The Three Martini Lunch Exposed.

On Saturday at a local charity shop I found a lovely collection of mid-century Japanese glassware in my favorite "bamboo" pattern. There were about 30 glasses in a range of cocktail shapes, including sherry glasses, brandy snifters, liqueur glasses, champagne coupes, and six of the cutest little martini glasses you have ever seen. Herein lies the secret to the Three Martini Lunch, the martinis were tiny.


Above is a photo of the mid-century martini glass (on the left) and a modern martini glass (on the right). The modern glass is not a particularly large example, either - just a standard glass out of my cupboard. (The little blue figure standing in front of the glasses is a Lego minifg, for scale.) The photo does not exaggerate the difference. The mid-century glass holds 2 ounces, filled to the brim. The modern glass holds nearly 8 ounces, similarly full. So three martinis in 1964 would barely equal one martini today.

This reflects a general difference when comparing vintage to modern table ware. Plates, tea-cups, cutlery, everything was smaller scaled. And, of course, servings were smaller, too, unless you had three of them.

Nineteenth Century Peach Ice cream and the Flavor Principle

Well, now that I have finished painting (for at least the immediate future), I can return to FOOD. It is still too hot to cook, so I  made Peach Ice Cream, another recipe from Mrs. Lettice Bryan's recipe in The Kentucky Housewife (1839). I followed the recipe as given (although I used an electric ice cream machine), so I will present the recipe first. Then I will discuss how it came out, and what I learned.

Coincidentally, the ice cream is made with heavy cream but without eggs (although the author offers an egg custard made with milk as a variant, if you are low on cream.) Apparently this style of ice cream is enjoying something of a comeback, and even was covered in the New York Times recently. (See Egg-Free Ice Cream Lets Flavors Bloom , and thanks, Pauline, for the link.)

PEACH ICE CREAM
The Kentucky Housewife by Mrs. Lettice Bryan (1839), pp. 341-342
Select peaches that are very ripe and soft, peel them, extract the stones, and mash them to a marmalade. Having one quart of peach pulp, mix with it one pound of powdered sugar, a grated nutmeg and a tea-spoonful of powdered cinnamon; stir it into a quart of rich sweet cream, and freeze it as directed [in an earlier recipe.] If cream is not to be had, substitute a quart of rich sweet milk, stir into it the beaten yolks of five or six eggs, simmer it till the eggs are sufficiently cooked, set it by till cold, and then stir into it the peaches, &c. as before directed.

Comments -
First off, this is a lovely ice cream, and it improves with a day or two in the freezer to let the flavors meld. This is also an excellent example of the concept of the flavor principle, as discussed in my review of Elizabeth Rozin's book, Ethnic Cuisine. This ice cream reflects a very old flavor principle in English cooking - sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon. To the modern palate, this ice cream tastes like a cross between peach ice cream and pumpkin pie. But that reflects just how old fashioned pumpkin pie is (well, how old fashioned the spices are, pumpkin pie is relatively modern, since pumpkin is a new world food.) Nutmeg and cinnamon were extremely common Elizabethan spices, used in savory as well as sweet foods.

In the U.S., and even in Britain, we have largely abandoned this flavor profile, especially the lavish use of nutmeg. It is hard to appreciate nutmeg's importance from a few recipes, but from at least the 17th through the 19th century, nutmeg (and its relative, mace) were dominant spices in cooking in the English speaking world. In some rural districts, nutmeg remained important well into the twentieth century. My husband remembers playing as a child in an abandoned grocer's cart. The cart had functioned as a traveling grocery store, visiting remote farms in southwestern Scotland before World War II. Even in the 1970s, the ruins were coated in a thick layer of ground nutmeg dust which covered every surface in the interior. When you make a modern recipe that uses nutmeg, such as pumpkin pie or eggnog, you are preparing a dish with ancient roots. This ice cream strongly reflects this ancient flavor profile, nutmeg with sugar and cinnamon.

The flavor of this ice cream is also notable for what is missing -- vanilla. Vanilla is the flavor profile that has replaced nutmeg in so many of our sweets. This ice cream, without either vanilla or egg, has an unusually bright, fresh flavor which is quite delicious, and even a little exotic. So dig out your ice cream maker and enjoy a quick trip to an antebellum summer party.

Here it is folks, The Vintage Cookie at Eclectic Nature, 1503 Mount Vernon Avenue, Alexandria VA (Del Ray). Hrs are Mon-Fri 10-6, Sat 10-5, Sun 11-5.

What is an authentic vintage recipe?
I made scones today, using the New York Times Cookbook, publication date of 1963. This is the cookbook I grew up with, and this is the scone recipe I grew up with. But I tweaked it -- tried a suggestion I read in Cooks Illustrated for cutting in the butter. I froze the butter and grated it into the flour using a box grater. Worked great. I also used some leftover eggnog instead of milk. Results - a great scone. Tender and almost flaky, with a lovely sweet flavor. But still a traditional scone, not what passes for a scone in Starbucks.

But here's the rub -- was this a "vintage" scone? Probably not. So, if I were directing someone to make a vintage scone, what do I tell them. Okay, I would skip the eggnog. Although eggnog is a very old recipe, with a very old flavor profile. And it was really, really good. But what about the trick with the box grater. It just makes a better scone, better along the lines of what a cook in 1963 would have understood as a good scone, not better in some new, modern way. And it doesn't use anything not available in 1963. On the other hand, I am pretty sure it is not the classic method.

So when does a recipe stop being vintage?

Unpacking the past - and ruminating on tea and Tea

I have been unpacking the dishes, linens, and other "kitchenalia" I bought in Scotland. Most of it is headed straight over to The Vintage Cookie (found at Eclectic Nature, 1503 Mount Vernon Avenue, Alexandria VA).


Most of what I have brought back relates to tea -- to the meal "tea" as well as the beverage. Scotland is simply awash in pretty tea sets, antique, vintage, and new. A tea set generally includes cups, saucers, and dessert plates, what the British call a "trio." The set may also include serving pieces, such as a tea pot, sugar bowl, cream pitcher, and/or cake plate. If the set is really fancy there may be different cups for coffee, but even the most elaborate tea set is a simple thing compared to a full dinner service. The tea set is meant to be used in the parlor, or drawing room or living room or whatever you want to call it, but not in the dining room. The plates are small, you could balance one on your knee if you were not near the tea table, and accommodate only simple food - sandwiches and pastries. In Scotland I found tea sets to suit every fashion, from the high Victorian straight through to the 21st century hipster (Marks and Spencer has some really nice sets). These pretty sets got me to thinking about tea and Victorians and the invention of modern life.

Tea, the meal, served in the mid-afternoon, is a very modern meal. I know this is not how it is generally viewed. Most of us, when we think of tea, think of pretty porcelain, white gloves and good manners, as well as silver trays loaded with cucumber sandwiches and tarts. A full-on British tea is very Victorian. Tea, as served at the Ritz or the Plaza, is about as close as one can get, without ridiculous effort, to a meal served in the manner in which it might have been enjoyed 110 years ago.

But that is exactly the point - we still enjoy "tea," the meal. It still suits our modern, more casual way of life. Tea, for a middle or upper-middle class Victorian, was not a formal meal. Quite the contrary, tea was the casual meal. Most of our modern meals, I argue, are descendants of the middle class Victorian tea. Whenever we eat anywhere outside the dining room, we are essentially having tea.

Tea is the meal that fled the dining room. The Victorian dining room was a fearsome place, where the full power of the Victorian concept of the patriarchal family was brought to bear. Everything about the dining room was intended to reflect the role of the husband and father. The furnishings were to be sober and masculine. The male head of household sat at the head of the table, with each other member of the family sitting in a spot that reflected his or her relationship to the father and his or her place in the family (the woman of the house sat, always, at the foot of the table.) And the father, or his representatives the servants, served the food. People ate the food according to strict rules of etiquette. There were dedicated tools for nearly every food that might be offered. And fingers were never, never to touch food.

Tea, on the other hand, was served in the drawing room, a woman's room. The drawing room could be decorated in pretty colors, and the arrangement of the seating was determined by the whims of the occupants. The participants at tea could sit where they liked, next to friends on a sofa or in a particularly comfortable easy chair, no matter their social position in the family. Servants were generally banished - they brought the tea things in and set them out, but then left. The tea, and the accompanying finger sandwiches and cakes, were served by the women of the household. People ate and talked. If someone could play the piano, they might be prevailed upon to do so for the entertainment of the room. If it were a family tea, with no guests, newspapers and books might even have come out. If TV had existed, it would almost certainly have been turned on.

And that is exactly the point - today we eat meals that would be identified by the Victorians as tea far more often than we sit down to anything that would look to a Victorian like a proper dinner. Our dining tables are covered in old mail and mittens. Instead we either eat in the kitchen (what a middle class Victorian might call High Tea, after he got over the shock of a middle class family eating in the kitchen), or we grab our food and head for the sofa. Of course, we are even less formal than Victorians were. To us, the Victorian tea does look formal - with one person pouring while another hands out finger sandwiches. But those are details. At its core, tea was a democratic meal, where men and women, old and young, could relax, eat, and talk, as equals.

Which brings me back to tea sets and dinner sets. In Scotland I went to a viewing at a very nice auction house. The second floor was given over largely to dishes of every description - tea sets, full dinner sets, fish forks, art pottery pitchers, silver chocolate pots, and anything else that might conceivably hold food or drink. Most of the pieces shown were late nineteenth through mid twentieth century. As I strolled the aisles I couldn't help noticing how much I liked the tea sets, and how little I liked the full dinner services. The dinner services were solid, conventional, pedestrian, and dated. The tea sets, even when clearly Victorian, Art Deco, or Mid-Century, seemed more modern, lighter of touch and far more likely to look good today, sitting on a modern kitchen table, or on the coffee table in the family room, or on a desk next to a laptop computer.

Now I don't generally ascribe moral characteristics to inanimate objects, but I do think in this case that the heavy weight of traditional expectations may be more than the average dinner service can gracefully handle. Tea sets, free from such expectations, are free to be pretty.  The only dinner service I saw which I thought escaped this fate was an 18th century dinner service. On the Orkney Mainland there is an old manor house, Skaill House, where oddly, you will find Captain James Cook's dinner service from his final voyage. (Quick check on Wikipedia will reveal that Captain Cook was killed in Hawaii in 1779.) This was not a woman's service, but it is exceptionally pretty and lighthearted, as you can see from the following picture of the dinner plate.This is not the plate of a man who worried whether or not his dishes supported his place in the patriarchy.

Play Dough from the Women of Galilee

A couple of days ago I was visiting my father, who lives in a high rise condominium tower. In the basement, on your way out to the parking garage, there are a couple of bookshelves where residents leave books they want to be rid of. Often these include cookbooks. On my last visit I found two interesting cook books: an English language translation of the classic French cookbook Tante Marie, and Loaves and Fishes from the Women of Galilee Episcopal Church, Virginia Beach, Virginia.

I love community cookbooks. Even when most of the recipes aren't very good, the collection tells a story about the group that chose them and put them together. Occasionally, the books are also promising as cookbooks. Loaves and Fishes looks to be one of the promising ones. The book is undated, but based on the illustrations it is post-1962. I would guess it is actually late 70s or early 80s. There is an unusually limited use of canned soup and other prepared foods, and a nice variety - plenty of seafood dishes, as well as lamb, buffalo and venison. But one of the most charming chapters is "Children's Recipes," which include a few treats, bubble soap, face paint, and several recipes for modeling doughs. One of them looked simple enough, and it was. Fifteen minutes after starting, my four year old and I had:

Play Dough (contributed by Leslie Reid Baker, p. 41)

2 cups flour
1 cup salt
4 tsp. cream of tartar
2 cups water
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
Food coloring

Cook over medium heat, stirring until mixture leaves the sides of the pan. [Turn contents out onto a large cutting board.] Knead in food coloring. Store in airtight container.

Who knew that Play Dough was really a salty choux paste? Anyway, this worked remarkably well. The Dough is lovely and soft and models well. I think I like it better than the commercial stuff. The recipe is  generous. We had enough Dough to fill 5 of the larger empty Play-Doh containers. We made five different colors, picking from my vast collection of food colors. Next time I think we will make more colors. And the whole project took fifteen minutes from reading the recipe to settling my son down for a couple of hours of quiet play with his new Play Dough.

Score one for the ladies of Galilee.

Painting...

I will be spending most of this week painting my space for The Vintage Cookie at Eclectic Nature. I'll be blogging more about the design of the space, with pictures, but for now I wanted to recommend the best book I know on how to actually paint a room, Painting Secrets from Brian Santos, The Wall Wizard. Usually I stay away from books labeled "XYZ Secrets," suspecting that I will get a bunch of disconnected tips. But this book is complete, covering all you need to know to produce a paint job better than most professionals can produce. It is my room painting bible. The instructions are detailed, thorough, and easy to follow. The advice covers not just how to paint a perfect room, but how to clean up and prep a room with problems. The book also covers equipment, planning, and clean-up. I have found the detailed description of clean-up to be especially useful. If you are planning to paint a room, buy this book.