santich.newtiles
Last Chance to Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World. Gina Mallet. Milson's Point, NSW: Random House Australia, 2004. 236 pp. + index
The doom-laden title demands immediate attention; who among us has not, at some stage, bemoaned the lack of flavour in tomatoes and peaches, the blandness of most Australian cheddar, the vapidity of characterless chicken breasts? Not that Gina Mallet gives any answers or any cause for optimism in this book, whose message seems to be that things ain't what they used to be and we'd better enjoy what we can now, because they will only get worse. Her conclusion is that 'unless consumers stick up for taste, there won't be any'. (p.218)
According to the back cover, Last Chance to Eat is a 'provocative and evocative account of the fate of food'. Certainly, the author has had plenty of wonderful food experiences to evoke and writes about them with verve and humour – for example, Dover sole at a birthday lunch at a Parisian brasserie, a properly aged porterhouse at a traditional New York steakhouse. But provocative? Pessimistic would be a better description. Perhaps this is an apt analogy for 'the fate of taste', but I would have found this book more provocative and more challenging if it recognised that the past is passé and directed its focus towards what can be done in the present to affect the future, and what we, as eaters, might do to 'stick up for taste'. Instead, the epilogue – set some 50 years in the future - assumes that we simply continued to accept what we were given and, like characters in a Greek tragedy, did nothing to change the fate of taste.
Nevertheless, the book describes clearly and candidly the changes that have occurred in food production and processing practices, and the reasons for these changes (essentially, health, hygiene, economics and politics). Mallet explains why steak and kidney pie has become steak and mushroom pie, why the number of different varieties of apple has diminished, why hydroponic tomatoes might be better than organic ones. Writing in a strong and authoritative voice, she is firm in her opinions, as when she states that Béchamel and Velouté are really the only worthy sauce accompaniments to fish. (p.216) In her discussions researchers and scientists are not spared, usually with good reason (for example, the scientists who decreed wood unhygienic and recommended plastic chopping boards; it was later discovered that wood has natural anti-bacterial properties (p.82)). She can be equally scathing about the FDA, which decreed that children should not lick the bowl and beaters when raw eggs have been used in the cake batter (p.59) and supermarkets which 'don't listen to customers … but buy the apples that make the best profit' (p.160).
It is not difficult to agree with Mallet's arguments and to be swayed by her sentiments. Yet, persuasive as the book is, it has a number of serious flaws which cast doubt on its probity and ultimate worth. One of these is its reliance, especially in the chapter on fish, on a limited selection of resources. I can accept that Bill Gerencer is very knowledgeable about fish and the fishing industry, but I would have expected a reputable writer to corroborate his information by referring to other sources. Bill might be correct when he says that shrimp are soaked in sodium-tri-polyphosphate to plump them up before freezing, but surely this could have been confirmed by other industry or government sources (I'm sure Jeffrey Steingarten would have!).
The second serious flaw is the number of factual errors. A prestigious publisher such as Random House presumably employs skilled editors and fact-checkers , so how can it happen that Carême is credited with creating a dish called Chevreuse de perdreaux (p.33) when the great chef actually named this masterpiece Chartreuse de perdreaux. Or that the chump chop is described as coming from the neck (p.136), when, according to the English (and Australian) system the chump is situated between the leg and the loin. Or that it states categorically that 'sugar is more fattening than fat' (p.200); depending on how much of each you eat, this might be valid but weight for weight, fat contains more kilojoules than sugar. Finally, I have doubts about a recipe in which 2-3 cm potato cubes are boiled for 30 minutes and then cooked for another 40 minutes in an 190o oven.
Third, I wonder about omissions. Surely, in a discussion of modern slaughtering and meat processing practices and the risks of contamination by E. coli, it would have been pertinent to mention Eric Schlosser's recent exposé of the American meat industry in Fast Food Nation (2001)?
The idea behind Last Chance to Eat is admirable. It is disappointing to me that a book that promised so much did not live up to expectations.
Dinner for Dickens: The Culinary History of Mrs Charles Dickens's Menu Books including a transcript of What Shall We have For Dinner by 'Lady Maria Clutterbuck'. Susan M Rossi-Willcox. Totnes: Prospect Books, 2005. 376 pp plus appendixes, notes and index.
Catherine Hogarth was born in 1815 , married Charles Dickens in 1836 and died in 1879, nine years after Charles' death and 21 years after he effectively ditched her in favour of a much younger actress. During her marriage she bore ten children, suffered two miscarriages, kept house and entertained in England, France, Switzerland and Italy, and, under the pseudonym of Lady Maria Clutterbuck, wrote a book of menus ('Bills of Fare') first published in 1851 and republished, with revisions and additions, in 1852, 1854 and 1857. It is this slim volume, What Shall We Have For Dinner, that engaged the attention of historian and museum curator Susan M. Rossi-Willcox.
The first half of Dinner for Dickens describes the life, travels and entertaining of Charles and Catherine (Kate) while the second half discusses the ingredients of the menus, noting Catherine's predilection for mutton and lamb, French beans and asparagus, and the ubiquity of potatoes, of which Londoners ate, on average, one pound per person per day in the 1850s. (p.279) The ingredients are, as Rossi-Willcox remarks, neither expensive and luxurious nor cheap and low status but precisely the kinds of foods appropriate to a reasonably well-off middle-class family which ate well but not extravagantly. Rossi-Willcox also documents the evolution of the menus in successive editions of the book and emphasises their seasonality – oysters feature in March, green peas and asparagus in April, fresh eggs and butter in May, whitebait in June, and game – partridge, pheasant and woodcock – in September.
The Dickens household included, in 1844, Charles and Kate and five children (one still a baby), Catherine's younger sister who lived with the family, a maid, a cook, and a nurse-governess. Assuming this was reasonably typical, it is easy to understand why the nineteenth century produced such a flurry of books on household management, since planning and provisioning and delegating domestic chores was probably much more important that just cooking. Dena Attar's Bibliography of Household Books Published in Britain 1800-1914 (Prospect Books, 1987) lists over 500 titles in the category of Household Books (excluding cookbooks, containing recipes only) published in the nineteenth century. Attar notes that 'women bought books in their millions seeking advice on household routines, managing servants, provisioning, decorating and furnishing their homes, marketing, planning menus and cooking, bringing up children, home nursing, entertaining and correct social behaviour.' (p. 13)
It is also easy to see why a reasonably extensive household staff was necessary. A day's meals included breakfast, lunch, tea, supper and other refreshments as well as special foods for the baby and for the children – and invalid foods if anyone was ill. Catherine seems to have been more than competent in the kitchen, but after a second child was born the family employed a cook, though Catherine probably still oversaw the making of preserves, jams, jellies, sauces, cordials and the various condiments mentioned in her recipes. Given the extent of the Dickens' entertaining one can only admire her organising skills and perhaps understand why a practical book of menus would prove such an invaluable guide in the mid-nineteenth-century.
Rossi-Willcox gives many examples of the way Dickens included food in his writing and allows the reader to appreciate Dickens not only as a bon vivant but also as an extraordinarily prolific and broad-ranging author who, in addition to his short stories and novels, wrote journalism, travel accounts and countless articles on food which were published in Household Words, a weekly magazine Dickens launched in 1850. Nevertheless, he also appears as a man who, under the influence of a pretty actress and a mid-life crisis, callously abandoned a long-serving wife.
Lady Clutterbuck's menus might be 150 years old but in many respects would be quite acceptable (if unexpected) today – for example, a summer menu starting with green pea soup, followed by roast leg of lamb, new potatoes and asparagus, and finally sweet omelette and macaroni. Or a winter menu of fried sole and whiting with shrimp sauce, roast hare with potato balls, and macaroni; or another winter dinner, for 8-10 guests, of giblet soup, baked and stuffed haddock, roast haunch of mutton with stewed onions and browned potatoes, roast pheasant, with pound puddings for dessert.
Also new from Prospect Books:
The Centaur's Kitchen: A book of French, Italian, Greek & Catalan dishes for ships' cooks on the Blue Funnel line. Patience Gray. Totnes: Prospect Books, 2005. 137 pp.
The Australian connection to this book is not so much its Mediterranean focus but rather the Centaur herself which, as one of the ships of the Blue Funnel fleet, carried passengers and livestock between Fremantle and Singapore in the 1960s. Patience Gray delivered her typescript to the company in 1964 but, as a private commission for the benefit of the Chinese cooks on the Centaur, it was never published. Written after her collaboration with Primrose Boyd , Plats du Jour (1957) , it abandons a French theme in favour of a more eclectic and certainly more personal collection of recipes, all written from a thoroughly practical viewpoint – and all perfectly appropriate to a domestic kitchen today.
A New and Easy Method of Cookery. Elizabeth Cleland. Facsimile of first edition, Edinburgh, 1755, with introduction by Peter Brears. Berwick upon Tweed: Paxton Trust; and Totnes: Prospect Books, 2005.
According to Peter Brears, Mrs Cleland's book 'is one of the most important sources regarding the culinary history of mid-eighteenth-century Scotland'. Written for the young ladies who attended her cookery school, it reflects the English style of cookery adopted by Scottish gentry (many recipes were 'borrowed', as was standard practice at that time, from such English classics as Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy and Eliza Smith's Compleat Housewife) and contains very few of the dishes today considered to be typically Scottish. Nevertheless, as Peter Brears points out, the range of oatmeal recipes and the variety of recipes for venison all testify to the book's Scottish origins and character.
Barbara Santich, University of Adelaide.
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