai are another sweet based on chhenna, this time shaped into flat cakes. After cooking in syrup, the cakes are soaked in a mixture called rabri–cream plus thickened fresh milk, flavoured with pandanus (see SCREWPINE). Mrs Balbir Singh (1967) observes: ‘This can truly be said to be the choicest of the Indian dishes. It is very delicious and is a treat for every tongue and every age.’
an Indian sweet based on COCONUT. A mixture of sugar and coconut is cooked gently in a little GHEE until it forms a sticky paste. Bengali raskara is flavoured with black pepper and a tiny quantity of raw camphor; that from Uttar Pradesh uses the more common Indian flavourings of rosewater and cardamom. Raskara is much used as a filling for other sweets, or is sprinkled on puffed rice as a breakfast dish.
Laura Mason
Rubus idaeus and other Rubus spp, a fruiting plant of which there are many varieties, grows wild in all the cooler regions of the northern hemisphere, and in some southern parts. The genus also includes the BLACKBERRY, CLOUDBERRY, DEWBERRY, and SALMONBERRY, and is part of the rose family.
Both raspberries and blackberries can be any colour from white through yellow, orange, pink, red, and purple to black, the difference between being one of structure. The fruit, though called berry, is technically an etaerio of druplets (a cluster of small fruits with stones). The etaerio grows from a core called a receptacle. When a blackberry is picked the receptacle remains inside the etaerio. When a raspberry is picked the etaerio comes away from the receptacle, which remains on the plant as an obvious white, conical structure. The absence of a core in the picked fruit makes raspberries softer and juicier to eat than blackberries.
The first people known to have cultivated raspberries were the ancient Greeks. Writing of them in the 1st century AD, the Roman writer Pliny the Elder explains that they called the raspberry idaeus because it grew thickly on the slopes of Mount Ida. (There are two mountains of this name, one in Crete and the other in Asia Minor, both still overgrown with wild raspberries.)
The Greek account differs slightly, according to Leclerc (1925), who describes it thus. Raspberries used all to be white, but one day, when the god Jupiter, still a child, was making the mountains resound with the echos of his furious screams (‘à rendre sourds les Corybantes eux-même’, comments Leclerc), the Nymph Ida, daughter of Mélissos, King of Crete, wished to pick him a raspberry to appease him. She scratched her breast on the spines of the shrub, staining the fruits a bright red for evermore. For this reason, raspberries are red, and the place where they grow called Ida.
R. idaeus is the modern botanical name of the chief species of both the wild and cultivated raspberry. The old English name for raspberry was ‘raspis’. Its origin is obscure, but thought to be connected with the rough, slightly hairy, and thus ‘rasping’ surface of a raspberry, compared with the shiny, smooth blackberry. Another old name was ‘hindberry’, given because the fruit was eaten by deer. The common German and Danish names are forms of the same word.
The common European wild raspberry has a distribution which extends well to the north of the Arctic Circle, and grows also in W. and N. Asia. (Wild plants of this species in America are not native, but escapees from cultivation.) There are red, yellow, and white forms. The flavour of some wild varieties is outstanding, so ‘canes’ (cuttings with a piece of root) are often taken from wild plants and transferred to gardens.
Wild raspberries are abundant in N. India and the Himalayas. Many species are very dark red or black. One of the most common is the Mysore (or hill) raspberry, R. niveus, a native of Burma and India, which is grown in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa, and is the only member of the Rubus family which has been successfully grown in Florida. The small fruits, black when ripe, are covered in a fine white bloom.
Wild American species include R. strigosus, of wide occurrence and quite similar to R. idaeus. Most kinds are red. It has no common name more specific than ‘wild red raspberry’.
In the eastern USA and Canada R. occidentalis, the black raspberry, is common. This is usually black, though yellow and red forms exist. It is more acid than most raspberries, which makes it particularly good for cooking.
The paler, often orange SALMONBERRY, R. spectabilis, is named not because of its colour but because American Indians in the north-west often ate it with salmon roe.
Modern cultivated raspberries in Europe are mainly varieties of R. idaeus, often crossed with other species to improve yield and disease resistance. In N. America, cultivated raspberries include R. idaeus, R. strigosus (for red raspberries), R. occidentalis (for black raspberries), and hybrids between these and others.
The climate in parts of Scotland is ideal for raspberries and it is there that some of the finest crops (90% of which are eaten in Britain) are grown.
Raspberries and blackberries are to some extent interfertile, and hybrids exist. The best known of these is the loganberry. In 1881 Judge J. H. Logan of Santa Cruz, California, discovered this plant growing in his garden. It was an accidental cross between one of his own raspberries and a wild blackberry outside the fence. Loganberries are dark red and of a good size. The plants yield well, and the fruits are canned in large quantities.
Hybrids of similar parentage but much more recent origin are the Tayberry and Tummelberry, each named for a river in the east of Scotland.
Other recent attempts to achieve superior hybrids had already produced the Boysenberry and the Youngberry, both called after their inventors. The Youngberry is fairly good, with a large, deep red, sweet fruit. There is also a cross between the Youngberry and the loganberry: the ollalie.
Raspberries have inspired flights of fancy in haute cuisine, most often in the guise of syrups and sauces used as an accompaniment to other fruits such as pears and figs. Raspberry sauce is an important ingredient in peach Melba (see PEACH). A more sober English alliance goes back to the 18th century, when ‘creams’ enriched with eggs and tinted pink with the fruit were a characteristic sweet dish.
Raspberry VINEGAR is one of the most popular flavoured vinegars. In Yorkshire, it used to be served with YORKSHIRE PUDDING, after the meat.
any of a large number of species of long-tailed rodents, mostly considerably larger than the related mice (although there are some which are only mouse sized). Rats come originally from the Old World but are now found worldwide.
The two principal rats, so far as people in temperate climates are concerned, are Rattus rattus, the black rat, and R. norvegicus, the common, grey, or Norway rat. In the western world they are regarded as pests rather than as potential food. There are, however, records of their being eaten, and some notoriety attaches to the rat dishes which were consumed in Paris when the city was besieged by Prussian forces in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1.
In W. Africa, rats are a major item of diet. The giant rat (Cricetomys gambianus), the CANE RAT (Thryonomys swinderianus), the common house mouse, and other species of rats and mice are all eaten. In some areas this group may provide as much as a half of locally produced meat (see also BUSHMEAT).
In rural Thailand, particularly in Pathum Thani province, rice rats, which are quite small, weighing just 90 g (3 oz), are relished, especially when pork and chicken prices are seasonally high. In the Americas there are nearly 200 species known as rice rats, some no doubt appreciated as food.
In Easter Island deposits, rat bones outnumber those of fish, doubtless because the diet of islanders was skewed by environmental degradation wrought by themselves and the fact that the rats (brought in as stowaways on the first canoes) did away with all species of land birds. In PAPUA NEW GUINEA bush rats are consumed, expecially the giant rat Mallomys rothschildi.
Simmonds (1859) supplies some characteristically arresting information about rats being eaten by the Chinese:
In China, rat soup is considered equal to ox-tail soup, and a dozen fine rats will realize two dollars, or eight or nine shillings.
Besides the attractions of the gold-fields for the Chinese, California is so abundantly supplied with rats, that they can live like Celestial emperors, and pay very little for their board. The rats of California exceed the rats of the older American States, just as nature on that side of the continent exceeds in bountifulness of mineral wealth. The California rats are incredibly large, highly flavoured, and very abundant. The most refined Chinese in California have no hesitation in publicly expressing their opinion of ‘them rats’. Their professed cooks, we are told, serve up rats’ brains in a much superior style to the Roman dish of nightingales’ and peacocks’ tongues. The sauce used is garlic, aromatic seeds and camphor.
From the southern hemisphere comes an impressively detailed account by Elsdon Best (1977) of Maori ways with rats. He explains that the native rats ate many kinds of berries, beech mast, and other wholesome foods of the forest.
When rats were to be potted they were, according to my Matatua notes, put in a large wooden bowl or trough (kumete), and allowed to remain there for a while; if in good condition, as they generally were when taken, the fat would soon commence to exude from them, and when a quantity had so collected, then hot stones were put in it, and renewed occasionally. This caused more fat to collect in the vessel, while it also cooked the fat and rats together, or at least sufficiently so to please the Maori taste, never in itself any too fastidious. The rats were then packed in gourd or wooden vessels, and the melted fat was poured over them, this being the preserving agent.
See also BUSHMEAT.
a word whose three meanings are explained below. Its origin is obscure. According to Favre (1883–92), the word is derived from the Latin phrase Res rata fiat, which was pronounced when a treaty or other such instrument was ratified. Since the custom was to accompany the ratification by drinking a good liqueur, the phrase, abbreviated, became a name for such a liqueur. If this is the origin of the name, it would explain why there is doubt about whether the name applies to all liqueurs or only some and, if only some, which. (It is usually understood to apply to liqueurs made from brandy and any fruit juice, especially those made by a process of maceration; but some authorities regard a flavouring of bitter almonds as necessary.)
The three meanings of ratafia are:
Laura Mason
an interesting example of a dish which achieved international currency during the 20th century, from a standing start as a local dish of the region of Nice, not recorded in print before Heyraud (c.1930).
In the late 18th century and the 19th the name was used in French to indicate a coarse stew. It apparently derived from ratouiller and tatouiller, two expressive forms of the French verb touiller, meaning to stir up. According to Ayto (1993), the word first appeared in English in Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery (1877), but in the misspelled form ‘ratatouville’. It retained in that work the early French meaning of a meat stew.
What Heyraud and subsequent authors described in the 20th century was something quite different. Heyraud defined it as ‘a ragoût of aubergine with tomatoes, courgettes and sweet peppers’, and commented that it was much eaten throughout Languedoc and Provence. According to him, ‘ratatouille’ was the original name and belonged to Nice (as did the alternative name sauté à la niçoise); at Nîmes, however, the name bourbouillade was in use. Escudier (1964), shrewdly pointing to two reasons for its growth in international popularity, comments that the ratatouille of Nice ‘is a summer dish which is becoming more and more popular. It is easy to make and has the advantage of also being able to be eaten cold.’
By the end of the 20th century the term has become so widely known that it is sometimes used as a generic term for any similar preparation made with other vegetable ingredients.
the Vietnamese and most commonly used name for Polygonum odoratum, (syn Persicaria odorata) a herb used in SE Asia. It is sometimes called Vietnamese coriander, since its strong smell has some resemblance to that of coriander. Other names are Vietnamese mint and, in Singapore and Malaysia, laksa leaf. The narrow pointed leaves are used when young; they become too bitter, and reddish, when they grow bigger.
READING:
a piquant French sauce; the verb ravigoter means ‘to perk up’. Sauce ravigote is usually met in its cold form, when it is in effect a variation of VINAIGRETTE, achieved by adding CAPERS, FINES HERBES, and chopped onion.
There is, however, a warm sauce ravigote, based on VELOUTÉ, with the addition of fines herbes and shallot butter, plus wine and wine vinegar.
the archetypal stuffed PASTA of the western world, can be presumed to be Italian in origin but had started to appear as far away as England by the 14th century (when the FORME OF CURY gave a recipe for ‘rauioles’), and was known in the south of France in medieval times.
So far as Italy is concerned, the earliest records of ravioli seem to be in some of the 140,000 preserved letters of Francesco di Marco, a merchant of Prato in the 14th century. They are described as being stuffed with pounded pork, eggs, cheese, parsley, and sugar; while in Lent a filling of herbs, cheese, and spices was used. There were both sweet and savoury kinds.
However, although this fortunate merchant could enjoy complex forms of ravioli, the basic and probably original kind were simply stuffed with spinach, or curd cheese. It is in relatively recent times that the filling for ravioli has become as varied as it now is: seafood, fungi, various kinds of meat–the form lends itself to almost infinite variety.
Agnolotti are similar but round or semicircular in shape. Both ravioli and agnolotti are normally accompanied by a sauce, such as tomato.
These are the western relations of well-known products of the Orient and C. Asia, such as, for example, MANTOU, JIAOZI, and PEL’MENI.
A diet consisting entirely of uncooked foods, as is sometimes advocated, would obviously require us to forgo many gastronomic pleasures. But it would be perfectly adequate and would include many such pleasures. We would not be restricted to salad vegetables, fruits and nuts, milk, raw fish, and steak tartare. Provided that the preparation of foods without heat was allowed, for example by marinating them or using the technique of fermentation, we could enjoy salami, prosciutto, cheese, and many other dairy products, and many alcoholic drinks (although neither beer nor spirits).
This diet would be expensive, since it would omit most of the cheap filling foods such as bread, potatoes, and the majority of legumes. But it would also avoid the wastage of certain nutrients which many acts of cookery entail.
Seizing on the point that it would be feasible to live on such a diet, and reminding us that our remote ancestors did just that, some authors have gone so far as not only to condemn cookery (treatment of food by heat) but also to eschew the use of artificially cold temperatures. Thus, Mr and Mrs Eugene Christian, in Uncooked Foods and How to Use Them (1904), claimed that ‘nature has provided a diet that can be selected and eaten without changing its form or chemical properties by the application of either heat or cold, and which will be perfect’. They cited the perfect health of their own family as evidence, and dwelt with fervour on the emancipating effect which their ‘natural diet’ would have on women.
When … the woman who has dreamed of a true home has settled therein, it gradually dawns upon her that, instead of being a queen, she is an improved vassal. She finds that she must stand over a miniature furnace for an hour in the morning and breathe the poisonous odor of broiling flesh, and spend another hour among the grease and slime of pots and dishes … She soon realises that the fires of the morning are hardly out until those for the noon are kindled and the labors from luncheon often lap over into the evening, and those of evening far into night. The throne over which she dreamed of wielding the queenly sceptre has been transformed into a fiery furnace, gilded with greasy pots and plates, blood and bones, over which she has unfurled the dish-rag.
The authors are sufficiently ingenious to make provision for the general desire that some food should at least be warm; and for the appetizing aromas that emanate from heated foods more readily than from cold ones. Their recipe for Sweet Potato Soup, for example, allows for it to be slightly heated (‘not enough to cook’, they explain). And further examination of their recipe section reveals that quite a high proportion of the dishes are to be warmed to ‘about 145 °F’. These concessions may be thought to weaken their case slightly, and they are not made in a number of later, less eloquent and engaging but more finely argued, books by other authors.
See also COOKING; and for a different view of one kitchen activity, WASHING UP.
a pair of names which can be used almost interchangeably for fish of the family Rajidae. No biological basis exists for using one name in preference to the other for any particular species; nor do dictionaries provide clear guidance. On the whole, however, the following practices are observed.
The unusual shape of rays is the result of their pectoral fins being greatly enlarged to constitute a more or less quadrangular ‘body’. These enlarged fins are referred to as wings. Rays are greatly ‘flattened’, like true FLATFISH, as befits their bottom-living mode of life. They are cartilaginous, lacking true bones. Reproduction is achieved by the laying of eggs in horny capsules, which when found empty on the sea shore are referred to as ‘mermaids’ purses’.
The best ray for eating, and the one best known in Europe, is Raja clavata, the thornback ray. Its name reflects the fact that its back bears numerous prickles and thorns sticking up from button-like bases known as bucklers. An alternative name for this prize ray is roker. Others which are appreciated include R. montagui, which has a pale brown back prettily ornamented with dark round spots, and Amblyraja radiata, which is an Arctic species but ranges some way south on both sides of the Atlantic. Among the larger species which are usually called skate, Dipturus batis, the blue skate, and also Rostroraja alba, the white skate, are noteworthy.
Rays have an ammoniac smell which puts some people off eating them. However, it should not do so. Non-bony fish, such as rays and sharks, use urea, a chemical substance, to control their osmotic balance (stop water leaching out of them into the sea or vice versa). On death, the urea starts to break up, producing ammonia and the ammoniac smell. This is good, since one wants to be rid of the urea and all traces of the ammonia will anyway be dispersed in cooking.
Cooking rays or skates is simple enough (although it can be sophisticated, e.g. a topnotch Raie au beurre noir, ray with black (i.e. dark brown) butter). Once cooked, the long strands of flesh part easily from the cartilaginous ‘bones’.
named after the famous English naturalist John Ray (1627–1705), a deep-bodied fish which does not belong to the same family as the various kinds of SEA BREAM, but which has a general resemblance to them and may be cooked in similar ways. The flesh is delicious.
This is a brown-grey fish of relatively deep waters, found in many seas including the central and western parts of the Mediterranean. Of a solitary lifestyle, it is not common in the markets anywhere but seems to be least uncommon in Spain, where its name is japuta. Maximum length 70 cm (28″).
or razor-shell any of a group of edible BIVALVES, mainly of the genera Ensis and Solen, whose shells resemble in shape the old-fashioned cut-throat razor. They are very brittle, usually covered by a glossy brown or yellowish periostracum (outer covering), and gape permanently at both ends. This last feature makes it impossible to market razor clams alive in their shells.
Its long and powerful ‘foot’ enables a razor clam to make its way through wet sand like a knife through butter, dodging danger by a swift descent. Hunting them in the intertidal waters where they lurk can be a frustrating business, and even perilous since the sharp edges of their shells can inflict severe cuts. In Orkney, where the cult of eating them has reached its apogee, they are known as spoots and their pursuit as spooting.
Opinions differ on how to make them emerge from their holes. Putting a teaspoonful of salt into the hole is said to work in some places but not in others. The comments of George Henry Lewes (1860) are apposite.
There is something irresistibly ludicrous in grave men stooping over a hole–their coat-tails pendant in the water, their breath suspended, one hand holding salt, the other alert to clutch the victim–watching the perturbations of the sand, like hungry cats beside the holes of mice.
However, Lewes did this himself, with varying results, and concluded that there was no certainty in the matter and that often, when a razor clam responds to a dose of salt by letting the tip of its syphon appear for a moment, ‘it is merely to see what is the matter, and to indulge in a not altogether frivolous curiosity as to the being who can illogically offer salt to him who lives in salt water’.
The common species of European waters are Ensis ensis, which is curved; and E. siliqua and Solen marginatus, which are straight. Maximum lengths are around 15 cm (6″). On the eastern seaboard of N. America Ensis directus, the eastern razor clam (or Atlantic jack-knife–see below), is the main species; while on the western coast, from Alaska to California, Siliqua patula, the northern razor clam, is prized.
The SE Asian species Pharella javanica reaches a length of 10 cm (4″) and has shells which are yellow and blue on the outside. Solen grandis is another Asian species which is widely eaten.
The name jack-knife clam is sometimes applied to certain razor clams in California and in Asian waters, but is perhaps better reserved for CLAMS of related genera, notably Tagelus (T. californianus being the Californian jack-knife clam).
If there is a useful distinction here, it seems to lie in a difference of proportion between length and breadth; the jack-knife clams being those which are shorter and broader and therefore less like a razor. Certainly the habit of ‘jack-knifing’ themselves down through the sand or mud is common to both these lots of clams and cannot itself constitute a distinction between them.
Razor clams, once removed from their shells, may be eaten entire. The meat is white and tender when cooked. Of the few dishes which specifically call for them, the Italian Zuppa di cannolicchi is noteworthy.
is a surface-ripened, semi-soft whole-milk French cheese from the Haute Savoie and Savoie regions. It has a mild, subtly sour taste, and is made in a flat disc shape weighing about 600 g (1 lb 5 oz). There are also miniature versions.
Pseudophycis bacchus, a fish of New Zealand waters, especially around the South Island, is not a true cod but a member of the family Eretmophoridae, bottom-living fish of moderately deep waters. Its alternative common name is hoka.
Maximum length close to 1 m (40″); average length half that or less. A grey-pink fish above, more white below, with pink fins. There is some commercial trawling for the red cod, but it is rated acceptable rather than good as a food fish.
a term which occurs as a verb, signifying a method of cooking, in books about Chinese cookery. It usually refers to a meat dish prepared by stewing or braising, with a liberal amount of SOY SAUCE to produce the reddish colour. Not all Chinese meat dishes which are red or reddish when finished are made in this way; some depend simply on the use of red colouring.
Geryon quinquedens, a deep-water CRAB of the W. Atlantic, from Cuba up to Nova Scotia. A fishery for this species, which had not previously been exploited, has been started in New England. The meat is good. Although the legs are thin, their meat slips out easily.
In the north of Spain a similar fishery has been begun for G. affinis, the corresponding species of the E. Atlantic. Normal weights of the ‘cangrexo real’ (as this crab is known in Galician) are 1 kg (2.25 lb) for the male (and much less for the female).
a name which for obvious reasons has been applied to various species of fish around the world, is best used for fish of the genus Sebastes in the family Scorpaenidae, especially S. marinus. This is a bright red or orange-red fish, with a maximum length of 1 m (40″) although it is commonly about a third of that. It belongs to the cold northerly waters of the Atlantic down to the Gulf of Maine on the west and the North Sea on the east, and is the object of a sizeable commercial fishery, for consumption in Scandinavia and also in Germany, where it may appear on menus as Island Rotbarsch, since the supply comes mainly from Icelandic waters.
S. marinus is known as ‘ocean perch’ in the USA, and may also bear that name in Canada.
A smaller relation, S. viviparus, is its counterpart in shallower waters; and it is this species, if any, which may be called by the unsuitable name ‘Norway haddock’ in Britain.
In Australia redfish has become the official name of the nannygai (see ALFONSINO).
Mullus barbatus and M. surmuletus, are among the most prized fish of the Mediterranean, distinguished by their crimson colour and delicate flesh. They are also found in the Atlantic, M. surmuletus as far north as the south coast of Britain. A Black Sea version of M. barbatus is recognized as M. barbatus ponticus.
M. barbatus is smaller (maximum length 25 cm/10″) and paler than M. surmuletus (maximum length 40 cm/16″). The latter often bears horizontal yellow stripes on its sides; and its common names usually mean ‘of the rocks’ (thus, French rouget de roche, Italian triglia di scoglio).
Into the western end of the Mediterranean another red mullet pokes its nose. This is Pseudupeneus prayensis, a species which belongs to the west coast of Africa, from Morocco to Angola. At the eastern end of the Mediterranean there has been a more interesting incursion. When de Lesseps built the Suez Canal, he was of course creating a passage for ships, not fish; and the salinity of the Bitter Lakes which punctuate the Canal was anyway too great to allow fish to pass through. However, a century or so later, the flow of water in the Canal had diminished the salt level considerably and Indo-Pacific species began to swim up from the Red Sea. These included two red mullet (or goatfish, as they are known in the Indo-Pacific), Upeneus asymmetricus (formerly U. tragula) and U. moluccensis (formerly Mulloidichthys auriflamma). These species are now established as breeding populations in the E. Mediterranean.
The Romans of classical times would have greeted these new arrivals, had they come 2,000 years earlier, with great enthusiasm. Many Roman authors testify to the red mullet fever which gripped their contemporaries in the first centuries AD. One symptom was an undue preoccupation with size, which caused the price of large specimens to rise to absurd heights, equivalent to many hundreds of pounds in the 1990s, for a really big one. Another was the habit of keeping red mullet in captivity and arranging for guests to enjoy the highly specialized aesthetic experience of watching the colour of dying fish change. The moralist Seneca attacked the practice with savage irony, claiming that a Roman would no longer attend the bedside of his dying father, however much he desired the father to die(!), if the rival attraction of a dying red mullet was on offer.
Red mullet may be grilled or fried. Their delicate but firm flesh needs no sauce or stuffing, although these are sometimes supplied. The liver is a delicacy.
(or pink peppercorns) which have enjoyed a vogue as a spice in the last decades of the 20th century, are not related to the common black PEPPER but come from a different plant, Schinus terebinthifolius. This is indigenous to Brazil, where it is known as aroreira, but since the 19th century has been widely diffused in other tropical areas. It is also called Brazilian pepper tree, Christmas-berry, and Florida holly. In the French island of Réunion it is known as poivrier, sorbier, or incense.
The plant can grow to tree size, and bears masses of ivory flowers. These are succeeded by small, single-seeded berries, which are glossy green and then bright red. When fully ripe, they become dry, with nothing inside except the seed. The flavour is slightly sweet at first, then peppery (with a hint of menthol) and pungent. Although the plant is common in parts of the USA, where it was first introduced for its decorative quality, it is from Réunion that the red peppercorns of commerce chiefly come. They are exported as ‘baies roses de Bourbon’, then processed and packed in France as red or pink peppercorns.
It was Alexandra Hicks (1982) who first dispelled confusion about the nature of these ‘peppercorns’. She explained that there had been two reasons for it. First, the berries of Piper nigrum, the ones which become true peppercorns, do go from a green to a red stage as they ripen (although they are normally picked when green). So there do exist ‘red/pink’ berries which can properly be called pepper berries; but they do not occur in processed form or in commerce. Secondly, there is a plant, Schinus molle, known as the Peruvian pepper tree, which is closely related to S. terebinthifolius and which bears purplish-red berries which have long been used as a condiment in Peru; and this plant is now common in California.
Red peppercorns may be decorative, and serve to add pungency to a dish, but it is questionable whether they are entirely suitable for consumption. Persons handling the plants may develop rashes; children who eat more than a few of the berries, ripe or unripe, experience digestive upsets and vomiting; and birds which feed excessively on the ripe berries become intoxicated and unable to fly.
Most chefs who use red peppercorns are unaware of all this, and do not know what the peppercorns really are.
is the misleading translation of a term very familiar in Spanish-speaking countries of C. and S. America: frijoles refritos. This refers to beans which have first been cooked in water and are subsequently fried. There is no question of their being fried twice, i.e. literally refried. Diana Kennedy (1986) has explained the matter:
Several people have asked me why, when the beans are fried, they are called refried. Nobody I asked in Mexico seemed to know until quite suddenly it dawned on me. The Mexicans have a habit of qualifying a word to emphasize the meaning by adding the prefix re-. They will get the oil very hot (requemar), or something will be very good (retebien). Thus refrito means well fried, which they certainly are, since they are fried until they are almost dry. I am glad to say that Santamaría in his Diccionario de Mexicanismos bears this out.
i.e. keeping foods at a low temperature, preserves them for a limited time. All the processes of life, indeed all chemical reactions, take place more slowly at low temperatures.
Heat is a form of energy which manifests itself as a vibration of the molecules of which things are made. In a hot body the molecules move fast; in a cold one they move more slowly. That is why chemical reactions occur more slowly in cold conditions.
There is no such thing as ‘cold’; a cold body simply contains less heat energy than a hot one. When two objects at different temperatures come together, heat flows out of the warmer body into the colder one until eventually they are at the same temperature.
When a substance changes state–that is, when a solid melts to a liquid or a liquid turns to a gas, or vice versa–there is a considerable transfer of heat energy. For example, when ice melts, a lot of heat has to pass into it to allow it to change to water. This heat is drawn in from the surroundings, so anything in contact with the melting ice loses heat and becomes colder. All the available heat is going into the melting process, so the ice and its meltwater remain at freezing point until all the ice has melted, and only then do things start to warm up.
Similarly, when any liquid evaporates to a vapour the process demands heat. The liquid can be made to evaporate by heating it. But it can also be made to evaporate without heating, by reducing the ambient pressure. In this case all the heat that is required has to come from the surroundings, which therefore become cooler. When water vapour condenses to a liquid it gives up the heat it has taken in, warming the surroundings.
The preservative effects of cold were observed early, even if the reason was not understood. The Romans used to chill perishable foods by packing them in snow brought from the Alps, using straw to insulate the snow and keep it from melting both on the journey and in use. The icehouse is another ancient invention, developed in the Middle East, taken up in Renaissance Europe, and familiar in N. America until recently. Ice is collected from lakes in winter, or from mountains, and stored in a heavily insulated building, usually sunk into the ground. With proper management there will still be some ice left by the time winter comes again.
Both these methods are strictly for the rich, who could afford to have ice transported and to build an icehouse. One other traditional method was available to all: the evaporation of water through unglazed earthenware. If water is stored in an unglazed pot, a little of it seeps through the clay and evaporates on the outside, cooling the pot and the water still inside it. Ideally the pot should be set in a shady spot exposed to any wind, since the movement of air speeds evaporation. This method is still widely used to cool drinking water in India and elsewhere. The same principle is used in the modern earthenware cooler for milk bottles.
In Italy in the early 16th century it was discovered that if ice is mixed with salt the temperature of the mixture will fall as low as –18 °C (0 °F; in fact the zero point of the Fahrenheit scale was determined in this way). This phenomenon may seem surprising, but it depends on simple facts of physics. A solution of any substance in water always has a lower freezing point than that of pure water; in the case of the strongest possible salt solution this is that stated above. When ice melts, the temperature of the ice and the meltwater around it is always exactly that of the freezing point of the water, even if this is below the normal melting point of the ice. So if ice is floating in a salt solution, it will melt at the freezing point of the solution.
In the 1830s some attempts were made to build mechanical refrigerators that used the cooling effect of evaporation, but these were unsuccessful until the British physicist William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) worked out the principle of the heat pump in 1851. A liquid is made to evaporate by lowering the ambient pressure and without heating it, so that it becomes extremely cold. The cold vapour is piped through a closed container, and the heat of whatever is in the container passes into the vapour, so the contents are cooled. After this the vapour is led out of the container and compressed to reliquefy it; this releases the heat that has gone into the vapour. The liquid is then vaporized, and thus cooled, again. The fluid travels in an endless cycle in a closed circuit of pipework, constantly taking heat out of the container and releasing it into the open air. All that is needed is some means of driving the fluid around the circuit–in most modern refrigerators this is an electric pump.
The first workable refrigerating machinery was built in 1857 by the Frenchman Ferdinand Carré. It used a variant of the principle just described. The refrigerant fluid is ammonia dissolved in water. The ammonia is made to boil out of the water by heating it–ammonia boils at a lower temperature than water. This creates enough pressure to force the ammonia vapour into another vessel, where it condenses into a liquid. Still driven by this pressure, the liquid flows through an expansion valve which greatly reduces its pressure, causing it to evaporate and become very cold, after which it passes through the food compartment and cools the food. From here it flows to another vessel containing water in which it dissolves again, and thence back to the start of the cycle. The system could reach a temperature as low as –30 °C (–22 °F), and was soon in use for the FREEZING of meat.
Carré’s refrigerator could equally well be used to keep foods cool without freezing them; but it was too big for home use. The domestic refrigerator had to wait until electric motors became small and reliable. The first practical model was the Kelvinator, launched in the USA in 1918. Since then the refrigerator has gradually become ubiquitous and indispensable.
An improvement came in 1931 with the invention of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), a group of inert gases which make excellent refrigerants. They do not need to be dissolved in water, and the cycle is the simple one described first. One other difference between the cycles is that the simple one needs a mechanical pump to drive fluid around the system; while (at least in a small machine without long pipe runs) the ammonia cycle can be powered entirely by the water heater and there need be no moving parts. This cycle is still used in small gas-powered refrigerators for caravans and boats.
In the 1970s it was established that CFCs were eroding the earth’s ozone layer, and since then they have gradually been replaced by less harmful chemicals such as hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and butane. With this beneficial change, refrigerators regain in full their reputation as one of the great boons of the 20th century.
Ralph Hancock
Rangifer tarandus, a large DEER inhabiting the northern regions of Europe and Asia, especially well known as a food in Sweden, Finland, and Russia.
The meat from a reindeer, which is better than that from its close relation the CARIBOU, is cooked and eaten in many ways (roasts, stews, etc.) in the countries where it lives in the wild. It has become increasingly available, often as smoked meat, elsewhere. Reindeer tongue is a delicacy. However, the praises of reindeer meat have been sung in the most melodious and informative manner by Anna-Maija and Juha Tanttu (1988):
The reindeer is a way of life in Lapland. It’s both a pack animal and the tourist’s darling. Its skins are made into boots and furs. Its horns are made into souvenirs. But above all reindeer are the Lapp’s cattle. The Lapp lives on and from reindeer meat.
Reindeer meat is wonderful. It has a slightly gamy taste, is rich in nutrients but not too fatty. It’s easy to digest and can be served in a variety of ways. The reindeer tastes so good because it eats good food itself: first it’s fed on its mother’s milk, later it forages for its own moss, in the unpolluted wilds of Lapland.
Reindeer dishes combine old Lapp folk traditions with modern meat technology, quality controls, and inspections.
You can make anything out of reindeer meat, from soup to stews. But Lapland has its own delicious specialities.
The Lapp serves smoked reindeer roast in thin slices as an appetizer and on sandwiches. Reindeer tongue is delicious cooked and also makes an excellent paté.
One of the simplest, tastiest, and perhaps most famous reindeer dishes is reindeer stew. The meat is cut into slivers while still frozen, put into a pot with a bit of water, and simmered until tender. Experts have different views of what ‘real’ reindeer stew should be. Some say that fatty pork should be added to the pot. It’s a matter of taste. The stew is served with mashed potatoes, seasoned with butter and onions, and lingonberry purée. (Some purists leave that out, too.)
Reindeer meat has its own special taste and doesn’t need any ‘fancy’ spices. The most common seasonings are green and black pepper, allspice, bay leaves, and salt. Suitable accompaniments are onions, carrots, celery, parsnips, and pickled cucumbers. Reindeer meat doesn’t suffer if you cook it with cream or sour cream, either. It also gets along well with mushrooms and berries: lingonberries, cranberries, rowanberries.
See also KOUMISS for the slightly alcoholic beverage called pima which is made from reindeer milk.
as a noun and in a culinary context, refers to a CONDIMENT or highly flavoured item of food taken with plainer food to add flavour and interest to it. An English example would be a small serving of pickled vegetables taken with plain bread and cheese.
A condiment may be a relish. However, it is more usual to refer to a condiment, e.g. mustard, as a condiment. Condiments are normally taken in small quantities, whereas relishes often come in mouthfuls and can usually be taken in conjunction with the main food, not necessarily in or on it; no one would just eat a spoonful of mustard, whereas one might very well do this with a SAMBAL (corresponding closely to the meaning of relish) or CHUTNEY.
a French culinary term which usually refers to a mayonnaise-like dressing with mustard. It is thought to have been derived in the 17th century from a name used in Picardy for the black radish, whose piquancy is not unlike that of mustard.
In the past, the term designated a broth flavoured with chopped anchovies, capers, parsley, spring onions, garlic, and a little oil. Its modern sense (a mayonnaise-like emulsion) seems to have evolved in the 19th century. It is now rarely encountered in France except as an element of céleri rémoulade, a popular salad made of grated celeriac (see CELERY) and MAYONNAISE that has been highly seasoned with Dijon MUSTARD.
When the term occurs as an English word, it may lack the accent.
an interesting dish, perhaps unique in its cooking method, which belongs to the Minangkabau (‘Victorious Buffalo’) people of W. Sumatra, although it has latterly become common property for all Indonesians and has appeared elsewhere in adapted forms (to some of which the phrase ‘dry beef curry’, which would not be appropriate for the original, authentic version, can be applied).
The WATER-BUFFALO meat, or beef, should be of a flaky sort, with some fat; brisket is the best cut of beef to choose. Spices and flavourings are shallots and garlic; ginger, GALANGAL, and TURMERIC; chilli peppers; turmeric leaf (daun kunyit) and salam leaf (see DAUN SALAM). The cooking medium is coconut milk and the technique is to cook the cubed meat, with its flavourings, in enough coconut milk to cover it for, say, an hour and a half, uncovered; then to let the now thick coconut milk bubble for another half-hour until it starts to turn into oil, becoming brown and even thicker. Stirring is now continuous, until the dish is almost ‘dry’.
In this unusual sequence, the stage of simmering in the liquid coconut milk passes seamlessly into the final stage which, with the coconut milk now turned into oil, must count as a form of frying.
READING:
is a substance used for CURDLING milk, either as part of CHEESE-MAKING or to make the dessert JUNKET. Most rennet is of animal origin, but vegetable rennet is used for making some cheeses, both of traditional and kosher or vegetarian varieties.
Animal rennet contains the digestive enzyme rennin, which curdles milk in the normal process of digestion. The usual source is the lining of the fourth stomach (the abomasum or true stomach) of a calf, though other young animals may be used. The animal should be unweaned, and thus with a high ability to digest milk, and abundant rennin. The gizzard lining of domestic fowls may also be used, giving a rennin which has a less powerful effect. Traditionally the linings, of whatever type, were salted and dried, which allowed them to retain their effect for several months. Only a small strip was needed. Modern rennet is a liquid extract or a powder.
The stomach lining of human beings, like that of calves and other animals, contains rennin, which exerts its curdling effect on milk which has been ingested. Thus, although we swallow milk as a liquid, we quickly turn it into a solid, like junket.
Vegetable rennet depends for its power on various plant enzymes which have a similar coagulating effect on the protein in the milk. Some traditional Italian CACIOTTA and PECORINO cheeses are made with fiore (‘flower’) rennet obtained from the wild cardoon, Cynara cardunculus. This plant is used for the same purpose in Spain and Portugal. The common British plant lady’s bedstraw, Galium verum, is another source, which has the added advantage that it also supplies a yellow dye suited to colouring cheese or butter. Some other plant enzymes (ficin from figs, papain from the papaya, etc.) could be used but are not entirely suitable, since they tend to produce bitter cheeses.
a Persian word meaning thread or string, sometimes referring to a very fine NOODLE like ‘angel’s hair’ but more often to a Middle Eastern fresh egg noodle of ribbon shape, often home made and hand cut.
Reshteh, as Perry (1982) points out, was ‘the only word for noodle known in the several 13th century Arabic cookery books and in the poems of the 14th century Persian rhymester Bushaq’. And it has indeed become the general Persian name for noodles.
Claudia Roden (1985), writing about the present role of reshteh in the Middle East, remarks that, ‘like rice, it has escaped the stigma of being a filling dish for the poor’. Indeed, although a common dish of the Arab world, it is considered suitable for special occasions. By standard practice the reshteh is broken up and fried brown, but nowadays it may be browned under the grill and added to rice.
Reshteh has more than one special significance in Iran. Margaret Shaida (1992) gives an example:
Dishes containing noodles are traditionally prepared at times of decision or change so that the ‘reins (of life) may be taken in hand’ and the future given direction. Reshteh polow is often served on the eve of the new year [Persian New Year–21 March] as its threads intertwine in the same way that the family bonds are tied together.
She also explains that reshteh is also made for occasions of thanksgiving, and appears in the soup ash-e-reshteh (sometimes called ash-e-poshteh-pa or pilgrim’s soup), traditionally served on the eve of departure of a loved one going on the pilgrimage to Mecca or any long journey.
See also SHA’RIYYA; NOODLES OF ASIA.
Helen Saberi
a sticky secretion of certain trees and shrubs; or any synthetic substance which has the property of naturally occurring resins. Resins resemble GUM in some respects although differing in others. Gums are soluble in water, whereas resins are not, although soluble in alcohol. Also, while gums are more or less devoid of flavour, resins contain essential oils which do have flavour and can be put to use in making flavourings.
Resins are often extracted by incisions in the bark of the trees or shrubs which yield them. Examples with food uses are MASTIC, obtained from plants of the genus Pistacia; BALSAM of various kinds; ASAFOETIDA (and the spice SILPHIUM of classical times).
According to contemporary dictionaries, a restaurant is simply an eating place, an establishment where meals are served to customers. By this definition, restaurants–by whatever name they have been given–are almost as old as civilization. The ruins of Pompeii contain the remnants of a tavern which provided foods and wines to passers-by. For as long as there have been travellers there have been institutions offering food and accommodation (and the traditions of hospitality ensured that they were also welcomed into private dwellings). Indeed, the prime function of these early ‘eating places’ was to cater to the needs of people away from home who, unless they had brought their own food and cooks with them, were obliged to take whatever was available–or go hungry. However, it would also be fair to accord these places a similar role in urban life to that occupied by a modern restaurant. Archaeologists have been struck by the lack of cooking places and facilities in Roman insulae. Presumably their inhabitants gratified their appetites in eating houses. Similarly, a geographical survey of medieval London cookshops shows them to have been located in the most densely populated districts and not on the routes of access where they would have been most useful to travellers.
In Europe, from the second half of the 17th century there were coffee shops or cafés, public places where people could meet and talk, eat and drink. Serving only coffee, to begin with, they soon became established as meeting places for men of letters; some also provided newspapers for their clientele to read, or facilities for playing chess or billiards. In England there were also taverns which, catering to a socially superior clientele, employed well-known cooks and offered an extensive choice of dishes. Reading James Boswell’s journal of his life in London in the middle of the 18th century reveals his constant use of tavern and chophouse dining rooms in identical manner to the man-about-town of the Victorian era.
The restaurant, as it was conceived in Paris towards the end of the 18th century, had a very specific vocation. It came to be seen that its principal advantage was that it offered diners a choice rather than the fixed table d’hôte of taverns or single-commodity fare of chophouses or pie shops: according to BRILLAT-SAVARIN, restaurants allowed people to eat when they wanted, what they wanted, and how much they wanted, knowing in advance how much this would cost. The top restaurants of the day boasted a vast menu, with a choice of 12 soups, 65 entrées of beef, mutton, chicken, or game, 15 roasts, and 50 dessert dishes.
The early history of Paris restaurants has lately been closely studied by Rebecca Spang (2000). In this she refutes the traditional account of restaurateurs invading the corporate provinces of traiteurs, rôtisseurs, pâtissiers, aubergistes, and taverniers/cabaretiers. Nor could she find documentary evidence of the reputed lawsuit brought against Boulanger in 1765 by the traiteurs for selling a RAGOUT, namely a dish of sheep’s feet–Pieds de mouton à la sauce poulette (a kind of white sauce enriched with egg yolks). Rather, she proposes that the inventor of the restaurant was Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau in 1766 who, as part of a broad hand of money-making schemes, opened his doors for the sale of restorative broth or bouillon. Concentration on this one dish, although evidently suited to the refined sophisticates for whom it was warmed (healthily, be it said, in porcelain, not in dangerously worn copper vessels), soon yielded to offering more imaginative cookery, all of which remained delicate, ‘nouvelle’, ‘restorative’ in the literal as well as figurative sense. From these small beginnings that harnessed commercially the great changes in cooking then in train in France, as well as servicing a more complex urban lifestyle than did the table d’hôte of traiteurs-rôtisseurs, sprang the restaurants of the Revolutionary period.
By 1771 the word ‘restaurateur’ was defined (in the Dictionnaire de Trévoux) as ‘someone who has the art of preparing true broths, known as “restaurants”, and the right to sell all kinds of custards, dishes of rice, vermicelli and macaroni, egg dishes, boiled capons, preserved and stewed fruit and other delicious and health-giving foods’. The restaurateur had total control of the wine and food service and was able to present one bill for all the foods eaten and wines drunk, whereas previously the aubergiste had been obliged to collect payment on behalf of the rôtisseur for roast meats, on behalf of the pâtissier for pies, and so on. The word ‘restaurant’, used to describe an eating house, first appeared in a decree of 1786.
While some restaurants were established in Paris before 1789 (the Grande Taverne de Londres opened about 1782 under the celebrated Antoine Beauvilliers, and at least three other famous restaurants appeared in the next few years), the abolition of guilds and their privileges in the wake of the French Revolution, together with an influx of deputies into the capital and a surplus of unemployed chefs no longer in charge of aristocratic kitchens, laid the scene for an enormous expansion of the restaurant industry in the 19th century. Restaurants were thus an important consequence of the Revolution and concurred with its aims in contributing towards social equality and promoting egality around the table. Eating well was no longer the privilege of the wealthy who could afford to maintain a cook and a well-supplied kitchen.
While the new restaurants flourished in 19th-century Paris, it was evident that some of their customers were not necessarily eating at a restaurant simply because they were hungry but were choosing the restaurant as a place to meet (literary groups in Paris), to be seen, or because the restaurant offered something different. This was an urban phenomenon. Throughout the 19th century restaurants seem to have been very much associated with cities; the first (red) Michelin Guide of 1900 recommended hotels in the country with good accommodation and good food, but no restaurants as such.
To follow the history of restaurants round the world during the 20th century would require another book, rather than another page. However, it may be noted here in conclusion that the USA would necessarily loom very large in any such extended account of the evolution of the restaurant. At first restaurants in America seemed to follow the French model, offering French cuisine and often employing French chefs. The transplant of the restaurant concept from Paris to America (indeed from Paris to many other European countries, for example Germany and England) was speedy. By the 1790s there were places answering the description in both Boston and Philadelphia. Thereafter, they flourished as in other metropolitan districts.
The introduction of Prohibition in 1920, however, caused many of them to close their doors, at the same time opening the way for an expansion of quick-service, alcohol-free, female-friendly cafeterias, luncheonettes, and tearooms serving a different class of cuisine to a different clientele. These in turn led to the proliferation of fast-food chains whose stereotyped outlets, while fulfilling all of Brillat-Savarin’s criteria, are a long way from the restaurants he knew and praised. It would also be true to say that for many people the word ‘restaurant’ now signifies something rather more pretentious than the inexpensive quick eateries which Americans have bestowed upon the world. However, the word continues to retain its wider meaning and there seems to be no reason to encourage a narrowing of its use to the more expensive end of the restaurant spectrum.
China has a quite independent tradition of restaurants, older indeed than France’s or Europe’s. The flowering of urban life during the Song dynasty (960–1279) saw the establishment of restaurants offering particular dishes or regional specialities (Anderson, 1988). Chinese cooking, therefore, was already equipped with the means of dissemination and public presentation before it embarked on its global expansion. It did not have to borrow from any indigenous or French-inspired commercial form save in mere incidentals.
See also: ASIAN RESTAURANTS; CAFÉ; FAST FOOD; HOTELS AND INNS.
Barbara Santich
a Welsh cheese to which the American author Bob Brown (1955), whose taste for oddities was well developed, drew attention, citing the following passage from The Story of Wales by Rhys Davies (1943):
The ‘Resurrection Cheese’ of Llanfihangel Abercowyn is no longer available, at least under that name. This cheese was so called because it was pressed by gravestones taken from an old church that had fallen into ruins. Often enough the cheeses would be inscribed with such wording as ‘Here lies Blodwen Evans, aged 72’.
a flightless bird from S. America which comes in two varieties. The common rhea (Rhea americana) is the larger and has the more northerly range; the lesser or Darwin’s rhea (Rhea darwini or Rhea pennatus) lives in Patagonia and the Andean plateaux of N. Chile. It was this lesser rhea that Darwin described in The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. Unfortunately the crew had cooked and consumed the specimen before he realized it was distinct from the larger birds he had met to the north. The skin was saved, however, so the identification could be made. Rheas are cousins to the OSTRICH, though they stand less tall and have three toes to the African two. The males are polygamous but hard-working: building the nest, incubating the eggs, and rearing the young unaided. They were hunted to near-extinction for their feathers and because their voracious appetite irritated farmers, but now are raised in Europe and N. America for their meat which may be treated as if it were ostrich, though lower in cholesterol. Rhea fat is used as an anti-inflammatory ointment and rhea oil is a base for cosmetic products.
Tom Jaine
a thick-skinned, horned animal which exists in five species, of which the most important are: the great Indian rhinoceros, Rhinoceros unicornis; the black or hook-lipped rhinoceros (swartrenoster in S. Africa), Diceros bicornis; the white or square-lipped rhinoceros (witrenoster in S. Africa), D. simus. All species are much reduced in numbers and it would be inappropriate to think of them as a food resource. However, they have been so used in the past. There are various references in early Indian texts to rhinoceros being a permitted food.
the edible stalks of Rheum rhabarbarum and two or three other species of the same genus, in the family Polygonaceae. Botanically, rhubarb is a vegetable; but the US Customs Court at Buffalo, NY, ruled in 1947 that it was a fruit, since that is how it is normally eaten.
Wild rhubarbs are all native to Asia. They prefer a cool climate and flourish especially in the general area of Mongolia and Siberia and in the vicinity of the Himalayas. The rhizomes and ‘crowns’ from which the leaf-bearing stalks grow survive readily in ground which is frozen during the winter.
Rhubarb was known in classical Greece and Rome as an imported dried root with medicinal qualities. Dioscorides (1st century AD) stated that the plant grew in the regions beyond the Bosporus.
There is some debate about how far back Chinese knowledge of rhubarb extends. Pen Khing’s herbal, of about 2700 BC, listed it; but Laufer (1978) says the work is spurious. Others point out that in Chinese rhubarb has composite names (e.g. ta hwan, ‘the great yellow one’), which are descriptive, whilst all genuinely ancient plants have a root word of a single syllable. It does, however, seem to be certain that it was known by the age of Han, 206 BC; that it was valued medicinally; and that it developed into an important article of trade from China to W. Asia during the 10th century. In modern times, the Chinese root was held in higher esteem than those supplies that came from Russian and Black Sea sources.
In England, rhubarb became known, at first in a purely medicinal context, in the 16th century. The idea of eating the stem may have occurred to people, much later, because of the resemblance between rhubarb and its smaller relation, SORREL. Ray, in his Historia Plantarum (1686), compared rhubarb stalks favourably with those of sorrel. Indeed, several DOCK varieties have ‘rhubarbic’ sobriquets, such as monk’s rhubarb for mountain dock, and curled dock is even preferred to rhubarb by some Australians. Another naturalist, Peter Collinson, wrote in 1739 about ‘Siberian rhubarb’ pie with sugar and cinnamon. However, it was some time before rhubarb recipes began to appear in English cookery books, perhaps waiting for sugar to be more widely available to sweeten the taste. One early example was in Mrs Rundell (1806). Other recipes for sweet pies and tarts followed during the first half of the 19th century.
Meanwhile, new varieties and hybrids were being developed. Early plants had mainly green stalks, and it was those with a red tinge which were selected to produce the modern red varieties. There are now numerous cultivars, varying in yield, colour, size, season, oxalic acid content, etc. Irish Giant is an interesting curiosity, with stems which may be as much as 1.5 m (5′) long, and as thick as a man’s arm.
Rhubarb is often forced, either by covering the plant with a pot to encourage early growth in the spring or by the modern method of hothouse cultivation. The practice has been observed in Afghanistan as well as in western countries, where the effect of forcing was accidentally discovered at the Chelsea Physic Garden early in the 19th century. In Britain the sweetest rhubarb, called ‘champagne rhubarb’, comes very early and has slim, tender stalks.
Rhubarb is mainly used for pies (hence its being known as ‘pie-plant’ in the USA and in Germany as piestangel) and similar dishes, but also for jams. The use of ginger to enhance the taste of rhubarb is traditional, especially in jam-making. Orange and ANGELICA are used likewise.
In Britain the combination of rhubarb and CUSTARD is as irrestible to some as it is offputting to others; and rhubarb CRUMBLE, also with custard, is deservedly popular.
Rhubarb may be cooked as a vegetable and may be used as a savoury sauce for pork, goose, or mackerel. In Norway they make a rhubarb soup and in Poland it is cooked with potatoes and aromatics. It is used in khorest (stew) in Iran and in Afghanistan it is added to spinach. The Iranian dish has medieval antecedents in meat and chicken stews described in Arabic cookery books (Perry, 2000). In Italy it is used to make an aperitif, rabarbaro, which has a low alcoholic content and is regarded as a health drink, a throwback to its medicinal uses. Generally, it has not found favour, nor much knowledge, in southern Europe. Indeed as recently as the first edition of Larousse gastronomique (1938), while describing English pies with aplomb, the editors advised cooking the leaves as if they were spinach. The effects could well have been fatal.
MENTION of health at the end of the entry on rhubarb brings to mind purgative powers, plus questions about possible health risks if a lot of rhubarb is eaten. In fact the purgative principle in rhubarb is a group of substances allied to chrysophanic acid and is present mainly in the root. The stalks contain oxalic acid, which is harmful if eaten to excess, but the amounts are no greater than those in spinach and chard, for example. Rhubarb leaves contain much more, and are not edible.
Oryza sativa, a grain that is a STAPLE food for roughly half of humanity.
Rice has several advantages over most other staple foods. It gives higher and more reliable yields than WHEAT and BARLEY. The moisture content of the grain is low when it is harvested, and is further reduced by drying. It therefore keeps well in storage; in cool, dark, and reasonably dry conditions its quality declines only a little after three years and it should be quite eatable after as much as ten years. It is easy to transport, because it is not heavy with moisture and does not bruise. Most important of all, rice has a good flavour and texture when cooked, absorbing and setting off to advantage the flavour of any sauce or other cooking liquid.
Although most people associate rice with a hot, wet climate, it was not originally a tropical plant. It is descended from a wild grass that was probably first cultivated in the southern foothills of the E. Himalayas and the upper reaches of the Irrawaddy, Salween, and Mekong. Rice-farming presumably began only after someone had discovered the technique of rice-cooking (see RICE AS FOOD). In 2003 the BBC reported that archaeologists in South Korea had found the world’s oldest known domesticated rice, which would push back by thousands of years the recorded origins of Asia’s staple food. Professor Lee Yung-jo said radioactive dating of fifty-nine burnt grains of rice found in central South Korea could place the earliest known date of rice cultivation to some fifteen thousand years ago. Professor Lee said the discovery challenges the accepted view of the origins of rice. Rice grains found near the Yellow and Yangtze rivers in China had been considered the world’s oldest–they were dated between ten and a half and eleven thousand years old.
Today, the number of varieties in existence may be as many as 100,000, of which 8,000 or so are, or have recently been, grown for food. The rest are ‘wild’ rices, but not to be confused with the long, black grains of WILD RICE (Zizania aquatica), a different plant.
Rice is now cultivated in over 110 countries, in many different climates and environments. This versatility is the result of a very long process. Rice extended its boundaries gradually, because it took time for early farmers to breed (through seed selection) new varieties that would tolerate heat, cold, drought, flood, and local soil conditions. Because different rices cross-breed easily, and because there are many ‘wild’ varieties, the genus still defies exhaustive botanic classification. For practical purposes, agriculturists count four main types: dry or ‘upland’ rice, which is grown mainly on hillsides, often by slash-and-burn cultivation in poor soil; rain-fed rice, grown in shallow water; irrigated rice, grown in shallow water fed from storage and drainage systems that make crops more or less independent of rainfall; and deep-water rice, grown in estuaries or other areas liable to flooding to a depth of as much as 5 m (16′). Different types predominate in different regions of the world. Mainland China grows irrigated rice almost exclusively; Latin America is about 75% upland rice; S. Asia as a whole is about one-third rain-fed, and rather less than one-half irrigated.
For agricultural purposes, rice varieties are also grouped by their growing characteristics. Some tolerate cold or heat, others drought or salt water. The time they take to come to maturity varies from 90 to 180 days or even longer, and they vary just as much in the number of tillers (grain-bearing stems) that each plant produces, in the height of their stems (from 0.5 m to almost 2 m/1.6–6.5′), and in their reaction to the length of daylight hours. Light-sensitive rices flower only when the day is exactly the right length to give them time to ripen their grain before the growing season ends.
The characteristics on which growers focus most attention overlap with but are by no means identical with those which are important to consumers. From the consumers’ point of view the classification and nomenclature of rice is complex and sometimes perplexing–perhaps more so than for any of the other major plant foods.
Rice farming and breeding have passed, and are passing, through a continuing revolution, of which the ‘Green Revolution’ of the 1960s and 1970s was only a chapter. The most ancient techniques remain in use and still have much to commend them. All over S. and E. Asia, rice is grown in small terraced fields which can only be cultivated by hand. Outside the USA and Australia, the average size of a rice farm is between 0.5 and 2 hectares (1–5 acres), and small farmers obviously cannot afford sophisticated machinery. The most modern rice varieties are often farmed by old methods, sown in nursery beds, transplanted by hand, and reaped with a sickle or even, stem by stem, with a tiny blade concealed between the fingers so as not to offend the goddess of the growing rice. At the other end of the technological spectrum, pre-germinated seeds are broadcast by a low-flying aircraft, the flow of water through the fields is controlled by a computer, and a combine harvester gathers in the crop.
One advantage of the old methods was that every ricefield contained a wide range of genes, which protected the crop against total loss; whatever pest or disease struck, some, at least, of the plants would resist it. When no fertilizer or other chemical was used, the natural ecosystem of the flooded field supported fish, frogs, and waterfowl which enriched the soil and fed the farmer. A skilled reaper could also select, as she cut, the finest heads of grain to be set aside as next year’s seed.
Modern varieties of rice, developed in great quantity in the search for higher yields, tend to be given initials and numbers, such as IR36, a variety bred by the IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) and believed to be perhaps the most-cultivated single crop in history; in the 1980s it was estimated that over 10% of the world’s rice land was sown with this one variety.