Category: dinner

Food of the Gods or Devil’s Dung?: The Enigmatic Asafoetida

asafoetida, illustration

Asafoetida is a touchy herb. Add too much and it ruins a meal; add too little and it fails to impart its unique flavor. Indeed, its many seemingly contradictory names attests to its enigmatic nature. Known variously as devil’s dung, food of the gods, stinking gum and giant fennel, the plant smells pungent when raw; but when cooked it delivers a pleasant flavor, reminiscent of leeks.

The 1919 book Sino-Iranica: Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilization in Ancient Iran reports that asafoetida is “a vegetable product consisting of resin, gum and essential oil in varying proportions, and that it is “generally used in India as a condiment, being especially eaten with pulses and rice.” The leaves are also consumed, and “the white under part of the stem” is considered delicacy, particularly when it is roasted and flavored with salt and butter.

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A Finnish Meal on the Go: The Meat Rooster

Finnish baking

Written at the suggestion of an English bookseller in St. Petersburg, Harry De Windt’s 1901 travel guide Finland as It Is relates tales of adventure and peril in the titular country’s vast, wild expanses. Tired of shopworn travel guides, the St. Petersburg bookseller asked De Windt to write something that would do justice to the mystique of the land of a thousand lakes. “During the summer season,” the bookseller lamented, “I am pestered every day for books upon Finland. But what am I to do? There are none in the market…. Why don’t you write your experiences? Tell people in England and America how to get to Finland, and how to travel through it as pleasantly and as cheaply as possible, and I will answer for the sale of the book — at any rate in Petersburg.”

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Bettina’s Spanish Lamb and Cottage Pie

Housewife with bakeware

“Making the Most of the Meat,” a chapter in Louise Bennett Weaver’s and Helen Cowles Le Cron’s whimsical 1922 tome A Thousand Ways to Please a Family with Bettina’s Best Recipes, begins with a complaint one housewife, Ruth, makes to another, Bettina:


“Oh, dear,” sighed Ruth, taking off her hat and leaning back against Bettina’s cushioned armchair, “I’ve just paid my meat-bill for last month, and it certainly did bite a chunk out of my housekeeping allowance! But I don’t know what to do about it. Fred is like most men and wants meat for one meal at least six days of the week. And that costs money!”

What to make of a man for whom meat is a most serious matter? Weaver and Le Cron present Ruth’s remarks as exemplifying an all-too-common household quandary. Fortunately, ever resourceful Bettina has the answer.

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