Category Archives: The Tableaux Blog

These visual studies of food literature tell a story through pictures, and often have an accompanying recipe.

Drinking Food

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Drink of all kinds populates Canadian literature and over the next few months we aim to sample some of it, nay imbibe, though purely in the name of research. The cupboard doors to my liquor cabinet have been thrown open and its contents scrupulously examined . . . for something other than a growing assortment of champagne flutes and, inexplicably, several tiny bottles of Poire Williams eau de vie.

Who better than Austin Clarke to begin the proceedings. In his culinary memoir Pig Tails ‘n Breadfruit, he has dedicated an entire chapter to “drinking food.” For, as his mother sagely advised, “If you know that you going be drinking a lot o’ liquor in the evening, you make-sure that you line your stomach with some good food, hear!” (239). Clarke proposes biscuits with cheese, cou-cou and salt fish, or corned beef with fried peppers and onions.

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I opted for the corned beef. Though I must admit to having later replaced it with a little smoked meat. This is Montreal after all and what is beef if it’s not pickled and smoked.

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Serve with a side dish of hot pepper sauce and a main dish of rum, “straight, man!” (238).

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Clarke, Austin. Pig Tails ‘n Breadfruit: Rituals of Slave Food : a Barbadian Memoir. New York: The New Press, 1999. Print.

 

Photos and Text by Alexia Moyer

To make Dry Pea soop

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This week’s recipe comes from The Johnson Family Treasury: A Collection of Household Recipes & Remedies 1741-1848, edited by Nathalie Cooke and Kathryn Harvey, transcribed by Erin Yanota, with forward by Lynette Hunter.

Johnson Family Treasury

Begun in Hertfordshire and London in the mid-eighteenth century, the manuscript found its way to Canada and into recipe collector Una Abrahamson’s hands and, eventually, to the University of Guelph’s rare book collection where it was taken up by Cooke.

This recipe book is the product of many hands and the editors have seen fit to preserve the visual proof of multiple contributors. Recipes appear in both typescript and in their original handwritten form.

Built over a period of over one hundred years, this collection is rich with instructions for stewing carp and lamprey, making Ratafea cakes and alleviating all manner of diseases from scurvy and pleurisy, to weakness in the ankles and cancer. This is indeed a treasure trove for scholars and amateurs alike interested in the history of medicine as tested by homemakers.

As tempting as it would be to soothe a sore throat with a plaster made from mutton suet, butter and bees-wax, I have elected to try my hand at pea soup. This is partly to do with the fact that the temperature here in Montreal has dropped of late to a brisk -20. At -20 nothing but soups and stews will do. Furthermore, this recipe calls for ingredients one can easily find in one’s “larder”.

Here, in one compact paragraph are the ingredients and (somewhat) vague instructions, transcribed by contributor C (as she is identified by the editors) and contributed by a certain Captain Torin, who has also provided a recipe for hard biscuits. I know not whether Torin’s captaincy was held by sea or by land. That the gentleman had excellent taste in soups, however, is undeniable. This is a pea soup to warm your cockles.

Dry Pea Soop

When you have strain’d off your Peas, stew in a little of that liquor, some sorrel, spinage, Beet leaves, Parsley, Carrot & leeks chopt together (a very little time will do them) in the mean time cut some sallery [celery] into pieces and boil it in the soop, and when the herbs are stewed put the soop to them; then fry a little fatt Bacon, in which you will fry your toasted bread to put into the soop.

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Quick recipe note: If I’ve understood the recipe correctly, Captain Torin calls for the addition of just the pea broth to the soup. Presumably the peas are reserved for some other meal. I’ve included them in this case.

Cooke, Nathalie, Kathryn A. Harvey, Lynette Hunter, and Erin Yanota. The Johnson Family Treasury: A Collection of Household Recipes & Remedies, 1741-1848. , 2015. Print.

 

Text and Photos by Alexia Moyer

 

Great Eggspectations

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Recipe Notes

The first chapter of Gina Mallet’s memoir/food manifesto Last Chance to Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World, is devoted to the egg. The imperiled egg: the unfortunate victim of food science and factory farming. Mallet, whose world war two childhood in Britain was virtually eggless (unless you count the dried variety), has become champion to the egg.

And with this responsibility comes scads of recipes and remembrances of meals past. Eggs of all sorts populate this chapter: oeufs mayonnaise, oeufs en cocotte, oeufs à la Polignac, mousse au chocolat.

HARD BOILED

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In the Garden: Radishes, Roasted Onions and Cold Cucumber Soup

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Recipe Notes (by Alexia Moyer)

Summer has arrived, and with it a plethora of potential literary recipes, most of which can ‒ and should ‒ be enjoyed al fresco. This season, we’re eating seaside with Audrey Thomas, lakeside with Margaret Atwood and hillside with Alice Munro. We’re hosting picnic luncheons and backyard barbecues. Socks are optional. Sandals are not.

This week, we’re gardening with Lorna Crozier, from “The Sex Life of Vegetables” series.

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