At risk of boring you, I could not resist staying with our cookbook of yesterday’s post, the Domestic Economy, and cookery, for rich and poor, by a lady (1827). The index alone is worth reading. It is full of fascinating and mysterious dishes which I have never seen in modern cookbooks. I was tempted by Caldomuchocaldo, but was eventually swayed by ‘cubbubs’ and assumed you might be too.
Ball Cubbub.
Pound the meat, fat and lean, with a sufficient quantity of onions, garlic, curry-powder, pepper, and salt; mix all well up together, make it up into balls, and fry them in butter; serve them in a heap upon buttered or curried rice, or in a curried sauce, on fried bread or parsley, or almost in any way, with plain boiled rice in another dish.
Cubbubs = Meatballs? Rissoles? Curried Hamburger Patties? I remained confused until I read the next recipe:
Curry Cubbub.
Cut the meat into small equal pieces, and thread them upon silver skewers, intermixed with garlic and onions, rub them over with ginger, sprinkle with vinegar, dust them over with a little curry-powder, and fry them in butter.
The skewers give the game away. Cubbubs are kebabs (or kebobs) and represent another phonetic interpretation of the original Arabic word meaning (according to the OED) small pieces of meat cooked on skewers. The first mention in English is in 1698, and sums them up pretty well – “Cabob is Rostmeat on Skewers, cut in little round pieces no bigger than a Sixpence, and Ginger and Garlick put between each.”
We might have Caldomuchocaldo another day, if you are interested.
Tomorrow’s Story …
A Shooting Luncheon.
Quotation for the Day …
When it comes to foreign food, the less authentic the better. Gerald Nachman, San Francisco Chronicle
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