The History of Pizza

The history of pizza begins in antiquity, when various ancient cultures produced flatbreads with toppings.

The word pizza was first documented in AD 997 in Gaeta and successively in different parts of Central and Southern Italy. The precursor of pizza was probably the focaccia, a flat bread known to the Romans as panis focacius, to which toppings were then added.

Modern pizza developed in Naples, when tomato was added to the focaccia in the late 18th century. However, pizza was mainly eaten in the country of Italy and by emigrants from there. This changed after World War II, when Allied troops stationed in Italy came to enjoy pizza along with other Italian foods.

Origins

Foods similar to pizza have been made since the neolithic age. Records of people adding other ingredients to bread to make it more flavorful can be found throughout ancient history.

In Sardinia, French and Italian archaeologists have found bread baked over 7,000 years ago. According to Professor Philippe Marinval, the local islanders leavened this bread.

The Ancient Greeks had a flat bread called plakous (πλακοῦς, gen. πλακοῦντος—plakountos)which was flavored with toppings like herbs, onion, and garlic.

In the 6th century BC, the soldiers in Persian King Darius I armies baked flatbreads with cheese and dates on top of their battle shields.

An early reference to a pizza-like food occurs in the Aeneid (ca. 19 BC), when Celaeno, queen of the Harpies, foretells that the Trojans would not find peace until they are forced by hunger to eat their tables (Book III). In Book VII, Aeneas and his men are served a meal that includes round cakes (like pita bread) topped with cooked vegetables. When they eat the bread, they realize that these are the “tables” prophesied by Celaeno.

Some commentators have suggested that the origins of modern pizza can be traced to pizzarelle, which were kosher for Passover cookies eaten by Roman Jews after returning from the synagogue on that holiday, though some also trace its origins to other Italian paschal breads. Abba Eban has suggested that modern pizza “was first made more than 2000 years ago when Roman soldiers added cheese and olive oil to matzah”.

Other examples of flatbreads that survive to this day from the ancient Mediterranean world are focaccia (which may date back as far as the ancient Etruscans); Mankoucheh in Lebanon, coca (which has sweet and savory varieties) from Catalonia; Valencia and the Balearic Islands; the Greek Pita; Lepinja in the Balkans; or Piadina in the Romagna part of Emilia-Romagna in Italy.

Foods similar to flatbreads in other parts of the world include Chinese bing (a wheat flour-based Chinese food with a flattened or disk-like shape); the Indian paratha (in which fat is incorporated); the Central and South Asian naan (leavened) and roti (unleavened); the Sardinian carasau, spianata, guttiau, pistoccu; and Finnish rieska. Also worth noting is that throughout Europe there are many similar pies based on the idea of covering flat pastry with cheese, meat, vegetables and seasoning such as the Alsatian flammkuchen, German zwiebelkuchen, and French quiche.

In 16th-century Naples, a galette flatbread was referred to as a pizza. Known as the dish for poor people, it was sold in the street and was not considered a kitchen recipe for a long time. This was later replaced by oil, tomatoes (after Europeans came into contact with the Americas) or fish. In 1843, Alexandre Dumas, père, described the diversity of pizza toppings. An often recounted story holds that on 11 June 1889, to honour the Queen consort of Italy, Margherita of Savoy, the Neapolitan pizzamaker Raffaele Esposito created the “Pizza Margherita”, a pizza garnished with tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil, to represent the national colours of Italy as on the Italian flag.

Pizza is now a type of bread and tomato dish, often served with cheese. However, until the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, the dish was sweet, not savory, and earlier versions which were savory more resembled the flat breads now known as schiacciata.Pellegrino Artusi’s classic early-twentieth-century cookbook, La Scienza in cucina e l’Arte di mangiar bene gives three recipes for pizza, all of which are sweet. However, by 1927, Ada Boni’s collection of regional cooking includes a recipe using tomatoes and mozzarella.

Text from Wikipedia

A Short History of Sauerkraut

Contemporary Chinese sour cabbage

Although sauerkraut – German for “sour cabbage” – is thought of as a German invention, Chinese laborers building the Great Wall of China over 2,000 years ago ate it as standard fare. Chinese sauerkraut, made from shredded cabbage fermented in rice wine.

Most likely it was brought to Europe 1000 years later by Gengis Kahn after plundering China.

Gengis Kahn

Although in Germany instead of using the wine they dry cured it by sprinkling salt on the shredded cabbage. The water is then drawn out of the cabbage to make the juice that you see that accompanies the kraut.

Typical German dish with sauerkraut

The Dutch, who were great sea-fearing traders used sauerkraut on their ships as it did not need refrigeration and helped prevent scurvy.

Today’s sauerkraut is made by combining shredded cabbage, salt and sometimes spices, and allowing the mixture to ferment. It can be purchased in jars and cans in supermarkets. Fresh sauerkraut is sold in delicatessens and in plastic bags in a supermarket’s refrigerated section. It should be rinsed before being used in casseroles, as a side dish and even on sandwiches like the famous Reuben Sandwich. Sauerkraut is an excellent source of vitamin C as well as of some of the B vitamins.

There is a theory that the Tartars introduced the acid cabbage from the Orient into eastern Europe, and from there kraut went to Germany, Alsace-Lorraine, and France.

FoodPorn, Circa 1600s: Then And Now, It Was More About Status Than Appetite

An article by Tove Danovich published on
The Salt at npr.org July 2016

A Jan Davidsz de Heem still life with ham, lobster and fruit, circa 1653

The table is set for dinner. Small cooked crabs and shrimp are laid out on the thick wooden tabletop next to succulent figs, grapes, pears and types of produce you can’t even name. There’s a citrus with a long coiling peel draped around it, and an entire roast of some animal’s leg that’s been cut down the middle — so you can see the thick layer of fat running around the edge. Just for good measure, a red lobster and ornate goblet of wine stand on a pedestal above it.

If this meal were laid out in 2016, you’d get out your phone and Instagram a perfectly filtered photo before digging in, #foodporn. But in the 1600s, when famous still life artist Jan Davidsz de Heem was eating, people showed off their meals with paintings instead.

Paul Cezanne 1890s

A new study by Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab found that capturing and showing off decadent and expensive meals is a decidedly old-fashioned practice. Brian Wansink, author of Slim by Design, and Andrew Weislogel, a curator at Cornell University’s Johnson Museum of Art, studied 140 paintings of “family meals” from 1500 to 2000 and found that the majority of foods depicted were not part of the average fare. Some of the most likely foods to appear were shellfish, ham and artichoke. For the common classes during the time these paintings were made, Wansink says, more likely items to eat would have been chicken, bread and the odd foraged fruit.

People don’t usually Instagram frozen foods they put in the microwave. Instead, the most successful #foodporn is often an item the photographer laboriously made in the kitchen or found in either an expensive or out-of-the-way restaurant. A recent top #foodporn on Instagram is a photo of seven elaborately decorated eclairs. In the caption the food blogger behind @dialaskitchen compares the Toronto-made pastries to some found a couple years ago, “while at L’atellier de l’éclair in Paris.”

Wayne Thiebaud – Cakes, 1963

Wansink says that today’s social media food posts often attempt to convey that their creator is worldly, adventurous and has money to spare. “None of these things are about food,” he says.

Spread The Word – Butter Has An Epic Backstory

An article by Nicole Jankowski posted on TheSalt at NPR

Among the rolling hills of ancient Africa, sometime around 8000 B.C., a dusty traveler was making gastronomic history, quite by accident.

Thirsty from a long, hot journey, the weary herdsman reached for the sheepskin bag of milk knotted to the back of his pack animal. But as he tilted his head to pour the warm liquid into his mouth, he was astonished to find that the sheep’s milk had curdled. The rough terrain and constant joggling of the milk had transformed it into butter – and bewilderingly, it tasted heavenly.

That’s likely how it went down, as author Elaine Khosrova explains in her new book, Butter: A Rich History. From happy Neolithic-era accident to inspiration for student protests to tabletop staple, butter has had quite the ride over the past 10,000 years.

The story of butter, Khosrova says, is a historical roadmap of humanity. “I felt like I had uncovered an epic story that very few people had been paying attention to,” she tells NPR.

Butter appeared on the world scene soon after the domestication of animals, although the first primitive batches would scarcely resemble the sticks that sit on your refrigerator shelf. Instead of cows, she writes, early butter came from the milk of yak, sheep and goats — the very first tamed beasts of our ancestors.

And while archaeologists have unearthed a 4,500-year-old limestone tablet depicting early butter-making, it’s not clear precisely how our ancestors shifted from “accidental discovery” to purposeful manufacturing. Khosrova writes that after trial and error, early civilizations probably realized that if they removed the milk pouch “off the back of animal and hung [it] like a cradle from a tree limb,” it could be deliberately “agitated” into sumptuous golden kernels. According to Khosrova, isolated communities in North Africa and the Middle East still make their butter in this way.

As butter spread, it took on new uses and meaning. Ancient Romans associated it with barbarism, much preferring to slather their bread in locally abundant olive oil rather than resort to the food of their enemies, the marauding army from Gaul. But they appreciated butter for its “curative properties,” Khosrova says. Romans used butter for cosmetic purposes and also as a healing balm, often sneaking tiny licks in between applications on their wounds.

Perhaps most surprising is the story of butter’s sacred and supernatural past. For many ancient civilizations, the unexplained mystery behind milk’s transformation into butter made it seem magical. It “seemed like a marvelous event,” Khosrova says.

Ancient Sumerians offered up gifts of butter at temple in honor of the “powerful fertility goddess Inanna, protector of the seasons and harvest,” she writes.

Recent discoveries in Ireland of ancient bog butter — wooden buckets loaded with butter and hidden in expanses of mossy swamp — date back as far as 400 B.C. These long-lost provisions were probably buried by early Celts, who knew that the Irish wetlands would preserve their spoils, keeping them edible for leaner times. But Khosrova also writes that ancient bog butter was likely presented to the pagan gods, as a way of appeasing the mystical “‘faeries’ that alternately terrified and awed country folk.”

Even the first-ever documented student protest in American history is linked with butter. Harvard University’s Great Butter Rebellion of 1766 began after a meal containing particularly rancid butter was served to students, who (not unlike modern college-goers) were frustrated over the state of food in the dining hall. As reported in The Harvard Crimson, Asa Dunbar (who would later become the grandfather of Henry David Thoreau), incited the student body into action by hopping onto his chair, shouting, “Behold our butter stinketh! Give us therefore butter that stinketh not!”

Once avoided for fears of making us overweight, butter is now making a vigorous comeback, with artisanal interpretations aplenty. And through small-batch production and experimentation, producers have returned to quaint traditions, such as slow-churning and hand packing, to recapture simple flavors and generate new ones.

As Khosrova sampled butter from around the world, she says that she was amazed by how a food with only one ingredient could produce so many diverse “nuances of flavors, textures and color.”

How this happens is a mystery that has astounded and confounded humanity for centuries. The history of butter is both humble and wondrous. With a simple batch of milk and a little creativity, a luscious — and magical — golden food is born.

Eat Like an Egyptian

An article by Stephanie Butler publised on
history.com october 2013

Archeological discoveries have told us much about how ancient Egyptians worshiped, celebrated and mourned. But these scientific finds have also provided tantalizing clues about how–and what–this complex civilization ate. From grains like emmer and kamut to cloudy beer and honey-basted gazelle, this week’s Hungry History focuses on the meals of ancient Egypt.

Bread and beer were the two staples of the Egyptian diet. Everyone from the highest priest to the lowliest laborer would eat these two foods every day, although the quality of the foods for the priest would undoubtedly be higher. The main grain cultivated in Egypt was emmer. Better known today as farro, emmer happens to be a fairly well balanced source of nutrition: it’s higher in minerals and fiber than similar grains. Breads and porridge were made from the grain, as well as a specially devised product that modern-day archeologists call “beer bread.”

Beer bread was made from dough that used more yeast than normal breads, and it was baked at a temperature that didn’t kill off the yeast cultures. Brewers crumbled the bread into vats and let it ferment naturally in water. This yielded a thick and cloudy brew that would probably disgust our modern palates. But it was also nourishing and healthy, and filled in many nutritive deficiencies of the lower-class diet.

But ancient Egyptians did not survive on carbohydrates alone: Hunters could capture a variety of wild game, including hippos, gazelles, cranes as well as smaller species such as hedgehogs. Fish were caught, then salted and preserved; in fact fish curing was so important to Egyptians that only temple officials were allowed to do it. Honey was prized as a sweetener, as were dates, raisins and other dried fruits. Wild vegetables abounded, like celery, papyrus stalks and onions.

Although no recipes from the times remain, we have a fair idea of how the Egyptians prepared their food thanks to dioramas and other objects left in tombs. Laborers ate two meals a day: a morning meal of bread, beer and often onions, and a more hearty dinner with boiled vegetables, meat and more bread and beer. Nobles ate well, with vegetables, meat and grains at every meal, plus wine and dairy products like butter and cheese. Priests and royalty ate even better. Tombs detail meals of honey-roasted wild gazelle, spit-roasted ducks, pomegranates and a berry-like fruit called jujubes with honey cakes for dessert. To top it all off, servant girls would circulate with jugs of wine to refill empty glasses: the perfect end to an Egyptian banquet.

A Short History of Le Croque Monsieur

The French name Croque Monsieur translates to  “Crisp Mister” and is basically a cooked cheese and ham sandwich, traditionally made with gruyere cheese and thinly sliced ham.  The name is sometimes shortened to just Croque.

The First Croque Monsieur

The first Croque Monsieur was simply a hot ham and cheese sandwich which was fried in butter – one step further than what some believe was the original which was accidentally created when French workers left the tins containing their lunches of  sandwiches on  hot radiators  whilst they worked. By the time they came to eat them, the heat of the radiators had melted the cheese.

It’s not known who had the idea of embellishing the recipe by frying the sandwich until crisp and golden,  however they first  appeared on menus in Parisian cafés in 1910, and the earliest written reference is thought to have been by the novelist Proust in his 1918 work titled  À la recherche du temps perdu  (In search of lost time).

Today’s Croque Monsieur

Over the years, further changes were made to the basic recipe, in particular the addition of mustard and a béchamel sauce. Whilst this complicated an otherwise simple recipe, versions made this way are sumptuous and relatively filling  and well worth the extra attention. 

Then came the variations including:
The addition of a fried egg served on top – a Croque Madame
The addition of tomatoes – a Croque Provençal
The substitution of  blue cheese for Gruyere – a Croque Auvergnat
The substitution of smoked salmon for the ham – a Croque Norvégien

Simpel Croque Monsieur Recipes

A simple version would be to make a cheese and ham sandwich in the usual way, then fry in butter until crisp and golden on both sides. Alternatively, spread the outside on your sandwich with plenty of butter and cook under a very hot grill until well browned on both sides.

Text from recipes4us

The History Of Tapas

The Spanish practice of going out for tapas – called el tapeo – had its humble beginnings long ago and ironically originally involved empty plates. Widely thought to have gotten its start in Seville, bartenders would cover – or tapar – wine glasses with a small plate in order to protect the drink from fruit flies. Soon, they took to placing a simple slice of ham on top of this place, an addition which naturally appealed to bar patrons. Seeing the possibility of attracting more customers, the bar-owners began varying the tapas adorning the little plates that came with each drink, and the widespread national phenomenon known as tapas got its start.

Traditions

Going out for tapas is one of the few phenomenal gastronomic experiences that doesn’t involve a table cloth and a pricey sit-down meal. The way to enjoy tapas is to stand at the bar with a group of friends, share a few different tapas, and wash them down with wine or beer. Afterwards, pick a new bar, a new spread of tapas, and repeat the process. You can easily see why, when the conversation is lively and the tapas delicious, this advanced art of snacking can certainly substitute a whole meal.

Typical Tapas

Don’t be shy about asking what order as most bars will suggest that you try their specialties, which usually happen to be the region’s specialties as well. Tapas menus undeniably vary as you move through Spain; the best tapas in central Madrid, for example, are sure to be different from the choice tapas along the northern Galician shores. However, regardless of whether you’re relaxing along the Mediterranean or channelling your inner Don Quijote in La Mancha, you are sure to find some common tapas “classics.”

As Spain is located on the Iberian peninsula and therefore very nearly surrounded by water, seafood and shellfish naturally play a huge part in Spanish gastronomy. A few delicacies of the sea to try are calamares (fried squid), cod fritters, gambas pil-pil (prawns in hot, garlic oil), and boquerones (anchovies). Moving away from seafood, other typical tapas include chorizo (sausage), paella (rice dish), a variety of casserole stews, callos (tripe with chickpeas), jamón serrano (cured ham), albóndigas (meatballs) and the ever classic tortilla española (Spanish potato omelette).

Text fra Enforex

Food in Art

A series of paintings featuring food in different situations
found on foodmuseum.jigsy.com

Artists, photographers and illustrators seem to have been fascinated by food in all aspects of life up through history. Harvesting, cooking, serving and eating, all of it can be found in paintings in galleries all over the world.

Some pictures may show poverty, some quite the opposite. Some are kitchen scenes, some show people round tables ar home, some in restaurants, some again show people eating outdoors.

Common for all these pictures and illustrations is the food, be it a girl peeling a potato, a woman having breakfast or farmers showing their goods at a market or Andy Warhol’s famous Cambell’s soup tins.

I hope you enjoy this small collection of food in art  – Ted

Klick the thumbs to see the full-size pictures

A Short History of Airline Meals

Through the late 1930s, inflight dining on U.S. airlines often meant free cigarettes and box lunches of cold fried chicken, as the airplane heaved and bounced through the sky. Stewardesses were instructed to act as nurses, administering aspirin and cordials to anxious passengers. But in post-War years as planes grew larger and reached higher altitudes, more comfortable pressurized cabins became the norm and a golden age of airline dining was ushered in.

A promotional Pan Am video from 1958 showcases white tablecloths and hors d’ouevre trays, boasting that “the travail has been taken out of travel” with gourmet meals “prepared in simultaneously operating galleys, where dishes can be cooked in five-minute ovens.”

Until 1978, Congress had regulated the airline industry, mandating identical ticket prices for each given route and casting mile-high cuisine as a way for carriers to compete for passengers.

Albright College history professor Guillaume de Syon pinpoints 1973 as a watershed moment for in-flight dining, when French airline UTA recruited chef Raymond Oliver to reevaluate their menus. Acknowledging that dry cabin air dulls the palate and dehydration decreases the effectiveness of taste buds, Oliver prescribed a menu of coq au vin, beef bourguignon and veal in cream sauce—hearty, drenched in thick sauce, and well-suited to reheating.  (Although he didn’t know it then, recent studies show that loud background noise also mutes our perception of flavor.)

While variations of Oliver’s meat-and-sauce continue to appear on the trays of cabin-trapped passengers around the globe, last April, landlubber diners clamored to pay £50 a head at British Airways’ London pop-up restaurant Flight BA2012. The three-course meals were inspired by the airlines’ 1948 first-class menu.

In the cost-cutting years post-September 11, many airlines migrated to BYOF status. To live vicariously through the plastic trays of air travelers around the world, check out airlinemeals.net.

From an article by Erica Berry posted on NowhereMagazine

In context:

The world’s worst airline meals
The 10 most regrettable airline meals ever
Five myths about airline food
The best airline meals, according to an in-flight food addict
Wikipedia: Airline meal

A Brief History of Spam, an American Meat Icon

For a six-ingredient food product, it’s taken on a life of its own. Spam — the square-shaped mash-up of pork, water, salt, potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrate — recently celebrated its 77th anniversary of being alternately maligned, celebrated, musicalized, or the subject of urban legend (one particularly pervasive myth insists that its name is actually an acronym for “Scientifically Processed Animal Matter”). And despite today’s more locavore approach to food and some unkind memories from soldiers who were served Spam during WWII, Spam has entered its third quarter-century on the rise. More than eight billion cans have been sold since the Hormel Corporation unleashed the product in 1937; it’s currently available in 44 countries throughout the world.

Spam’s ability to straddle highbrow and lowbrow is apparently in its DNA: Since its early days, even Jay Hormel, the man who Spam made rich, had a vexed relationship with the lunchmeat. In a 1945 “Talk of the Town” profile published in The New Yorker, Hormel met writer Brendan Gill over noontime drinks, during which Gill “got the distinct impression that being responsible for Spam might be too great a burden on any one man.” The piece sees Hormel waffling on his brand’s association with Spam, spending equal time distancing himself from it (“Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t have…”) and defending it (“Damn it, we eat it in our own home”).

The budget-friendly meat has enjoyed a recent upswing on the American mainland in part thanks to rising meat costs and a floundering economy: When the recession hit in early 2008, Spam saw its sales jump 10 percent compared to the previous year. A CBS News report noted that the increased numbers were seemingly accompanied by a cultural shift: Even consumers who continued to purchase expensive organic vegetables were adding cans of Spam to their pantries. The meat, once relegated as a quirk of Hawaiian or Asian cuisine, started appearing on haute restaurant menus as a nod to that highbrow/lowbrow mash-up, or perhaps to the chef’s feelings of nostalgia for the ingredient. (A quick search of Spam recipes from the ’60s reveals dishes like Spam upside-down pie; and Spam sandwiches topped with baked beans.)

Today, its sometimes-kitsch factor is a point of pride, for both Hormel and Spam fans: You can show your affection for Spam with everything from Hormel-authorized T-shirts (reading “I think, therefore I Spam”) to crocheted, cat-shaped Spam musubi (available for purchase, naturally, on Etsy). Here’s a look back at how Spam first got canned, why it’s currently beloved in Hawaii and South Korea, and why Spam remains on many restaurant menus today.

That recipe, using pork shoulder (once considered an undesirable byproduct of hog butchery), water, salt, sugar, and sodium nitrate (for coloring) remained unchanged until 2009, when Hormel began adding potato starch to sop up the infamous gelatin “layer” that naturally forms when meat is cooked. According to Behne, the recipe change was purely an aesthetic choice: “It looks a lot better now when you open the can.” The rest, Hormel insists, has remained the same.

Although lore behind the name Spam varies, Hormel himself claimed the product was named for a combination of the words “spice” and “ham,” despite the fact that neither ingredient appears in Spam. The confusion has led some to speculate that Spam is an acronym for “Shoulder of Pork And Ham,” but company line gives Kenneth Daigneau, the brother of a Hormel VP, credit for naming the product. As Hormel tells it, he launched a naming contest for the new product during a New Year’s Eve party, when Daigneau spit out “Spam” as if “it were nothing at all,” Hormel told Gill. “I knew then and there that the name was perfect.”

Text from eater.com

What Did Elizabethan England Eat & Drink

Poor people may have had humble and unvaried diets, consisting largely of bread, fish, cheese and ale, but the rich of Elizabethan England ate well. All kind of meats were served such as lamb, beef, mutton, pork, bacon, veal, rabbit, hare, and fowl such as peacock, swan, goose, blackbirds and pigeon. They also ate different kind of freshwater and sea fish. Vegetables such as turnips, parsnips, carrots, onions, leeks, garlic and radishes were also eaten, and fruits such as apples, pears, plums, cherries and woodland strawberries. However, vegetables and fruits were regarded with some suspicion and it was far more common for roasted and boiled meat to be accompanied with bread.

Over the course of the Tudor period, more and more foods were introduced into society as they were discovered in the New World, such as Tomatoes (or love apples as they were known) from Mexico, Turkey from Mexico and Central America, Kidney Beans from Peru, and of course the Potato famously brought to England by Sir Walter Raleigh in the later years of Elizabeth’s reign. However, the Elizabethans did not know quite how to use or cook these foods to their optimum, so they were not as tasty as they could have been and tended to be kept as special delicacies.

As well as a good meal, the Tudors were fond of desserts. They enjoyed pastries, tarts, cakes, cream, and custard, and crystallized fruit and syrup. They were especially fond of sugar and marzipan and on special occasions such as banquets, all kinds of specialities would be made out of sugar and marzipan such as animals, birds, fruits or baskets. Sometimes wine glasses, dishes, playing cards and trenchers were made out of a crisp modelled sugar called sugar-plate which would be elaborately decorated.

Apparently Elizabeth I affected the edible world quite a lot: Over the course of her 45-year reign, Lizzy made 382 proclamations, and 200 of those concerned food. Examples of these proclamations can be found in The Proclamations of the Tudor Queens. Here are but a few:

18 Sept 1561: Forbidding early sale of new wine
8 Jan 1564: Prohibiting import of French wines
30 Jan 1564: Lowering the price of hops
22 Dec 1564: Setting prices for wines
22 Mar 1565: Licensing export of grain from East Riding
20 Dec 1565: Setting prices for wines (again)
22 Dec 1565: Gauging Scottish fish barrels
14 Oct 1585: A Proclamation against bringing in of wines
or other merchandise from Bourdeaux, in respect of the
Plague being there

Alcohol

Yes, she made a lot of proclamations involving alcohol — the majority of food-related proclamations involved the pricing of wine. And then there’s that one about measuring the Scottish fish barrels, because we know how sneaky the Scots can be when making fish barrels. On a side note, she also made a lot of proclamations regarding pirates and Frenchmen. But back to the alcohol: It was very important in the 16th century due to the undrinkable state of the water. Rather than risk dysentery and other unpleasant gastro-diseases, the people of the 16th century drank alcohol; while they were escaping the risk of illness they were also maintaining a nice buzz throughout the day.

The book “To The Queen’s Taste: Elizabethan Feasts and Recipes Adapted for Modern Cooking” by Lorna J. Sass, explains that “[Beer] was prepared in three strengths: single, double, and double-double.” The Queen herself is said to have consumed two pints of beer (single strength…weak) with breakfast on a daily basis, which is why one should plan on emulating the Queen more regularly. Though Queeny was a bit of a buzz kill at times too. In 1560 she ordered that the brewing of double-double be stopped.

Meat-free Fridays and sugary treats

Her Majesty was also very instrumental in meat-free Fridays. According to To The Queen’s Taste, “In 1563, by an act of Parliament, Elizabeth proclaimed that her countrymen had to eat fish on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Infraction of her command was punishable by three months’ imprisonment or a three-pound fine.” Though the law was rooted in religion, it was really implemented in order to boost the English shipbuilding industry and lower the cost of meat. She was a sneaky magistrate.

Apart from booze and seafood, Elizabeth and her court dined on copious amounts of sugary treats like marchpane, a kind of marzipan or suckets (dried fruits). She liked them so much that her teeth ended up turning black. But one of the many benefits of being the Queen is that you can do no wrong. In an attempt to resemble their ruler more, the ladies of the court blackened their teeth. Pretty. In this way one should not try to emulate her ladyship.

Text from elizabethi.org & eatmedaily.com

Read more here:
Tudor History / food
Cook it! History Cookbook / Tudors
Hudsonsheritage / Tudor recipes
Hampton Court Palace / Henry VIII’s Kitchens
On The Tudor Trail / Recipes, Food and Cooking in Tudor England
Renaissance-spell / Food
The Tudors / Cooking

Tempting Orange Cake With Icing / Fristende Appelsinkake Med Glasur

A delicious orange flavoured cake found on Allers.no

Sweet, juicy and tasty with a delicious glaze that makes this luscious cake extra good !! It’s hard to resist this cake flavoured with orange zest and juice, but then again, why should you 😉

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Chocolate Crescents / Sjokoladehorn

A nice crescents recipe found on melk.no

Crescents with chocolate filling tastes great and makes yeast baking a little more exciting.

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Tempting Orange Squares / Fristende Appelsinruter

A toffee and chocolate covered cake found on aperitif.no

A great recipe for small square cakes topped with orange flavoured toffee and chocolate.

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Bacon potatoes / Baconpoteter

A Yummy potato and bacon recipe found on rimi.no

More potatoes. A yummy blend of potatoes, bacon, peppers and onions. A lovely dish in itself or as an accessory.

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