Cook together until onions are soft, remove lemon and serve.
Equal parts vinegar and water with chopped shallots, lemon
juice, pepper and salt.
English cooks say this is extra good for warming up cold mutton.
Some stir a beaten egg yolk into any of the above sauces to make
them richer.
XXIX. "JVe Dine for the Poor
^^
In "Old Cookery Books" W. C. Hazlitt tells how a farm owner
in Shakespeare's time indulged his ** hinds" by feeding them some
of the meat they fattened for him, twice a week, on Sunday and
Thursday, which of course is much more than the modern share-
cropper gets. But Hazlitt says this was exceptionally good treat-
ment and gives us quaint culinary news from another food writer,
Tobias Venner, who shook a mean quill in the time of "Good
Queen Bess":
Venner considered two meals a day sufficient for all ordinary people,
— breakfast at eleven and supper at six (as at the universities); but
he thought that children and the aged or infirm could not be tied to
any rule. He condemns "bull's beef" as rank, unpleasant, and indi-
gestible, and holds it best for the laborer; which seems to indicate
more than anything else the low state of knowledge in the grazier,
when Venner wrote: but there is something beyond friendly counsel
where our author dissuades the poor from eating partridges, because
they are calculated to promote asthma. "Wherefore," he ingeniously
says, "when they shall chance to meet with a covey of young par-
tridges, they were much better to bestow them upon such, for whom
they are convenient."
And all the way through culinary literature we find this idea per-
sisting: that the fat of the land is far too good for the people who
213
2l4 MOST-FOR-YOUR-MONEY COOK BOOK
produce it. Workers, until recently, were supposed to have different
tasters and partridges have always been considered too rich for
their blood. This line of unreasoning was established by gormandiz-
ing medieval monks who spent most of their waking hours sampling
special dishes and brews, roUing their eyes and patting their stom-
achs, while they purred, "Ah, this is much too good for the laity."
To be sure, these charitable priests gave beer and black bread to
pilgrims who tottered starving to their gates, but it was a cheaply
brewed "small beer" handed out with "coarse" bread while they
regaled themselves on specially brewed "strong beer" with fancy
cakes, and even in the Lenten season brotherly cooks smuggled
into their refectories great dishes of forbidden meat camouflaged
under coverings of fish, which made chance penitents think the
fathers were keeping their fast honestly.
We still have traces of the best-being-none-too-good-for-the-
clergy in poor women who save a drop of good drink they can't
afford to taste themselves to give to the priest when he comes to
pray with them. And among Protestants the Sunday chicken dinner
for the minister is an established custom, with the wishbone for
him and the backbone for the family, who subsist on corned beef
the rest of the week. All of which parallels the practice in darkest
Africa where the medicine men get free beer parties to keep them
from casting the evil eye on tribal herbs.
Page 120
Presented as published in 1938. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
AI-modernized reading of the original text
Cook together until onions are soft, remove lemon and serve.
Equal parts vinegar and water with chopped shallots, lemon juice, pepper and salt.
English cooks say this is extra good for warming up cold mutton.
Some stir a beaten egg yolk into any of the above sauces to make them richer.
XXIX. "JVe Dine for the Poor
^^
In "Old Cookery Books" W. C. Hazlitt tells how a farm owner in Shakespeare's time indulged his ** hinds" by feeding them some of the meat they fattened for him, twice a week, on Sunday and Thursday, which of course is much more than the modern sharecropper gets. But Hazlitt says this was exceptionally good treatment and gives us quaint culinary news from another food writer, Tobias Venner, who shook a mean quill in the time of "Good Queen Bess":
Venner considered two meals a day sufficient for all ordinary people, — breakfast at eleven and supper at six (as at the universities); but he thought that children and the aged or infirm could not be tied to any rule. He condemns "bull's beef" as rank, unpleasant, and indigestible, and holds it best for the laborer; which seems to indicate more than anything else the low state of knowledge in the grazier, when Venner wrote: but there is something beyond friendly counsel where our author dissuades the poor from eating partridges, because they are calculated to promote asthma. "Wherefore," he ingeniously says, "when they shall chance to meet with a covey of young partridges, they were much better to bestow them upon such, for whom they are convenient."
And all the way through culinary literature we find this idea persisting: that the fat of the land is far too good for the people who
produce it. Workers, until recently, were supposed to have different tasters and partridges have always been considered too rich for their blood. This line of unreasoning was established by gormandizing medieval monks who spent most of their waking hours sampling special dishes and brews, rolling their eyesand patting their stomachs, while they purred, "Ah, this is much too good for the laity." To be sure, these charitable priests gave beer and black bread to pilgrims who tottered starving to their gates, but it was a cheaply brewed "small beer" handed out with "coarse" bread while they regaled themselves on specially brewed "strong beer" with fancy cakes, and even in the Lenten season brotherly cooks smuggled into their refectories great dishes of forbidden meat camouflaged under coverings of fish, which made chance penitents think the fathers were keeping their fast honestly.
We still have traces of the best-being-none-too-good-for-theclergy in poor women who save a drop of good drink they can't afford to taste themselves to give to the priest when he comes to pray with them. And among Protestants the Sunday chicken dinner for the minister is an established custom, with the wishbone for him and the backbone for the family, who subsist on corned beef the rest of the week. All of which parallels the practice in darkest Africa where the medicine men get free beer parties to keep them from casting the evil eye on tribal herbs.