Chapter 12
The Science of Cooking, According to Fannie
Today, food science has traveled all the way from the laboratory to popular television. One might easily make the mistake of thinking that this is a purely modern phenomenon—that the Victorians were cooks, not scientists, and were not particularly interested in or knowledgeable about the whys of their profession. Of course, this is nonsense. Fannie Farmer and Mary Lincoln both wrote cookbooks full of food science, some of it wildly inaccurate, but some was right on the money. They were curious, and it was an age when scientific principles were being applied to everything, including the domestic arts.
The field of culinary science got its start with food preservation. In 1809, a Frenchman named Nicolas Appert was the first person to seal foods (cooked meat, vegetables, and milk) in glass bottles and heat them to preserve the food in response to a request from Napoleon. Breakable bottles were replaced by cans in 1812 by Brian Donkin in England. Most of this technology was developed without a knowledge of the science of food, although in 1860 Louis Pasteur did pioneer the discovery that bacteria caused the spoilage of wine and milk. The first studies of the science of food preservation were published by Samuel Cate Prescott at MIT in 1896. His work ultimately led to the establishment of one of the first food science departments in the the United States. Others followed at the University of Wisconsin and the University of California (1913). Prior to the establishment of these departments, there was little real study of the science of food. Ella Eaton Kellogg did publish Science in the Kitchen in 1893. Her approach to cooking was very precise, but not truly scientific. (Her husband founded the Kellogg Cereal Company in Battle Creek, Michigan.)
There was a broader cultural backdrop to the movement of science into the culinary arts. Simply put, many women found their lives boring, tedious, and thoroughly unfulfilling. This, combined with the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of a wealthy middle class, meant that women were desperately seeking a new role for themselves in society. Science and technology would be the tools to free them from their bondage and provide new opportunities to express themselves in more creative and compelling ways. In the best-selling 1888 utopian novel, Looking Backward: From 2000 to 1887, Edward Bellamy predicts a desirable future for housework: “Our washing is all done at public laundries at excessively cheap rates, and our cooking at public shops. Electricity, of course, takes the place of all fires and lighting. We choose houses no larger than we need, and furnish them so as to involve the minimum of trouble to keep them in order. We have no use for domestic servants. ‘What a paradise for womankind the world must be now!’ [the fictitious heroine] exclaimed.” This sentiment was just one of many movements in the late nineteenth century to remove the vast burden of home cooking and cleaning off the backs of women.
As a result, in Victorian times the kitchen was often viewed as a laboratory. A good example was to be had at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. At the Massachusetts Pavilion, two home economists, Mary Abel and Ellen Richards (the latter the first woman to graduate from MIT and join the faculty) displayed a kitchen as scientific laboratory in order to “extract the maximum amount of nutrition from food substances and the maximum heat from fuel.” Yet another example was the New England Kitchen, which was built in Boston in 1890. It was promoted as a public kitchen to teach American workers to cook more scientifically.
So it is no wonder that the cooking process itself was subject to scientific principle, with the goal to provide better and more nourishing foods. These principles are easily found in many books of the era, two of the best examples being those of Lincoln and Farmer. Having investigated the scientific principles of the Victorians and compared them to modern kitchen science, we found that their understanding of how foods cooked was about half right. Their most common mistake was to think that rapid boiling of foods would quickly harden the exterior, thus keeping the juices trapped inside. Fannie Farmer was correct about the effects of cooking in hard versus soft water: the former is more likely to keep vegetables firm and bright-colored, whereas the latter is best for extracting flavors, in tea or coffee, for example.
Fannie believed that frying was healthier than sautéing and that bacon fat was easier to digest than butter or cream. She also suggested adding cold water halfway through boiling potatoes (to prevent overcooking the outer layers), but this had no effect when tested. Victorian cooks finished baking bread at a lower temperature than the one they started with, a technique that did not seem to matter when tested in our kitchens. They did know how to extract the maximum flavor and nourishment when making stocks (cut the meat into small pieces and cook gently), but when it came to making tea, their advice about never using “twice-boiled” water turned out to be demonstrably true when we did a blind taste test. And, as we have also found, it is best to add the sugar to cream before whipping so that it dissolves properly. All in all, not a bad showing, considering that food science was still a nascent discipline.
SEPTEMBER 2009. IN 1898, THE TOWLE COMPANY’S GEORGIAN pattern had 131 different pieces for one setting, 1,572 pieces for twelve settings—which would have cost a small fortune. This excess, which implied as well a rigorous ritual surrounding the serving of food, grew out of rather humble beginnings. Most homes did not have formal dining rooms until after 1850; people ate in the kitchen, especially if they lived on a farm. In the city, only the rich actually owned an entire house; most city dwellers were living in boardinghouses of one sort or another. (Half of Americans, even in the late nineteenth century, did not own property.)
As the Industrial Revolution elevated the upper middle class in terms of wealth, the dining room became the domestic showcase. It was a semipublic room, one that could be displayed to one’s peers. This was quite different from the period prior to 1880, when the dining room’s primary purpose was to reinforce the sanctity of family life. Some dining rooms featured stained glass and an organ: it was a place for a Christian family to reassert its bonds and its faith.
In fact, the notion of allowing the public—one’s friends—into the family dining room was debated vigorously for some time, and was not common in midcentury. It was the existence of new money, of created wealth, that turned the dining room from a refuge from the world into a place of self-expression and creativity. Women, in particular, were interested in being perceived as artists, not just housewives, and thus the home became a blank canvas on which to paint their sensibilities and notions of personal artistry. Of course, architects and designers wanted the dining room to reflect modernity and practicality, hence the pass-through pantry and the sideboard for convenient storage and buffets. In terms of decoration, ferns and trailing ivy were often used in the bay window, paintings of hunting dogs on the walls, fruit on the sideboard, and partially closed blinds on a south-facing window. Many classical motifs were incorporated as well, whether in the wallpaper or through the use of pedestal urns.
Flatware also changed with the times, and so did its use. Forks originally had but two very sharp tines. The food was speared, elevated, and then pushed into the mouth with the aid of the flat side of a knife. Forks slowly added more tines, and the convention of cutting food—switching the fork from the left to the right hand, putting down the knife, and then using the fork to lift a piece of food to the mouth—came into vogue. Silverplated tableware, which became available in the 1840s, was the first step in bringing the Victorian notion of elegant dining to the middle classes. It started in and around Sheffield, England, but electroplating was being done in the United States by that time as well.
In addition, the Comstock silver lode was discovered in Nevada in 1859, and this provided much of the materials for the silverware industry. At first, mass-produced flatware was rather crude, but eventually shaped dies and better machinery created deeper impressions, so handles became elaborately decorated, even to the point of reproducing actual figures. Tea sets were quite popular, including a coffeepot, teapot, and a hot-water pot, as well as a sugar bowl, a creamer, and a waste bowl. By the late nineteenth century, these sets came in myriad styles, including neoclassical, Persian, Elizabethan, Jacobean, Japanese, Etruscan, and even Moorish. Things soon got out of hand. Castors containing condiments and seasonings made sense, but then these sets started to include egg cups, bells, and bouquet holders.
Once commercially produced butter was available (until the mid-1800s most butter was made at home), then one could purchase silver butter dishes, many of them quite elaborate, as well as cake baskets that held cakes or cookies for tea and desserts. Napkins in the Middle Ages used to be quite large and were frequently washed, since food was eaten with the fingers. They were soon downsized, and then, of course, the napkin ring became popular. Reed & Barton had 129 styles of napkin rings by 1885, 43 of them figural, including animals, playing children, and so on. Ornate ice-water pitchers were being sold with two walls for insulation (some of them were constructed on hinged stands so they could be tilted forward for pouring), although refrigeration made these items less popular after 1900.
An important part of our dinner party would be authentic Victorian table settings. The first item on our shopping list was a silver punch bowl. After months of searching, Adrienne found a stunning example dated November 21, 1894, and made by the firm of Hennegan, Bates of Baltimore. It was pure sterling silver and decorated using repoussé, a form of relief decoration produced by hammering on one side so that the decoration appears on the other. The pattern was elaborate, in high Victorian style, and the motif was floral, including leaves, tendrils, and blossoms. It was completely over the top and perfect for the occasion.
Adrienne also purchased sterling silver placecard holders shaped like upright flower blossoms, which held a small flower for each guest. We assembled a vast army of bowls, main-course plates, and chargers, made or sold by a variety of firms, including Higgins & Seiter of New York, and many Limoges items from William Guerin & Co., Theo. Haviland, and M. Redon, among others. Dessert plates, also used for the salmon course, were made by Adderley’s of England, and I had inherited a mother-of-pearl fish fork and knife set from my mother’s side of the family. We purchased gold-rimmed glass bowls for the sorbet.
We were also on the lookout for a few key kitchen and dining room accessories, including jelly molds, in particular one with a pineapple design on the bottom. After scanning eBay and similar sites, we discovered that antique jelly molds were generally small. The reason for this soon became apparent during testing. Larger molds required excessive amounts of gelatin to maintain the proper shape during and after unmolding. A series of taste tests made it clear that the less gelatin used, the better the flavor. So we were going to have to make a series of jellies, each of them of modest size, instead of one large centerpiece.
We very quickly fell in love with this course. It turned out that the jellies were highly elaborate, multicolored, multiflavored, and often filled with Bavarian cream, fruit, and other items. The simpler recipes had vertical layers of colors, all based on a simple lemon jelly. Others used special molds to produce layers within layers. One recipe instructed the cook to cut strips of different jellies and then line a mold with alternating colors, binding these strips with a fresh batch of warm jelly. This was edible sculpture; sadly, Jell-O had replaced one of the most creative and interesting features of the Victorian table. The first step, however, was to go back in time and make gelatin using calf’s feet. First, we had to find them.
SO HOW, EXACTLY, DOES ONE CALL UP THE LOCAL MEAT MARKET and order a box of calf’s feet? Well, we did just that, although we had a lot of trouble locating them. Watching the pointy pink feet sticking up out of a tall stockpot, busily simmering away for hours, did make one think that a modern culinary education is a bit lacking in terms of breadth. Now we were really getting into the meat of it, heading back into time like the good culinary pioneers that we thought we were. And, thankfully, the result was pretty good—a clear, strong, bouncy gelatin that would be much too firm to eat as it was, but would make a good base for a flavored gelatin. In the end, the flavor was sweet and lemony, with a texture reminiscent of Jell-O, just firm enough to hold its shape. So, yes, one can make one’s own homemade gelatin. Like all things Victorian, it’s just a matter of time.
Speaking of time in the kitchen, cooking prior to 1850 required a prodigious amount of labor because food was not just being cooked, it was also being preserved. Some of it—for example, gelatin—was transformed into basic cooking ingredients used for a myriad of recipes. They also had to make their own vinegar, soaps, sugar syrups, stocks, jams, jellies, potted meats, pickled vegetables, and corned beef. All this, however, had changed radically by 1900.
Gelatin is probably the best example of the time-saving trend offered by commercial food producers. After homemade calf’s-foot gelatin went out of style, home cooks could turn to either isinglass or Irish moss. Lower-quality isinglass was often dyed and sold in various colors, including red, green, and blue. The term sheet gelatin came from the process of extracting gelatin from animal skins; it was dried on nets into thin sheets. Leaf gelatin was made from sturgeon bladders; it was an accurate description of what was left once the outer and inner membranes of the swim bladders were scraped away. Irish moss was made from a form of seaweed called carageen, making it more economical, and was so named because it was harvested off Ireland’s southern and western shores. By the 1860s, Irish moss was produced locally—a half-million pounds of Irish moss was pulled annually off of Scituate, Massachusetts.
By the late 1890s, calf’s-foot gelatin was hopelessly outdated, as a tongue-in-cheek recipe published by the Boston Daily Globe on May 4, 1890, demonstrated: “Get [a Chicago] calf, cut off the calf, which can be used for making hash or chicken salad; wash the feet, having first removed all chillblains, thicken with glue, add a few molasses, strain through a cane-seated chair, pour into a blue bowl with red pictures on it, set in the shade to get tough. Then send it to a sick friend.” So when commercial manufacturers of instant gelatin (including Plymouth Rock, Junket, Crystal, Cox, and Knox) offered a simple, economical solution to setting up jellies and similar desserts, consumers immediately made the shift. In addition, home cooks no longer had to make their own natural food colorings for jellies; the food industry was doing the job for them. In 1856, Sir William Henry Perkin discovered the first synthetic organic dye, mauve, and the synthetic food coloring industry was born. Cheap food substitutes were coming on the market, and food coloring made these items appear either more natural, as in the case of margarine, which is pure white, not yellow; or more appealing, as in the case of soft drinks. Ordinary oranges were injected with red dye to make them look like the more expensive blood oranges. Old meat was dyed to make it appear fresh. Jams and jellies were tinted to make them look like they had more fruit than they actually did. This practice became so common that dye manufacturers offered their colorants with the following descriptions, “egg substitute,” “mustard color,” “beer,” “pie filling,” and “raspberry color.”
To make matters worse, some of these artificial colors were poisonous. According to Daniel Marmion in the Handbook of U.S. Colorants, “In 1820, Frederick Accum reported the demise of a woman who frequently ate pickles while at her hairdresser—pickles that had been colored green with copper sulfate. A survey taken in Boston in 1880 showed that 46% of all candy examined contained one or more mineral pigments, chiefly lead chromate. Perhaps the classic horror story of the time is that of the druggist who in 1860 gave a caterer copper arsenite to use for making a green pudding for a public dinner. Two people died as a result.” A headline in an 1884 edition of the New York Times cried out, “Poison in Every Cup of Coffee,” the reporter detailing two coffee mills in Brooklyn that had been using coloring agents containing arsenic and lead to make their beans look like Java.
It was Pearle Wait who thought up the notion of adding colors and flavors—raspberry, lemon, orange, and strawberry—to the granulated gelatins currently on the market. Jell-O was born. Sales reached $250,000 in 1902 and continued to climb quickly over the next decades, thanks in part to the printed color recipe booklets. So when food writers lament the decrease in quality cooking time spent in American kitchens, don’t forget our friends the Victorian cooks, who were more than happy to never have to look at another calf’s foot, piece of seaweed, or powdered, dried sturgeon bladder again.
Finally released from the drudgery of unwieldy thickeners, jellies and custards of all kinds, both wine and fruit, were now easy to make and therefore these recipes were printed in almost every cookbook. Orange pudding was made from segmented, seeded oranges covered with cold custard and topped with beaten egg whites. Snow pudding, for which there are endless recipes and flavors, is a molded dessert made from fruit juice, gelatin, and beaten egg whites. It was often served with a sauce that is similar to a crème anglaise. Here is a recipe from Fannie that we adjusted slightly to give you a good idea of the range of gelatin desserts enjoyed in her time.
ORANGE SNOW
Snow was a very popular dessert and had many variations. The Boston Globe was full of similar recipes throughout the 1890s. I prefer to make it with fresh-squeezed orange juice for a very light, refreshing dessert. Note that the egg whites will lose their shape and structure as they are gently whisked into the fruit juice. This is not a mistake.
2¾ cups fresh-squeezed chilled orange juice, plus 2 teaspoons zest
¼ cup lemon juice, plus ½ teaspoon zest
1 cup sugar, plus 1 teaspoon (for whipping egg whites)
½ ounce powdered gelatin (2 envelopes)
3 cups boiling water
2 egg whites, whipped to soft peaks
Pinch salt
8 to 10 wineglasses for serving
1. Combine citrus juice and zest with 1 cup sugar and whisk until sugar is almost completely dissolved. Sprinkle gelatin on top. Let stand 5 minutes. Add 3 cups boiling water and stir. Strain and chill to 45 degrees; mixture should just begin to set up.
2. Beat egg whites and salt until very soft peaks start to form (peaks should slowly lose shape when whisk is removed). Add 1 teaspoon sugar and continue to beat until soft peaks have formed (and hold their shape). Add egg white mixture to gelatin mixture and fold whites in gently with whisk until incorporated. Transfer to mold or wineglasses and chill.
Serves 8 to 10.
An updated recipe for prune pudding can be found at www.fannieslastsupper.com.
TO MAKE FANCY JELLIES FOR THE PARTY, WE HAD TO START WITH molds, and these were originally made by the English out of tin-lined copper. Molds were made in the shape of royalty, pets, and even famous locations in London, including the Belgrave, the Savoy, and the Carlton. By the late 1800s, the Victorians had over a thousand mold designs to choose from. Here in the States, molds were made from steel, which was easy to bend and less expensive than copper. However, steel tended to rust over time and was a poor heat conductor—not a good thing when trying to produce a chilled dessert. These molds also tended to be simpler and plainer in design, mostly oval and round (the ubiquitous melon mold comes to mind), since odd shapes and projections were difficult to manufacture.
Layered Lemon Jelly
This gelatin mold is based on a basic lemon jelly which is then colored using natural ingredients to create multicolored layers. You can mix and match as you like, use a small mold or a large one, and play with the color combinations any number of ways. The design of the mold will determine how many colors you wish to use and how to use them. For example, the mold we used for the dinner party had a pineapple design on the bottom (the top when served), and therefore we used yellow-colored jelly for the pineapple, green for the leaves, etc. I have also provided two versions of this recipe. One uses homemade calf’s-foot gelatin; the other, easier version simply calls for powdered gelatin.
HOW TO MAKE NATURAL FOOD COLORINGS
Green: Process 1 bag baby spinach in food processor. Sieve liquid, then pass through jelly bag.
Yellow: Simmer ½ teaspoon of saffron in 2 cups water until liquid is reduced to about 1 ounce (2 tablespoons) and is vibrant in color. Pass through fine sieve.
Red: Peel and grate three small beets. Place in medium saucepan and cover with cold water, about 3 cups. Bring to simmer over medium heat and simmer for 40 minutes. Drain beets, reserving liquid and discarding beets. Reduce liquid to ½ cup. Pass through jelly bag.
White: Add 2 tablespoons heavy cream per pint of jelly.
HOMEMADE GELATIN FROM CALF’S FEET
This was a much less smelly and easier proposition than we had originally thought it would be. Yes, you do need to purchase split calf’s feet, but the good news is that this gelatin base can be used to thicken a great many jellies or puddings. We decided to use this gelatin in our lemon jelly but used regular powdered gelatin in the other two jelly molds. We did detect a slight aftertaste to the calf’s-foot gelatin, and did not want the flavor of the Spatlese or rhubarb jellies to be affected.
4 calf’s feet, split in two
1 tablespoon sugar
¼ cup lemon juice, from 2 lemons
1 cup white wine
Water
1. Soak split calf’s feet in cold water for 1 hour; drain. Transfer soaked feet to 17-quart stockpot, cover with water, and bring to boil for 10 minutes; drain. Return feet to stockpot, and add sugar, lemon juice, wine, and 6 quarts of water to cover. Bring to boil and reduce heat to maintain gentle simmer; simmer for 4 hours. Remove and discard feet, skim fat, and strain liquid through fine mesh strainer. Let cool to room temperature. Transfer to refrigerator and chill overnight.
2. When it firms up, remove any fat from the top and wash the surface with warm water to remove all traces of grease. Lift out the jelly without disturbing the sediment at the bottom. Use per recipe for Lemon Jelly Mold.
Yields about 3 quarts
LEMON JELLY USING POWDERED GELATIN
Lemon-flavored jellies were the most common base flavor for Victorian jellies. Using powdered gelatin, they are also very easy to make.
4½ cups water
7½ teaspoons powdered gelatin
¾ cup lemon juice
1¼ cups sugar
1. Measure ½ cup water into a small bowl. Sprinkle powdered gelatin on the surface of the water and set aside for 5 minutes to soften.
2. Meanwhile, combine lemon juice, 1 cup water, and sugar in a small saucepan and warm over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar is melted. Remove from heat. Stir in softened gelatin until dissolved. Slowly add remaining 3 cups water, stirring constantly. Pass through jelly bag or fine sieve until mixture is clear.
3. Divide the gelatin into separate bowls and color as desired, adding ¼ teaspoon of coloring at a time. (See page 190 for natural colors.) Pour into chilled jelly mold. Let each layer set completely before adding the next.
For additional jelly recipes, including Lemon Jelly Made with Calf’s-Foot Gelatin, Spatlese Jelly with Black Corinth Grapes, and Rhubarb Jelly with Strawberry Bavarian Filling, go to, www.fannieslastsupper.com.