Food History

[BattleNymph]

In 1383 Lowenbrau brewery was founded in Munich, Germany.

1390 The oldest surviving cookbook in English is 'The Forme of Cury', from about 1390.

In 1411 Charles VI of France gave sole rights to the aging of Roquefort cheese to the village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, and all Roquefort still must be aged in the caves there today.

In 1444 Any merchant caught selling adulterated saffron in Bavaria was burned alive.

In 1449 Lorenzo de Medici (The Magnificent) of Florence was born. Many in this Italian noble family were patrons of learning and the arts. Lorenzo’s great granddaughter, Catherine, is known as the ‘mother of French haute cuisine’ because when she married the French king Henry II, she brought the finest Italian chefs, and her passion for fine food, with her to France. (With apologies to my French readers. Reasonable rebuttals accepted for future publication). (heh)

In 1495 The first written mention of Scotch whiskey is in the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland. A Friar John Cor was the distiller.

1550 The first chocolate arrived in Europe.

1610 The 1610 Community Regulations of Kracow, Poland stated that bagels were to be given as a gift to women in childbirth.

http://www.foodreference.com/html/html/food-history-1600.html

[Mouser]

1610 The 1610 Community Regulations of Kracow, Poland stated that bagels were to be given as a gift to women in childbirth.


I wonder why that was...

[BattleNymph]

Banbury Tarts
A Golden Oldie from Saltwater Foodways
Bann Berries
One cup of sugar, 1 cup seeded raisins chopped, 1 egg, juice of 1 lemon. Put all in a double boiler and cook two minutes.
Make pastry of 2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup lard, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, a little salt. Roll out and cut thin.
Put a teaspoon of raisin mixture in each puff, and bake.
[Miss E. Agnes Stewart. From The Stonington Cookbook, Reprint of the Cookbook of the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor of the Second Congregational Church (Stonington, CT,) ca. 1900, p. 45.]

You can make your pastry yourself, or if you wish, use prepared puff pastry, re-rolled so it will not puff quite so dramatically.

Filling:
1 cup sugar
1 cup raisins
1 egg
juice of one lemon (and zest, if you wish)

Pastry:
2 cups flour
1/2 cup lard (or vegetable shortening)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
6-8 tablespoons ice water

Preheat the oven to 425.
Chop the raisins coarsely by rocking a knife through them. Mix the filling ingredients well then cook, stirring constantly until it is slightly thickened. Cool completely. Mix the pastry ingredients and chill. When you are ready to make the tarts, roll out and cut two rounds for each tart. Put filling on the bottom round, moisten the edges, then place top round over, pressing the edges together with a floured fork. Bake for 15-20 minutes.

Yield will vary depending on how large a cutter you use.

[BattleNymph]

The History of the Potato Chip

1853, Saratoga Springs, New York

As a world food, potatoes are second in human consumption only to rice. And as thin, salted, crisp chips, they are America's favorite snack food. Potato chips originated in New England as one man's variation on the French-fried potato, and their production was the result not of a sudden stroke of culinary invention but of a fit of pique.

In the summer of 1853, American Indian George Crum was employed as a chef at an elegant resort in Saratoga Springs, New York. On Moon Lake Lodge's restaurant menu were French-fried potatoes, prepared by Crum in the standard, thick-cut French style that was popularized in France in the 1700s and enjoyed by Thomas Jefferson as ambassador to that country. Ever since Jefferson brought the recipe to America and served French fries to guests at Monticello, the dish was popular and serious dinner fare.

At Moon Lake Lodge, one dinner guest found chef Crum's French fries too thick for his liking and rejected the order. Crum cut and fried a thinner batch, but these, too, met with disapproval. Exasperated, Crum decided to rile the guest by producing French fries too thin and crisp to skewer with a fork.

The plan backfired. The guest was ecstatic over the browned, paper-thin potatoes, and other diners requested Crum's potato chips, which began to appear on the menu as Saratoga Chips, a house specialty. Soon they were packaged and sold, first locally, then throughout the New England area. Crum eventually opened his own restaurant, featuring chips. At that time, potatoes were tediously peeled and sliced by hand. It was the invention of the mechanical potato peeler in the 1920s that paved the way for potato chips to soar from a small specialty item to a top-selling snack food.

For several decades after their creation, potato chips were largely a Northern dinner dish. In the 1920s, Herman Lay, a traveling salesman in the South, helped popularize the food from Atlanta to Tennessee. Lay peddled potato chips to Southern grocers out of the trunk of his car, building a business and a name that would become synonymous with the thin, salty snack. Lay's potato chips became the first successfully marketed national brand, and in 1961 Herman Lay, to increase his line of goods, merged his company with Frito, the Dallas-based producer of such snack foods as Fritos Corn Chips.

Americans today consume more potato chips (and Fritos and French fries) than any other people in the world; a reversal from colonial times, when New Englanders consigned potatoes largely to pigs as fodder and believed that eating the tubers shortened a person's life—not because potatoes were fried in fat and doused with salt, today's heart and hypertension culprits, but because the spud, in its unadulterated form, supposedly contained an aphrodisiac which led to behavior that was thought to be life shortening. Potatoes of course contain no aphrodisiac, though potato chips are frequently consumed with passion and are touted by some to be as satisfying as sex.