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rushthatspeaksThe full title of this compendium is Lobscouse and Spotted Dog: Which It's a Gastronomic Companion to the Aubrey/Maturin Novels. The Aubrey/Maturin novels, as most of you probably know, are a very long and quite renowned series of books by Patrick O'Brian, set in the late eighteenth century and in the milieu of the British Navy. The recent movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World was based on one of these. I have not yet actually read any Patrick O'Brian, and probably won't do so until after Dorothy Dunnett, who holds the next 'long, dense series' spot on my library list; however, we happened to run across this Gastronomic Companion (to be short, a cookbook) because ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eredien brought with her, upon moving in, a plum pudding mold. We had to try it out, of course, and made a decent job of the recipe she also brought, which was more fruitcake than pudding, but the whole process sparked something in Thrud's brain, and one gear ground upon another, and she handed us this incomprehensible title and told us to go to the library and get out the Patrick O'Brian cookbook.
As she usually is, Thrud was right. The Gastronomic Companion is a treasure, worth seeking out whether or not you care about eighteenth-century cookery, or probably even if you don't cook at all. Its intrepid authoresses (mother and daughter) set out to recreate, or perish in the act of recreating, every dish served or so much as mentioned in the whole thirty-odd-book series, and they set down both their recipes and the processes that led to them in an amusing and anecdotal tone which totally fails to disguise the fact that the two of them are utterly mad in the most delightful ways possible.
For evidence of this delightful madness, I refer you to the chapter in which, aware that one of the ship's crew fries and eats rats out of hunger, they painstakingly comb the text for evidence of what kind of grease he could have fried them in, what spices he might possibly have had on hand to sauce them, and what method he might have used to kill and dress the rats. It's almost a concordance, the way they extrapolate, lingering lovingly over timetables and possible movements of persons between decks; once the puzzle is solved to their satisfaction, they note the recipe, and then add that they found it very tasty and do not wish discussion of where they found the rats. They are also in a perpetual state of bewailment over the illegality and impossibility of obtaining skylarks in the United States, but note that they found common pigeon a respectable substitute.
There are some limits, of course; they make but do not ingest the boiled guano that Stephen Maturin subsisted on while stranded on a deserted rock for a week, and they restate firmly the old rule that it is impossible to be both a person who makes haggis and a person who voluntarily eats haggis, but beyond that there is little that outstrips their range, and it makes for fascinating, page-turning reading. This is a cookbook to read aloud to your friends in amazed disbelief.
Happily, there's also a nice foundation of authentic eighteenth-century cookery in the book, centered on the principals of the boiled pudding and the raised pie (pie made without dish, mold or buttress, with the pastry itself the only thing to hold it together). Most recipes have equivalents given for the truly obscure ingredients, although you may be at a disadvantage if you do not have your own herb garden, and there are careful explanations of the more peculiar techniques involved. The authors are also at great pains to explain how best to duplicate the best portions of the experiences they had, most notably in a long sequence in which they extol Syllabub from a Cow (curdled wine made by milking a cow directly into the wine jug) and then detail precisely how you can rig up a hot-water bottle arrangement with nozzles to get the correct temperature of milk, the correct degree of force, and the sequential dropping necessary to get your wine to curdle correctly. It's the little touches like this that make me feel cared for as a reader: they will not allow me to escape their entertaining obsession merely because I do not have access to a cow.
In addition, their obsession really is very tempting. We have a pudding mold in the house, we have beef suet in the supermarket down the street; it's easy to let thoughts of things that would clutter up the stove for weeks on end drift through the mind and the mind's taste buds. If I cave and buy a copy of the book, there will no doubt be many painfully inedible concoctions in my future, but it almost seems worth it when I contemplate the idea of being able to make, for example, that blasted syllabub. Their wit makes it all seem quite painless, even when it really can't be, and their prose is sparkling, to boot.
To close with an example, a discussion of the various forms of the dish known as Floating Island, which was served to Jack Aubrey molded into the shape of the Galapagos Islands:
"Just at the critical time when it crossed Jack Aubrey's path, Floating Island was undergoing a sea-change; and there is some question as to which form it might have taken when it appeared in the Aubrey/Maturin novels. The Floating Island of eighteenth-century England was an elaborate affair of cakes, jellies, and whimsical decorations, towering over a sea of cream or custard. The French Ile Flottante of the same period was closer to the Floating Island of today, a large molded Italian meringue surrounded by custard or cream... Since the pastrycook in The Far Side of the World was from Danzig, it is reasonable to assume that he inclined toward the Continental, or meringue, side of the question. On the other hand, it is dreadfully difficult to make the Galapagos in meringue, and much less so to perform the operation with cake and jelly. We have tried both, and we felt it would be only fair to offer a choice." (Upon which the recipes follow.)
The book's titular dishes, by the way, are, in order, a kind of corned-beef-and-flour hash and a kind of boiled pudding.
eredien brought with her, upon moving in, a plum pudding mold. We had to try it out, of course, and made a decent job of the recipe she also brought, which was more fruitcake than pudding, but the whole process sparked something in Thrud's brain, and one gear ground upon another, and she handed us this incomprehensible title and told us to go to the library and get out the Patrick O'Brian cookbook.As she usually is, Thrud was right. The Gastronomic Companion is a treasure, worth seeking out whether or not you care about eighteenth-century cookery, or probably even if you don't cook at all. Its intrepid authoresses (mother and daughter) set out to recreate, or perish in the act of recreating, every dish served or so much as mentioned in the whole thirty-odd-book series, and they set down both their recipes and the processes that led to them in an amusing and anecdotal tone which totally fails to disguise the fact that the two of them are utterly mad in the most delightful ways possible.
For evidence of this delightful madness, I refer you to the chapter in which, aware that one of the ship's crew fries and eats rats out of hunger, they painstakingly comb the text for evidence of what kind of grease he could have fried them in, what spices he might possibly have had on hand to sauce them, and what method he might have used to kill and dress the rats. It's almost a concordance, the way they extrapolate, lingering lovingly over timetables and possible movements of persons between decks; once the puzzle is solved to their satisfaction, they note the recipe, and then add that they found it very tasty and do not wish discussion of where they found the rats. They are also in a perpetual state of bewailment over the illegality and impossibility of obtaining skylarks in the United States, but note that they found common pigeon a respectable substitute.
There are some limits, of course; they make but do not ingest the boiled guano that Stephen Maturin subsisted on while stranded on a deserted rock for a week, and they restate firmly the old rule that it is impossible to be both a person who makes haggis and a person who voluntarily eats haggis, but beyond that there is little that outstrips their range, and it makes for fascinating, page-turning reading. This is a cookbook to read aloud to your friends in amazed disbelief.
Happily, there's also a nice foundation of authentic eighteenth-century cookery in the book, centered on the principals of the boiled pudding and the raised pie (pie made without dish, mold or buttress, with the pastry itself the only thing to hold it together). Most recipes have equivalents given for the truly obscure ingredients, although you may be at a disadvantage if you do not have your own herb garden, and there are careful explanations of the more peculiar techniques involved. The authors are also at great pains to explain how best to duplicate the best portions of the experiences they had, most notably in a long sequence in which they extol Syllabub from a Cow (curdled wine made by milking a cow directly into the wine jug) and then detail precisely how you can rig up a hot-water bottle arrangement with nozzles to get the correct temperature of milk, the correct degree of force, and the sequential dropping necessary to get your wine to curdle correctly. It's the little touches like this that make me feel cared for as a reader: they will not allow me to escape their entertaining obsession merely because I do not have access to a cow.
In addition, their obsession really is very tempting. We have a pudding mold in the house, we have beef suet in the supermarket down the street; it's easy to let thoughts of things that would clutter up the stove for weeks on end drift through the mind and the mind's taste buds. If I cave and buy a copy of the book, there will no doubt be many painfully inedible concoctions in my future, but it almost seems worth it when I contemplate the idea of being able to make, for example, that blasted syllabub. Their wit makes it all seem quite painless, even when it really can't be, and their prose is sparkling, to boot.
To close with an example, a discussion of the various forms of the dish known as Floating Island, which was served to Jack Aubrey molded into the shape of the Galapagos Islands:
"Just at the critical time when it crossed Jack Aubrey's path, Floating Island was undergoing a sea-change; and there is some question as to which form it might have taken when it appeared in the Aubrey/Maturin novels. The Floating Island of eighteenth-century England was an elaborate affair of cakes, jellies, and whimsical decorations, towering over a sea of cream or custard. The French Ile Flottante of the same period was closer to the Floating Island of today, a large molded Italian meringue surrounded by custard or cream... Since the pastrycook in The Far Side of the World was from Danzig, it is reasonable to assume that he inclined toward the Continental, or meringue, side of the question. On the other hand, it is dreadfully difficult to make the Galapagos in meringue, and much less so to perform the operation with cake and jelly. We have tried both, and we felt it would be only fair to offer a choice." (Upon which the recipes follow.)
The book's titular dishes, by the way, are, in order, a kind of corned-beef-and-flour hash and a kind of boiled pudding.
