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Monthly Archives: July 2020

RECIPES FOR CAPTAINS OF SHIPS© By: Victoria Brady

15 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by thehistoricfoodie in 18th century cooking, 18th century food, Cooking on ships

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Cooking on ships

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Keeping supplies from which to feed the crew on a late eighteenth or early nineteenth century sailing vessel was an art which was part culinary and part science though those doing it wouldn’t have viewed their efforts as either. Janet MacDonald’s in depth look at “Feeding Nelson’s Navy” shows how the food was procured by the Victualling Board or captains in port, stored, loaded onto the ship, preserved, cooked, and served for the officers and messes onboard ship. While common sense might dictate, with her research we can document the sort of supplies kept on the ships. By looking at receipts for ships captains in Hannah Glasse’s “The Art of Cookery, Plain and Simple” (1774) and possessing a general knowledge of 18th century food preparation we can envision what made dishes the men ate.

The first receipt in Glasse’s chapter, “Recipes for Captains of Ships”, is “To Make Catchup to Keep Twenty Years”. With today’s inferior packaging this claim may seem dubious at best, however, I have no trouble believing it kept until it was used up. It was made with strong stale beer, anchovies, shallots, mace, cloves, whole pepper, ginger, and mushrooms. It was cooked until it reduced by half, strained, and bottled. This would have seasoned any number of dishes.

Her fish sauce was similar, but instead of mushrooms contained horse-radish, white wine, lemon, anchovy liquor, red wine, and similar spices.

Meat drippings were an integral part of cooking at home or on the sea, but particularly so on ships where access to fats and oils was often limited. Glasse gave explicit instructions to the sea cooks on keeping the drippings fresh. The beef dripping was boiled in water, cooled, then the hard fat taken off and the “gravy”, or gelatinous material adhering to the underside of it, was scraped off. This was to be repeated seven times more before adding bay leaves, cloves, salt, and pepper to it. It was sieved and allowed to grow cold in the pot. She advised turning the pot upside down onto a flat surface to keep out the ever-present rats.

There were receipts for pickling and powdering mushrooms which are found in most any cookbook from the era. (Plagiarism was common amongst early cookery writers.) Her “To Keep Mushrooms Without Pickle” is rather interesting. She instructed cooking the mushrooms with salt, draining them and drying them on tin plates in a cool oven. When perfectly dry they were put into a stone jar, tied down tight and kept in a dry place. “They eat deliciously, and look as well as truffles”.

For change she discussed drying artichoke bottoms and reconstituting them in water for adding to sauces or to flour and fry them. The latter was to be served with melted butter. Her “fricasey” of artichoke-bottoms directed the cook to lay them in boiling water until tender, and put to them half a pint of milk, a quarter of a pound of butter rolled in flour, stir it “all one way” till quite thick then add a spoonful of mushroom pickle. The artichokes were put into a dish and the sauce poured over. Documents show that ships carried cows, or more often, a sheep or goat aboard for fresh milk.

Crew members were known to catch fish which was a welcome meal. Glasse told the cook how to fry the fish in beef dripping and serve with a sauce. Her method of baking fish was quick allowing the cook to concentrate on other parts of a meal. “Butter the pan, lay in the fish, throw a little salt over it and flour; put a very little water in the dish, an onion and a bundle of sweet-herbs, stick some little bits of butter or fine dripping on the fish. Let it be baked of a fine light brown; when enough, lay it on a dish before the fire, and skim off all the fat in the pan; strain the liquor, and mix it up either with the fish-sauce or strong soop [sic], or the catchup.

For soup, the cook was to refer to a previous chapter aimed at home cooks.

Puddings were salt beef or pork, mutton (butchered onboard), apples or prunes rolled in pastry, put into a pudding bag, and boiled in like manner.

Currants and raisins were among the stores kept on the ship and these were utilized to make a suet pudding. There are two receipts for Oatmeal puddings with raisins and/or currants.

The liver of an animal killed onboard was made into a pudding with the liver cut fine and mixed with suet, crumbs of bread or biscuit (hard cracker), sweet herbs, nutmeg, pepper, salt, anchovy and butter, then put into a crust and boiled.

Rice pudding was made by: 1. boiling rice in a cloth, taking it up and adding nutmeg, butter, and sweetener and boiling it again. It was served with a sauce made of butter, sugar and a little white wine. 2. Baking it in a buttered pan with similar ingredients.

There were methods for making both soup and pudding from dried peas found in rations.

Harrico of French beans is brilliant in its use of ships stores. A pint of the “seeds of French beans, which are ready dried for sowing”, were boiled for two hours, drained, reserving the liquid, and added to onions fried brown in butter, pepper and salt, and made to the thickness desired. “When of the proper thickness you like it, take it off the fire, and stir in a large spoonful of vinegar and the yolks of two eggs beat. The eggs may be left out, if disliked.”

Ships often housed poultry for the eggs and for cooking. They were readily available in most ports. At whatever point the cook felt proper to butcher some of the fowl the evening meal could have been made into a pie. Glasse says to fill the paste with bacon or cold boiled ham, sliced, and season it with pepper and salt and add a little water. A pastry lid was put on and the pie baked for some two hours. Seasoned gravy was poured in just prior to serving it.

Janet MacDonald found no mention of potatoes among the foods available from the Victualling Board until the 19th century, however, either they sometimes purchased them from locals where they stopped or Hannah Glasse wasn’t aware they weren’t available onboard ships. Her Cheshire pork pie for sea was a crust filled with layers of salt pork and sliced potatoes seasoned with pepper.

Her Sea Venison was freshly killed mutton boiled in the sheep’s blood and hung to dry before roasting. She did note this process depended upon the weather and how long the meat could be kept without spoiling.

She concluded the chapter with a receipt for dumplings the size of a turkey’s egg made of bread crumbs, beef-suet, nutmeg, sugar, and two spoonsful of sack (wine). They were boiled and served with a sauce of butter and sack with a little sugar strewn over.

She referred the reader to her chapter on soups and broths. The officers’ cook might have been able to read her book and shared ideas with the mess cooks, but more likely an officer might have purchased or borrowed a copy from which he instructed the cook.

The most useful receipt may have been for making Portable soup and Pocket soup which was cooked down to “glue” and when ready to prepare it reconstituted with water to make gravy and sauces as well as broth and soup.

Good day, gentle readers, I hope you find this brief advice useful in stocking your home larder should you have an interest in any degree of self-sufficiency. I leave you with wishes for Blissful Meals.©

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“Dutch” Case-knife Beans: A Taste of History©

01 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by thehistoricfoodie in 17th century food, 18th century clothing, 19th century food, Colonial foods, gardening, Heirloom seed, historic food, Uncategorized

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case-knife beans

Palatine June bean

Photo:  William Woys Weaver, Roughwood Seed Collection

I once had someone who was viewed as an amateur historian tell me that people did not eat dried beans in the 18th century.  What?  I’ve never forgotten that and today we will debunk that theory.

The earliest description this writer found for a white-seeded bean that matches the description of what was later called the case-knife bean was written by Nicholas Culpepper in 1666.  “…but white is most usual; after which come long and slender flat cods, some crooked, some straight, with a string as it were running down the back thereof, wherein are contained flattish round fruit made to the fashion of a kidney…”.

Amelia Simmons was perhaps the earliest cookery book writer to document white beans for drying (1796) and Simmons listed a “clapboard” bean which some think was the case-knife.  She advised they must be poled and were, “the easiest cultivated and collected, are good for string beans, will shell”.

Philip Miller said in 1775 the Dutch White Beans were much the sweetest for the table.  He thought them “extream [sic] windy Meat” and recommended preparing them in the Dutch fashion of half boiling them then “you husk them and stew them… they are wholesome food”.

John Reid wrote of beans in 1683, “Beans and peas boyled with savory and thym[e]…served up with sweet butter beat amongst them and set a little on a coal or chaffing boyl [sic]”.  – “The Scots Gard’ner”.

A farmer wrote in 1840 that the “prettiest” way to grow dry beans was to raise white pole beans and, “The common case-knife beans are excellent for this purpose”.  Twenty-three years later Fearing Burr told his readers the case-knife was “common to almost every garden” and it remained so into the early 20th century.  Today the white-seeded variety of case-knife bean isn’t as common, at least by that name, but close versions can be found.

“Some Dutch case-knife beans did come up and grew finely…In good time they were heavily loaded, and they were of rich and splendid flavor, so much so I forbade wife cooking any more, having visions of acres of beans and a big bank account”.  One will pity this poor farmer when he explained that a mere few days before he went to pick his dried beans they had been beset upon by weevils.

“The manner of saving the seeds of these plants, is to let a few rows of them remain ungathered in the height of the season; for if you gather from the plants for some time, and afterwards leave the remaining for seed, their pods will not be near so long and handsome, nor will the seed be so good.  In autumn, when you find they are ripe, you should in a dry season pull up the plants and spread them abroad to dry; after which you may thresh out the seed and preserve it in a dry place for use”.  – Miller, Philip.  “The Gardener’s Dictionary”.  1768.

Buist [1805-1880] proclaimed the Dutch Case-knife to be an excellent pole bean producing a good crop of fine flavor and much earlier for the table than either the Lima or Carolina.  “It can be used either in or without the pod; it is also adapted for winter use”.

Mr. W. F.  Massey submitted information on white beans and their culture in the hot humid South for the Southern Planter and Farmer in 1900 saying they produced more damaged beans than when planted in the North.  He stated the best white beans he’d ever tried growing in the South were the Dutch Case-Knife beans.  “This is a pole bean, but not a rampant climber, and in my boyhood was commonly planted in the corn field and allowed to climb on the stalks in a portion of the field so as to give a supply for shelling in winter.  It is a flat bean, similar in shape to a small lima, but smaller still.  There is no shelled bean of better quality.”

As for the method of growing these beans they could be trellised or staked.  The following would make a nicer presentation than row staking.  “Strike out a dozen (or more) circles on the ground, as large as a cart wheel.  Put a wheel barrow load of manure into it and spade it up with the earth.  Drop the seeds in the circle, on the outer edge of the hill, say six inches apart.  Then insert eight or ten poles just within the circle, at equal distances from each other, and tie the tops of the whole together-forming a cone.  Cover up the seed and wait the result.

Each of these hills will yield you a peck or a half bushel of dry beans next fall—which if you have but a dozen such hills, will give you, perhaps half a dozen bushels.  This will be enough for your purpose.  By this course, but a little land is occupied.  Pole beans will yield very much more abundantly than bush beans, and occupy air, whilst the latter must have the surface of the earth”.  – Holmes, Frances.  “The Southern Farmer and Market Gardener”.  1842.

This bean was often referred to as Old Dutch White or White Dutch and differs from the brown-seeded variety sometimes sold as Caseknife today.  Old cookery books and garden manuals refer to white beans, small white beans, large white beans and great white beans.  All agree the white was preferred.

Dr. William Woys Weaver says the Caseknife Bean is perhaps the oldest documented bean in American gardens.  Like the farmers quoted above he believes the oldest were white seeded like those grown in the gardens of Thomas Jefferson and the closest variety to the original bean is the Pelzer Schwertebuhne (Palatine Caseknife Pole Bean).  He found the beans being grown by the Wendel family of Weilerbach in the Rheinland-Pfalz.  He offers the Palatine June Pole Bean in his Roughwood Seed Collection.

As to cooking dried white beans, let’s look at Louis Eustache Ude’s 1814 receipt.

White Beans a la Maitre d’Hotel.  “if they are dry, they must be soaked for an hour in cold water, before you boil them.  Then boil them in cold water and replenish with cold water also which makes the rind or coat tender.  White beans must be well done before you dress them, which is done as follows:  trim a stew-pan with a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, a little parsley chopped very fine, and some pepper and salt, over which lay the beans, well drained.  Keep moving the stew-pan without using a spoon, for fear of crumbling the beans.  Then squeeze the juice of half a lemon and send up quite hot”.

The Shop at Monticello offers seeds of the Caseknife Pole Bean which have white seed like the original and the flattened, slightly curving shape of the beans matches the description above.  They are grown out on-site.  A packet contains between 20 to 25 seeds and sells for $3.95 plus shipping.  1-800-243-1743.

Johnson’s Home and Garden offers “Old Dutch White Half Runner Bean” seed he says were brought from Germany by original settlers of the Dutch Fork Section of South Carolina.  A Half Pound of untreated seed is $3.95 and a pound is $5.95.  Johnson’s Home & Garden, 130 Power Drive, Pikeville, KY 41501, phone                   606-432-8460.

Roughwood Seed Collection:  https://www.roughwoodtable.org/roughwood-seed-collection offers the Palatine June bean seed.

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