Carême to Cradock

For every week in 2015, I'm making one recipe that you wouldn't find on a typical menu today. I'll also be posting resources and historical asides as they apply/entertain. Join me on my vintage food adventure, won't you?

[caremetocradock]

Let no salad go unjellied

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[caremetocradock]

8. 7Up Parfait Pie

Source: The Gallery of Regrettable Food, from a section on working 7Up into everything you eat

Recipe date: 1953, according to the cover

Substitutions made: 

Recipe terror level: 4 out of 10 aspics

I should have known better, really, when I saw this:

“Goes great” with food. As in, “goes great” is a substitute for “doesn’t really go at all, but we want you to buy more 7Up so we will lie to you.”

Full disclosure: I’ve never been much of a 7Up person. I always liked Sprite a bit better because it had a livelier flavour, but I thought this pie actually sounded pretty nice and I have absolutely nothing against Jell-O-based desserts, especially not ones that incorporate fresh strawberries. Also, it was Pi Day and that kind of thing is almost always fun. “What could go wrong!?” I thought to myself.

I made the pastry shell with the 7Up in it like I was supposed to. It was barely noticeable. Then I made the filling, with the equivalent amount of 7Up that one would have found in two bottles in 1953. I did consider that it seemed like quite a lot of liquid for just one package of gelatin, but I foolishly trusted the recipe. The ice cream and strawberry mixing together in the bowl looked so pretty!

I was so wrong.

The thing tasted fine, but I was right: it was way too much liquid and it didn’t set all. We ended up ladling most of the filling onto our plates, and although it actually tasted quite good, it was just so wrong. As well, the crust was way too hard and we had trouble cutting into it. 

I was actually sort of looking forward to this pie because it reminded me a bit of a dessert I made as a kid: raspberry Jell-O with ice cream replacing half the water, and chopped strawberries and bananas in it. This pie fell far short of that happy memory and I shan’t make it again.

Stupid pie. 

Hear me whine about it here:

[caremetocradock]

7. Indian Pizza (or Food Can Be Surprising)

Source: Culinary Atrocities, specifically this page

Recipe date: About 1982-1983, as far as I can tell

Substitutions made: Like the previous pizza, dough and sauce were made from scratch instead of a kit. I also added cheese.

Recipe terror level: 6 out of 10 aspics, because the prospect of raisins and nuts was pretty scary

Right off the bat: I totally cheated on this one and added cheese, because it just seemed much more appropriate than putting cheese on the Chinese version. I think it made this pizza a much better experience, and because everyone has been such a good sport about actually eating the food I’ve been making, I felt I owed them this cheese.

I was totally ok with the (hilariously low amount of) curry powder added to this pizza sauce. It tasted good, and Indian food has a ton of tomato-based dishes, so it makes sense that this would be nothing short of palatable. The chicken was fine too; I used leftover rotisserie chicken from the grocery store and it was perfect. 

The nuts and raisins sprinkled on top though, those I was way less sure about. It actually made me laugh out loud when I first read the recipe. I was also nervous since there was a confirmed raisin-hater in our midst when we were trying this recipe. 

But because life is full of surprises, the raisins were actually alright. So were the nuts, which I actively enjoyed. They added a nice crunchy texture to the pizza. And the raisin-hater even ate a dried grape and didn’t die. Success!

Here’s what it sounded like:

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Look at that jelly mold and how it gleams with promise. It will someday contain a very fine salad indeed.

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6. Chinese Pizza (or The Peas Don’t Belong)

Source: Culinary Atrocities, specifically this page

Recipe date: About 1982-1983, as far as I can tell

Substitutions made: I made the pizza dough and sauce from scratch, since they were definitely the less important part of this dish.

Recipe terror level: 6.5 out of 10 aspics

Even though I’m definitely behind on this project and need to catch up, I’ve noticed a theme developing with these recipes I’ve done. That theme, surprising as it is, is success. There have been a couple that I knew would be good, but also one or two that I wasn’t so sure about (see: steamed strawberry pudding). While this success makes me very happy indeed, I thought that I’d better throw in a few items that would lean higher on the Aspic Scale but hopefully still get some entertaining reactions from my guinea pigs dinner guests.

Enter the Chinese Pizza, which I found in an ad for Chef Boyardee Pizza Mix from the early 1980s which features several different ideas for “international pizza” that are at once terrifying and wonderful. The kit contains the mix for the dough and sauce. (It may also contain pre-grated parmesan cheese, but I can’t be sure. A version of this kit is still sold today and it includes said cheese.) To be fair, this ad showed up on a site called “Culinary Atrocities,” so there wasn’t a whole lot of hope to begin with. Which is exactly what I was looking for. *cue maniacal laugh*

I make my own pizza often, so instead of getting a kit (which wouldn’t have been the same as the 1982 version anyway), I just made my own plain dough and tomato sauce. I then topped this pizza with shrimp, water chestnuts, bean sprouts, snow peas, and a few splashes of soy sauce, all as directed by the ad.

At first bite, this pizza wasn’t too bad. Not having some cheese on top to hold things together was kind of weird, but oh well. The shrimp was fine. Then I hit the water chestnut, whose crunch I normally enjoy. That particular crunchiness really doesn’t go well with the dough or sauce, though. To me it was kind of like putting a bit of raw potato on a pizza.

The real kicker though was the peas. Promise me, dear reader, that you will never ever put snow peas on a pizza. Trust me on this. (Or don’t. In fact, if you love snow peas on pizza, please get in touch. I would like to hear some of your other thoughts on foodstuffs.) For me though, the peas really were the terrible proverbial icing on a particularly sad proverbial cake.

This whole pizza was just a hot mess. I fully support fusion cuisine, but fusion does not mean taking the approximate food of two cultures and forcing them together unwillingly. As one eater pointed out, you never even really have bread with Chinese food, let alone a pizza base.

Maybe Chef Boyardee was trying to suggest pathways to world peace with their international pizzas, but all this did was confuse, enrage and (let’s be honest) entertain me.

Here’s the audio:

[caremetocradock]

5. Lemon Ginger Biscuits

Source: Miss Tuxford's Cookery for the Middle Classes

Recipe date: c. 1929, according to the book dealer

Substitutions made: I had to add some milk while mixing the dough, because the amount of eggs called for was nowhere even remotely close to enough moisture to bring this dough together.

Recipe terror level: 2 out of 10 aspics

See above? That’s all the liquid that was called for. Ridiculous.

This recipe came out of the same book as the the strawberry pudding recipe. I thought that lemony gingery cookies sounded like a nice thing to make for tea in the afternoon at a friend’s place. A friend who plays Tchaikovsky whilst baking.

In keeping with the time of the recipe, I opted again to mix the dough by hand. It made for some dense cookies, to be sure, but they still turned out quite nicely overall. They feel old-fashioned to me because of the amount of ground ginger in them. Maybe I just don’t notice them elsewhere, but I feel like there aren’t just too many recipes for baked goods that call for ground ginger and not a whole lot else. Although please, prove me wrong and point me to your recipes if you have them!

The only problem I really have with this recipe, other than the truly puzzling lack of liquid in it, which is easily rectified, is the total lack of salt. Full disclosure: I’m totally unafraid when it comes to salt. (I actually ran down my salt supply last week after the shops closed and was a teeny bit panicked until I got some more.) I believe in salt in my sweet baked goods as well as my savoury foods, because it just makes everything that much better. But there are hardly any recipes in this book that have salt in them. I’ll make these cookies again, but that will definitely be in the modifications.

Also in the modifications will be DIRECTIONS and GUIDELINES of any kind. “Bake slowly,” you say? Sure! Let me go look up whatever that means! (Fun fact: it’s about 325F.) But there’s no time given for whole long these things should take, how thinly you should roll out the dough (apparently just “thinly” is enough) and you have no idea how many cookies you’re going to get. I suppose because you could roll them out at all sorts of different thicknesses. Sigh. Although I did appreciate the freedom I was given to choose my own “fancy shapes,” as it meant we could use Pac Man and ghost cookie cutters. The fanciest of cookies.

It’s actually quite interesting to see how different recipes are now compared to a few decades ago. I’m assuming that a lot more cooking instruction was done person-to-person in actual kitchens, so recipes really were more like guidelines and less like gospel. I may look into this some more.

Until then, enjoy the dulcet tones of two ladies baking to some very dramatic music.

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4. Crêpes Suzette

Source: Larousse Gastronomique, which I haven't actually used for recipes before

Recipe date: Tough to tell exactly, but it’s been around since the late 1800s and had its heyday during the 1950s to 1970s (when people realized that it’s awesome to set things on fire at the table)

Substitutions made: No tangerines, so I used oranges instead. I also used Cointreau instead of curaçao liqueur, because I came from a house where there was always a bottle of Cointreau around, and I am definitely turning into my parents.

Recipe terror level: I was going to give this at a 2 out of 10 aspics because crepes suzette is everything that’s good in the world. But then I realized that I purposely found a recipe that did not involve flambéing the liqueur because I fear flames that don’t come out of a gas stove and don’t trust myself to do it properly. Thus, I need weight the terror and average it out to about 5 out of 10.

The Larousse recipe worked fairly well, and I like that it called for tangerine/orange in the crêpes themselves, not just the sauce. That was something I hadn't even considered doing before. 

The downside to this recipe was the sauce. It tasted great, but there wasn't enough of it. Not for my liking, anyway. Full disclosure: I'm really into sauce. Pretty much any kind of sauce. Nothing annoys me more than getting a dish that's had a sad little dribble of sauce waved over it. I like my sauced dished to actually have sauce on them. So I was disappointed that the amount of sauce that should have served about six people only served two. On the plus side, it was the perfect amount of sauce for two! 

I'll keep making this dish. It's so very tasty and buttery and wonderful. I'll keep experimenting with different recipes though. There needs to be more sauce for this to be a true Suzette.

Maybe next time I'll even try setting it on fire.

And now for the audio. Note: that sound at the beginning is the beautiful sound of butter bubbling in a pan, because that should not be missed.

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3. Flapper Pie

Source: A genuine Saskatchewanian, via my auntie who also used to live in Saskatchewan for many many years.

Recipe date: 1920s, probably? No one is really sure.

Substitutions made: None!

Recipe terror level: 1 out of 10 aspics. Sweet creamy pie = no fear.

My experience with Flapper Pie has almost entirely been my mum mentioning how much she loves it at random infrequent intervals over the course of my life. I’m pretty sure I’ve had it only once before, at some indeterminate time at least 10 years ago, and I can’t remember where that would have been. I grew up in Saskatchewan and my dad is from there too, so I really should have been better acquainted with this pie, but it somehow had its heyday before I was at the age where solid pie-memories could be formed. There’s a smidge more history here and here if you’re interested, from super-appropriately prairie sources.

Flapper Pie, from the surprisingly little I was able to glean from the internet, probably showed up in the 1920s and is made with very basic ingredients that you would find in most prairie pantries, combined to make a wonderfully light dessert with just the right balance of air and sweetness.

Audio and recipe after the jump:

It’s just a graham cracker crust, a custard made with milk, egg yolks, sugar and thickened with a little cornstarch, topped with a lovely meringue and more graham crumbs. You bake it just until it’s a little golden brown on top; no longer. It’s wonderful. you should bake it and enjoy it and pretend you’re at a curling bonspiel or a sports day somewhere in the flat middle of Canada.

Here’s the recipe, almost exactly as it was given to me:

Crust

1 1/2 cups graham crumbs

1/2 cup melted butter

Mix together and save 1/2 cup for topping. Pat remaining crumbs in a 9-inch pie plate. You can bake slightly but I never do.

Filling

2 cups milk

1/3 cup sugar

3 tbsp cornstarch

2 eggs, separated

1 tbsp butter

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Mix cornstarch and sugar. Add milk and beaten egg yolks. Cook until thick, then add butter and vanilla. Cool slightly and pour into crust.

Meringue

2 egg whites

2 tbsp sugar

Beat egg whites until thick, then add sugar and beat [until peaks form]. Place over filling, making sure to have meringue touch crust (otherwise it can shrink). Top with remaining crumbs and bake at 400F until slightly browned, about 4-7 minutes.

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2. Sole Meunière

Source: Ye Olde BBC Websyte

Recipe date: ?? (see explanation after the photo)

Substitutions made: I left out the capers because it was a weeknight and I was too lazy to go get them. That's it.

Recipe terror level: 2 out of 10 aspics. Butter don't scare me.

You know, a couple of weeks ago I had this brilliant idea to record a portion of either the making or consumption of these recipes, and then the first one went pretty well and I was very proud of myself. And then I made a recipe that was so tasty and easy, that I just plain forgot to do any recording. Oh well. It would mostly have been either the sound of butter bubbling or me just going "Mmmmm..." anyway, so you're not missing anything.

I wanted to make sole Meunière because a) I don't eat enough fish and b) watching Meryl Streep as Julia Child fawn over this dish in a movie definitely made me want to try it. It's fish, lightly dusted in flour, cooked in butter, then draped in more butter and sprinkled with parsley. Come on. 

I was dismayed to find that the recipe is not, in fact, contained within Mastering the Art of French Cooking, as I had assumed it would be. I instead used the recipe from the BBC Good Food website. I researched it a bit and have had trouble figuring out just how old this dish is, although on this incredible site from the New York Public Library, I found it on a menu dating back to 1906. It seems to peak in about the late 1960s/early 1970s, so it fits into the retro category very nicely.

I honestly don't know why I don't see this on more menus today. It seems pretty commercial kitchen-friendly, and I can't stress enough how delicious it is. If you see it somewhere, order it and then tell me about it.

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Who is Carême, anyway?

It took me quite a while to come up with a name for this project, and in the end I decided to call it after a chef and a TV cook who both had a penchant for the dramatic when it came to the food of their respective eras.

We start with Marie-Antoine Carême (1784-1833), whose bio you can read here. Wikipedia has done all the legwork for me, but I'd really like to draw your attention to this glorious masterpiece (which my mother brought to my attention to last month, thanks Mum!): the menu he created and executed for one meal on the occasion of a visiting duke to the Royal Pavilion in Brighton in 1817, where Carême was working at the time (which is its own special brand of ridiculous. Seriously; go look at this place). Here's the kitchen!

The menu is beyond belief. I can't imagine the thousands of man hours that must have gone into creating all of those dishes. And keep in mind that the "pièces montées" are elaborate constructions of food that are purely for show.

Carême was known for the impressive showpieces, but he's also the granddad of the mother sauces, apparently created the modern chef's hat we know and love, and published important texts on French cuisine, its preparation and its history. Quite the guy.

For extra credit, you can watch the French Revolution episode of my very favourite food history show, The Supersizers. (Honestly, this show is fabulous and all the episodes are on YouTube. It's more than worth your time.) The French Revolution instalment actually showcases one of Carême's meals. It's a sight to behold.

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1. Strawberry pudding

Source: Miss Tuxford’s Cookery for the Middle Classes

Recipe date: c. 1929

Substitutions made: Used PC Blue Menu strawberry jam instead of the Hartley’s brand that was called for (they’re not paying me or anything; I’m just being thorough)

Recipe terror level: 3 out of 10 aspics

I made my first steamed pudding, one of the Christmas variety, at the beginning of November. I took it up to my parents' place for Christmas dinner and it was a great success, so I figured I would build on that and do a similar (but much much simpler) pud as my first oldie recipe.

I chose this recipe because I love strawberry jam and really appreciate any recipe that calls for it. Plus, I thought it would be a delightful pink colour, perfect for the belated New Year's Eve party that I was taking it to.

I followed the instructions to the letter and even, against my better instincts, mixed the thing by hand in a bowl instead of using my electric mixer to make the batter all light and fluffy. The batter looked as lovely as I'd imagined. Unfortunately though, the blush pink got very much more subdued after an hour in its own personal steam room. It came out sort of a blunt, vaguely blue dusty-rose shade that was a lot less impressive.

Still, it tasted quite nice. Extremely dense, but very moist. It would have gone really well with the recommended serving of custard sauce that I chose to completely ignore. (But don't think you won't see custard sauce this year. By hook or by crook, there will be custard.)

I recorded the consumption of our less-than-dainty pudding friend, seeing as how I was hanging out with a few people whose always-entertaining opinions I knew I'd be able to exploit for the internet's entertainment. Enjoy this auditory component to your blog-reading. Oh, and the reason we're talking about ammonia a lot? That's because I found ammonia in a recipe for cookies in the same book that the strawberry pudding came from. That whole business will get its own article.

Here's the link to the audio recording.

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A quick note

As I plan my recipes, I realize that some definitely have more terror involved than others. Therefore, I'm going to assign a threat level to each recipe, based on my feelings about it beforehand, using the most terrifying food of all as a barometer. I present for future use: the Aspic Scale. Examples:

1 out of 10 aspics: Apple pie. Vanilla ice cream. A bowl of cereal. Something you would have no problem consuming if laid before you.

5 out of 10 aspics: An otherwise normal-looking recipe with maybe one or two interesting ingredients, such as suet. Eel would bump things up to a 6 or 7.

10 out of 10 aspics: Boiled animal head, actual aspic made from bits of critter, anything using ammonia as a leavening agent.

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Putting this here for safekeeping. There are two menus at the bottom. Note the use of "liberty cabbage" in the one from 1919.