Oh, for....

[oursin]

Another annoying recommendation from Michael Pollan in second lengthy extract from his book in today's Guardian G2:
Don't eat anything that your great-grandmother wouldn't recognise as foodWhy your great-grandmother? Because at this point your mother, and possibly even your grandmother, are as confused as the rest of us; to be safe we need to go

Comments

[hafren]

Btw, how in the name of God are we to find (or recognise) fat hen and purslane? Suggesting that the unversed go and look for "wild food" is potentially dangerous; if someone comes back with aconite (which looks alarmingly like horseradish) they'll know about it, though not for long...

[despotliz]

I didn't know my great-grandmother, but judging by the cooking of my grandmother, I would be eating mostly meat and potato stew, meat and potato pie, lobbies (a form of meat and potato stew with barley in it), corned beef stew (with potatoes), and maybe a bit of fish on Fridays. Which is not to say that it wasn't good tasty food, but vegetables which were not cooked to within an inch of their life were not a big feature.

[shezan]

If he means an ENGLISH grandmother, does this mean all meat will be boiled until grey?

[oursin]

And we will make very sure that all those vegetables are DEAD before reaching the table.

[oursin]

But lots of salt, and the greens boiled with a ha'penny in the pot (or soda bicarb) so that they come out nice and green!

[oursin]

True, people (with the proviso, who could afford to be, and didn't have to consider first the risk of possible wastage) have been much more culinarily/gastronomically enterprising from much earlier dates than we imagine.

I was once doing some research in interwar women's magazines, and glancing over the cookery pages (not the actual focus of what I was looking for) noticed a number of recipes for or including things that tend to be assumed were part of the post-Elizabeth David revolution.

And according to papers at recent conference, Victorian visitors to Empire exhibitions were happily consuming the Indian, Chinese, etc delicacies on display, though what people do on a fun day out doesn't necessarily relate to day-to-day food practices.

[chickenfeet2003]

Soyer had a whole 'palace' devoted to the foods of different parts of the world during the Great Exhibition. Curry came in fairly early too. Queen Victoria employed two Indian chefs to make curry for the royal table. Anglo-Indian food was certainly a staple in both British officers' messes and the merchant marine by the late 19th century.

One also notes that William Verrall, innkeeper somewhere in Southern England (The White Hart at Lewes?) in the 18th century was serving macaroni and a variety of French dishes that he had acquired while apprenticed to a French chef working for the Duke of Newcastle.

How much this impacted the eating habits of the less well off though I don't know.

[sam_t]

I think the first curry recipe published in England was Hannah Glasse's, in The Art of Cookery (1747). As far as I remember, the spices were mild - mostly coriander seed.

This didn't stop my maternal grandmother declaring anything that wasn't basically meat-and-two-veg 'that foreign muck' and unfit to eat. There were other influences there, though: budget, two world wars and class prejudice, for a start.

[hafren]

I think it's a bit interesting that he talks purely about female relatives. I have a suspicion this is all leading up to more work for women in kitchens. And a lot of them don't have time for it, just as their grandmothers didn't, though for different reasons (work outside the home rather than constant childcare).

[clanwilliam]

And of course, there are those of us who are descended from women who worked outside the home *and* had constant childcare.

Luckily, even on their very low incomes, salaries for "help" was so low they could afford to have someone in. I can't see a pair of primary school teachers with eight kids and no extra income being able to afford a maid these days.