Literary Eats #4: Anatole, from P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves Novels

One of Wodehouse's finest.

One of the most delightful characters in the Jeeves novels is the luminous gastronomic MacGuffin Anatole, a highly strung ‘God of the gastric juices’ whose creations are dangled as bait in front of Bertie by the ever-manipulative Aunt Dahlia whenever she wants a service rendered. Conversely, sometimes she promises that never another bite of Anatole’s delectable dinners will cross Bertie’s lips if he fails her, as in this gem from Right Ho, Jeeves (1922):

‘You will do it, young Bertie, or never darken my doors again. And you know what that means. No more of Anatole’s dinners for you.’

            A strong shudder shook me. She was alluding to her chef, that superb artist. A monarch of his profession, unsurpassed – nay, unequalled – at dishing up the raw material so that it melted in the mouth of the ultimate consumer, Anatole had always been a magnet that drew me to Brinkley Court with my tongue hanging out. Many of my happiest moments had been those which I had spent champing this great man’s roasts and ragouts, and the prospect of being barred from digging into them in the future was a numbing one.

Anatole is Aunt Dahlia’s prize posession, stolen by her from Mrs Bingo Little (née Rosie M. Banks) in an attempt to soothe her husband Tom Travers, a martyr to stomach complaints. Somehow Anatole manages, with the aid of rich French food, to keep Tom humming along nicely and even to put him in a sufficient mood to bail out Dahlia’s pet project, the magazine Milady’s Boudoir (or, as Tom calls it, Madame’s Nightshirt), once in a while.

Despite Anatole’s need for constant soothing lest he succumb to his nerves and flee Brinkley Court to pastures new, he takes on the challenge of English cuisine with aplomb. In doing so he clearly fulfils an Edwardian British food fantasy: that it be French (at that time believed the most advanced cuisine in the world), but not too French: to wit., the roasts mentioned above, and the steak and kidney pie Tuppy Glossop steals from the larder, also in Right Ho, Jeeves. As Tuppy says,

the thing that I admire so enormously about Anatole is that, though a Frenchman, he does not, like so many of these chefs, confine himself exclusively to French dishes, but is always willing and ready to weigh in with some good old simple English fare such as this steak-and-kidney pie to which I have alluded.

Witness the unexpected British inclusions in the valedictory meal Bertie plans for himself in The Code of the Woosters (1938) after getting out of a prospective stay in chokey:

Caviar frais

Cantaloup

Consommé aux pommes d’amour

Sylphides à la crème d’écrivisses

Mignonette de poulet petit Duc

Points d’aspereges à la Mistiguette

Suprême de foie gras au champagne

Neige aux perles des Alpes

Nonnettes de la Maditerranée au fenoil

Selle d’agneau au laitues à la Greque

Timbale de ris de veau Toulousiane

Salade d’endive et de celeri

Le plum pudding

L’étoile du Berger

Benedictins blancs

Bombe Nero

Friandises

Daiblotins

Fruits

Courgette Central

It’s that time of year when I begin to suffer from a surfeit of courgettes, having discovered several years ago that they cannot be beaten in terms of the amount of yield you get for the work you need to put in: essentially, sticking one seed, price approx. 25p, into a small pot of damp compost, and then planting it into the ground four or so weeks later and ignoring it, means around 25 courgettes plus flowers if you wish. I’m a lazy gardener who doesn’t like to nurture things (my view is that if they can’t be bothered, neither can I), but I get a giant courgette harvest every year: vegetables well out of proportion to my own effort, inducing a pleasant feeling that I’ve somehow gamed the system.

Alan Davidson resolutely uses the name zucchini rather than courgette in his Oxford Companion to Food, explaining, entirely reasonably, that it was the Italians who first bred these small marrows and that until the 1920s the French referred to them as courgettes d’Italie; it therefore makes little sense that we’ve adopted the French name instead of the Italian one (incidentally, it means ‘little gourd’, just as zucchini does in Italy). The first reference to courgettes in the OED dates from 1932, which seems fairly astonishing when you think how easy it is to grow courgettes in the UK, but then, I suppose they would have been considered just small vegetable marrows, which certainly were eaten (I remember my grandmother cooking marrows in a cheese sauce, or stuffing them with mince).

Mrs Beeton prefers to boil vegetable marrows, which I feel would give a rather watery result, especially since they are even pulpier than courgettes, but the Victorians were not keen on crisp vegetables and no doubt they were to contemporary tastes. She suggest serving boiled marrows with melted butter or white sauce, but does give one rather nice-sounding recipe for egg and breadcrumbing and then frying slices of marrow. She has this to say about the family:

THE VEGETABLE MARROW.—This vegetable is now extensively used, and belongs to the Cucurbits. It is the C. ovifera of science, and, like the melon, gourd, cucumber, and squash, is widely diffused in the tropical or warmer regions of the globe.

The downside of hitting the courgette jackpot in the garden is that by the end of the summer you do get a bit fed up of them, but I’ve found that they also work well if you grate and drain them, mix with a grated onion and garlic, then bake in a cheese sauce with a handful or two of parboiled rice thrown in to soak up the juices. It makes a lovely main course.

Salmagundi

I was delighted the other day to come across a new and distinctly odd food term: salmagundi. What could it be, I hear you ask? According to the OED it’s ‘a dish composed of chopped meat, anchovies, eggs, onions with oil and condiments’ – a sort of salady mixture, in other words. (Solomon Gundy in Jamaica is similarly a fishy pickle.) The first recorded use of the term is from 1674 and identifies it as ‘a dish of meat made of cold Turky and other ingredients’. What first interested me about the word – quite apart from the pleasure to be had from pronouncing it – is its resemblance to the nineteenth-century nursery rhyme figure Solomon Grundy:

Solomon Grundy

Born on a Monday

Christened on Tuesday

Married on Wednesday

Took ill on Thursday

Grew worse on Friday

Died on Saturday

Buried on Sunday.


That was the end

Of Solomon Grundy.

And indeed the OED confirms that the variants of 'salmagundi' include Solomon Gundy and Solomon Grundy, as well as salmagondi, salamongundy and salad-magundy (the last of which must be a sort of ‘backwards corruption’ in which the word has been adapted back to fit what people think it ought to be, rather than its actual origin). Etymologically ‘salmagundi’ comes from the French salmigondis, which, it is suggested, comes either from salami conditi (pickled salami) or Old French salemine (salted food) + condir (to season), and means mixture – what we might call a hodge-podge, or dog’s dinner.

Is Solomon Grundy related to salmagundy because his eventful week is such a mixture of different things? Or is it simply that the word 'salmagundy' is so fun to say that the sounds evolved into a character?

Curry Time!

Becky Sharp currying favour with Josiah Sedley in W. M. Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1848). Becky tries to ensnare the curry-loving Josiah, who has recently returned from India. An insensitive boor, he plays a practical joke on her by making her eat chillies, which he promises her are very cooling, hence the name. 

It’s National Curry Week! Britons don’t generally need any encouragement to eat spicy food, so I’m not entirely sure why this festival has come about, but hey ho. I find it interesting that although we’re unfairly famed for our ‘bland’ food, the Brits are a nation of spice-lovers, and have been ever since medieval times. Though chillies – which some might consider a necessary ingredient in a curry (I use the term in its most commonly used sense to mean a bastardized dish of meat or vegetables with spices and sauce and usually served with rice, rather than as a synonym for ‘Indian food’) – were not part of the European repertoire until Columbus brought them back from the New World, Europe already had a real love of pungent spices. Columbus referred to them as chilli peppers because he was marketing them as a replacement for the much loved – and extremely expensive – black pepper. Monks in Spain and Portugal grew them, Portugese traders took them to Goa, and the vindaloo was born.

It’s no surprise, then, that the word ‘curry’ comes from the Portugese caril, which itself derives from the Tamil kari and Kanarese (an Indian dialect) karil, to mean a relish for rice. The first reference to it in the OED is from Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s Discours of voyages into ye Easte & West Indies, translated by William Phillip in 1598: ‘Most of their fish is eaten with rice, which they seeth in broth which they put upon the rice, and is somewhat sowre . . . but it tasteth well, and is called Carriil.’

It tasteth well indeed. 

Allium Bacchanalium!

James Gillray, 'French Liberty, British Slavery'. Les pauvres Français  ont les oignons seulement, mais les Anglaises ont le rosbif! The price of liberty has been poverty.

I’ve been absent from this blog for a while because I’ve had other fish to fry. My book Onion: A Global History has been contracted with Reaktion Books and will be published in April 2014! It will discuss the fascinating history of onions, garlic and leeks from pre-history till the present day. Naturally doing the proposal for this has kept me busy, but now things have calmed down a bit, I’ll be back on blogging. If you want a sneak preview of Onion you could read the article ‘Onions at War’ I wrote for The Foodie Bugle last month. 

Anyway, not wishing to depart from all things allium, I thought I’d share with you Mrs Beeton on the onion: 

PROPERTIES OF THE ONION.—The onion is possessed of a white, acrid, volatile oil, holding sulphur in solution, albumen, a good deal of uncrystallizable sugar and mucilage; phosphoric acid, both free and combined with lime; acetic acid, citrate of lime, and lignine. Of all the species of allium, the onion has the volatile principle in the greatest degree; and hence it is impossible to separate the scales of the root without the eyes being affected. The juice is sensibly acid, and is capable of being, by fermentation, converted into vinegar, and, mixed with water or the dregs of beer, yields, by distillation, an alcoholic liquor. Although used as a common esculent, onions are not suited to all stomachs; there are some who cannot eat them either fried or roasted, whilst others prefer them boiled, which is the best way of using them, as, by the process they then undergo, they are deprived of their essential oil. The pulp of roasted onions, with oil, forms an excellent anodyne and emollient poultice to suppurating tumours.

Ice Cream Cookbook Competition

You can never have enough ice cream recipes.

I recently had a look at Matt O'Connor's The Icecreamists (if anyone reading this lives in the Aberdeen area, you can read my feature about it in the Press and Journal!) and decided, in the Olympic spirit, to compare it to another ice cream tome - The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz, which I just bought from Amazon and am tremendously excited about. I shall be scoring the books gymnastics-style: in other words, I shall devise a system so complicated that it almost looks arbitrary, and none of ye shall even have a hope of understanding it. There will be categories; there will be thousandths of points; and points awarded will be out of a possible fifteen and a half. There may even be a last-minute appeal by Japan that throws the medal table into uncertainty.

Round 1: Beauty

Yes, it's the swimsuit competition! The first thing to notice about The Icecreamists is its astonishing photography, by Anders Schonnemann. I don't think I've ever seen food photography this good. Simultaneously witty and sexy, without too much of the default soft-focus you get in most food books, the styling and photos really give a great feel of what the author's trying to say: that ice cream can be adult, modern, even outrageous. It's rock and roll. And the font, cover and black and pink printing really add to this. In contrast, Lebovitz's book is much more pedestrian image-wise. The text is easier to read, but the photos, though attractive, are only so-so.

Result: The Icecreamists 15.144/The Perfect Scoop 12.783

Round 2: Ideas

At first, I was pretty excited to lay my hands on The Icecreamists. Ooh, A Chocwork Orange, sez I. Mmm, Doughnut Stop Believin'. Yummy. And sounds exciting. But the second or third time you read the book through, you realise there's not as many recipes as all that. It's sort of cheating, I think, to have big sections on ice cream cocktails, milkshakes, sundaes etc. In Lebovitz's book, instructions on how to make these are given in additional notes at the bottom of the real recipes, not padded out to make sections on their own. Plus Lebovitz includes many more recipes for mix-ins, cones, cookies, sauces and so on, and information on techniques such as rippling and stracciatella. On count, I reckon Lebovitz has at least three times as much useful (i.e. cookable) content. Also, he doesn't waste my time bitching about his marriage or boasting about his celebrity friends. His personal anecdotes are food-related and charming.

Result: The Icecreamists 12.896/The Perfect Scoop 15.168

Round 3: Recipe Quality

Though it's been pretty level pegging so far, now is the time for The Icecreamists to choke spectacularly. The real shame about this book is that while it's good on ideas and great on style, it doesn't carry through on the details. O'Connor has developed a gelato-style base which he uses for nearly every ice cream recipe; nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is that he hasn't bothered to tweak it slightly depending on how he flavours his ice cream. Every recipe has the same amount of sugar - wouldn't you want less sugar in a recipe that also included a load of mashed-up After Eights? - cream, and egg yolks. In contrast, Lebovitz has painstakingly worked out the tweaks that perfect each recipe. Some have an extra egg yolk to make up for a runnier add-in or more sugar to counteract a tart ingredient. Some are lighter, some richer. O'Connor's recipes really read more like, 'Make the base as usual, then chuck in what you like!' - which I could work out on my own. In this sense, it's not really a recipe book at all - more of an idea book.

Result: The Icecreamists 9.685/The Perfect Scoop 15.355

Round 4: Technique

Lebovitz carefully tells you exactly how to check the consistency of your custard; how to coat your frozen dessert in chocolate; how to caramelize nuts to mix in to the final product; how to make your own cones. The book is full of tips that show just what an expert he is. Reading it is like having someone friendly in the kitchen with you, telling you what to watch out for, giving you advice on when something's ready. It's amazing. The Icecreamists, however, gives the same instructions word for word for every recipe in a section. I'm not convinced that Matt O'Connor actually knows how to cook. If he does, he's not letting on. 

Result: The Icecreamists 10.562/The Perfect Scoop 15.445

FINAL RESULT

The Perfect Scoop scoops the gold. By miles.

I shall now celebrate my judging prowess with a cone of strawberry froyo, which I made from The Perfect Scoop book on Friday. Mmm.

It's All Gone to Custard

Mmm, custardy goodness. Love the retro packaging too.

Excited by the sudden improvement in the weather, and inspired in part by reading Matt O'Connor's new book The Icecreamists last week (on which more later if I get around to it), I purchased myself a new ice cream maker this week. (My old one is leaking weird liquid, so I have consigned it to the bin. I wouldn't have thought it of you, John Lewis! It was own brand and everything!) I like to be prepared when I cook, so I've been doing some research on ice cream recipe books as well. As we know, ice cream can be made in various different styles - the American, or more specifically Philadelphia, style is to freeze cream with sugar and fruit, and the French or Italian style is to make a thin custard with egg yolks and then freeze that for a richer flavour and less chance of ice crystals forming.

I have purchased David Lebovitz's book after reading this article in the Guardian, as well as the excellent reviews, index &c on Amazon, and of course will be consulting my uncle Timothy Walker's book If You Can Read You Can Cook. Uncle Tim is a great ice cream maker and I have fond memories of basil ice cream and strawberries at a barbecue circa 1995.

Reading all these books' careful instructions on how to make a custard base got me to thinking about how fundamentally complicated and delicate an operation custard-making is, and how strange it is therefore that, as Alan Davidson says, it is fundamental to Western cooking (think of dishes like quiche Lorraine or bread and butter pudding, as well as the hot stuff we pour over pies and crumbles). He details how it was made in medieval times - before easily controllable hobs - by being baked in bread ovens after the bread had been taken out, or cooked slowly in a chafing dish under which hot coals were laid, presumably to allow for better control over the heat. He also mentions some medieval tips (important to know if you had unreliable equipment) on how to thicken it, such as mixing in breadcrumbs, or a gelling agent made from carrageen moss. Usually it was eaten as a semi-solid dish – rather like how Americans eat it, as 'pudding' – rather than as a sauce to pour over other things, a change of role that occurred in the nineteenth century.

It is no wonder that the cornflour-based custard powder made by 'Alfred Bird FCS, Experimental Chemist', as his shopfront described him, was a godsend to cooks in the mid-nineteenth century. No more curdling, no more scrambled eggs. I've made ice cream with Ambrosia custard before but have never quite stooped to using powder. And what with my modern gas hob, quality saucepan with no hot spots and ready supply of ice to ice-bath my cream in and avoid overheating of the mixture, I don't really have any excuse to do so.

Two more custard facts: did you know that the word comes from croustade, or tart, and in Britain came to denote the filling rather the whole thing? And, delightfully, that in the 1920s one pâtisserie in Hollywood turned their entire operation over to making the custard tarts that were thrown in films, after perfecting a recipe for a throwable tart with the perfect slurp?