I mentioned a few weeks ago that I'd fairly recently discovered the variety of books on the subject of food history. To start with, the concept includes several different sub-genres: some writers focus on the crops from an agricultural or economic viewpoint, others cover locations or time periods, others talk about eating and cooking. Those are just some of the options, each itself divided into books for a general audience and unreadable academic histories.
One very good example of an economic and political history is Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky (2003). Salt has been essential to people everywhere all through history, not just for our modest dietary needs, but for preserving meat for storage. But like other limited resources, that makes it valuable and fought over. Kurlansky also wrote Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World (1998), which I haven't read yet, it got excellent reviews.
The one I mentioned before is Beans - A History by Ken Albala (2007). This one crosses genres: it is organized botanically; discusses nutritional value, economic importance, social impact, history and historic recipes; and is both academically thorough ("...every major species of legume eaten by humans around the world...") and very readable. Since legumes are some of the oldest cultivated crops there's a lot of history here.
The ones that talk about cooking include books that present period recipes adjusted for modern measurements and methods, with varying amounts of historical context. The process of adjusting the recipe is itself quite interesting since ingredients may no longer be common, quantities were probably vague, and we've been mostly happy to leave behind historical methods. And for most of history, dishes eaten might be described by a writer but recipes were much less common so the historian is really inventing the recipe. Twenty years ago a friend gave me The British Museum Cookbook which is kind of interesting but is mostly a lot of recipes with thin history around them.
Much richer historically is Abraham Lincoln In the Kitchen, by Rae Katherine Eighmey (2014), combining some lesser-known Lincoln stories with the general evolution of American cooking at a time of dramatic changes. Lincoln himself went from eating cornpone and being glad to have that, to the dining rooms of the best chefs in America. During his lifetime Americans went from cooking in front of an open hearth to having an iron stove, completely changing the possibilities. The frontier Lincoln grew up on was a corn and hog economy with few luxuries, but the transportation revolution including canals, railroads and steamboats made a much wider variety of foodstuffs available to average consumers, including the first commercial canned goods (tomato sauce). Cookbooks were widely published (we know of some owned by Mary Lincoln), and recipes were printed in newspapers, including those in Springfield IL. Lincoln is reported to have read all the newspapers he could get, and unlike more recent politicians he probably meant it. So he may not have cooked or eaten those dishes, but he almost certainly knew of them, and he knew what was available in the markets of his increasingly prosperous small city.
Some of the dishes from the book can be directly connected to Lincoln. One of his political stories told of boys eating gingerbread men; he also spoke to friends of the delectable almond cake that Miss Todd served him. Initially I was amused by the literal image of Lincoln "in the kitchen", but it's recorded as fact that at least sometimes Abe came home from the law office, put on an apron, and helped his wife prepare dinner. It's also known that when he worked on a flatboat down the river to New Orleans, Lincoln was the cook for his crew. Of course that may only have meant that he could cook cornpone without burning it. The author has done IMO a great job of integrating the history, the recipes, and Lincoln as the framework.
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German Beef with Sour Cream
serves 8 to 10
Lincoln may not have ever eaten this German-style roast beef, but he was certainly connected with that immigrant community: Springfield had enough Germans to support two churches, three beer halls and a German-language newspaper -- which for a year and a half leading up to the 1860 election Lincoln owned. German-Americans would be a significant Republican constituency. Adapted from an 1859 cookbook.
1 2 to 3 lb beef round or rump roast
3/4 cup sour cream
1/2 cup milk (approximate)
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Allow the meat to come to room temperature before cooking.
Make a basting sauce by combining sour cream with enough milk to thin to the consistency of whipping cream and put in the refrigerator. For a larger roast mix more of this.
Preheat oven to 375F. Sprinkle the meat with salt and pepper. Put fat side up in a roasting pan and roast for 30 minutes. Lower oven temperature to 225F. After 10 minutes at this lower temperature, baste with the sour cream mixture. Continue basting every half hour; stop about a half hour before you think the meat will be finished. It should take 2 to 3 hours to cook medium rare (internal temperature 135-140F).
Remove the meat to a plate, tent with foil and let rest 15 minutes before carving. Gently mix the juices and sour cream in the baking pan to make a sauce. Good served with sauerkraut.
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Union Army Bread
makes two 8-inch round loaves
Armies in the field of course would not eat so well, but the troops in the garrisons around Washington were supplied from their own bakery, described in detail by journalist Noah Brooks: The army bakery had 20 ovens each holding 150 loaves at a time and 280 bakers worked around the clock, turning 210 barrels of flour per day into nearly 33,000 22-ounce loaves of bread. Each barrel was 156 pounds of "superfine" flour, produced about that many loaves, and cost the government $8.87.
The rest of the basic ration was beef, beans, rice or hominy, molasses, coffee, tea, salt and pepper. There are many stories of the President dropping into an army camp to talk with soldiers and share coffee or "a plate of beans"; it's unlikely that he didn't eat some of this bread.
The author discusses re-creating the recipe:
The key to the recipe is as much what Brooks doesn't mention as what he does. There is no list of firkins of butter or lard, gallons of milk, clutches of eggs, or barrels of sugar. Brooks was an accurate and descriptive reporter. If those ingredients had gone into the soldier's bread, he would have mentioned them. No, this was a simple flour-and-water bread leavened with a yeast sponge.
Having said that, she does add sugar, and a little salt.
1 envelope active dry yeast
2-1/2 cups warm water, divided (warm=110F)
1 tb sugar
6-1/2 to 7-1/2 cups unbleached bread flour, plus more for dusting
1/2 tsp salt
Put the yeast in a mixing bowl; add 1/2 cup of the warm water and the sugar. Stir with a fork until blended and set aside until it begins to bubble. This is "proofing" the yeast to be sure it will make the bread rise.
Mix in 1 cup of the flour (and the salt? the author forgot to say when to add it!) and knead into a smooth dough. Put back into bowl and pour 2 cups of warm water around the ball of dough. Set aside for 15 to 20 minutes until the dough ball rises and is bubbly on the bottom.
Add 2 cups of flour to the water and carefully begin to mix with your hand, breaking up the dough "sponge" and blending it with the flour. Continue adding flour until you have a smooth and non-sticky ball of dough. Knead for several minutes on a lightly floured surface until it is very smooth. Divide the dough in half. Form each half into a tight round loaf. Place on a lightly greased baking sheet and put in a warm place to rise until doubled, roughly an hour. (125F is a good rising temperature. One method is to heat the oven to its lowest setting, then turn off, put the dough in, leave oven door ajar. But not too hot or you'll kill the yeast before the bread rises.)
Preheat oven to 350F. Bake until loaves are browned on top and when you tap the bottom of the loaf it sounds hollow, about 45 minutes.
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