Category: food history

Bread Missiles in Bohemian San Francisco

bohemian grove, northern california

In his 1914 collection of recipes and culinary anecdotes, Bohemian San Francisco: Its Restaurants and Their Most Famous Recipes, Clarence Edgar Edwords defines bohemianism as the “naturalism of refined people.”  He laments that this urbane sort of urban savagery has been made to serve as “the cloak of debauchery and the excuse for sex degradation,” and argues that bohemians’ “innate gentility” prevents “those things Society guards against.” So virtuous are the bohemians, in fact, that “men and women mingle in good fellowship and camaraderie without finding the sex question a necessary topic of conversation.” These noble, free souls “do not find it necessary to push exhilaration to intoxication; to increase their animation to boisterousness.”

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Liederkranz á la Hoosier

variations of human stature

In his “Introduction” to the 1922 volume of virile culinary delectables, The Stag Cook Book: Written for Men by Men, Robert H. Davis proclaims that cooking “is a gift, not an art” and that eating “is an art, not a gift.” The Stag Cook Book is a careful consideration of both activities, with recipes contributed by true gustatory veterans. Davis writes that the “immortals who have contributed recipes to this volume were born with a silver spoon not in their mouths, but in their hands.”

Among this manly compendium of mouthwatering delights is an unusually named dish, Liederkranz á la Hoosier. Liederkranz is the American version of the odoriferous German cheese, Limburger, while “Hoosier” is the official demonyn for a resident of Indiana. Together they make a pungent snack fit for the keenest of masculine appetites.

Liederkranz á la Hoosier

Run around and find a real nice Liederkranz cheese and treat it as follows to get a serving for four people:

Mix the cheese with about a quarter of a pound of butter and work into a fine paste, adding salt, pepper, French mustard, paprika and Worcestershire sauce as you go along. Just add them to taste.

When the paste is smooth put in one finely chopped small green pepper; one small onion, or chives.

Mix well!

And serve on rye bread—spread thick. To be thoroughly technical, I suppose I should have said: spread to taste!

Editor’s Note :—You can have a wonderful time and make quite a reputation for yourself by inventing cheese combinations. Ordinary cream cheese makes a splendid base for original mixtures. Try combinations of finely minced pimento, celery, olives, chives and peppers (green and red). And anything else that promises well.

 
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The Commonsensical Delights of Fried Chicken

leghorn cock

“What are we coming to? Whither are we drifting? And oh, times and oh, manners!”, writes Frank Crane in his 1920 collection of observations and ruminations, Adventures in Common Sense.

What — or who — occasions Crane’s lament? None other than the “chief high worshipful of the United States Food Research Department, Mary E. Pennington,” who in her research findings “deposes that FRIED CHICKEN is bad for us. That is to say, fried chicken that is fresh killed.”

The chief high worshipful decrees that all chicken “should be ripened from three to ten days in a temperature of 32 degrees.” Only then is the fowl fit to eat.

Crane considers this insanity. He writes that he “cannot get over the conviction that these scientific people are set upon robbing us of our most delectable things to eat. Naturally we would not strike a woman, but why does the Pennington lady attack us at the very core and citadel of our national gustatory treasure?”

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