A Banquet of Unfired Food (1909)

It was impossible to resist going back to our source of a few days ago for some more blog fodder. How could I resist a title like Unfired Foods and Hygienic Dietetics for Prophylactic Feeding and Therapeutic Feeding? As its title suggests, the book promoted raw food as a healthy eating option, and it included a significant number of recipes as well as several menus. But before we get to the details, please enjoy one of the front pages, which contained a mission statement of sorts:

Let it be understood

that this book

is written for those who

“EAT TO LIVE”

and to

CURE

those who

LIVE TO EAT.

It is useless to study

ASTRONOMY

without a foundation

in rational

GASTRONOMY

I give you a suggested banquet menu from the book:

A BANQUET MENU

Served in 8 Courses.

COURSE ONE.

Serve only one of the following dishes:

An apple cut into eight sections and arranged to represent a lotus.

An orange with the peeling turned down to represent a flower.

A banana stuffed with a few nuts and peeling replaced.

COURSE TWO.

Serve about one ounce of one of the following foods for nibblers:

Pecan meats, carobs, chufas, dried olives (one-half ounce).

COURSE THREE.

Serve one of the following health drinks:

A lemonade. Orangeade. Fruit frappee. Tamarade. Rhubarbade.

Fresh cider. Fresh grape juice. Near-milk.

COURSE FOUR.

Serve according to the convenience of the season:

A fruit salad, an herbal salad, a salad pie or a flower salad.

COURSE FIVE.

Serve a small dish of cereal foods as neatly as you can prepare them:

Brownfood. Honey flakes. Evaporated fruit flakes. Pound cake.

Fruit bread.

COURSE SIX.

This course is optional.

Lentil surprise salad (small dish). One ounce of either lemon, cottage cheese, horseradish, cheese, cranberry savory cheese or cereal confections.

COURSE SEVEN.

Serve a small dish of the following preparations for dessert :

Banana mousse. Berry sauce. Apple sauce. Plain dessert.

COURSE FINALE.

Serve the fingerbowl.

When so many courses are served each individual dish must be comparatively small. A menu of six courses is long enough for most festive occasions.

I was baffled by Near-milk and Brownfood. The former is explained, but the latter is not.

NEAR MILK

Near-milk is prepared like near-buttermilk, with the exception that in place of the rhubarb juice only pure water or orange juice is used. This milk is wholesome, delicious, appetizing, cooling and refreshing. All the infectious diseases, such as consumption, lumpjaw and several fevers which may be transmitted to man in cows milk are barred out of near-milk.

NEAR BUTTERMILK

Soak in a cup 3/4 full of water

1 oz. Flax seed and beat it about every ten minutes during the course of one hour with a rotary eggbeater. Before beating the last time fill the cup nearly full with water and then let the seed settle. Meanwhile mix and rub into a cream

1 oz. Pignolias or Peanuts flaked exceedingly fine and

½ oz. Rhubarb Juice. Put this cream into a cup and add

3 ½ oz. Rhubarb Juice and beat it briskly with a rotary beater and then add

3 ½ oz. Flaxseed fluid and beat it again briskly. Now pour it through a large tea strainer, stirring the while, to keep it from clogging. Serve in a glass with a teaspoon or rye straw. At your option you may add a half ounce honey (teaspoonful).