The Old Foodie
 Seems like everyone's a foodie these days. People stick their noses in the air and rave about organic, grain-fed asparagus and hand-picked, shade-grown chicken, all cooked in delicate fusions of seasonal sauces and paired with eclectic, flinty wines. Um, yeah.
Instead of hipster eats, we'll take some history for dinner, thanks to Janet, "the Old Foodie," who we discovered late last year. This culinary blogger has been serving up 400 words on the history of food, plus a fascinating recipe, pretty much every day for a couple years now. Janet bypasses current trends and instead gives context to long-standing food favorites from around the world like coffee (nope, not invented by Starbucks). She even indulges us with a peek into the stranger pots of the past with recipes such as roast camel's hump (does not taste like chicken!). We popped into Janet's virtual kitchen to see what's cooking now. Why did you start this blog? My son nagged me to do it, that's the short answer! I have been interested in food for as long as I can remember, and in food history for almost as long. I wanted to improve my writing and to get more efficient at it, with a long-term goal of it playing a bigger part in my retirement (whenever that happens!). I decided to commit to sending little stories out every weekday to friends and family, as a writing discipline, to see if they had an appeal and to get feedback. Pretty soon, I found that my emails were being forwarded to others who I didn't know. From the beginning my son nagged me to "blog" them. At that time I don't think I even knew what a blog was. Eventually, to get him off my back by proving it was technically beyond me, I logged onto Blogger.com... and within a few minutes had a blog! I was so amazed I decided instantly to take the risk and go public. It has been—and still is—enormous fun. Where do you get all this great information? You must have a huge library in your home. I do have a pretty good library, but many of my resources are electronic. The real versions of very old manuscripts and texts are for libraries and museums or very wealthy collectors. Many of these old sources are available via online databases—some only through subscribing institutions such as university libraries, but there are still a huge number that are freely available. I have made up a list of over 500 of these freely available online historic cookery texts, which anyone can download via a link in the sidebar of my blog [PDF link here]. So why can't we have Christmas pudding / Easter eggs / birthday cake every day? Ah! But we can! I am determined to prove that there is a celebratory food for every day. That is the point of my perpetual work-in-progress, which I call my Food History Almanac—my collection of food history events and information related to every day of the year. I use it to trigger the ideas for the blog stories, and sometimes to write personalised birthday food histories. Have you used many of the historic recipes? Have any favorites you'd recommend? I haven't used as many as I would like, in their original form, for a variety of reasons (time pressure at this point in my life, and the need to persuade my regular and frequent dinner guests to let me experiment on them!). One of my favourite themes is the idea that there is nothing really new under the sun, and that there is no such thing as a new recipe, only an evolution or adaptation of a pre-existing idea. There are some great old ideas waiting to be rediscovered, and I am constantly surprised that we don't use the past more for inspiration when it comes to cooking. One good example (which I have cooked) is a 14th century English recipe called "Fenkel in Soppes," which is fennel braised with saffron and sweet spices. If you saw that on a restaurant menu today you would think it was very innovative. What are some historic recipes you'd never want to try? I'd pretty well try anything, apart from the downright poisonous, like pickles cooked specifically in a copper pot to "green" them. They probably looked good, but the "greening" came about because of the interaction of the vinegar with the copper to produce very poisonous copper salts. Having said that, I don't think I'd be too enthusiastic about the calf's eyeballs carefully placed along with the rest of the filling in an 18th century Calf's Head Pye. Seems like you have a lot of articles about eggs—why do you think they come up so often? I wasn't aware until you pointed it out that I had so many! I guess they are a universal food, easily available everywhere, and adaptable to so many recipes. There are almost 800 historic recipes on the site now, so it is a bit hard to keep track. I have specially featured recipes for potatoes and gingerbread, so perhaps now I should start an egg archive! Tell us a little about the Christmas recipes. You have quite a collection! I am sentimental about Christmas, that's the main reason behind my collection of recipes! I am also fascinated by the way recipes evolve and are adapted as times change and people migrate and so on—yet they retain echoes of the past. Almost the entire history of the development of cooking techniques can be seen in the modern Christmas cake. The simple staple dish of wheat porridge called "frumenty" was enriched with eggs and wine and dried fruit and minced meat for special occasions such as Christmas, and this basic mixture gave rise to Christmas pudding (a thicker mixture boiled in a cloth) or Christmas cake (baked in a tin in an oven). Mince pies are essentially the same mixture baked in pastry cases or "coffins," which also functioned as an early way of preserving foodstuffs before canning and refrigeration. It worked pretty well, provided the pastry did not crack or get wet. Eating a mince pie is eating history. I love that idea. Some of the older recipes feature meats that are, well, less common on today's tables—turtles, parrots, organ meats, even horse and kangaroo. Have you gotten negative feedback about those? I've never had any abuse—even in one of my early posts on eating dog meat. I guess that is because I'm not promoting the eating of one's pets, I just record that it has happened in times past. That is not to say that I don't get some intrigued or puzzled or disgusted commenters—but it hasn't been personal. Do you cook as much as you write and research? I cook a lot and entertain a lot. I find it extraordinarily difficult to cook small quantities—even though it is a long time since I had adolescent offspring bringing hordes of hungry friends home. My friends and family almost expect to take leftovers home after a meal here. My interest in food history arose out of my love of cooking—which is why my food history interest is recipe-driven. I am more interested in what went onto the dinner table than in the grand sweeps of spice routes and agricultural change. Where have you traveled and what world foods have interested you the most? I have travelled to quite a lot of places around the world—never on long trips unfortunately, but I hope this will change soon. It is almost impossible to say what has interested me most—am interested in all food. The street food of Asia I love. Anything in Paris is fantastic, even if it is not. I love seeking out very local specialties made in a single small area—such as the little sweet/meat pies in Pézenas in the Languedoc. It is always a treat to find good bread from an artisan baker. I am going to buy a Scotch Egg from Fortnum & Mason when I go to London later this month, because they are supposed to be very good—and eel pies at the oldest Eel Pie and Mash shop. You were born in England and give a fair amount of space to English recipes. What stereotypes about English food, past and present, do you think are most unfair? That is a good question—meaning it is not an easy one to answer. I have always been a champion of English food and cannot ignore my heritage. On a daily basis, living in the hot climate of Queensland, I am more inclined to cook light, Asian-inspired food, but the British culinary tradition is magnificent. Until the 17th century, when the world started to open up, English food was probably the best in the world. The view that British food is awful and stodgy and dull is ridiculous—you can eat badly anywhere in the world. Good food always has to be sought out. I don't like any stereotypes; they are prejudices with another name. Do you collect cooking paraphernalia? We're picturing the Old Foodie standing by a big cast-iron stove, pouring an exotic stew into an ornate china dish… No, I am not by nature a collector of "stuff," although I am an information junkie. I do rather fancy the ornate china dish you have tempted me with, but mostly I love my thoroughly modern kitchen. I don't have any desire to do things the hard way on a day-to-day basis, my life is too busy in other ways—although I am full of admiration for those that do try to recreate things in a historically accurate way. Describe your favorite dinner. Would you cook it yourself or have it made for you? Much as I am fascinated by the history of food, my day-to-day pleasure centres around eating good food with good friends. Any good food—fine bread and excellent cheese will do nicely. I do love to cook for people—I think I am happiest when I am cooking for those I love (I'd hate to cook for strangers in a restaurant). We are blessed with good friends who live very close (and also like cooking), so we are all a short stroll away from a dinner party. Often we combine forces, each contributing something to the meal, which is really great, although I never mind doing all the cooking. I love variety, so my favourite meal would include some new idea as well as something familiar. Something made with excellent chocolate is obligatory for dessert. There are a few historic recipes that I am keen to cook soon, so I am thinking that my next dinner party will have Turkie with Raspis (turkey with raspberries, from a French cookbook of 1653) and Parmesan Cheese Ice Cream (from an English cookbook of 1760). Want to come to dinner? Oh yes please! We can't wait to tuck into a meal—real or virtual—with the Old Foodie. Thanks for the mouth-watering history.
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