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CzarChasm
Mar 14, 2009

I don't like it when you're watching me eat.

RoboRodent posted:

I've been fascinated by cicadas since I first learned of them, but I've never seen one. Good to know that at least one person who lives with cicadas thinks they're neat.

My experience with bugs as food is that they're crunchy but without a lot of flavour themselves. I've had crickets that were toasted as a snack food, but they don't taste of much other than the flavoured powder on them and the legs and antennae are a bit off-putting. Mealworms are meant to be better? I know my sister was going to make a stir fry using pet store mealworms but I never heard how that turned out.

Cicadas are kind of terrifying when you are 5 and swarmed by them (Thanks Ohio). I want to say a few years ago some outfit in Chicago tried to market a seasonal ice cream that contained cicadas. I don't think it was a big seller.

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Phil Moscowitz
Feb 19, 2007

If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!
Cicadas singing in my oak trees now. I love the sound, but I don’t think I could ever eat them (or any other arthropod that doesn’t live underwater, honestly).

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface
Its my understanding that if you are allergic to shellfish you are allergic to most insects. I have not heard of anybody having a specfic reaction to just scorpions or cicadas. That one dude who died a while back in a cockroach eating contest because his throat swelled up had a shellfish allergy.

Edit: Apparently cockroach allergy is a thing for people with asthma.

Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Aug 28, 2018

Rollersnake
May 9, 2005

Please, please don't let me end up in a threesome with the lunch lady and a gay pirate. That would hit a little too close to home.
Unlockable Ben

CzarChasm posted:

Cicadas are kind of terrifying when you are 5 and swarmed by them (Thanks Ohio). I want to say a few years ago some outfit in Chicago tried to market a seasonal ice cream that contained cicadas. I don't think it was a big seller.

It was Sparky's in Columbia, MO. They only did one batch before the health inspector had a word with them, and I didn't get to try any.

Yolo Swaggins Esq
Jan 29, 2015

oOoOoh 👀 a dapper little mouse🎩 🐀🕺🏻🕺🏻 a dAppER MoUSe🧐🐀 🚶🏿‍♂️🚶🏿‍♂️it’s a 🎩DAPPER mouse 👀✔️🐀🥾🏃🏽‍♂️🕺🏻🕺🏻🕺🏻🏃🏽‍♂️🐀💥

Telsa Cola posted:

Its my understanding that if you are allergic to shellfish you are allergic to most insects. I have not heard of anybody having a specfic reaction to just scorpions or cicadas. That one dude who died a while back in a cockroach eating contest because his throat swelled up had a shellfish allergy.

Edit: Apparently cockroach allergy is a thing for people with asthma.

Yeah that's asthma too.
I am a lazy goon who never does anything to trigger asthma and found out I had it because I almost died when the neighbours decided to bomb their massive roach infestation into the rest of the building and I had to stay at friends because I couldn't breathe at all.
But that was maybe partially due to other respiratory problems from the building having a big ol mould problem idk

... i feel like living in a hovel is fairly thread appropriate tho.

JacquelineDempsey
Aug 6, 2008

Women's Circuit Bender Union Local 34



RoboRodent posted:

I've been fascinated by cicadas since I first learned of them, but I've never seen one. Good to know that at least one person who lives with cicadas thinks they're neat.

They're dying off right now in my area, I find them on the sidewalks all the time. I collect them and use them for my weird-rear end artwork, and just picked up a nice one yesterday. They don't really rot (I have some art featuring them that's several years old, and they still look fresh, even without clearcoat), so if you'd like to see one in person I'd be happy to mail one to a fellow cicada fan, if you live in the US.

(This may be the weirdest derail SA has ever seen.)

...

Today's fun fact is not so much about actual historic cooking, but I needed to learn the origin of this term, and thought I'd share.

I work in a kitchen, and as my boss and I were pulling meat off whole roasted chickens, she asked if I wanted the pope's nose to snack on. "The WHAT?" I asked. It's the meat that comes from the chicken's tail (or a turkey, or any fowl, apparently). It's fatty and delicious, in part because it comes from where poultry has oil glands to promote feather-preening. Turns out the name comes from a Protestant joke of the 1600's comparing the shape of the current pope's nose to a chicken rump.

Essentially boils down to a 17th century version of:
Guess what?
Chicken butt.

POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug
Huh!

It's also called the preen. Birds! Even their sebaceous glands are delicious.

Tiggum
Oct 24, 2007

Your life and your quest end here.


JacquelineDempsey posted:

I work in a kitchen, and as my boss and I were pulling meat off whole roasted chickens, she asked if I wanted the pope's nose to snack on. "The WHAT?" I asked. It's the meat that comes from the chicken's tail (or a turkey, or any fowl, apparently). It's fatty and delicious, in part because it comes from where poultry has oil glands to promote feather-preening. Turns out the name comes from a Protestant joke of the 1600's comparing the shape of the current pope's nose to a chicken rump.
I've always heard it referred to as the "parson's nose".

Podima
Nov 4, 2009

by Fluffdaddy
Yeah I hadn’t heard of it till I found it on yakitori menus in Japan. It’s good!

Hirayuki
Mar 28, 2010


And it has a cute name over there, too: bonjiri. :3: Though I see at least one yakitori chain officially calls it "triangle" instead. What a spoilsport.

Phil Moscowitz
Feb 19, 2007

If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!
Pope's nose and oysters are the first things to get poached (by me) when I pull a roast chicken out of the oven.

Oysters are called "sot l'y laisse" in French..."the dummy leaves them there"

Pontius Pilate
Jul 25, 2006

Crucify, Whale, Crucify

JacquelineDempsey posted:

They're dying off right now in my area, I find them on the sidewalks all the time. I collect them and use them for my weird-rear end artwork, and just picked up a nice one yesterday. They don't really rot (I have some art featuring them that's several years old, and they still look fresh, even without clearcoat), so if you'd like to see one in person I'd be happy to mail one to a fellow cicada fan, if you live in the US.

(This may be the weirdest derail SA has ever seen.)

My boyfriend loves both cicadas and weird-rear end artwork and we just moved into a place with a lot of wall space and it needs filling so at the very least I’d love a cicada but possibly artwork too if that’s possible.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

I’ve decided that in November (once I’m home from a series of long trips) I’m going to start homebrewing and work up to recreating Sumerian beer from bappir bread.

POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug
Homebrewing is great! I make makgeolli, sihkye, sodas, and meads.

A pal shared this exciting resource this morning:

https://egyptianmedievalcookbook.wordpress.com/recipes/

An English translation of a 14th century cookbook from Cairo!

Jo Joestar
Oct 24, 2013
I'm not sure whether this fully qualifies as historical cooking, but I'm doing some relatively old-fashioned dishes this Christmas. To start with, we're going to be drinking Arrack punch, a popular 19th century drink based on the recipe from Anne and Lisa Grossman's surprisingly useful Lobscouse and Spotted Dog. Instead of turkey, this year I'm cooking a Shropshire Black ham, which uses the same cure as the much older Bradenham ham.

For dessert, we're going to be having Nesselrode pudding, a moulded ice pudding made with whipped cream, pureed chestnuts, a good quantity of Maraschino liquor, and various dried fruits and candied peel soaked in more Maraschino. This was originally a French dish, invented by Antoine Careme, but it was enormously popular with the British upper classes throughout the 19th century.

I'm not sure yet what I'll be serving apart from that, but I'll be looking through Peter Brear's Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England for things to serve alongside the main dishes.

Jo Joestar fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Dec 23, 2018

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Arrack punch sounds very cool! I’m getting supplies for some Jerry Thomas cocktails. I had an Improved Gin Cocktail made with Bols genever and it was nothing like you’ve had before.

JacquelineDempsey
Aug 6, 2008

Women's Circuit Bender Union Local 34



Hey, this thread's back! And your menu sounds cool as all get out, Jo. Please share pics and whatnot if you can.

Recently my boss at my restaurant job had pies cooling when we came in (we come in at 5 am; she's nuts and comes in at like 3. But hey, not gonna argue with stuff like 5am congee if she likes making breakfast for us).
They looked like pumpkin pie, and the whole kitchen smelled like it. She'd put a pecan crumble on top, and had freshly made whipped cream. Woo! Breakfast of champions!

We dig in, and while this pie is really good, we all start exchanging looks because none of can quite place what it's made from. It's custardy, but not pumpkin pie, nor pecan pie.
"Boss, what IS this?"

Turns out a thing in the south during the Great Depression was using pinto or similar beans to make a mock pecan or pumpkin pie. She had come in early to soak beans for one of our lunch menu items, and had a poo poo ton left over, so she made these sweet pies out of them. And drat fine pies; as I said, we all liked it, and she gave out samples to customers to test drive it and got rave reviews. Now it's on our holiday catering menu as 1929 Bean Pie.

As a Yankee born in the 70s, I'd never heard of such a thing, and thought the thread might find this lil bit of historic cooking interesting (and a cool way to use up extra beans).

Sandwich Anarchist
Sep 12, 2008
That is incredibly loving cool and incredibly my poo poo. I'm going to look into that for my place.

Hirayuki
Mar 28, 2010


Oh, wow, that bean pie story is tickling my memory in a major way. I know I've had bean pie before--and liked it--but I can't for the life of me remember where. Possibly outside the U.S. Reading your description of it, I'm pretty sure I'd like to have it again.

This Christmas, I'm making ypocras, a very old spiced wine made by dissolving brown sugar, cinnamon, mace (or nutmeg), and grains of paradise (or black pepper) in red wine for a couple days, then filtering it twice through cheesecloth before serving. It's lovely; none of the alcohol is lost, since it's never heated, and it keeps for a few weeks, since this was once a good way to preserve wine. I managed to score some grains of paradise this year, so I'm excited to see how it turns out.

e: I remembered! Pastel de feijão from a Portuguese bakery in Ontario. And it was drat tasty, too.

Hirayuki fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Dec 22, 2018

big dyke energy
Jul 29, 2006

Football? Yaaaay
drat, I would absolutely love a recipe for bean pie.

JacquelineDempsey
Aug 6, 2008

Women's Circuit Bender Union Local 34



Sandwich Anarchist posted:

That is incredibly loving cool and incredibly my poo poo. I'm going to look into that for my place.

Yeah that would totally fit y'alls menu. Google "depression pecan pie", it's basically a bunch of cooked beans, some egg to make it set and be like a custard, some Karo and/or brown sugar to sweeten it up, and the usual seasoning suspects you'd want in a pumpkin/sweet potato/pecan pie like vanilla, cinnamon, allspice, etc. It's crazy low food cost (natch, being a Depression/WWII thing), so you can make mad overhead on it given how cheap beans are. Smash some nuts of your choice on top and make it look purdy, and you're all set.

Necessity is not only the mother of invention, but also deliciousness.

Hirayuki, that sounds tasty as well! Where/when does ypocras hail from?

My Lovely Horse
Aug 21, 2010

JacquelineDempsey posted:

Where/when does ypocras hail from?
According to The Shakespeare Cookbook, which I happen to have read just the other day: 15th/16th century England. The idea of spiced wine goes back much further, but ypocras was at its most popular then. (The name comes from the filtering bag you'd use, which was known as a "Hippocratic bag".) Spiced wines are also the origin of vermouth - you'd spice wine with wormwood as a medicine to kill intestinal worms.

Incidentally, without meaning to badmouth your recipe, the book tells me it was most commonly made with white wine, and indeed white sugar, which was considered to be exotic and medicinal in those days. Cinnamon, mace and pepper are all mentioned, ginger and cardamom too. The book also points out a few you shouldn't use: pink peppercorns (no reason given), capsicum and star anise (didn't have that in 16th century England), and coriander and cumin (not exotic enough).

Also wormwood, unless you know what you're doing, or you may end up like the worms.

Hirayuki
Mar 28, 2010


My Lovely Horse posted:

Incidentally, without meaning to badmouth your recipe, the book tells me it was most commonly made with white wine, and indeed white sugar, which was considered to be exotic and medicinal in those days. Cinnamon, mace and pepper are all mentioned, ginger and cardamom too. The book also points out a few you shouldn't use: pink peppercorns (no reason given), capsicum and star anise (didn't have that in 16th century England), and coriander and cumin (not exotic enough).
Oh, I'm not using an actual historical recipe, just this one, though it was apparently adapted for modern times. No mention of white wine, although red is better for room-temperature sipping (and feels more wintry to me). And I'd forgotten that there were cloves in there, too.

I can highly recommend it even if it's not entirely historically accurate. :) Now to dig up a good bean pie recipe...

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

I’m stopping at Dead Rabbit in NYC. It’s got an internationally recognized bar program situated in a 19th century grocery store, so it’s basically a must-do if you’re in the city.



They sell 18th century punches by the glass. This one, the Swedish Punsch, is made with Batavia arrack (a distilled liquor from Indonesia made from sugarcane and red rice) flavored with ginger, lemon, and lapsang souchong tea. Identical punches (yes, including the tea) were common from the 17th century into the 19th century, when cocktails and other individual drinks took precedence.

The arrack has a taste similar to a funky white rum, like a cross between rum and genever. I can easily see someone at a party downing 3 or 4 glasses.

Reiterpallasch
Nov 3, 2010



Fun Shoe
From personal experience, arrack/tea punch is smooth enough to be dangerous. 4Loko has nothing on it.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014



Here’s all the kinds they currently have. They’re all radically different in flavor but equally easy to drink. The Usquaebach in particular definitely has anise in it.

Leraika
Jun 14, 2015

Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.
Anyone have any good resources for ancient Roman cooking? I'm not brave enough to try cooking straight from Apicius.

e: other than the ones on the first page of course, ha ha

Leraika fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Dec 24, 2018

Cavenagh
Oct 9, 2007

Grrrrrrrrr.
That radical bean pie

Jo Joestar
Oct 24, 2013

JacquelineDempsey posted:

Hey, this thread's back! And your menu sounds cool as all get out, Jo. Please share pics and whatnot if you can.

OK! Apologies in advance for the quality, lighting, composition etc; I'm taking these on my phone, and I'm not much of a photographer.

This is the initial infusion for the punch: coriander seeds, cloves, and lemon zest soaking in sugar syrup.


Here's the completed punch, flanked by the remaining ingredients: 2 cups of water, 1 of arrack and 1 of brandy (it took me half an hour to remember to add the lemon juice).



The ham's had two days to soak, and is now resting in its cooking liquid. The cooking liquid, based on Jane Grigson's recipe, is water mixed with 500g of black treacle, and pickling spices (coriander, allspice, black pepper, nutmeg, dried chilli, cloves, and ginger).



This is the first time I've cooked a whole ham, so I don't have a good frame of reference, but it seems like a big one; 51 cm long, and 31 cm across at the widest point. Weighing it on the bathroom scales was a bit difficult, but it seems to be around 20 pounds. As you may have noticed, the pot I'm using (the largest one I could find, bought specifically for this use) isn't actually big enough to contain the entire ham. My first idea was to start it narrow end down and turn it over after half an hour, but the logistics of pulling a 1 stone 6 pound ham from a pot of scalding liquid, turning it over and putting it back in without getting horribly burnt seemed a bit challenging. Fortunately, I have a cunning plan...



Unfortunately, at this point my phone ran out of batteries, and I had too much going on in the kitchen to deal with it. The tinfoil worked well; it trapped enough steam to cook the top of the ham. I haven't cut into it to see if it's cooked through, but there's enough thoroughly cooked ham that it doesn't really matter. Right now, though, I'm kicking myself for letting the liquid boil, and while it all tastes good, the outer meat has definitely lost some flavour and texture compared to the inner meat. I'm not really sure how to sum up how it tastes, except that it's a world away from any supermarket ham I've ever had. Tomorrow I'm going to take the skin off and roll it in breadcrumbs.

This is the only photo I was able to take of the Nesselrode pudding being prepared. These are just the fruits and candied peel being soaked in a good dose of Maraschino, which I ended up including in the pudding itself. The unfrozen pudding looked like what it is: a very egg-rich custard mixed with pureed chestnuts and whipped cream.


Anyway, it's 3 in the morning, I'm exhausted, and there's still half a christmas lunch to cook tomorrow, so that's all from me for now. I'll try to get photos of the finished dishes for the thread.

Jo Joestar fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Dec 25, 2018

CAPT. Rainbowbeard
Apr 5, 2012

My incredible goodposting transcends time and space but still it cannot transform the xbone into a good console.
Lipstick Apathy

chitoryu12 posted:

I’m stopping at Dead Rabbit in NYC. It’s got an internationally recognized bar program situated in a 19th century grocery store, so it’s basically a must-do if you’re in the city.



They sell 18th century punches by the glass. This one, the Swedish Punsch, is made with Batavia arrack (a distilled liquor from Indonesia made from sugarcane and red rice) flavored with ginger, lemon, and lapsang souchong tea. Identical punches (yes, including the tea) were common from the 17th century into the 19th century, when cocktails and other individual drinks took precedence.

The arrack has a taste similar to a funky white rum, like a cross between rum and genever. I can easily see someone at a party downing 3 or 4 glasses.

I love punch. Isn't it supposed to have been introduced to the world by India via England?

Also, I heard "punch" is a bastardization of the Hindu word for "five" because the original recipe has five ingredients.

Am I right thinking these things or have I been misinformed?

JacquelineDempsey
Aug 6, 2008

Women's Circuit Bender Union Local 34



Thanks for the pics and info, Jo! Looks great so far. Merry Christmas to you (and anyone else in the thread who celebrates it)!

I'd never heard of arrack, or Swedish punsch before. Just looked it up now that my state has online ordering, which lets you know what the local state ABC store has in stock. They can special order Batavia arrack, as well as a pre-mixed punsch similar to what you guys described. The arrack seems a much better deal, you get 750ml of straight arrack for $31, vs $33 for a 750 of punsch. I mean, I'd like to try the punsch to see what I'm shooting for, but would y'all agree it's a better idea/value to get all that straight arrack and make my own tea and mix it myself?

Xiahou Dun
Jul 16, 2009

We shall dive down through black abysses... and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory forever.



CAPT. Rainbowbeard posted:

I love punch. Isn't it supposed to have been introduced to the world by India via England?

Also, I heard "punch" is a bastardization of the Hindu word for "five" because the original recipe has five ingredients.

Am I right thinking these things or have I been misinformed?

https://www.etymonline.com/word/punch

Scroll down.

Seems pretty contentious.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Read Punch: The Delights (And Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl. It’s a history of distilled liquor and the development of punch in Europe, followed by a set of historical recipes.

Reiterpallasch
Nov 3, 2010



Fun Shoe
Wondrich's Punch is very good and excellent for classing up a party even if all you have is a handle of cheap brandy and some lemons.

Crosspost from the A/T milhist thread: so someone managed to FOIA the CIA's 1948 translation of an "acquired" Soviet military cook's manual. It simultaneously drips with Soviet-era menace and is a fascinating read. The Soviets appear to have been extremely concerned with scurvy.

Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004


Out here, everything hurts.




Given the places they waged war that makes sense. Being stuck on the tundra for months is not unlike being at sea when it comes to vitamins.

Randaconda
Jul 3, 2014

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Every army was concerned about scurvy back in the day.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 12 hours!
Scurvy in the Arctic was a funny thing, because it took them a ridiculously long time to figure out that it wasn't caused by spoiled food.

My understanding is that they sort of lost the knowledge of fortifying one's diet with vitamin C. For a long time, they had been providing sailors with citrus juice that had been processed and bottled in such a way that it destroyed most of the vitamin C content. But no one noticed, because by that time, everyone was using steamships and sailors weren't at sea long enough to develop scurvy.

JacquelineDempsey
Aug 6, 2008

Women's Circuit Bender Union Local 34



Reiterpallasch posted:

Crosspost from the A/T milhist thread: so someone managed to FOIA the CIA's 1948 translation of an "acquired" Soviet military cook's manual. It simultaneously drips with Soviet-era menace and is a fascinating read. The Soviets appear to have been extremely concerned with scurvy.

Lmao at the bit on page two about "sautedsautéed tubercules". Whoever translated this knew and cared enough to correct the spelling of sautéed, but not the difference between tubers and tubercules. I know I love me some pan-cooked skin protrusions.

Fun read so far, thanks for sharing it! The part about not adding certain herbs/spices to a soup like laurel (bay leaves) until 5 minutes before serving is bizarre as hell to me. Maybe they were using fresh, not dried? I only get dried bay leaves here in the US, and throw them in the stock right off the bat so they can soak and leech out the flavor. My rule of thumb is dried spices go in early, fresh herbs like parsley go in last minute so they still taste "green".

Mr. Wiggles
Dec 1, 2003

We are all drinking from the highball glass of ideology.
They talk about and encourage gardens, so I imagine fresh was the way to go. Especially since the Soviet supply system wasn't set up for moving sacks of fresh herbs, and military units were *supposed* to not only be supplied by the surrounding area, the soldiers were supposed to provide labor for surrounding agricultural concerns.

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poverty goat
Feb 15, 2004



There's almost 4 pages on the correct washing and peeling of potatoes. Doing it the wrong way increases waste by 10-15% and is absolutely forbidden. I wonder how many cooks died in the gulags for violating potato law

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