I wonder which of the present things we eat and just take for granted as ordinary, will in the future seem weird or even repellent? I have been looking through my copy of The A1 Cookery Book published in 1901; the recipes were written for a young housewife, probably inexperienced in cooking and running a household, so the recipes are the everyday dishes for all occasions, written in a straightforward and easily understood way.
I opened it at random and it was the meat section; on the page I was looking at – just by chance, rissoles of veal, aspic jelly, brawn, salmagundi, kromeskies. My grandma’s were barely out of their teens when the book was published, but I wonder if they were familiar with these five dishes? We used to have rissoles at home made from left over roast beef; we never had veal, and in fact I think I have only ever eaten it once that I remember. Aspic jelly was very popular from the mid-nineteenth century, but again, we didn’t have it at home – although when I’d left home and mum went to fancy cookery classes, I think she once did something in aspic. Brawn was something we had on occasion, although mum didn’t like it – she would eat most things, but I think the thought of anything made from a pig’s head, would have put her off! Salmagundi? I confess I thought it was a salad made of a mixture of different items including meat, but the A1 Cookery Book recipe sounds similar to brawn. And kromeskies? I have no idea – if I had come across it anywhere else than in this book I would have thought it was an American dish of some sort!
Rissoles of veal
- ½ lb cooked veal, scraped as fine as possible (minced? chopped?)
- 1 lb crumb of bread soaked in ¼ pint milk, then pressed
- extra breadcrumbs
- 2 oz suet
- ¼ gravy
- peel of ½ a lemon, finely grated
- 2 eggs, beaten
- salt, pepper, mace
- mix all the ingredients together
- form into balls and roll in breadcrumbs
- fry until golden brown and serve with heated gravy
Aspic Jelly
- 1 oz gelatine
- 1 pint stock
- 1 onion
- 1 carrot
- a bit of celery
- 2 cloves
- 12 peppercorns
- 1 gill sherry
- rind and juice of half a lemon
- white of 1 egg
This recipe is so long and convoluted and sounds so difficult that I have chickened out of sharing it. Let me know if would like to know how to make it and I will oblige!
Brawn
- a pig’s head, rubbed with salt two days before using
- 1 onion
- 2 blades of mace
- 4 cloves
- 12 peppercorns
- 2 bay-leaves
- 4 allspice
- cayenne
- salt
- stock
- vegetables
- seasoning
- hard-boiled eggs
A detailed recipe which explains how to get the meat to make the brawn… not for the squeamish
Salmagundi
- 1 calf’s foot
- 1 pig’s foot
- 1 lb lean beef cut into small pieces
- 3 pints cold water
- peppercorns
- lemon rind
- parsley
- simmer everything in a stew-pot until the liquid is reduced to a pint (it doesn’t tell you how you will know)
- strain and leave the meat and the liquor in separate bowls until the next day
- remove the meat and cut up small and add it to the liqor which has had the fat skimmed off
- season (‘it should be rather highly seasoned‘) pour into a mould
- when cold turn out and garnish with parsley
Kromeskies
- cooked beef, mutton, veal or any kind of poultry, minced finely
- batter made with 4 oz flour, pinch of salt, ¼ pint lukewarm water, 2 tbs salad oil, stiffly beaten white of 2 eggs
- white sauce made with 1 oz butter, 1 oz flour, ¼ pint cream, pinch of mace, salt, cayenne, 1 tsp lemon juice
- small slices of bacon as thin as wafers,, 3×2 inches
- tomato sauce to serve
- add the minced meat to the white sauce and then let cool
- on each of the slices of bacon place a heaped tsp of the mince mixture and roll tightly
- put each kromesky onto a spoon, dip in batter then fry in boiling fat
- They will only take a minute to cook, then drain on kitchen paper
- pile on a dish and serve with tomato sauce
I was interested to see the use of kitchen paper – was it the same as we have, or was it more like grease proof paper? I am sure i would not want to go to all the trouble of making kromeskies – if I had left over meat to use up, I would make my mum’s rissoles – mince the meat with cooked carrot and onion, a dash of tomato ketchup, make into rissole shapes and dip in seasoned flour then fry; serve with mash and gravy and maybe green beans!
Newsprint maybe. Sound a bit fiddly but quite nice. But don’t fancy the salmagundi and I don’t like brawn. My mum used to do pressed ox tongue which in jelly / aspic or just naturally gelatinous. I didn’t like any of them, but do now like haslet. Think it was the texture I didn’t like.
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Texture is so important isn’t it, you can manage to eat things you don’t really like the taste of, but the texture of something makes it impossible!
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