If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Pete, who may or may not contain peanuts (nobody’s quite sure) commented thus on the last but one entry:

‘The recipe for brain sauce (page 196) please. I’m sure it would be thoroughly delectable.’

Sadly, it’s rather predictable. It comes just before Brandy Sauce and Bread Sauce, both of which I’d far rather eat, and is made like this:

Wash the brain in salt water, and skin. Tie in muslin, place in cold water, and boil for 10 minutes. Chop finely and add to 1/2 pint of parsley sauce (see page 194).

The more of this ghoulish ‘Radiation Cookery Book’ I read, the more it starts to feel like one of those old choose your own adventure games (turn to page 13 if you want to open the treasure chest, page 42 if you want to go through the door or page 22 if you want to shred a sheep’s brain).

So, for Pete’s benefit, to save him a sleepless night over the mystery that is parsley sauce, think of that nasty muck you get with boil-in-a-bag fish. Or, as page 194 puts it, it’s white sauce with two teaspoons of chopped parsley plus salt and pepper to taste.

This whole book is just so fantastically outdated and has loads of stuff about using up old food in it:

Cut some stale bread into thick slices and place them on a baking tray. Cook in the oven for 20 minutes (regulo setting mark 6). The time will vary slightly according to the staleness of the bread.

That makes rusks.

There’s lots of talk about dripping, too, and an implicit assumption that you’ve got loads of the stuff just hanging around your kitchen. The recipe for Large Spanish Onions only specifies ‘5 or 6 onions (large)’ in the ingredients list, but the method is far more involved:

Place in a greased tin. Spread dripping over and cover with greased paper and place on a baking tray.

I don’t have a clue what’s so Spanish about that.

Unless it’s dripping from a matador.

Come to that, I don’t know how you’d cook it. The instructions tail off enigmatically after you’ve put them on a baking tray.

Two bizarre ones to close on (there is 310 pages of this madness), the recipes for ‘potatoes’ and for ‘peas’.

Potatoes

Ingredients: 2lbs of potatoes
Method: If old, these should be cut up and baked in a tin with chickens. If the potatoes are new, place them in a paper bag with a lump of butter and salt, and put in a casserole half filled with water. Cover with a lid.

Peas

Ingredients: 3lbs peas, salt, sugar, butter
Method: Melt some butter in a casserole [dish]. Pour boiling water over the peas just before they are required. Drain the water from the peas, leaving them damp, and place them in the casserole [dish] with the butter. Add salt and sugar. Cover with a lid, shake well and place in the oven.

Notice how there is 50% more peas than potatoes there. That’s a lot of peas (and sugar). I’m almost tempted to try some of these (sans dripping or sheeps’ heads) for a themed dinner party…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 13th, 2004 at 9:21 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.