Tag Archives: recipes

Tasting History: Shakespeare’s Kitchen, Last Dinner on the Titanic, and Gastroanomalies

18 Nov

Food can be a strong reminder of one’s own past such as Marcel Proust’s madeleine, but it can also go beyond the personal to evoke historic moments in time as well. An amusing British series The Supersizers Go featured restaurant critic, Giles Coren, and comedian, Sue Perkins, eating through time including the Middle Ages, The French Revolution, and Ancient Rome. The title is inspired by the documentary Super Size Me. You can sample some of Sue and Giles’ zany antics on Hulu. Watching them made me want to dip my own spoon in the culinary broth of history and find recipes from the past. These three books all available at the Hoboken Public Library will give you a taste of some sweet and savory flashbacks.

Shakespeare’s Kitchen: Renaissance Recipes for the Contemporary Cook

shakespeares kitchen
Shakespeare’s Kitchen by Francine Segan with color photographs by Tim Turner collects recipes from the Renaissance period. The recipes have been updated for the modern stove top and given in the standard recipe format that we are used to (during the Renaissance ingredient lists, cooking times, and exact measurements were not included). A nice inclusion though is that original recipes are also provided in most cases as well. Additionally, sprinkled throughout are quotes from Shakespeare and historical tidbits. It is interesting to see what ingredients are included and excluded. Prunes and dates are used heavily in savory dishes, but tomatoes are missing. Although several dishes have edible flowers and rosewater featured in them, chocolate and vanilla are not found in a single dessert since they were unknown at the time in Shakespeare’s London. I do not think the majority of the recipes will be making a heavy rotation in most people’s diet today unless they are a heavily committed SCA member, but I would still recommend this book for its interesting historical value and an option for a unique dinner party; the book puts together sample menus, invitations, and decorating ideas for this purpose. Segan has three other cook books available from BCCLS libraries The Philosopher’s Kitchen, Opera Lover’s Cookbook, and Dolci.

Last Dinner on the Titanic

titanic-book
Last Dinner on the Titanic by Rick Archbold with recipes by Dana McCauley is richly illustrated and a treat for food lovers as well as those with an interest in history’s most famous ship. Several menus from the voyage survived (including two from the tragic evening of April 14, 1912) and dishes are recreated from ones that would have been used at the time in first, second, and third class. The book gives suggestions for everything you would need for throwing a Titanic themed dinner party including music likely to have been played on the ship, fashion suggestions, and even down to the proper way to fold the napkins. Beautiful illustrations and photographs of items and the interiors of the Titanic and her sister ship, the Olympic, are found throughout. Vivid descriptions on what it would have been like dining on the ship and short biographies of some of the passengers (amongst them Hoboken born silent film star and model Dorothy Gibson) that you may want to role play are also included. If you find having a dinner party recreating such a tragic moment in history lachrymose, you could instead use the book to create an Edwardian themed meal; the food is representative of the best of what was available at that time in the UK and America. Several other books Archbold has written or co-written are also available from BCCLS Libraries including two more books about the Titanic: The Discovery of the Titanic and Deep-Sea Explorer: The Story of Robert Ballard, Discoverer of the Titanic.

Gastroanomalies

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Gastroanomalies: Questionable Culinary Creations from the Golden Age of American Cookery by James Lieks takes a humorous look back at old ads, recipes, and photographs from the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s. I was slightly disappointed in the book. Although I found some of Lieks quips about the pictures and other materials funny, some of his humor seemed to me to be channeling his inner ten year old boy and a few I found a bit off putting and crude. I was also somewhat disappointed that there were not more recipes to go with some of the images of food. In some case the reader is left wondering what an item might truly be beyond the lump of food in the grainy photograph. Perhaps, though this is for the best, as someone who once served both a turducken and a piecaken for Thanksgiving, my family and friends may have been saved from some jiggly jello abomination that I found amusing. The book is less well researched than the other two books and I would recommend it more for people who enjoy humorous takes on life than foodies or history buffs. If you enjoy this work, James Lieks also has written The Gallery of Regrettable Food and Mommy Knows Worst which are available from BCCLS Libraries.

-Aimee Harris, Head of Reference

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Love and Sweets in Paris: Paris in Love, Lunch in Paris, and Paris, My Sweet

23 Oct

Paris, like New York, is a city that conjures up strong emotions and pictures in one’s mind whether or not you have actually been there.  My grandmother grew up in Paris, but moved to New Jersey when my father was two.  I have been lucky enough to visit Paris twice—once as a tween with extended family and once as an adult with my fiancé.

Paris for me always feels both beautifully foreign and yet nostalgically like home.  I grew up with homemade croissants and petite pains au chocolate as a weekend breakfast treat. Thanksgiving included escargots floating in garlic butter before the turkey, and salad was always served at the end of the meal.  I had heard so many stories about Paris that by the time I actually got there it felt like visiting a pen pal who you have written for years; you may have never seen them before, but you already know them so well.

I was interested in these three memoir pieces since all three women left this area (New York or New Jersey) and had their own unique encounters with Paris.  All are enamored with the delicious French cuisine, but they are in different stages of their lives romantically (one single, one engaged, and one married with two kids), which gives a unique view of their experience there.  Whether you have lived in Paris or simply have daydreamed about a trip, you will enjoy these vicarious visits.

Paris in Love: A Memoir by Eloisa James

paris-in-love
Eloisa James is the nom de plume of a New York Times bestselling author of historical romances and a Shakespeare professor.  In this memoir she describes the year she spent on sabbatical from her teaching job with her Italian born husband and two children in Paris.  James details both her interest in both French pastries and French fashion.  The work intersperses snippets from her Facebook posts with longer essays.  James was inspired to spend the year abroad after overcoming cancer.  I found many of the longer essays which look at both her time in Paris and invoke her childhood to be very moving, but I also highly enjoyed the moments of humor many of them detailing her son and daughter’s experiences at an Italian Language school and some bits about their ongoing efforts to get their overweight chihuahua to lose weight that made me giggle out loud.  Fans of her romance novels will enjoy an insight into James’s life, but even if you are not a regular reader of that genre, you will still find something to delight in this engaging book.

Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, With Recipes by Elizabeth Bard

lunch-in-paris

What makes this perspective distinctive from the other two memoirs is that Elizabeth Bard is not simply a visitor or short term resident of Paris, but marries a Parisian and becomes a French citizen.  Because of this she delves more deeply beneath the surface of what it is to be French and must accept how these changes became a permanent part of her life.  The novel begins with her first lunch date in Paris with Gwendal, a young man from Northern France and their subsequent romance.  After spending weekends together, she soon moves in with him in Paris.  The book as she notes does not end in the way of fairy tales with her marriage, but pushes onward through a serious illness of a beloved family member and her further experiences of acclimating to life in Paris.  The book includes a few recipes at the end of each chapter and concludes with her decision to write this book as a kind of cookbook.  Although the recipes are a nice addition for those who want to create a little piece of Paris to eat in their own home, they didn’t feel essential to the book, which felt very rich on its own.  I liked that the book balances her love of Gwendal and the art and charm of Paris with the shifts in expectations of what one’s future will be that come from moving permanently to another country.

Paris, My Sweet: A Year in the City of Light (and Dark Chocolate) by Amy Thomas

paris-my-sweet

Thomas’s book, like Bard’s, will appeal to foodies, but in the place of recipes she includes recommendations for bakeries, cafés, and boutiques for acquiring the delicious treats she chronicles during her time working as an ad executive for Louis Vuitton in Paris.  For those not planning to hop a plane across the Atlantic in the near future there are also recommendations for places where sweets can be acquired in New York City.  Thomas’s stay in Paris does not have a definite end like James’s yearlong sabbatical, but with her struggle to master the language and periodic pining for the States it is clear that she is not putting down roots in the same way that Bard does.  However, her job does allow for some workplace drama and humor that the other two lack.  It also causes her to reevaluate decisions that she has made in her life such as with earlier relationships, which add greater depth to what at first felt a bit of a shallow lark. However, many of these issues such as infertility and which country she will choose to make her permanent home are left unresolved at the memoir’s end.  The wonderful descriptions of the sweets is what truly caries this work.

-Aimee Harris, Head of Reference

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