Random Menu Thoughts.

I haven’t given you a menu for some time, so purely at random I have selected this gem – which I am sure will help you all solve the What Shall We Have for Breakfast, Luncheon, and Dinner Today, Not Forgetting the Servants.

The author of Menus for Every Day of the Year, published in 1912, and written by M. Jebb Scott suggests the following for October 28:

BREAKFAST
Grilled Kippered Salmon.
Game Omelet.

LUNCHEON
Stewed Eels.
Fried Calf’s Liver
Batter Pudding.
Fig Roly-Poly

DINNER
Clear Soup.
Filleted Mackerel, Parsley Sauce
Roast Ox Heart
E.M.Pudding
Coffee Moulds
Parmesan Soufflé

SERVANTS’ DINNER
Liver and Bacon
Fig Roly Poly.

A whole lot of random thoughts pop up into my head and compete for attention when I read this. In no particular order I noted that:

- There are two puddings at both luncheon and dinner.
- I have never, in my whole, entire, complete life to date, been offered Game Omelette for breakfast. My life is the poorer for that.
- The dinner ends with a small savoury dish. That is just so British.
- The servants obviously got the leftovers of the Family’s luncheon pudding.
- Didn’t the Family get Bacon with their Liver!? If not, why on earth not?
- We don’t eat Ox Heart much these days. Why?
- Recycling of leftovers was an art form in those days. The breakfast menu for the next morning included “Minced Ox Heart and Tomatoes.”
- Is “kippered” salmon another name for smoked salmon?
- I hope there were vegetables – that they were “assumed” to be present, but not menu-worthy.
- Ditto the custard for the puddings.
- Who (or what) was E.M.?

E.M. Pudding.
Cream together 3 oz. of butter and 4 oz. of sugar, add two or three eggs, and half a gill of warm milk. Then lightly mix in 6 oz. of self-raising flour, 2 oz. each of candied peel, cherries, and sultanas. Grease some fancy tins, dust some caster sugar, and flour over them, half fill with the mixture, and bake in a moderate oven from fifteen to twenty minutes.

What are your thoughts?

Quotation for the Day …

No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers. Laurie Colwyn.