100 Books I Keep Keeping... 13 Lobscouse and Spotted Dog
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Lobscouse and Spotted Dog by Anne Chotzinoff Grossman and Lisa Grossman Thomas (1997)
I've read a couple of the Aubrey/Maturin books and liked them, but that was not why I bought this book: how could I, a non-cook but a hopeless devotee of social and domestic history in all its sometimes messy glory, resist a book full of both the authentic eighteenth/early-nineteenth-century recipes, both delicious sounding and frankly appalling (slime-draught, which is apparently... medicinal) that O'Brien seems to gleefully have peppered all of the books with, and also cheerfully and in some cases hysterically redacted versions (as I recall, there was only one or two that the authors didn't try to recreate, at least one because they actually couldn't get the turtle. But sometimes the story of what they went to in making the recipes is even more fascinating than the recipe itself).
And they don't hold back when it's bad...
Having plenty of breadfruit, we made this, as in duty bound; the results were so unpleasant that we haven't the heart to describe them in much detail...If you dig it up in a day or two you will find it, as Captain Cook said, 'soft and disagreeably sweet.' Wait a few more days for the second fermentation - when you dig it up it will still be soft and disagreeable, but no longer sweet. Captain Cook says this mess will keep 10-12 months, during which time it can be rolled into balls, baked, and eaten 'either hot or cold, and hath a sour and disagreeable taste.'
We did not have the patience to wait the full 10 months; but we can certainly vouch for the taste.
Makes an awful lot of pap.
They cooked rats and made ship's biscuits (methods to knead include the authentic beating with a marlinspike, and two less authentic alternate: "One is to run it repeatedly through a hand-cranked pasta machine; the other, much more exciting though a bit less efficient, is to put it in a large stout bag and repeatedly drive a car over it.") They even made - though didn't actually taste-test - Boiled Shit (from Maturin's short and utterly involuntary stay on a rock totally lacking in, well, anything, in the middle of the ocean) And the names!! Burgoo, Bashed Neeps, Drowned (or Boiled) Baby, Sea-Pie, Solomongundy, Treacle-Dowdy, Jam Roly-Poly, Soused Hogs Face, Treacle-Dowdy, Comfits, Inspissated Juice, Little Balls of Tripe a Man Might eat For Ever, and, of course, Lobscouse and Spotted Dog...
The authors, unabashed O'Brien devotees, cook and write with love, humour and a light touch. I may never eat any of this, and certainly wouldn't try to cook it (even if I could get the rats and other ingredients, explaining it to the firefighters when I burned the house down would be... embarrassing) but I love reading about it... and anyone writing a novel in that period (napoleon wars/regency) would find the menus and ideas (welllllll..... some of them) a treat :)