Poulet Sauté Chasseur (1932)

The front door of Villa Sebastian in Hammamet, Tunisia, where chef François Rysavy once ruled the range.

Last month I immersed myself in one of my intense, periodic obsessions about style and design. This time around my focus was Villa Sebastian, a vast, early 1930s house of some modernist importance, located beside a snow-white beach in Hammamet, Tunisia. You can read more about its history on my other blog, An Aesthete’s Lament (click here).

The owners of that extraordinary house, Romanian-born George Sebastian and his American wife, the former Flora Stifel, not only commissioned a much admired winter retreat, they maintained a high standard as North Africa’s leading hosts during their relatively brief marriage. Part of this success was due to the couple’s canny hiring of François Rysavy, a chef they met in Paris on their honeymoon and made the star of their Tunisian kitchen. There, for several years, he produced all manner of delectable dishes for the Sebastians and their glamorous guests, from Greta Garbo to W. Somerset Maugham to the future Duchess of Windsor. As Wallis Simpson, the last-named visitor spent a holiday with the Sebastians in 1932, joined by her second husband, Ernest. One of the dishes made for the Simpsons by Rysavy—who went on to serve as White House chef during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations—was a French favorite, Poulet Sauté Chasseur, or chicken with mushrooms. It happened to be one of the Sebastians’ preferred plats.

My interest piqued by the chef’s association with the Sebastians, I swiftly hied myself to Amazon.com and acquired a copy of Rysavy’s culinary memoir, A Treasury of White House Cooking (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972). My husband and I have been greatly entertained by its recipes, as well as Rysavy’s tittle-tattle about his presidential employers, though it came as little surprise to learn that Mamie Eisenhower had a delicate stomach, leading her to ban garlic and goulash. (The First Lady did, however, love mint and caramel.) Pat Nixon, on the other hand, was a fiend for chicken in any form, especially enchiladas, while Jacqueline Kennedy, Rysavy explains, “would have been almost incapacitated in her social life if she could not serve veal in its many succulent forms or lamb.” President Nixon loved tacos, even ordering them for his 30th wedding anniversary celebration, though he did have an amatory reason: tacos reminded him of his honeymoon, which had been spent south of the border.

But I digress. A few weeks ago my husband took on Rysavy’s Poulet Sauté Chasseur and made it the centerpiece of a triumphant family dinner. Moistened with an unctuous sauce composed of brandy, wine, mushrooms, and chicken stock—which gave a far richer flavor than the recipe’s called-for consommé—this chicken creation turned out to be one of the finest dishes ever to come out of our kitchen. No wonder the Sebastians craved it, and, yes, found it fit for a future royal duchess. As Rysavy points out, Jacqueline Kennedy loved it too, serving it at Mount Vernon during a state dinner for the president of Pakistan in 1961.

François Rysavy's Poulet Sauté Chasseur, with a side of asparagus.

POULET SAUTE CHASSEUR
SOURCE: A Treasury of White House Cooking by François Rysavy, as told to Frances Spatz Leighton (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972)
SERVES: Four (4) persons

INGREDIENTS
Salt and pepper to taste
1 3-pound fryer, cut into 8 pieces
¼ pound [unsalted] butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
½ pound raw mushrooms, sliced [NOTE: We used presliced baby portabellas.]
3 shallots, finely chopped
1 cup chicken consommé [NOTE: We used boxed chicken stock.]
1 cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons brandy
¼ cup tomato paste
½ teaspoon chopped tarragon
Parsley (chopped, for garnish)

DIRECTIONS

1. Salt and pepper the pieces of fowl, and sauté them in a large skillet with the butter and olive oil until brown.

2. Take the pieces of chicken out of the skillet and set aside on a platter or dish. Sauté the mushrooms and shallots in the skillet, using the now-chicken-intensified butter/olive oil mixture. When they begin to turn a golden color, pour in the consommé, white wine, and brandy. Let simmer, uncovered, until the liquid is reduced by about one-third. Then add the tomato paste and tarragon, and immediately return the chicken to the pan.

3. Simmer the chicken, covered, until tender—about 30 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

4. Place the chicken on plate or platter, cover with the sauce, sprinkle with chopped parsley, and serve.

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Wine Jelly (1942)

An American expatriate hostess extraordinaire, the Duchess of Windsor, in the late 1930s.

 

Whatever else they may have thought of her life’s eye-popping trajectory, the family, friends, and guests of Wallis Warfield (1896—1986), the Baltimore belle best known as the Duchess of Windsor, hailed her skills as a hostess. As a friend of the duchess’s wrote in a letter in 1931, when the royal spouse was still Mrs Ernest Simpson, “Wallis’s parties have so much pep no one ever wants to leave. Cocktails with sausages, not on skewers, caviar with vodka, soup with sherry, fish with white wine, hock, champagne, from then on to the brandy. Needless to say, I do not attempt this lavish mixture. But her food is as elaborate as her wine list.”

More than 100 of the duchess’s dishes, from appetizers to desserts, were published in Some Favorite Southern Recipes of the Duchess of Windsor (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942), a slender but stylish cookery book whose royalties were earmarked for the British war-relief effort. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt penned the painfully earnest foreword, while the duchess, then cooling her high-society heels in the Bahamas, wrote the introduction, observing, “I have been very happy to help carry some of the well-known dishes of my native land to other countries, and especially to have served on my table Southern dishes which appeal to the Duke … [It] is the simple dishes of my homeland which are most popular with me, and which are the ones most frequently served at my table.” Whether Wallis Windsor actually wrote those words is arguable, since the book was copyrighted by food journalist Marie M. Meloney, a friend of Mrs Roosevelt’s. It was Mrs Meloney who doubtless encouraged the duchess to provide only easy, accessible recipes, which most of them, perhaps surprisingly, are.

My husband had first crack at the book when it arrived in the post, and last weekend, for a large dinner party, he made the duchess’s recipe for Wine Jelly. Think of a cool, quivering dessert the color of French-vanilla ice cream and infused with the delicate taste of white wine. Odd, perhaps, but strangely elegant, especially when prepared in a ceramic mold that gave it a decorative appearance, rather like carved Carrara marble. My husband has begun to amass a collection of such molds, so expect some extraordinary desserts to result as time goes by.

The verdict? A slightly bland but refreshing dessert that might have been improved with a bright drizzle of raspberry sauce. We’ll be serving it again—the looks are impressive, which is half the battle, don’t you think?—though I will be experimenting with other types of wines. Wine Jelly might look beautiful prepared with jewel-tone layers of rosé and white wine or even Champagne. And instead of white granulated sugar, which the recipes calls for, perhaps light brown sugar would add a deeper flavor note.

 

 

WINE JELLY (1942)
SOURCE: Some Favorite Southern Recipes of the Duchess of Windsor (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942)
SERVES: Six (6) portions, according to the cookery book, we managed to get nine (9) good slices out of the recipe.

INGREDIENTS

1-1/2 tablespoons [powdered] gelatin
2/3 cup white wine
3 eggs slightly beaten
1/2 cup [granulated white] sugar
3 cups milk, scalded

DIRECTIONS

1. In a bowl, soften the gelatin in the wine and set aside.

2. In another bowl, combine the eggs and sugar. Add milk slowly, stirring constantly.

3. Transfer to a medium sauce pan over hot water, or to a double boiler, until the mixture coats a spoon.

 

 

4. Remove sauce pan from the heat. Add gelatin to the milk-and-egg mixture. Stir until dissolved.

 

 

5. Carefully pour the mixture into a mold. Chill until firm.

6. When ready to serve, dip the mold, for just a moment, into a bowl of warm water to loosen. Place a serving plate, upside down, on top of the mold, and turn the mold over, waiting for the jelly to loosen.

7. Serve immediately, slicing the mold as one would a loaf of bread, with one slice per person.

Charlotte à la gélée au coing (1961)

Heinrich Hurter's 1781 miniature of Queen Charlotte, wife of George III of England, framed with pearls and rubies. Formerly a princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, she has been proposed as the namesake of the classic desserts known as Charlottes. The miniature is held by The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection in London, England.

My husband and I were gratified recently when a friend recently told us he looks forward to our dinner and drinks invitations because we always have an unexpected guest list. This set us to beaming, obviously—our gatherings may not be perfect but we do try to make them congenial as well as spirited. Our village is so small that everyone knows one another, so planning a gathering enlivened with a few surprise elements is more difficult than one might imagine—blending old friends, new friends, couples, the unattached, conservatives, liberals, professionals, and free spirits into an amusing whole. The space issue can be another serious challenge: our dining table only seats eight people comfortably, yet we want each meal to be memorable. A stellar dessert always helps.

Recently I have become enamored of Charlottes, an age-old dessert basically composed of fruit purée encased behind a decorative fortress of liquor-soaked lady fingers. Its history is as complicated as its preparation is simple. No book agrees on the origins of the Charlotte though it seems clear that the baked fruit desserts of the Elizabethan age rank early in its genealogy and that the trifle is a close cousin. Given the Charlotte’s popularity in the late 18^th century, some sources believe that the wife of George III of England is the dessert’s namesake, perhaps due to her love of apples (apple Charlotte is a culinary classic) or as a tribute paid by Marie-Antoine Carême, superstar chef to an enviable array of crowned heads. Another scholar believes the name can be traced to one Goethe’s fictional characters, a certain Charlotte Buff, heroine of a bestselling 1774 novel called The Sorrows of Werther. Complicating matters is the assertion of Richard Olney, in The French Menu Cookbook, that Charlotte correctly refers to the straight-sided metal mold used to prepare such a dessert—and only, by association, to the dessert itself. Then there’s the thorny issue of capitalization; does one or does one not? I like the formality of the capped C and am sticking to it.

Charlottes have been a frequent dessert in our house of late, washed with crème à la vanille and carried into the dining room on a fancy silver platter of no great age but splendid appearance. My first attempt was just before Christmas, inspired by a cookery book my husband and I often use: La Cuisine de France by Mapie de Toulouse-Lautrec (Orion, 1961). The creative countess offers several Charlotte recipes but one in particular caught my eye. Called Charlotte à la gélée au coing, it interweaves ladyfingers and quince jelly (coing is French for the little-used fruit), which certainly sounded wintery enough to me. Unfortunately I could not find quince jelly in time for a dinner party so resorted to melting down, in a sauce pan, a few shimmering blocks of quince paste I picked up at Whole Foods on Columbus Circle in New York City. This decision, I hasten to add, was not an unalloyed success. The flavor of the paste was too strong and the texture, even when melted, somewhat dense, but our dinner guests finished the Charlotte and asked for seconds. In the end all that remained was a few crumbs and a puddle of leftover crème à la vanille.

Since that evening I have relied on Mme de Toulouse-Lautrec’s recipe as the foundation for other, quite toothsome Charlottes, including one made with apricot jam and another with raspberry preserves, each of which has been resounding successes. I plan on making an orange marmalade version in the very near future.

The finished quince-jelly Charlotte, on its platter, covered in crème à la vanille, and ready to be carried into the dining room.

CHARLOTTE A LA GELEE AU COING WITH CREME A LA VANILLE (1961)

SOURCE: La Cuisine de France by Mapie de Toulouse-Lautrec (Orion, 1961)

SERVES: Mapie de Toulouse-Lautrec states that the recipe serves six (6), but we had eight (8) people at dinner and several had second helpings.

CREME A LA VANILLE

INGREDIENTS FOR CREME A LA VANILLE

NOTE: Makes about two cups. You could also double the recipe, as I did, so there will be enough crême à la vanille to put in a pitcher as extra garnish.

1 pint whole milk

1/2 cup granulated sugar (NOTE: I used vanilla-flavored sugar, which my husband always keeps in the pantry; just insert a vanilla bean into a sealed container of sugar and allow the flavor to be absorbed.)

1 vanilla bean, cut in half, lengthwise

4 egg yolks

DIRECTIONS FOR CREME A LA VANILLE

1. Scald the milk and sugar in a sauce pan, with the vanilla bean segments.

2. Beat the egg yolks with a wood spoon in a large bowl.

3. Remove the vanilla bean and pour the hot milk mixture, slowly, into the egg yolks, and stir until well combined.

The vanilla cream, thickening over a low flame.

4. Pour the mixture back into the sauce pan and heat, over low flame, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens, enough to coat the back of the wood spoon. Do not allow to boil.

5. Set the vanilla cream aside to cool and then refrigerate until cold and until ready to use.

INGREDIENTS FOR THE CHARLOTTE

1/2 cup kirsch (NOTE: I used the cheapest Polish cherry brandy I could find.)

1/2 cup water

3/4 pound ladyfingers, prepackaged (NOTE: Buy two packages to be on the safe side; either regular or gluten-free will work fine.)

1 jar quince jelly (NOTE: Almost any jelly or preserve will do.)

2 cups vanilla custard cream (NOTE: Recipe above)

DIRECTIONS FOR CHARLOTTE

1. Mix the kirsch and the water in a bowl and dip the lady fingers lightly into the mixture—do not soak them, just fully immerse each one before using. Line the bottom of the Charlotte mold with several moistened lady fingers; you will have to break some of the lady fingers into pieces for them to fit properly. Next line the sides of the mold, with the lady fingers standing upright. (NOTE: Since I wanted the Charlotte to be rather boozy, I dipped the lady fingers a few times, which meant I had to replenish the kirsch-water mixture.)

The Charlotte, in process.

2. Spread the bottom layer of lady fingers with jelly and continue alternating layers of jelly and moistened lady fingers until the mold is full. Finish with a layer of lady fingers.

The Charlotte, weighted with a jar of maraschino cherries and a wine coaster.

3. Cover the mold with a small plate weighted with something heavy so that the cake will be pressed together firmly. (NOTE: I used a big jar of maraschino cherries and a wine coaster.)

4. Chill the weighted mold for several hours in the refrigerator.

5. Gently unmold the cake onto a dessert platter—you might have to slide a knife carefully around the edges to loosen—cover with the custard cream, and serve.

A cross-section of Charlotte à la gélée au coing, drenched with crème à la vanille.

Royal Gingerbread (pre 1920)

The Duke of Windsor, at his country house in France's Loire Valley, in the 1960s. Image by Horst for American Vogue.

The Duke of Windsor isn’t known much for food, though he certainly made an impact on fashion with his idiosyncratic mixing of plaids and stripes. As a child, however, the future king of the United Kingdom and emperor of India had a passion for gingerbread — the stickier, the better, according to one of his doting aunts. The thin, crisp gingerbread we know today, primarily through gingersnaps and gingerbread houses, bears no resemblance to the royal child’s favorite confection. His was more like a cake or a brownie: dense, sweet, and, yes, sticky, thanks to a serious amount of treacle. Think of a sticky toffee pudding, without the sauce, and you’ll get the general idea.

Recently I was alerted to the duke’s preferred gingerbread recipe by a Facebook friend. It was published in Court Favourites: Recipes from Royal Kitchens (André Deutsch Limited, 1953) by Elizabeth Craig, a leading British cookery expert and author of masses of food- and housekeeping-related books. In recent years an adaptation of the recipe has shown up on various cookery related blogs. Do not, however, trust anything but the original, because the adaptations reduce the spices to an alarmingly degree and deliver instead a pleasing, middlebrow gingerbread without any real bite. The gingerbread preferred by the Duke of Windsor is apparently as bold as his suits—rich, moist, and intensely spiced, and the flecks of candied citrus peel give it an interesting, fruit-cake edge. As for the required stickiness, I didn’t have ready access to black treacle, so I was forced to substitute a blend of dark and light Karo syrups. I baked two gingerbreads and took one to work the following day. My co-workers quickly wiped it out, one pronouncing it the best traditional gingerbread she had ever tasted. As for the one I left at home, my husband nibbled at it over the course of three days, saying, “It was a very spicy cake, very delicious, though I thought the store-bought lemon peel was a bit too hard on my teeth. Homemade is better.”

When preparing this gingerbread, a stand mixer with the flat-beater attachment is the best course of action. Just keep a close eye on it, because the batter gets very thick before the softening addition of the treacle or syrups. I nearly burnt out the engine of our KitchenAid when I got distracted by a Netflix episode of “Green Acres.” How very Lisa Douglas of me.

NOTE: A reader of this blog has pointed out that the recipe will be significantly different if actual black treacle can be found. Therefore I have ordered Lyle’s Black Treacle via Amazon.com and will post again about this recipe once it arrives, perhaps as early as next week-end.

THE DUKE OF WINDSOR’S GINGERBREAD

SOURCE: Court Favorites: Recipes from Royal Kitchens (André Deutsch Limited, 1953)

SERVES: Makes two (2) cakes

EQUIPMENT: Two (2) 9 x 13 cake pans, either metal or glass

INGREDIENTS

1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

2 pounds (4 cups) plain white flour

1 pound (2 cups) dark brown sugar

2 ounces ground ginger

1 pound (2 cups) slivered almonds

3 ounces ground caraway seeds (NOTE: I couldn’t find ground caraway at the market so bought whole seeds and pulverized them in a coffee grinder.)

4 ounces chopped mixed candied peel (NOTE: I used Paradise brand store-bought lemon peel.)

2 ounces ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

2 pounds (4 cups) treacle (NOTE: I didn’t have any Lyle’s Black Treacle on hand so substituted one 16-ounce bottle of light Karo syrup and one 16-ounce bottle of dark Karo syrup. I have since been advised that one could use 2/3 molasses mixed with 1/3 Lyle’s Golden Syrup to achieve a gingerbread somewhat closer to what the Duke of Windsor ate as a child.)

6 eggs

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Rub the butter into the flour until it looks like coarse meal. (NOTE: I just dumped those two ingredients into the bowl of the stand mixer and turned the machine on low.)

3. Stir in the sugar, ginger, almonds, spices, candied peel, and the bicarbonate of soda until well combined.

4. Beat the eggs with the treacle and stir into the dry ingredients.

5. Pour the batter into two buttered and lightly floured 9 x 13 cake pans — fill them only half way — and bake in the oven until the cakes have risen and are “just” shrinking from the sides of the pan. (This will be about 35 minutes. Use a toothpick to test.)

6. Turn out onto racks and allow to cool. Wrap in parchment paper and then wrap in foil.

The finished gingerbread, slightly overcooked but it was delicious nonetheless.

Stuffed Eggplant (1932)

A vintage photograph of the single-door version of the late, lamented 1932 double-door General Electric Monitor Top refrigerator that stood in the kitchen of my country house. Image from Worthpoint.com.

For several years, about a decade ago, my husband and I owned a 1930s General Electric Monitor-Top refrigerator. You know the kind: an imposing white slab of enameled metal, straight out of a Hollywood movie, with a basket-like contraption on top that hummed like a hive of bees and cabriole legs. As far as kitchen appliances go, it was my pride and joy, an eBay purchase so heavy that the kitchen floor had to be stabilized before the  refrigerator could be brought into the house—through the combined efforts of four able-bodied men, as I recall. It also took up an amazing amount of square footage, as I recall. Still, the side-by-side doors opened and closed with a satisfying ka-chunk, followed by a metallic click, so you knew everything inside was going to stay perfectly cool. Unfortunately this hunk of American ingenuity died one excessively hot and humid summer and could not be revived, at least not on our budget, so we replaced it with an extremely boring but efficient modern model. I still mourn the GE’s absence, though presciently, for the purposes of this blog, I had the presence of mind to keep its original handy-hints cookery brochure.

"The Silent Hostess Treasure Book," a curious cookery brochure that once accompanied a 1932 General Electric refrigerator.

Entitled The Silent Hostess Treasure Book, the paper-back publication is a promotional giveaway intended to make the General Electric Monitor Top seem even more radiantly modern and efficient to beleaguered American housewives. As the introduction states, it is “arranged to assist you in making the greatest use of your General Electric Refrigerator.” Consequently the recipes in its pages—from the cannon ball cocktail to beets cut into heart shapes for a Valentine’s Day luncheon salad—are devised to spend some time in the refrigerator, either waiting to be cooked or congealing in its chilly depths, which seems rather nonsensical today, at least as a galvanizing selling point. Still, the assortment of hors d’oeuvre, main dishes, desserts, and the like must have caught my fancy, at least enough to retain the brochure as the old refrigerator went out the door to its landfill demise.

Over the week-end, as our daughter was preparing her pencils, notebooks, and other paraphernalia in anticipation of her first day back in elementary school, she asked to choose the cookery book for at least one blog post. And the book she selected was The Silent Hostess Treasure Book. She flipped through its pages, studying the garish, even lurid photographs with great intensity, considering which looked the most appetizing. Finally she pointed at one picture and said, “Make this one.”

Stuffed Eggplant, as pictured in "The Silent Hostess Treasure Book" (1932).

“This one” was Stuffed Eggplant. Frankly, I’ve never been fond of stuffed vegetables, having been plied with far too many stuffed bell peppers as a child, but the illustration was fancy enough to catch my eye: a baked eggplant shell mounded high with sautéed chopped eggplant flesh and mushrooms and picturesquely crisscrossed with pimiento trelliswork. We had numerous eggplants growing in the vegetable garden’s raised beds, my husband reminded me, and there’s nothing I like better than decorative garnishes. So off we went to the grocer to pick up a few missing ingredients, and upon our return, I set to work. Some flavor adjustments were made (and are noted below), given the bland promise of the recipe’s contents, and what was wrought was unexpectedly good. Not great but warm, filling, and delicious, far more flavorful than I expected it to be. And as you can see in the photograph below, I got all details right. Just don’t eat the eggplant vessel, only the filling.

Stuffed Eggplant, as prepared by The Aesthete Cooks; the platter is 1830s Old Paris Porcelain.

STUFFED EGGPLANT

SOURCE: The Silent Hostess Treasure Book (General Electric Corporation, 1932)

SERVES: Two (2), as a main course, with other side dishes; using two small eggplants for this recipe would certainly look better.

INGREDIENTS

1 medium size eggplant

1 cup raw mushrooms (I used Baby Portobellas)

½ cup chopped onion (I used red Bermuda)

¼ teaspoon pepper (I used hand-ground black pepper, rather generously)

¼ teaspoon salt (I used a healthy pinch of French grey sea salt by McCormick)

1 cup minced ham (I used Virginia ham, Boar’s Head)

4 tablespoons butter (unsalted)

Pimientos (sliced thinly and lengthwise for garnish)

Dried thyme (not in original recipe)

Dried basil (not in original recipe)

Buttered breadcrumbs (about 1/4 cup, warmed in a skillet with a bit of unsalted butter until it is fully absorbed; I used panko crumbs)

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Cut slice from top of eggplant or cut in halves lengthwise; scoop out meat to within half an inch of outer skin.

2. Chop mushrooms and eggplant coarsely and sauté in butter, with onions, for ten minutes.

3. Add ham and seasonings and continue to sauté for another minute.

4. Fill eggplant shell with the ham-mushroom-eggplant mixture (it will be heaping) and sprinkle top with buttered bread crumbs.

5. Bake until thoroughly heated and the breadcrumbs have turned golden brown.

6. Arrange thin strips of pimento crosswise on top and serve.

Miss Beecher’s Cocoanut Pudding (1871)

Catharine Beecher, the author of "A Treatise on Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School" and "Miss Beecher's Receipt Book," just two essential 19th-century lifestyle publications that bore her byline. Image from Wikipedia.

Tucked into a towering 19th-century sideboard in the kitchen of our country house are several shelves of cookery books, overflow from the adjacent pantry. I presumed this hoard encompassed all the books we possessed in that genre, but to my surprise, my husband carried in another armload of old volumes of recipes from the storage shed over the weekend. He’s preparing for winter (Matthew is very much an in-advance kind of fellow), so he informed me the books had to go to make way for more pressing storage demands. Which meant I had to find a new home for these unexpected treasures, among which is an 1871 edition of Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt-Book, Designed as a Supplement to Her Treatise on Domestic Economy (NY: Harper & Brothers).

Just who was Miss Beecher? From what I’ve read, Catharine Beecher (1800-1878) was a 19th-century firecracker: educator; cookery expert; household know-it-all; promoter of kindergarten as a foundation for a child’s education; founder of The Ladies’ Society for Promoting Education in the West and the American Women’s Educational Association; and cofounder of the Board of National Popular Education. She was keenly interested in women’s health issues and was a firm believer in calisthenics set to musical accompaniment, which makes her sound like Jane Fonda in a hoopskirt. In sort, she made an enormous impact on American society in her day, though, admittedly, her sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was the bigger star in the family.

The Beecher book in my possession, actually a compilation of two earlier books, is a guide to living well, eating well, and prospering on the home front. Between its worn covers is a staggering range of domestic topics, including everything from a standardized weekly schedule for one’s chambermaid to directions for building a “sick couch” for an invalid to detailed hog-butchering instructions. The vast majority of the volume, however, is given over to “short, simple, and perspicuous” recipes for meals composed of what Miss Beecher described as “simple and well-cooked dishes, designed for every-day comfort and enjoyment.”

The “simple and well-cooked” dessert we tried out on Sunday is Cocoanut [sic] Pudding. Unfortunately, in the manner of so many old cookery books, Miss Beecher’s directions are vague. In situations like this, I simply turn to the nearest modern cookery book, see what temperature is advised for the recipe at hand, and use it or adapt it to the older one. Usually this works, as it did Sunday night, though I did overcook the pudding a bit; our Chambers gas stove is several decades old and a trifle temperamental.

The pudding produced is an interesting hybrid—it’s nothing special but my husband pronounced it one of the most delicious desserts he had ever tasted. The ingredients separate during the baking process, leaving a tender flan-like custard below and a layer of crisply baked coconut above; the latter offers a textural crunch that reminds one of a coconut macaroon. As for the gill of rosewater included in Miss Beecher’s ingredients list—that’s a 1/4 pint to you and me—it contributed no flavor or scent that either my husband or I could detect. Perhaps our allergies prevented us from fully appreciating it; we’ve a new kitten in the house. His name is Isaac, in case you are wondering.

COCOANUT PUDDING

SOURCE: Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt-Book, Designed as a Supplement to Her Treatise on Domestic Economy (NY: Harper & Brothers).

SERVES: 8 to 10, depending on serving size

EQUIPMENT:

Standard soufflé dish

Ovenproof pan large enough to hold the soufflé dish

Boiling water

INGREDIENTS

1 and 1/2 cups grated coconut

1 stick unsalted butter, softened

Two cups granulated sugar (we used castor sugar, to add a vanilla-like undertone)

1/2 pint whole cream

Nine eggs (we used what was gathered from the hen house that morning, meaning 7 chicken eggs and 2 turkey eggs)

1/4 pint rose water (we used William Brewer’s Culinary Rose Water from Todd’s General Store at The Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown, New York)

DIRECTIONS (Adapted by The Aesthete Cooks)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Cream the butter and sugar.

3. Beat the eggs thoroughly, then whisk or stir into the butter/sugar mixture.

4. Add the coconut and mix thoroughly, and stir in the rosewater.

5. Pour batter into an ungreased standard soufflé dish. Place soufflé dish in a baking pan and pour boiling water into the pan, around the soufflé dish, until the pan is 3/4 full. Carefully place water-filled pan on center rack of oven.

6. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the coconut crust has turned a pale caramel color. (Ours baked a trifle darker than we planned, as you can see above, which didn’t cause a problem.)

Collared Beef (1655)

Collared beef, badly plated, with horseradish-mayonnaise sauce and steamed broccoli.

One’s kitchen productions are often described as “delicious,” “unusual,” even, occasionally, “better in concept.” However, I have never had a carefully prepared dish described as looking like something out of an Egyptian tomb. But that was the case with my attempt at collared beef, an English recipe featured in the 17th-century cookery book The Queen’s Closet. Actually, my husband said, as I removed the beef from the stove, halfway through the cooking instructions, “That looks like something out of a canopic jar.” Which was, admittedly, deflating, even though I knew precisely what he meant.

A recipe for potting meat and preserving it to some degree, the collared beef turned out to be really quite tasty, despite its unprepossessing looks. Simply put, it is a thin piece of flank steak, tightly rolled up, wrapped in cheesecloth, tied tightly, and simmered for hours in a broth of water infused with fragrant spices. After this, the meat, encased in its cheesecloth shroud, is removed from its bath and transferred to the refrigerator, where it is pressed with a heavy weight until it compresses and chills. (I placed an old cast-iron pot, filled with water, on top of it.)

Seemingly collared beef was all the rage way back when, and was, a writer observed, a “peculiarly English method of potting a cut of meat.” As the cookery book The Delectable Past notes, traditionally, collared meats (pork, beef, venison, boar, fish, rabbit, whatever) were pickled in brine doused with saltpetre, which reportedly gave the meat a delectable reddish tint when cooked.

Given how easy it is to make, and because of its curiosity factor, collared beef might want a 21st-century revival. “It was cold and good, and the horseradish sauce was terrific,” my husband observed. (It was simply Hellmann’s mayonnaise combined with liberal amounts of bottled horseradish.) Even our spice-averse daughter agreed. Once her plate was clean, she said, “Oh, please make that again. Collared beef is delicious.”

COLLARED BEEF

SOURCE: The Queen’s Closet Opened (1655), as adapted in The Delectable Past by Esther B. Aresty (Simon and Schuster, 1964)

SERVES 4

INGREDIENTS

3-to-4 pound flank steak
Salt and pepper
Cheesecloth
Twine
1/2 teaspoon whole allspice
1/4 teaspoon each: thyme, peppercorns, powdered sage
1 bay leaf
1 clove garlic (optional and only added for last hour of cooking)

Collared beef, submerged and simmering merrily away.

DIRECTIONS

Cut away all gristle and unwanted fat from the flank steak, sprinkle with salt and pepper, roll up tightly and tie with twine at each end and in the middle. Then wrap in 1 thickness of cheesecloth (this will keep the outside of the meat moist). Place in a stewing pot, cover with cold water, bring to a boil and remove all scum. Add the spices and herbs and allow to simmer 3 to 4 hours. Add garlic and 1-1/2 teaspoon salt for last hour of cooking.

The flank steak, removed from its spicy bath. As you can see, thanks to the protective cheesecloth wrap, the resemblance to what might be stored in a canopic jar is unsettling.

Collared beef is delicious served cold. Hot, or cold, it should always be sliced fairly thin. (It may be pressed for several hours with a heavy weight before being sliced.) Served hot, it may be accompanied with carrots sprinkled with dill, and accompanied by scalloped potatoes. Since it is not a “gravy meat,” a dill or horseradish sauce goes nicely with it.

Collared beef, ready to thinly slice, after being flattened overnight with a weight in the refrigerator and the cheesecloth removed.

Flounder with Mustard and Anchovies (1655)

 

A detail from one of Sir Anthony Van Dyck's portraits of the elegant Henrietta Maria, Franco-Italian Queen Consort of Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland, aka King Charles the Martyr. Image from the website of The Royal Collection.

To the best of my knowledge, royalty rarely knows its way around the kitchen. That being said, crowned heads have had an impact on how their countrymen dine. In 1655, for instance, a cookery book called The Queen’s Closet Opened was published, and it became a seventeenth-century best seller.

Much of the frisson had to do with the lady who inspired the title, Henrietta Maria (1609 – 1669), Queen Consort of Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland. History does not record whether Her Majesty—a tremendous beauty who was half French, half Italian, and fully, controversially Roman Catholic in a nation of resentful and suspicious Anglicans—actually used any pots and pans, but she was descended from a family known for its lavish hospitality and culinary advances. The queen’s mother was Marie de’ Medici (wife of Henri IV of France), whose cooks invented sauce Mornay and sauce Bearnaise. And her grand-aunt Catherine de’ Medici (wife of Henri II) brought pasta and forks to the French court. The Queen’s Closet Opened, of course, wasn’t written by Henrietta Maria. Instead it was what one observer described as “a typical housewifely hodgepodge of Household Hints, medicines (some of them particularly gruesome), sausages, and pies.” All, the frontispiece states, “were presented unto the Queen By the most Experienced Persons of the Times.”

Over the weekend I came across several of those recipes reproduced in The Delectable Past by Esther B. Aresty (Simon and Schuster, 1964), which I picked up at a local secondhand bookstore. Of course, I couldn’t resist trying them. Tonight, however, I didn’t have a great deal of time to prepare dinner so I opted for the simplest of the taste-tempting treats in The Queen’s Closet Opened, a dish Aresty called “worthy of notice”: Flounder with Mustard and Anchovies.

Unfortunately the seventeenth-century recipe called for a dusting of dry mustard, which I didn’t have and couldn’t find at the market, so I improvised with a jar of Grey Poupon. The results were frankly terrific, the flounder fillets a perfect vehicle for the salty tang of anchovies, the tartness of lemon juice, the heat of mustard, and the silkiness of melted butter. As our daughter happily observed, “It’s great, Papa. And you know why I love it? It tastes like fish and lemons, my favorites.” My husband called it “A-1 delicious.”

Flounder with Mustard and Anchovies, though with one minor slight ingredient alteration, in a buttered pan, ready to go under the broiler.

FLOUNDER WITH MUSTARD AND ANCHOVIES

SOURCE: The Queen’s Closet Opened (1655), as adapted in The Delectable Past by Esther B. Aresty (Simon and Schuster, 1964)

SERVES 4

INGREDIENTS

4 thick flounder fillets

1 two-ounce can of anchovy fillets

1/4 teaspoon dry mustard

A sauce made of 1 crushed garlic clove, 1/4 cup melted butter, and the juice of one lemon

DIRECTIONS

Arrange the fish, skin side down, in a buttered baking dish from which it can be served. Score the flesh side [with a sharp knife]; sprinkle it with dry mustard. Arrange several anchovy fillets on each piece of fish. Place under a pre-heated broiler and broil slowly, basting with the lemon-garlic-butter mixture until nicely done, 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish. Garnish with lemon wedges and scoop up sauce from the baking dish as you serve each portion.

Queen Henrietta Maria's Flounder with Mustard and Anchovies, plated with broccoli, and on its way to the dining table.

Mrs Rose’s Fish Chowder (1973)

Actress and writer Ilka Chase in "Now, Voyager" (1942). She played the role of Lisa Vale, sister-in-law of Bette Davis's character, Charlotte Vale.

Only child of Vogue editor-in-chief Edna Woolman Chase and a classmate of tastemaker Pauline de Rothschild — they attended the same small boarding school near Paris in the early 1920s — the tart-tongued Ilka Chase (1905—1978) was a boldface personality in the mid-twentieth century. A well-known character actress, she appeared in such films as “Now, Voyager” and “Ocean’s Eleven” and numerous stage productions (she was in the original Broadway casts of “The Women” and “Barefoot in the Park”). She hosted a radio program and wrote novels and memoirs too, as well as a handful of mirthful books about her worldwide travels. And near the end of her life, Chase, then living in retirement in Mexico City with her third husband, a doctor, penned a cookery book: The Care and Feeding of Friends (Doubleday, 1973). My spouse brought home a copy the other day and encouraged me to make something from it.

Chase’s sole culinary publication is not, I hasten to warn you, a brilliant piece of work. Though her wicked tongue is largely unimpaired, the book has a dated archness and, in some instances, is just plain offensive. One section, for instance, is dedicated to the proposition that no single woman can live without homosexuals in her life, especially if she needs an extra man at the table. Chase comments on gay men and women as if they were a curious species she had come across on one of her travels, ie “Many homosexuals are extremely pleasant companions” or that, very often, they “are outstandingly courageous” on the battlefield.

The recipes in The Care and Feeding of Friends sound delectably boring, if that makes sense. The dishes are not particularly adventuresome comfort food, which likely explains why New York magazine’s restaurant critic, Mimi Sheraton, dismissed Chase’s book as nothing compared to the inspiration one could get from a single issue of Gourmet. (She found the odd homosexual passages eyebrow-raising as well.) Still I thought I’d give Chase a whirl. After all, the weather was cold, fat snowflakes were drifting down, and the fish chowder recipe looked easy enough, if retardataire; the ingredient list features canned soups.

Called Mrs Rose’s Fish Chowder, the recipe came courtesy of Chase’s friend Bertha Bartlett Rose (1905—1986), wife of prominent stockbroker Reginald Rose. An authority on antique houses and furniture, she sat on the boards of Winterthur and the Museum of the City of New York, and grew up around choice works by Duncan Phyfe. The soup was a last-minute replacement for a lovingly prepared fish chowder that had gone bad overnight. Mrs Rose and her cook saved the evening by coming up with a substitute, utilizing cream of mushroom soup, cream of celery soup, cream of chicken soup, and several varieties of cooked shellfish. As Chase recounts, Bertha Rose’s guests were none the wiser and pronounced the chowder delicious. So did my husband. And, yes, our daughter was smitten too, believe it or not.

Word to the wise: Chase notes that Bertha Rose added “a little Beau Monde seasoning” to the chowder, but does not include that particular ingredient in the recipe. Spice Islands makes Beau Monde seasoning, which the firm describes as “a perfect balance of celery, onion and salt with a touch of sweetness.” You can also make a batch yourself; Ehow.com has directions.

Mrs Rose's Fish Chowder, warming up over a low flame.

MRS ROSE’S FISH CHOWDER

SOURCE: The Care and Feeding of Friends by Ilka Chase (Doubleday, 1973)

Serves 8 to 10

INGREDIENTS

1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup

1 can condensed cream of chicken soup

1 can condensed cream of celery soup

3 soup cans milk

Pinch of thyme

Pinch of oregano

1/4 cup sherry

1 pound cooked shellfish [NOTE: I used 1/2 pound frozen baby scallops and 1/2 pound frozen shrimp, tails removed]

DIRECTIONS

In a large saucepan, mix the soups together. Add the milk and seasonings; heat through. Add the sherry and seafood; heat through. One kind of seafood is adequate. Three are living!

A serving of chowder; the bowl is 19th-century English porcelain.

Dem Bones

Roasted Marrow Bones and Parsley Salad, courtesy of British chef Fergus Henderson, via The New York Times.

Some days I feel a bit like a Georgian squire, a fantasy helpfully fueled when (a) you have a Federal Style farmhouse, as we do; (b) a fire is blazing in the wood stove, which is nearly always the case at this time of year, and (c) there’s a bottle of port nearby, resting in an antique glass decanter. To make the most of this picturesque reverie recently I went in search of an historic recipe for roasted marrow bones, a dish I associate with England in the eighteenth century and which I haven’t eaten in years and years. Unfortunately my search for authenticity went awry.

Most of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century recipes I came across seemed utterly wrong, directing one to seal up the ends of the bones with pastry dough and then to roast them for upwards of a hour. The fatty, inner lining of bones, marrow is a delicate, jelly-like substance, and prolonged cooking turns it to little more than hot liquid, or what former Gourmet editor in chief Ruth Reichl accurately describes as “bright yellow crankcase oil” in the book Endless Feasts: Sixty Years of Writing from Gourmet (Random House, 2003). In the end, she boiled marrow bones, wrapped in a dishcloth, for about ten minutes in boiling water, and found them to be perfect softened and ready to spread onto toasted bread.

I went to The New York Times website and found a 2007 recipe for roasted marrow bones that was adapted from one created by Fergus Henderson, chef and founder of St John Bar and Restaurant in London. (The eatery is happily housed, to me, in a modest Georgian former smokehouse near Smithfield Market, which upped the squire fantasy to my mind.) If you like marrow bones, look no further. The dish, which includes a delightful topping made of chopped parsley, sliced shallots, and capers is wholesome, hearty, fresh, and, yes, delicious enough to include a nine-year-old among its fans. Our young daughter raised her eyebrows when she sat before a plate of beef bones and was told that it was dinner, but she enjoyed the rich taste. As for the parsley salad? She hated it.

ROASTED MARROW BONES

SOURCE: The New York Times, 31 October 2007

SERVES 4

TIME: 20 minutes

INGREDIENTS

8 to 12 center-cut beef or veal marrow bones, 3 inches long, 3 to 4 pounds total

1 cup roughly chopped fresh parsley

2 shallots, thinly sliced

2 teaspoons capers

1 1/2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

Coarse sea salt to taste

At least 4 1/2-inch-thick slices of crusty bread, toasted

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Put bones, cut side up, on foil-lined baking sheet or in ovenproof skillet. Cook until marrow is soft and has begun to separate from the bone, about 15 minutes. (Stop before marrow begins to drizzle out.)

The parsley salad in preparation.

2. Meanwhile, combine parsley, shallots and capers in small bowl. Just before bones are ready, whisk together olive oil and lemon juice and drizzle dressing over parsley mixture until leaves are just coated. Put roasted bones, parsley salad, salt and toast on a large plate. To serve, scoop out marrow, spread on toast, sprinkle with salt and top with parsley salad.