Accidents: Accidental Foods

By Jennifer Linforth

Food and the holidays go hand in hand and sometimes we all fall prey to a kitchen mishap or two. Lucky for us, some food accidents turned into everyday culinary delights! Below is a list of some of the more famous....

BEER: Beer began in Mesopotamia totally by mistake when stored grains for bread became wet and began to ferment. Some brave chap tasted the frothy mess and there you have it--the world's first beer.

POPCICLES: These tasty treats were the accident of eleven year old Frank Epperson who, in 1905, left his soda and soda making equipment outside by accident. It dropped below freezing that night and the next day he discovered the stick in which he'd used to stir the flavored powder into the water froze upright in the mixture. Bingo! The "Epsicle" was born. It was not until 1924, that he applied for a patent and redubbed it the "popsicle."

POTATO CHIPS: This one most folks know! It was 1853 and a customer at Saratoga Springs' Moon's Lake House had issues with the batches of fried potatoes served to him. He kept sending them back to the cook, claiming they weren't up to his standards. He liked his potatoes firm and crisp. The angered chef sliced the final batch paper thin, fried them in oil, and tossed a bunch of salt on top. Now it seems we can't eat just one....

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES: Ever hear of the Toll House Inn? Inn keeper Ruth Wakefield ran out of baking chocolate one day and chopped up a bar of semi-sweet chocolate and added to her cookie dough thinking it would melt. However, upon their removal from the oven she noted the chocolate didn't melt but dappled the cookie with chocolate chunks. So in 1930, the chocolate chip cookie was born!

PEANUT BRITTLE: According to legend a woman in 1890 was making a batch of taffy and an ingredient mix-up led her to invent peanut brittle.

CHAMPAGNE: "Brothers come--I am drinking stars!" That apparently was what Benedictine monk Dom Pierre Perignon exclaimed upon his accident... Initially his job was to try to find a way to stop the secondary fermentation of wine. In the process of trying to discover a way to do this, many of the wines began to have bubbles in them. Once he tasted it, what was the point in stopping the fermentation when a drink as wonderful as champagne was born!

SANDWICHES: It was in the 1700s when the Earl of Sandwich couldn't stop gambling long enough to eat. Instead he ordered some food to be piled between two slices of bread...

COCA COLA: This famous drink was invented by a doctor working on a headache cure. He created the syrup, but those inspecting it for approval felt it tasted better than it worked. They added some carbonated water and...the rest is history.

Ever concocted something by accident? Bake a turkey without removing the bag? Add salt to coffee instead of sugar? What food accidents, holiday or otherwise, can you share?

Jennifer Linforth expands the classics by continuing The Phantom of the Opera. MADRIGAL and ABENDLIED are available now. Readers should look for future books based on the classics, in addition to her unique historical romances. "Ms. Linforth's prose is phenomenally beautiful and hauntingly breathtaking." ~ Coffee Time Romance

Good Times: Food Fight

By Zoe Archer

No, Bluto, not that kind of food fight.

It seems that as long as there have been cultures blessed with a surplus of food, there have been food fights. Frenetic, messy, anarchic food fights. A collective release of aggression that also, mysteriously, builds community. One moment, you’re throwing tomatoes at your neighbor’s head, the next moment, you wrap them in a tomatoey, pulpy hug.

Our food fight tour begins first in Spain, where the famous Tomatina Food Fight is held in the village of Buñol, near Valencia. If you happen to be in Buñol on the fourth Wednesday of August, be sure to wear clothing you don’t mind getting stained. La Tomatina is a fairly recent event, its earliest origins dating to somewhere in the 1940s. Apparently, a civil disturbance in the town lead to a confrontation with local police, and this degenerated (or evolved) into a tomato fight.

That food fight was so popular that it became an annual occurrence, and is now a huge tourist attraction, drawing more than 20,000 eager tomato-throwers from around the world. A week-long fiesta culminates in a climactic tomato battle. Trucks laden with 90,000 pounds of tomatoes rumble into town, and people on the backs of the trucks throw tomatoes into the crowd. The crowd retaliates, and soon a full-blown batalla takes place between anyone and everyone who happens to be in throwing distance. Within thirty minutes, the battle is over, and combatants/celebrants all head down to the river for a good wash.

For those of you who need more vitamin C, we head to the small Italian town of Ivrea, 40 miles north of Turin. Here, during Carnival, the local citizens commemorate an 1194 insurrection against a local despot with a Battle of the Oranges. Popular lore has it that the tyrant attempted to exercise his droit de seigneur with an unwilling maiden on the eve before her wedding. The maiden, Violetta, turned the tables on her would-be assailant and decapitated him, after which, the populace stormed and destroyed the castle.

The event and assertion of independence is celebrated by teams of Aranceri (orange handlers) on foot throwing oranges at Aranceri riding in carts. Originally, beans were thrown by the celebrants, but some time in the 19th century oranges became the projectiles of choice--which are considerably harder than beans, especially after a winter frost. No wonder many of the Aranceri wear helmets.

Stretching the definition of "food fight," we head north, to Cooper’s Hill, near Gloucester in England. During the Spring Bank Holiday, local citizens and tourists make a mad dash down a steep hill for a wheel of Double Gloucester cheese. It’s estimated that the event is over two hundred years old, though between 1941 and 1954, a wooden cheese took the place of the actual cheese due to rationing. During the event, a round of cheese is rolled down Cooper's Hill and, one second later, competitors race after the cheese. The hill is very steep, and not only does the cheese reach high velocity, so do the racers. Sprains and broken bones are not uncommon. Separate races are run for men, women and children, with the winners receiving small monetary compensation as well as a wheel of cheese--but everyone who tumbles down Cooper's Hill in pursuit of Double Gloucester is a winner. Surely Wallace would agree.

Maladies & Treatments: Accidental Science

By Carrie Lofty

For generations, healers and physics (an early term for physicians) used natural cures that worked wonders for their patients. Little did they know, the cures were based on scientific principles of chemistry that wouldn't be verified for hundreds of years. They only used what worked.

One of the medieval cures for cleansing a wound involved calcium carbonate. Called "quicklime," it was made from crushed shells or bones. The quicklime was added to salt or a sodium-rich plant, with a little dry mustard (a powerful astringent). Healers would wash the wound in hot beer--beer being far more hygienic and reliably sterile than water--and then scrub the area with the quicklime and salt mix. For the final step, they coated the would with a vegetable oil and pulverized fir, another proven astringent that also helped form scabs.

There is sound chemistry behind this cure. The calcium carbonate, salt and oil formed an impromptu soap on the skin, keeping the wound clean. Ta-dah! Science!

Trial-and-error science was not limited to cures; nutrition also benefited. One medieval means of cooking involved a double boiler. Cooks would bundle cool, thickened leftover pottage (porridge) in a linen cloth, a large ball of ground meat in another, and a selection of vegetables in a third. The packets were layered on top of one another in the smaller pot, pottage on the bottom, then meat, then vegetables. Cooks would pour broth in the larger pot of the double boiler, assemble it, and let it simmer for hours--a medieval crock pot.

What was so ingenious about this method, aside from saving time and keeping food warm until it was needed, is that is wasted nothing. Healthful vitamins released by the vegetables were simply collected in the double boiler, invigorating the broth with much-needed nutrients, while the boiling, swirling broth kept the food moist, gave everything a nice flavor, and slowly steamed the vegetables--no wiggly veggies! They might not have known it was a healthy thing to do, scientifically speaking, but record of this method of cooking shows that medieval citizens knew they were better off eating from multiple food groups and not overcooking vegetables.

Over the years, cures and techniques such as these were scrutinized by science and proven sound. People of old might not have known how it worked, but they benefited nonetheless. Now if only someone had been around to tell them that mercury worked so well as a diuretic because it was slowly poisoning the body...

Maladies & Treatments: Writing with Folk Cures

By Anna C. Bowling

Growing up as the child of older (both were over forty when they adopted me; the photo is of me, at three, on the blacktop where I skinned pretty much everything) first generation American parents must have hardwired me for unusual historicals right from the start. Many of the treatments for the minor childhood illnesses or injuries I had in the 1960s/70s were as likely to come from the traditions my mothers and aunts, one of whom who worked as a nurse, learned from their mother, who learned them from her mother back in Italy in the early 20th century.

As a child, I'd often wondered what my mother grew that patch of mint for (aside from the delightful smell) but when puberty hit, I found out it was a natural remedy for menstrual cramps. By then we had moved away from the house with the fresh mint in the garden, so it had to come from a store, but it still worked, and the mint tea also worked to help with nausea.

Sore throats were as likely to be treated with licorice as commercial medications, which may be why I still like licorice today, and I will long remember the discussion my parents had when my father wanted to give me a hot toddy (mostly rum) to help ease the discomfort of a bad case of chicken pox when I was ten. They left it up to me, and I declined.

One of my strongest memories of my mother's Aunt Anna, who I only knew as an elderly woman who spoke a fast stream of Italian was the time when I'd talked a neighbor child into splitting a bar of Ex-Lax (to be fair, I was five and the grownups had described it to me as chocolate.) Being sorely lacking in my Italian, I can't vouch for anything said that day, but Aunt Anna refused to let my mother take me to the doctor, instead pounding an endless supply of ice with a hammer and pouring it down my throat before depositing me in the bathroom with even more tall glasses of ice. When I asked my mother to translate, she said this was Aunt Anna’s treatment for loose bowels, something she learned back in Italy.

Since I survived and turned out okay, my foremothers must have been on to something, so when characters in my historicals now have the need for doctoring, I turn to the state of the art medical care of their time. Often, such as in colonial settlements, the most advanced medical treatments meant calling in whoever had dealt with the illness or injury before. If the need was something the person hadn't encountered before, common sense was often the best guess.

In my colonial historical romance, MY OUTCAST HEART, the hero, Dalby, suffers third degree burns to one hand. Today, witnesses would call 911 and paramedics would rush him to the burn unit, where trained professionals would examine him and use a variety of treatments and procedures to find out how bad the damage was, how much mobility he might be able to retain and even address cosmetic repair. In 1720, Dalby was lucky this occurred in winter, so heroine Tabetha can drag him outside and stick his hand in a snowbank. The cold would help, but the "everybody knows" medicine of the time--likely coating the burn in butter or bear grease--we now know would have the exact opposite effect.

Looking at the folk medicine of the times I write about, and consulting with several friends who work in the medical field of today as well as visiting living history museums lets my characters have the best--or worst--of both worlds, depending on what the story needs. Good thing a great read is excellent medicine in any time.

Maladies & Treatments: Galen and Ancient Medicine

By Michelle Styles

One of the more interesting aspects that I always find when I am researching a historical period is the way medicine and the treatment of illness has changed over the years.

We like to think of progress as being a straight line, but when you examine the medical instruments of the beginning of the Roman Empire with those of the medieval times, it is quite clear that the Romans had greater skill.

Roman medicine reached its apogee under Galen. Marcus Aurelius described him as Rome's finest doctor. It has been postulated that it would have been far better to be under the care of Galen (AD 129 - AD 210) rather than any other physician almost to the closing years of the 19th century. Indeed, of all the Roman doctors, Galen's writing was the most copied, and he is the one doctor that we do have the greatest body work from.

But who was he?

Before becoming the emperor's private physician, Galen spent his early formative years, in the gladiatorial rings of Turkey--learning about wounds and the part diet played in recovery. Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of gladiators did not fight to the death. He never discovered the circulation of blood, but was nearly there with his theory of blood ebbing and flowing. Because he was from a wealthy background, he was able to use patronage and commanded a far higher social position than most of other doctors in the Roman world. The reason he studied medicine than the more usual architecture or law was that when he was 17, his father received a sign that his son was destined to be a doctor.

Although he invoked Hippocrates in his writing, he did codify various theories. He felt fevers could be caused by several things--overheating through exposure to sun, certain types of exercise or indeed certain food and drink (e.g. hemp), the humours, or inflammation. Most doctors at the time thought fever had only one cause--the imbalance of humours.

Like many in the ancient world, he believed that first came diet, then drugs, venesection (letting of blood/other fluids) and finally surgery. He believed that a good doctor should also be a good cook. He also believed that good diet should be the first line of defense, along with sleep. And that the doctor had to match the treatment and the diet to the individual as every person had a different temperament. Thus he did not believe in indiscriminate blood letting.

If you are interested in read Galen's work, Galen on Food and Diet by Mark Grant translates Galen's work on food into English. There you can learn things like chickpeas are supposed to incite the need for sex and are suppose to increase the productive of sperm. This is why they were fed to stud horses. They are also supposed to break down kidney stones as they can have a purgative effect.

Galen's emphasis on diet also feeds into his stoic philosophy, and his belief that medicine was a legitimate branch of philosophy.

After Galen's death, the impetus to research and study the human body stagnated for a number of reasons--including the linking of medicine with philosophy. thus research into the human body and actual causes of ill health declined.

Daily Life: The Food of Kenya

By Jennifer Mueller

Say African food and you get a myriad of options: from Arabic inspired North Africa and the coast of East Africa to the Maasai drinking blood and milk, spicy Ethiopian to San Bushmen eating what they find--the same as they have for thousands of years. While the cities might sport as modern a kitchen as you can find, the countryside still cooks over an open fire. Where I lived in Kenya, the traditional kitchen was a room separate from the rest of the house, with thatched high roofs. It allows the smoke to rise and filter through the thatch, an odd sight to see smoking roofs as you walk by. Only with the advent of tin roofs have lung problems occurred.

The daily routine is centered on water. If you have it close you save hours. If you have to walk kilometers to find a source, things get more complicated. Kenyan breakfast is usually a cup of chai--watered down milk with enough tea and sugar to flavor it--and a thick slice of bread and blue band with a margarine product needing no refrigeration. Uji is also popular, a ground millet sort of porridge with or without fermentation. For anything else, it takes time. Quite a bit of it. There are very few snack foods other than fruit: mangoes, papaya, guava, passion fruit, maybe an orange or pineapple, and little bananas as big around as a silver dollar and half the length of the ones we see in the store. They're like eating candy.

Market day is the center of any village, usually held twice a week. Everyone with something to sell would descend, whether it was a woman with 10 mangoes looking for some extra cash or a seller who went to the larger town and found treasures that no one else had. Staples usually ran along the lines of beans (up to 20 sorts), rice in some areas, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, onions, cabbage, kale, fruits and, when in season, peas and green beans. Up the mountain where there was access to Mount Kenya, odd fruits--giant green and ugly--could be found if anyone was ambitious enough to go find them.

Kenya was a British colony, but in building the railroad to Uganda, there were thousands of Indians who arrived to work. Modern day Kenyan food is a mix of traditional Kenyan and Indian. Small packets of curry can be bought for only a few cents. Seasonings are minimal: salt, curry, mchuzi mix, bouillon cubes, sometimes hot peppers. But with it they create quite the variety.

It all depends on where you live what you would be eating. In one area the staple food is githeri, another irio, and across the country you haven't eaten unless you've had ugali. All are based on corn to some degree. Githeri is a simple combination of maize and beans. Irio is a mixture of potatoes, maize, and pumpkin leaves. Ugali is corn meal cooked like stiff grits, mainly used as a filler for a soup of some kind.

In the area where I lived, the basis for most dishes were tomatoes and onions. They would be fried in melted shortening before adding the rest, whether beans, kale, cabbage, or githeri, green grams. A few dishes went without, such as mashed bananas and potatoes--only made with green plantains so it is starchy rather than sugary. Mashed potatoes and pigeon peas were served on special occasions.

Meat is expensive. Most families might only eat it only once or twice a week. A special treat is nyama choma, or bits of roast meat. Some places season it; others just cook it plain, like grilling steak. Chickens are raised by most families, as well as goats, cows and, in the north, camel. It's lean meat with no marbling at all. It just takes a little more prep since the connective tissue is rather hard to chew through if left in large pieces.

The coast is an entity unto itself. Middle Eastern spices and coastal ingredients like coconuts all mix to create a menu unlike any in the rest of the country. They make pilau--rice thick with spices and fried--and potatoes cooked in coconut milk, just to name a few.

Barbecued Meat
1 kilo meat
Juice of 2 lemons
2 pounded onions
2 crushed chilies
4 crushed cloves
salt to taste

Marinate: Clean meat and make a few stripes 1/2" deep all over meat. Mix in the rest of the ingredients and let stand for 2 hours.

Barbecue: Prepare the charcoal fire and place grilling wire on top. Place meat on the wire and roast it on a very low heat. Cook evenly on both sides. Garnish with lemon slices. Serve with potatoes.

Pigeon Pea Sauce
1 cup pigeon Peas
2 cups water
2 tablespoons butter
2 onions
seasoning
1 cup milk

Cook the peas in the water until soft. Fry the onions in the butter until golden brown and add the peas. Cook until all the water is dry. Mash the peas into a paste. Season well and add the milk. Reheat and serve with mashed potatoes or bananas.

Ugali
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup maize meal
1/2 dessertspoon dried skim milk powder
salt

Boil water. Sieve maize meal, dried skim milk powder, and salt. Add sieved flour to boiling water. Cook for a few minutes stirring continuously. Serve with stewed meat.

Beef stew
1 lb cut beef
2 carrots
2 green peppers
4 tomatoes
4 onions
Coriander
Curry powder
Black pepper
Seasoning salt, cooking oil, salt

Fry the onions that have been chopped until they turn brown. Add tomatoes and chopped green pepper. Add carrots, black pepper and coriander. Wash the cut meat and sprinkle it with seasoning salt. When the carrots have become slightly soft, add the cut meat. When meat is almost cooked, add some curry powder and salt to taste.

Pilau rice
1.5 lb rice (water according to rice)
1/2 lb green peas
2 T pilau masala (type of spice)
3 onions
3 tomatoes
Oil
Salt

Wash the rice with cold water. Boil the peas until cooked. Chop onions and then fry until slightly brown. Add tomatoes that have been peeled and cut. Boil some of the rice water with the pilau masala until it boils. Add some salt to taste. Add the rest of the water to the fried onions and tomatoes. Add the green peas when the water starts boiling and the rice; let it cook.

Chapati
1 cup flour
1 T shortening
1/2 t. or less salt

Melt shortening in a small frying pan. DO NOT boil it. Mix shortening with flour and salt. Mix with warm water (add just a little bit of water at a time and mix the dough thoroughly, make sure the dough is not hard). Keep for at least one hour. Separate dough into small rolls similar to oven cupcake buns. Use rolling pin and roll the dough balls each on a large flat surface as you roll the pin spread a little shortening on the dough and then tear the now flat pizza like dough spread from the center by pulling evenly to all edges and cut one side so you are left with a long lean piece of dough in your hands. Roll it into a coil (snakes) from each end in opposite directions (one clock wise and the other end counter clock wise) when they get together, then twist one of the collected coil and put it over the other.

Clean area over the oven top and keep a wide flat heavy/thick frying pan on the cooking range, turn on the cooker at low. Leave the dough for about 10 minutes then roll with rolling pin on flat surface into an evenly spread round (pizza like) thin spread. Turn the heat on to medium using oiling brush, spread a little shortening evenly all around the pan and cook the chapatis. Keep turning (rotating it) to ensure even cooking and turn over and keep pressing after turning and also put shortening on top but not too much and keep on pressing in the frying pen until light brown.

Daily Life: Moorish Hospitality in the Medieval World

By Lisa Yarde

Good food and good company were relished in the medieval Arab world, much the same as today. The roots of hospitality began in the early centuries with the migration of Arabs, who brought the culture of their desert dwellings refined by conversion to Islamic religious principles, to the West by the eighth century. The improvement of culinary arts and attention paid to the treatment of guests practiced in Moorish society evolved into an almost sacred duty.

In Moorish society, all guests were offered shelter and hospitality whether or not it was convenient for the host. Meals and entertainment were shared opportunities for interaction, though the social conventions requiring separations between the sexes where people were not closely related still held away. The extent of the hospitality remained closely related to the honor of the family - to show poor treatment to a guest impugned the reputation of the host.

Women ruled daily life in Moorish homes. Housewives in the noble or royal classes had servants to direct but even the poorest woman in the lowliest dwelling took pride of her home. Women burned incense and aloe wood in metal braziers, or perfumed candles to create a pleasing fragrance that drifted throughout the house. The scents they chose also possessed elements of purification. On arrival and departure, guests were offered braziers to perfume their clothes and hair; hotels around the Arabian Gulf still offer incense burners hefted by waiters even today. Women also hired the entertainment that followed the meal, whether a troupe of dancers or a singer. Most importantly, they supervised or directly participated in the creation of the meal.

To share in a meal in a Moorish home must have been a delight for the senses, with aromatic fragrances vying with the scents of spiced foods. Islamic tradition required that diners eat with the first three fingers of their right hand, and never to touch food with the left hand, which was considered unclean. Hosts signaled the start of the meal by offering their guests perfumed water, typically rosewater, in a ewer and basin set, to clean their hands. The basin had a perforated removable cover. When the diners had feasted, servants sprinkled rosewater on the guests' hands, signaling the end of the meal. One of inventions the Arab world brought to the West was the use of the toothpick.

The cuisine of Islamic societies varied by region, but Moorish society refined food preparation to an art form. The only meat not consumed was pork for religious reasons; beef, poultry and lamb were common staples of the Moorish diet. Foods were spiced with saffron, aniseed, cardamom, honey, cinnamon, turmeric, cumin and sumac, to name a few. Harisa, called the "Mother of Strengthening" (pictured), was a popular dish made into a paste. Meat, ground wheat, chicken joints, cumin, and cinnamon were combined and cooked in an oven, sprinkled with lemon juice when ready. Tharid was a traditional dish of crumbled bread, meat and barley thickened in a broth. The only meat not consumed was pork for religious reasons; beef, poultry and lamb were common staples of the Moorish diet. Dishes that originated in the Moorish period are still a part of modern day Arabian cuisine.

Daily Life: Medieval Sweets

By Carrie Lofty

I cannot think of a day without sweets. Sugar. Candy. Honey. Corn sweetener. These tasty treats invade even the most basic of foods, from bread to the recipe for KFC chicken. Science has demonstrated that the sugar we ingest is unhealthy and contributes to instances of diabetes, premature free radical cell damage, and weight gain. But we cannot get enough! In fact, I'm feeling a chocolate craving coming on right now.

But what about in medieval times? How did they satisfy their sweet tooth? After all, one of the four regions of the human tongue--the tip, where we lick ice cream or lollipops--is designed to recognize sweet tastes. It's hardwired in our DNA to like sweet things, but it wasn't always easy for humans to find.

Sugar. Seems basic enough. However, sugar use in medieval times was primarily limited to alchemy and medicine. Cane was grown and processed in China, India, and the South Seas, imported by Arab explorers and eventually cultivated during the Arabian agricultural revolution. With crusaders' travels to the Holy Land and the Moorish conquest of Iberia, sugar gradually filtered into the culture of Western Europe. Only regular travel to the Caribbean in the 17th century and the invention of better techniques for refinery brought sugar into regular consumption.

Because of its rarity, sugar was exceedingly expensive. Herbalists used sugar as a means of treating every ailment from gout to toothache (the irony!). Alchemists also used sugar in their attempts to create gold, inadvertently creating smoke bombs. My heroine, Meg, from WHAT A SCOUNDREL WANTS used this to her advantage:

"You heard the boy, Scarlet. We need sugar."

Will could not swallow the foul taste of their argument. Frustrations ground together in his throat. "I admit it. I'm lost."

"Niter, when heated and distilled, creates an acid. Combined with sugar, that acid creates smoke. A great deal of smoke." Her condescending tone reminded him far too much of Robin. "The smoke may help us if we need to get into or out of places we shouldn't be."

"You're insane," he said. "But that's not a bad idea. Where?"

"The apothecary in Keyworth, I should think."

"But sugar is expensive," Jacob said.

Meg shrugged. "He's not wrong. You'll have to steal it."

So no sugar, then. How about honey? Honey was a much more common and ancient sweetener, even depicted in Mesolithic cave paintings. Like sugar, it was believed to have medicinal qualities and was used in poultices, salves, and oral remedies. Without the steep price tag associated with cane sugar, even poorer peasants could afford honey for their homemade cures.

Honey could be collected naturally, but organized beekeeping began in Egypt during the time of the Pharaohs. Religious texts including the Bible and the Qur'an associate honey with places of redemption and happiness--a rewarding afterlife. This leads me to believe that honey, although available, was a rare treat.

Today, sugar and honey and other sweeteners are available throughout the world and at a fraction of the cost from even a century ago. We can indulge...within reason! I think I'll go have that chocolate now.

Sources: Wikipedia entries on Sugar, Honey, and Beekeeping

Rotten Grapes

Some good things were discovered only by accident. The case in point for this post? The discovery of the qualities of late vintage wine. It all happened in the Year of Our Lord 1775 at Schloß Johannisberg in the lovely Rheingau, famous for its wines! At that time, Johannisberg was owned by the Bishop of Fulda. Consequently, the monks at Johannisberg had to wait for the bishop's permission before they could start the wine harvest each autumn.

In 1775, however, the messenger who was supposed to bring said permission from Fulda to Johannisberg was delayed for several weeks -- either because he became the victim of robbers or because the bishop was away hunting and thus unavailable. In any case, the monks had to watch their grapes shrivel and rot (and to add insult to injury, they probably became something of the laughing-stock of the whole area), until the messenger finally arrived with the permission of the bishop. Despite the poor condition of their grapes, the monks eventually decided to harvest them and press them. Imagine their surprise when it was discovered that the resulting wine tasted good. In fact, after some maturing, it tasted even better than good: the rotten grapes had resulted in a wine of unheard of quality! "Such wine," a contemporary records wonderingly, "has never before passed my lips!"

Today, a statue in the courtyard of the inn of Johannisberg commemorates the discovery of late vintage wine, or Spätlese. A few years ago, the story of its discovery served as the backdrop for a comic book, which started an extremely successful series: Karl: Der Spätelesereiter.

~*~

Addendum (not about wine, but about sex): today my At the Back Fence Column about lust-thought in romance went online. I was tickled pink when Laurie offered to let me write it, and I hope you'll all like the result. :)

On the old Oregon Trail

Two thousand miles across the great American desert, fifteen miles a day (on a good day), I take a bit of offence to that I'm from Kansas, but at the time, that's what it was. This huge expanse of nothing to cross to get to the rich fertile farm lands of Oregon and the gold fields of California. Back in 1992, I worked in a Ghost Town in Montana and sitting on the shelf was a paperback that I picked up to read. Back home I reread it and stopped part way through, it stank. That was the day I said I could do better and picked up a pen and paper, hey it was 1992 how many of you had computers in the house. It was an Oregon Trail book and it started my writing career, and in researching my rebuttal, I found out that the author should have been writing fantasy. Four-six months was turned into two years. The first trip of 1842 was turned into 1839 I believe. They were rushing to stamp out the possibility of Russia establishing a colony. I can forego a little artistic license, but the six months to two years, I find unpardonable.

The real six month trips started in 1842 though a handful of people made it across in the two years previous. This was several years after Narcissa Whitman and her husband made the trip to found a mission, she was the first woman to head west and her letters back home sparked the first real interest. If a woman could do it, anyone could. Taking off from Independence, MO the route followed the rivers west, the Platte, the Snake, the Columbia, dozens other smaller ones. Some they had to cross, they used as a traveling water source and followed their banks. Only a trickle was flowing when gold was discovered jumping the numbers from hundreds or thousands a year to tens of thousands. New short cuts were discovered from miners wanting to get west faster, the Mormons crossed to Utah in the same period many of them pulling handcarts it was in their best interest to cut time off. Slowly the jumping off point moved north, from Independence to St. Joseph, MO to finally Council Bluffs, IA, the former Mormon wintering over site. They were only there for a few seasons as they made their trek to the Great Salt Lake but it set up the resources to supply them leaving and it cut several weeks off the journey. By the end of the era four months was a usual crossing.

Whole books were written to pass on vital information to those following them, a large amount of the space filled with supplies to be taken. In our time of fast food, and convenience stores carrying six months of food is a novelty. Not only that they had to hope they would have enough left to help them get through the first very lean winter as they set up their homes and farms. Or the funds to buy it in a land where there wasn’t much. A handful of stops along the way gave some chance but in a heavy travel year what those trading forts did have could very well be gone by the time you got there.

For each and every person in the party it was suggested that they carry, 200 pounds of flour, 30 pounds of pilot bread (similar to that ubiquitous hardtack), 75 pounds of bacon, 10 pounds of rice, 5 pounds of coffee, 2 pounds of tea, 25 pounds of sugar, half a bushel of dried beans, one bushel of dried fruit, 2 pounds of baking soda, 10 pounds of salt, half a bushel of corn meal, half a bushel of corn and a small keg of vinegar. Seeing as it was large families that often traveled together the amount of food alone becomes staggering. Vegetables unless pickled were non-existent. Many would add luxuries to that list, cocoa was available, a product along the lines of soup bouillon, cheese, flavored essences like peppermint and lemon. But the cost of them would of course be more, they were saved for special occasions.

The wagons in addition to carrying the supplies for the six-month journey all with only canvas to keep out the elements, also had to carry everything that would be needed to start a house and farm out of nothing. An ax, a saw and a plow, were mandatory. However, if your child would get schooling you had to bring your own books, furniture if you were lucky to have room. Think of it like having a regular sized cargo van and fitting everything you would need to eat for six months as well as everything you could possibly fit to get you started on the other end and then while one of you drove the rest walked along side it. What would be your most prized possessions that you couldn't leave behind? The cross-country railroad wasn't finished until 1869, it was a once in a lifetime trip for most. There was no chance to go back for more.

The most dangerous part of the trip wasn't Indians despite what the prejudices were, it was sickness and accident. Perhaps Indians killed 300 people in some 20 years. Deaths for all other causes estimates are as large as 30,000 deaths, but a more conservative estimate is 20,000 for the entire 2000 miles of the Oregon Trail--an average of ten graves per mile. Assuming 350,000 people emigrating, which is commonly thought, that averages to one death for every seventeen people who made the trip. Cholera was a big factor caused by drinking infected water. But many occurred from more mundane things poor sanitation practices in cooking and food storage, bad water, and poor living conditions. Diseases that we now have vaccines for but were killers then caused many more deaths; pneumonia, whooping cough, measles, small pox and various other miscellaneous sicknesses and diseases.

Fort Kearney, Fort Laramie, Fort Bridger early on, Fort Hall, Fort Boise, were all stops along the way, but they weren't vacations, most they were only there overnight, buying a few supplies if they had the money and if there were even any available. Maybe a drink. The great American desert, the Rocky Mountains, and then just as they are about to collapse from exhaustion they had to cross the Blue Mountains before finally pulling into Oregon City. The end of a journey, but not the end of the ordeal, arriving in fall they had no houses to live in, no crops stored for the winter. They still had a lot of work to do.

Cooking through the Ages

A well-dressed couple enters a handsomely decorated house for a bit of dinner and entertainment. The setting and clothes don’t matter, what do they eat? Food is one of the necessities of life and yet thousands of years of cuisine are only theories. Paintings, sculpture, archeology can tell what the ingredients were, but really how did the ancients or even the not so ancients eat? With cooking a largely mundane task, recipes were passed orally, few getting around to actually writing such things down. Even the cookbooks that did make it onto paper, assume quite a bit of local cooking knowledge.

Roast Duck with Damson Sauce
From Romans in Britain

Ingredients
1 duck

For the damson sauce
Pepper
Dried onion
Lovage
Cumin
Celery seed
Stoned damsons (a type of plum)
Mulsum
Vinegar
Liquamen
Defruitum
Oil

To give the bird a greater flavour and make it more nourishing and keep all the fat in, wrap it in pastry made of oil and flour and cook it in the oven.

Damson sauce
Take pepper, dried onion, lovage, cumin, celery seed, stoned damsons, mulsum, vinegar, liquamen, defruitum and oil. Cook together until damsons are tender. Strain.

A scholar might know that Liquamen is a very salty fermented fish sauce, and so would a Roman matron who heard the recipe from a friend. Very much like adding salt to a dish, but how much? What were the tastes of the ancient Romans? Mulsum is honeyed wine, and defrutum is reduced must of wine, both sweet so the research says. With no amounts given would you describe it was a salty dish or a sweet dish. Duck in plum sauce, I would imagine sweeter, but would fish sauce completely change my conception of the dish or would it just add salt?

The cook had outdone himself on the meal; grilled damsons and pomegranate seeds, truffles and mushrooms, sausages on a silver grill, piping hot wild boar, lobsters garnished with asparagus, apples whose scent was a feast in itself, Syrian pears in a soufflé. It was all the best that could be purchased, but as far as feasts went, it was quite modest. The family prided itself on its fine standing in Rome, but they weren’t the sort to have lavish feasts that people spent all night long at. Besides, there was business to take care of this night.

This is a paragraph that I wrote for A Little Roman Scandal, the feast little more than a list of dishes whose recipes are lost to time. I think if I remember right, I found an archeology magazine where they were trying to recreate them. Does it matter that the reader won’t know more than that, are the names enough of an impression to imagine the splendor of a wealthy roman senators banquet?

How about we go back even further? The Ancient Egyptians left hundreds of records of banquets and food preparation, but in the most basic terms. Few recipes exist and the ones there are come simply as a list of ingredients. The following is a recreation of what they think an Egyptian recipe might be.

Tiger Nut Sweets
From An Ancient Egyptian Herbal

Grind a quantity of tiger nuts in a mortar. Sift the flour carefully. To the ground tiger nuts add a bowl of honey and mix to a dough. Transfer the dough to a shallow vessel, Place on top of the fire and add a little fat. Boil over a gentle fire until a firm paste is obtained. It must smell toasted, not burnt. Cool and shape into tall conical loaves.

"Oh look, Tameri’s cooks make the best duck." Kifi squealed in delight as more servants brought in tray after tray of food. Mounds of vegetables, more birds and fish than she could count and wine enough to float a ship.

Just a tiny paragraph in Egyptian Days describing a feast, but with drawings alone, even names are not known, how do you describe what is there when it’s all guessing? Whole books have been written about incantations for the dead, sexual practices, herbal medicine, gods, daily life, but not one about the food, a small chapter telling the ingredients they had access to, maybe one or two recipes, but even the vast internet can’t provide more than a snippet of how the Egyptians ate with certainty.

After looking up food history for some 40 stories I ended up making a cookbook called cooking through the ages, I’m working on an updated version with some more recent stories included but you can still get it free off my website free reads. I mean just how do you use all those little tidbits you find? An 1850 recipe for sore nipples relief just isn’t in demand, interesting, but I’m sure the Lead would turn people off. So for good cooking and a few facts you might not have known. Enjoy!

Jennifer Mueller

Out Now!!!!

Samburu Hills Visit Africa 1907 http://www.chippewapublishing.com/
Lord Dronovic From http://www.thedarkcastlelords.com/ebooks2.htm
For other titles see http://www.jennifermuellerbooks.com

Advice To A Young Lady

Advice to a Young Lady in the Colonies
Letters sent from Mrs E. of England to Maria Macarthur in the colony of New South Wales in 1812.

Advice on Social Dinners

Almost all the forgoing Dinners are enough to entertain 7 or 8 people socially, it is easy to add a little to the Poultry according to the size of your party – for instance 2 rabbits or chickens for where I have named one – large dinners are not fashionable – I shall give you proper bills of fare for more formal parties, and you can vary them as you please.
I do not know how people live in N. South Wales, so I have been obliged to go according to our English ways – but if meat is scarce in N. S. Wales, of course you cannot have it every Day – When you and Mr. M.Arthur are by yourselves – you can eat cold or hashed meat with the addition of a steak & a Pudding if you chose it, or if Poultry and Fish are cheap articles with you, you can have them the oftener.
In giving Dinners, mind you do not ever serve up boiled Poultry in a second course – I do not call Fish & soup anything – boiled Poultry may come up after them, but not after other things – mind too, you have not bacon & ham or tongue the same day (except when one of them is in a pie) – nor anything twice over the same day.
You must not mind what you see others do, for many people do not understand the rules on these occasions.
It is not the fashion now, to cram the guests, & force them to eat, but to let every one act as they please – indeed the custom of asking you 50 times what you will eat is so much out, that in many great families the guests are not asked to eat at all, but are expected to care for themselves, & no one who understands the etiquette, asks people to take of the dessert the help themselves. At the same time , it is better to be too civil, than to be censured as being rude, by those who do not understand new customs. So if in N. South Wales it is the fashion to torment folks to eat, you had better do that than offend any one, for they might fancy you meant to give yourself airs because you are very young.
We must conform in some Degree to other peoples prejudices & the customs of the society in which we reside, & I know not any thing which gives more offence than the idea of a young woman seeming to wish to teach her elders – in a confines society of females, this is enough to raise a rebellion, for I am sorry to say there is not too much reason among women, & they certainly Delight in gossip & clamour.
But you may give your Dinners your own way, there is no offence in that.
In giving any of the forgoing Dinners, you may, if you chose, entirely omit the removes, except the tart or Pudding – there are simple little things, which you should attend to – for instance, boiled meat & boiled Poultry should not be seen together – roast ones may.
I make the things come in at 2 or 3 times when once would do, because it is much better to have them hot, they are better done & it is not genteel to crowd the table.

Dinners for 8, 10 or 12
Not very formal
Given in 3 removes

Soup

Sauce Potatoes Sauce

Fish
*
2 Boiled Chickens

Vegetables Pates Vegetables

Roast Mutton

Bacon on side table
*
Stewed Celery

Cheesecake Gooseberry Fool Tartlets

(It goes on for many more different dishes)

Rules to be Observed

Do not fail regularly to inspect the provisions in the house, & to order every thing yourself – you will soon learn how much is necessary – look at the Bread, Butter & every thing – if you have quantities of articles, which most likely will be the case with you, keep them all locked up & weigh out your Butter for yourself – your servants will endeavour to manage you & get the power into their own hands, because you are young, but do not part with it, for you will soon know how much of everything is necessary.
Eggs if you have a stock, should be placed regularly as they are laid, that you must use the stalest first. I have seen a nice contrivance in a hen-house of sloping shelves with little divisions in them & saw-dust placed under the eggs. You had better keep the in the house for fear of rats – remember always to set your poultry upon the newest eggs.
Do not let your Cook put dripping of roast Beef among the Kitchen stuff for it should be kept for frying fish only & mind & look often into the kitchen stuff to see that she does not improper things there.
Servants are apt to throw away many articles in a shameful way, pieces of bread, vegetables that have been dressed & many other things – they ought to eat all the pieces of bread before they begin upon another loaf – never suffer them to have new bread – if you chose your company to have it – your servants ought not, & do not give them steaks for dinner, it is very unprofitable, & do not suffer them to have hot suppers. I know they will try to procure many indulgencies from a young Mistress & can persuade her it is customary to grant them. You cannot be too careful of your husband’s property, & a good economist may save hundreds of Pounds even living in a moderate way.
Waste is the great fault of servants, & economy they call meanness – never mind that – keep the keys yourself - do not from idleness entrust them at any time to your servants.
If you give out a few candles & a little soap at a time - you will know hoe long it ought to last. Vegetables ought to be warmed up again for servants – mind they do not cut pieces of fat & suet off the meat to be put among the kitchen staff & be sure you inspect occasionally every part of the house for cunning cooks often keep 2 tubs of kitchen stuff & let you see only one.
Have a list of all the linen put into the wash & count it again when it comes out that you may know it is safe – keep a list of household linen, Clothes, etc, & frequently see that it is right. When you give out table linen & napkins, etc take care to make your servants bring back the dirty ones & observe the state they are in, for I have known servants wipe glasses with Damask napkins, knives with glass cloths & turn towels into dusters & dish cloths. Mind your clothes are not worn by any body after you pull them off – undergarments are often worn by the maids before they are washed.
In short, my dear Maria, a mistress must have Argus Eyes & not trust too much to her servants. In case of lying in – it is easy to arrange a certain proportion of most articles in one closet, ready to be given out without having to trouble Mr. McArthur too much or leaving your property at the mercy of your servants.

**I have written the letter as Mrs E has written it, with Capitals, word spacing, etc, etc, to add to its authenticity.

Regards,

Anne.~