#historic cooking

[benjhawkins]

Behold, the worst food I cooked this summer:

DANDYFUNK

A “dessert” made by sailors from rations of molasses and hardtack and baked until “brown and bubbly”.

George Boughton tells us the processes:

���A rough canvas bag was made into which hard ship's biscuits were placed; then we hammered the bag on the windlass until the contents were converted into what we termed flour. Next we courted the cook, offering to "wash up" for him all his greasy slushy pans, … in return for which voluntary service we secured a pinch of ground ginger, and the loan of a shallow square baking pan... We emptied the contents of the canvas bag, ... mixed this with slush purloined from the tin containing the awful stuff we used for greasing down the masts...we added a little salt water until a lovely dough resulted, when it was flattened out in the baking-pan, and placed in the oven until nicely browned.”

From Seafaring, by George Boughton, 1926

It tasted like molasses-scented sand! But I suppose after weeks of salt horse and hardtack dandyfunk would really be a treat.

[libralthinking]

Babylonian Stew.

[white-throated-packrat]

The toast water is for people who can't keep else anything down. The various beef teas are for people who can keep them down -- you've cooked beef and possibly a bone in water and the liquid now has protein and some salt, some minerals, even some vitamins in it and will help the sick person recover enough to eat actual food.

[astraedax]

Historic Cooking

Nasaump

Nasaump is a traditional Wampanoag dish that is made from dried corn, local berries, and nuts. It is boiled in water until it thickens, and is similar to a porridge or oatmeal. 1 1/2 cups grits or cornmeal* 1 cup strawberries, raspberries, blueberries or a combination of all three 1/2 crushed walnuts, hazelnuts, sunflower seeds or a combination of all three 1 quart water Maple syrup or sugar to taste (optional) Combine cornmeal, berries, crushed nuts, and the optional sweetener in a pot of water and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat to medium and cook, stirring frequently, for 15 minutes-20 mins (*cornmeal will cook faster than grits).

Samp

This recipe is the English version of Nasaump. The word samp is a simplified English version of the word nasaump.

This description comes from the 1600s book "Two Voyages to New England", by John Josselyn:

It is light of digestion, and the English make a kind of Loblolly of it to eat with Milk, which they call Sampe; they beat it in a Morter, and sift the flower out of it; the remainder they call Hominey, which they put into a Pot of two or three Gallons, with Water, and boyl it upon a gentle Fire till it be like a Hasty Puden; they put of this into Milk, and so eat it.

Modern Version

2 cups coarse corn grits 4 cups water 1 cup milk ¼ cup sugar

Bring water to a boil in large saucepan with a heavy bottom. Add the corn grits and stir. Simmer until they are soft, about 10 minutes, and the water has been absorbed. Serve with milk and sugar.

Curd Fritters

Curds are a soft cheese like cottage cheese or ricotta. These fritters are a lot like thin pancakes or crepes. This recipe is from the 1594 cookbook "The Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin" (pp. 47-48):

Take the yolks of ten Egs, and breake them in a pan, and put to them one handful Curdes and one handful of fine flower, and sttraine them all together, and make a batter, and if it be not thicke ynough, put more Curdes in it, and salt to it. Then set it on the fyre in a frying pan, with such stuffe as ye will frie them with, and when it is hot, with a ladle take part of your batter, and put of it into the panne, and let it run as smal as you can, and stir then with a sticke, and turne them with a scummer, and when they be fair and yellow fryed, take them out, and cast Sugar upon them, and serve them foorth.

Modern Version

5 eggs curds (ricotta, cottage or other soft cheese) wheat or corn flour salt cooking oil or butter sugar

Make a thin batter with the eggs and equal amounts of curds and flour. Season with salt. Heat a small amount of cooking oil in your frying pan. When the oil is hot, pour in the batter and tip the pan to make the batter spread very thin (that’s what “let it run as small as you can” in the recipe means). They should be like crepes. When brown on one side, use your knife to flip them over or slide them onto a plate and flip them over into the pan. Add more oil to the pan when needed. Serve with sugar sprinkled on the top if you wish.

Turkey Sobaheg

Sobaheg is the Wampanoag word for stew. Like most stews, this dish is easily adapted to seasonal ingredients. The ground nuts help to thicken the sobaheg. Variations of this dish are still made in Wampanoag country today.

1/2 pound dry beans (white, red, brown or spotted kidney-shaped beans) 1/2 pound white hominy corn or yellow samp or coarse grits 1 pound turkey meat (legs or breast, with bone and skin) 3 quarts cold water 1/4 pound green beans, trimmed and cut into 1 inch-lengths 1/2 pound winter squash, trimmed and cubed 1/2 cup raw sunflower seed meats, pounded to a course flour (or pounded walnuts) Dried onion and/or garlic to taste Clam juice or salt to taste (optional)

Combine dried beans, corn, turkey, seasonings and water in a large pot. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, turn down to a very low simmer, and cook for about 2 1/2 hours. Stir occasionally to be certain bottom is not sticking. When dried beans are tender, but not mushy, break up turkey meat, removing skin and bones. Add green beans and squash, and simmer very gently until they are tender.

Add sunflower or nut flour, stirring until thoroughly blended.

Boiled Bread

Boiled bread is a small patty made mostly of cornmeal with crushed nuts and berries added in. It is dropped in a pot of boiling water and when done, rises to the top. 1 quart slightly boiled water 1/2 cup cornmeal 1/2 cup corn flour 1/2 cup dried cranberries, blueberries, and/or currants 1/2 cup crushed nuts or seeds (walnuts, hazelnuts or sunflower seeds) Maple syrup or sugar to taste (optional) Combine all ingredients in large bowl and mix thoroughly. After mixing, slowly add a spoonful at a time of slightly boiled water. When the mix is thick enough to be sticky, shape round patties (about 3 inches in diameter and 1/2 inch thick). Return water to slight rolling boil and drop in 1 or 2 patties, carefully making sure they do not stick to the bottom. Remove breads when they begin to float.

Stewed Pompion

This is a delicious recipe for pumpkin, known as "pompions" to English people in the 17th century, as were all squash. It is one of the earliest written recipes from New England, from a book written by John Josselyn, a traveler to New England in the 1600's. (John Josselyn, "Two Voyages to New England").

John Josselyn called this recipe a “standing dish” suggesting that this sort of pumpkin dish was eaten everyday or even at every meal. He called it “ancient” because English housewives had cooked this recipe in New England for a long time.

The Ancient New England standing dish. But the Housewives manner is to slice them when ripe, and cut them into dice, and so fill a pot with them of two or three Gallons, and stew them upon a gentle fire a whole day, and as they sink, they fill again with fresh Pompions, not putting any liquor to them; and when it is stew'd enough, it will look like bak'd Apples; this they Dish, putting Butter to it, and a little Vinegar, (with some Spice, as Ginger) which makes it tart like an Apple, and so serve it up to be eaten with Fish or Flesh: It provokes Urine extreamly and is very windy.

Modern Version

4 cups of cooked (boiled, steamed or baked) squash, roughly mashed 3 tablespoons butter 2 to 3 teaspoons cider vinegar 1 or 2 teaspoons ground ginger 1/2 teaspoon salt

In a saucepan over medium heat, stir and heat all the ingredients together. Adjust seasonings to taste, and serve hot.

[paranoid-artist]

Lafayette yearns for the goulash.

[alpaca-clouds]

How to cook in a medieval setting

Alright. As some of the people, who follow me for a longer while know... I do have opinions about cooking in historical settings. For everyone else a bit of backstory: When I was still LARPing, I would usually come to LARP as a camp cook, making somewhat historically accurate food and selling it for ingame coin. As such I know a bit about how to cook with a historical set up. And given I am getting so much into DnD and DnD stories right now, let me share a bit for those who might be interested (for example for stories and such).

🍲Cooking at Home

First things first: For the longest time in history most people did not have actual kitchens. Because actual kitchens were rather rare. Most people cooked their food over their one fireplace at home, which looked something like what you see above. There was something made of metal hanging over the fireplace. At times this was on hinges and movable, at times it was set in place. You could hang pots and kettles over it. When it came to pans, people either had a mount they would put over the fire or some kind of grid they could easily put into place there with some sourts of mounts (like the two metal thingies you can see above).

If you have a modern kitchen, you are obviously used to cook on several cooktops (for most people it is probably four of them), while in this historical you obviously only had one fire. Of course, as you can also see in the picture above, you could often put two smaller pots over the flames or put in a pan onto the fire additionally. But yes, the way we cook in modern times is very different.

Because of this a lot of people often ate stews and soups of sort. You could make those in just one pot - and often could eat from the same stew for days. In a lot of taverns the people had an "everything stew" going, which worked on the idea that everyone just brought their food leftovers, which were all put into one pot everyone would eat from.

Now, some alert readers might have also noticed something: What about bread and pastries? If you only have one fireplace and no oven, how did people make bread?

Well, there were usually three different methods for this. The most common one was communal ovens. Often people had one communal oven in a neighborhood. Especially in a village there might just be a communal oven everyone would just put their bread in to bake. (Though often this oven would only be fired up once or twice a week.)

The second version to deal with this some people used was a sort of what we today call a dutch oven. A pot made either of metal or clay with a lit you would put into the hot coals and then put bread or pastries into that, baking it like that.

There was also a version where people just baked bread in pans on the fire, rotating the bread during the baking process. At least some written accounts we have seem to imply. (Never tried this method, though. I have no idea how this might work. My camp bread was mostly done in dutch ovens or as stickbread.)

Keep in mind that the fireplace at home was very important for the people in historical times. Because it was their one source of warmth in the house.

🏕️ Cooking at Camp

Technically speaking cooking at camp is not that different - with the exception of course that you have to drag all your supplies along. And while in Baldur's Gate 3 and most other videogames you can carry around several sets of full-plate armor and several pounds of ingredients so that dear Gale can whip something up... In real life as an adventurer running around you need to make decisions on what to take along.

If you have read Lord of the Rings, you might remember how many people have criticized Sam for actually dragging all his cooking supplies along and how sad he was for not being able to cook for most of the time, because they were very limited in taking ingredients along.

So, yes, if you are an adventurer who is camping out in the open, you will probably need to do a lot of hunting and gathering to eat during your travels. You can take food for a couple of days along, but not for a lot.

A special challenge is of course, that while you can cook food for several days when you are at homes, you do not want to drag along a prepared stew for several days. So usually you will cook in smaller batches.

A lot of people who were journeying would often just take along one or two pots along.

So, what would you eat as an adventurer travelling around while trying to save the world from some evil forces? Well, it would depend on the time of the year of course. You would probably hunt yourself some food. For example hares, birds or squirrels. Mostly small things you can eat within one or two days. You do not want to drag along half a dead deer. In the warm months you might also forrage for all sorts of greens. You also can cook with many sorts of roots. Of course you can also always look into berries and other fruits you might find.

Things you might bring with you might be salt and some spices. A good thing to bring along would be herbs for tea, too, because I can tell you from experience that water you might have gotten from a river does not always taste very well - and springs with fresh water are often not accessible.

Now, other than what you can access the basic ideas of camping fires and cooking with them has not changed in the last few thousand years. While modern people camping usually have a car nearby and hence will have access to a lot of ingredients. But the general ideas of how to build a fire and put a pot over it... has not really changed.

So, yeah.

Just keep in mind that for the most part in historical settings until fairly recently, there was not much terms of proper kitchens. People cooked over an open fire and hence had to get at times ingenius about it.

[the-merry-otter]

Potage From Meat

(15th century Italian)

"Take lean meat and let it boil, then cut it up finely and cook it again for half an hour in rich juice, having first added bread crumbs. Add a little pepper and saffron.

When it has cooled a little, add beaten eggs, grated cheese, parsley, marjoram, finely chopped mint with a little verjuice. Blend them all together in a pot, stirring them slowly with a spoon so that they do not form a ball. The same may be done with livers and lungs."

2 1/3 lb stewbeef 4 cups water "Rich juice": 31 oz (3 cans) concentrated beef broth 1 1/2 cups dry bread crumbs 3/4 tsp pepper 8 threads saffron 5 eggs 1 1/2 cups grated cheese (~ 7 oz) 3/8 cups chopped parsley 3/4 tsp dried or 1 tsp fresh marjoram 1 1/2 tbsp chopped fresh mint verjuice: 3 tbsp wine vinegar 1 tsp salt (to taste)

"Bring meat and water to a boil and cook 10 minutes; take meat out and cut up small; put back in water with broth, bread crumbs, pepper, and saffron. Simmer 1/2 hour over low flame, being careful that it does not stick. Mix in remaining ingredients; cook, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes. This makes about 10 cups.

This is a rather meat-rich version; it also works with as little as half this much meat."

Source: Cariadoc's Miscallany

Otter's notes:

I used two beef stock cubes which was fine.

I wasn’t sure how small the meat should be cut, so I did pieces of a couple centimetres diameter. This worked well in my opinion.

I don’t enjoy skimming the scum off water I’ve boiled meat in, so I used fresh water for the second part. I did not find the result lacking in flavour.

Cariadoc isn't kidding about it sticking. Make sure to stir every 2-4 minutes. Stuck doesn't necessarily mean burned though.

It’s sooooo so tasty, can recommend

[timetraveltasting]

ORIGINAL TOLL HOUSE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES (1938)

Since I won't be home for the holidays this Christmas (we are going to Australia to spend a summery Christmas with my in-laws), I went home to Canada a little early for a quick trip - most importantly to meet my new, adorable niece! Surrounded by childhood favourites and nostalgia, I thought it would be a great idea to make a classic Tasting History treat with my mom: the Original Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies. This first ever chocolate chip cookie recipe, originally called Chocolate Crunch Cookies (a later newspaper typo created its now-common name), was created by Ruth Wakefield and her head pastry chef Sue Brides at The Toll House Inn in Whittman, MA in 1938. The restaurant was already quite popular among locals and food critics, and Ruth finally decided to share the recipe for these star cookies with the public. It was printed in newspapers, and the popularity of the chocolate chip cookie grew even further when Nestlé printed it on the back of their packaging. In the original recipe, Nestlé's chocolate is mentioned by name, and the growing popularity of the cookie recipe led to a 500% increase in profits for the company. Their chocolate bars originally had to be chopped up into 'pea-sized' pieces by hand until Nestlé began selling scored bars with the correct size, and eventually chocolate chips - created especially for making chocolate chip cookies. Interestingly enough, the original chocolate chip cookie recipe is very close to the one that is still on packages today. I have very fond memories of making chocolate chip cookies with my mother as I was growing up, and I thought, what better way to compare the two recipes than to also make this original chocolate chip cookie recipe with her! See Max’s video on how to make this dish here or see the ingredients and process at the end of this post, sourced from his website.

My experience making it:

Finally in my natural element in Canada, with easier to find ingredients that I recognized and could more predictably bake with, I was able to follow the recipe exactly. The one major change I made was to omit the chopped nuts completely, mostly because I'm not a fan of nuts in baked goods.

Because this recipe requires an overnight element, my mom and I began preparing the cookie dough the day before we wanted to bake and eat them. My mom began by beating the eggs, then creaming the butter with a hand mixer while I portioned out the other ingredients. She added in the sugars, eggs, baking soda dissolved in water, and vanilla and mixed them until combined. I then slowly sprinkled in the flour and salt mixture into the mixing bowl while she mixed, until that, too, was combined. I was worried the dough was looking a little too dry and dense, but my mom assured me it still looked right - I totally trust her baking instincts! We then folded the chocolate chips into the dough with a spatula, then covered it with Saran wrap and let it sit in the fridge overnight. The next evening, we preheated the oven, took our dough out (which had really hardened up!), and began portioning it out into little balls of dough. My mom had to use a fork and a bit of force to portion it, since it was so cold and solid! We used a weigh scale to determine the 14 oz. size of ball, but honestly, we did end up going up to 20 oz. or so at some points - it would have taken a long time to weigh every ball. On a lined baking sheet, we fit about 14 balls of dough, spaced about 2 inches apart. After pressing down on each just a little bit, we tossed the first batch in the oven. It smelled so good, and the bits of raw cookie dough I snuck while waiting for the cookies to bake were heavenly! When we took them out, we transferred them onto cooling racks. I think we baked about 5 trays of cookies overall, leaving us with an absolute plethora of chocolate chip cookies by the end! They looked small, but classic - almost like the chocolate chip cookies you can buy in a store. Very photogenic, in my opinion.

My experience tasting it:

Of course, our patience got the best of us, and we did not wait for the cookies to cool before trying them. No regrets! They tasted wonderful - crisp on the bottom and edges, but soft and a little melty in the middle. Really ideal, this kind of cookie could please everyone. My mom likes her cookies on the crispier side, and I like mine on the soft and gooey side, yet we both were very happy with how this recipe turned out. So was my dad, sister, my brother-in-law, and my aunt! In fact, these cookies didn't taste much different from my mom's chocolate chip cookie recipe (as I remembered it). She claims she also got her recipe from a newspaper, so it may have also had the same origin as this one. The flavour of these cookies was sweet, but balanced by the salt and rich brown sugar. They were so tasty, I think this could even become my main chocolate chip cookie recipe, although I will probably make each cookie even bigger in order to get a large volume of soft gooeyness. And I will definitely halve the recipe! 100 cookies or so, as tasty as they are, is an awful lot to get through and would definitely become noticeable on the waist. Otherwise, I agree with Max that there is a reason this recipe has lasted so many decades in its nearly-original form - it really is a crowd-pleaser. I was happy I was able to take some cookies with me back to Germany so I can share some with my husband! If you end up making this dish, if you liked it, or if you changed anything from the original recipe, do let me know!

Original Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies original recipe (1938)

Sourced from Ruth Wakefield’s Toll House Tried and True Recipes by Ruth Wakefield (1938).

Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies Cream 1 cup butter, add 3/4 cup brown sugar, 3/4 cup granulated sugar, and 2 eggs beaten whole. Dissolve 1 tsp soda in 1 tsp hot water, and mix alternately with 2 1/4 cups flour sifted with 1 tsp salt. Lastly add 1 cup chopped nuts and 2 bars (7 oz.) Nestle’s yellow label chocolate, semi-sweet, which has been cut in pieces the size of a pea. Flavor with 1 tsp. vanilla and drop half teaspoons on a greased cookie sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes in 375° oven. Makes 100 cookies. 

Modern Recipe

Based on the recipe from Ruth Wakefield’s Toll House Tried and True Recipes by Ruth Wakefield (1938) and Max Miller’s version in his Tasting History video.

Ingredients:

1 cup butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 beaten eggs

1 tsp baking soda, dissolved in 1 tsp hot water

1 tsp vanilla

2 1/4 cups flour

1 tsp salt

1 cup chopped nuts

14 oz. chocolate chips

Method:

Cream the butter until smooth. Mix in the brown sugar, granulated sugar, eggs, baking soda water, and vanilla until combined.

Whisk together the flour and salt. Add this to the butter mixture and mix until just combined.

Stir in the nuts and chocolate chips just until evenly distributed.

Cover and chill the dough overnight.

Preheat the oven to 375°F (190° C).

Scoop dough into balls, about 14 grams each. A half a teaspoon is way too small of a measurement, so I found weighing the dough to be the best way. Place them on lined baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches between each cookie. Press the cookie dough down a bit.

Bake for about 8 minutes, or until golden brown.

Take them out of the oven and let them cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Serve them forth!

[buildoblivion]

🟩⬛️ queens ⬛️🟩

[mcytblrconfessions]

I'm not usually one for rpf, it just doesn't interest me. However the one cc I have consistently imagined in various scenarios is Jack Manifold. I don't mean like shipping rpf, but more like historical fiction. I like to imagine Jack in different time periods and think about what he would do in situations pertaining to those times

[aheathen-conceivably]

I have a dream of growing old, raising a child, building a home...🎶

[thejoyofseax]

Why We Can't Have Medieval Food

I noted in a previous post that I'd "expand on my thinking on efforts to reproduce period food and how we’re just never going to know if we have it right or not." Well, now I have 2am sleep?-never-heard-of-it insomnia, so let's go.

At the fundamental level, this is the idea that you can't step in the same river twice. You can put your foot down at the same point in space, and it'll go into water, but that's different water, and the bed of the river has inevitably changed, even a little, from the last time you did so.

Our ingredients have changed. This is not just because we can't get the fat from fat-tailed sheep in Ireland, or silphium at all anywhere, although both of those are true. But the aubergine you buy today is markedly different to the aubergine that was available even 40 years ago. You no longer need to salt aubergine slices and draw out the bitter fluids, which was necessary for pretty much all of the thing's existence before (except in those cultures that liked the bitter taste). The bitterness has been bred out of them. And the old bitter aubergine is gone. Possibly there are a few plants of it preserved in some archive garden, or a seed bank, or something, but I can't get to those.

We don't really have a good idea of the plant called worts in medieval English recipes. I mean, we know (or we're fairly sure) it was brassica oleracea. But that one species has cultivars as distinct as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, Savoy cabbage, kohlrabi, and gai lan (list swiped from Wikipedia). And even within "cabbage" or "kale", you have literally dozens of varieties. If you plant the seeds from a brassica, unless you've been moderately careful with pollination, you won't get the same plant as the seeds are from. You can crossbreed brassicas just by planting them near each other and letting them flower. And of course there is no way to determine what varietal any medieval village had, a very high likelihood that it was different to the village next door, and an exceedingly high chance that that varietal no longer exists. Further, it only ever existed for a few tens of years - before it went on cross-breeding into something different. So our access to medieval worts (or indeed, cabbage, kale, etc) is just non-existant.

Some other species within the brassica genus are as varied. Brassica rapa includes oilseed rape, field mustard, turnip, Chinese cabbage, and pak choi.

We have an off-chance, as it happens, of getting almost the same kind of apple as some medieval varieties, because apples can only be reproduced for orchard use by grafting, which is essentially cloning. Identification through paintings, DNA analysis, and archaeobotany sometimes let us pin down exactly which apple was there. But the conditions under which we grow those apples are probably not the same as the medieval orchard. Were they thinned? When were they harvested? How were they stored? And apples are pretty much the best case.

Medieval wheat was practically a different plant. It was far pickier about where it would grow, and frequently produced 2-4 grains per stalk. A really good year had 6-8. In modern conditions, any wheat variety with less than 30 grains per stalk would be considered a flop.

Meats are worse. Selective breeding in the last century has absolutely and completely changed every single species of livestock, and if you follow that back another five centuries, some of them would be almost unrecognisable. Even our heritage breeds are mostly only about 200 years old.

Cheese, well. Cheese is dependent on very specific bacteria, and there are plenty of conditions where the resulting cheese is different depending on whether it was stored at the back or front of the cave. Yogurts, quarks, skyrs, etc, are also live cultures, and almost certainly vary massively. (I have a theory about British cheese here, too, which I'll expand on in a future post)

So, even before you go near the different cooking conditions (wood, burnables like camel and cow dung, smoke, the material and condition of cooking pots), we just can't say with any reliability that the food we're making now is anything like medieval people produced from the same recipe. We can't even say that with much reliability over a century.

Under very controlled conditions, you could make an argument for very specific dishes. If you track down a wild mountain sheep in Afghanistan, and use water from a local spring, and salt from some local salt mine, then you can make a case that you can produce something fairly close to the original ma wa milh, the water-and-salt stew that forms the most basic dish in Arabic cookery. But once you start introducing domestic livestock, vegetables, or even water from newer wells, you're now adrift.

It is possible that some dishes taste exactly the same, by coincidence. But we can't determine that. We can't compare the taste of a dish from five years ago, let alone five hundred, because we're only just getting to a state where we can "record" a taste accurately. Otherwise it's memory and chance.

We've got to be at peace with this. We can put in the best efforts we can, and produce things that are, in spirit, like the medieval dishes we're reading about. But that's as good as it gets.

[barnlarn]

Thought I'd share my favorite bread recipe and storage method :) I make 2-3 boules every couple of weeks and eat a slice as toast with an over-easy egg for breakfast every day. Love that it's easy to make and there's no sugar.

Townsends historical cooking youtube channel where I found the recipe.

Recipe as plain text below the cut!

No-knead Artisan Bread

Tools Dutch oven (preferably cast iron or coated cast iron) Mixing bowls & ramekins Working surface Oven

Ingredients 3 cups bread flour 1.5 t of salt 1 egg white 2 egg yolks 2 T melted butter ¾ cup milk Barm or barm substitute- - ½ cup warm water - ½ t yeast - 1 T bread flour Handful of cornmeal

Method Combine barm sub ingredients in a cup and set aside to let the yeast activate. It should turn frothy after a few minutes.

Combine flour and salt in a medium mixing bowl. In ramekins, separate egg yolks from the one egg white. Slowly whisk the melted butter together with the yolks. Use a small mixing bowl to heat the milk to lukewarm in the microwave, then add egg white and milk, then barm sub.

Make a well in the dry ingredients, then add wet and mix thoroughly with hands for a few minutes so that plenty of air enters the dough. The dough will be sticky. Shape into a ball, cover the bowl and dough with a damp cloth. Set aside for 12 - 24 hours at room temp to rise (the longer it proofs, the stronger the flavor). It should be doubled in size by the end. After resting, preheat the oven to 450 with the dutch oven inside.

Turn out the dough onto a floured working surface; the dough should be spongy. Gently shape into a boule. Try not to work too much flour into the dough, you don’t want to knead it. Lightly score the top of the boule with a bread knife. Sprinkle a thin layer of cornmeal in the bottom of the preheated dutch oven, and place boule into the dutch oven and cover. Bake for 30-35 min, or until the crust is deep golden brown.

[thank-you-doggo]

Had an idea.

✨😭💗

Thank you for this Peakness Its cannon now

[the-golden-vanity]

Born to be Hanged by Keith Thomson, is, without a doubt, the "dudes rock"-ingest book I've read all year. An account of one of the most ambitious raids of the Golden Age of Piracy taken primarily from the diaries of six men who participated in the voyage, it was a nice change of pace from the tales of shipwreck and tragedy I often gravitate towards. I'd like to read more books like this (well-informed and engaging accounts of the Golden Age of Piracy), so if you have any recommendations, please let me know!

In celebration of finishing the book, I also made a sweet avocado dish described by one of the book's protagonists, the seafaring naturalist William Dampier, in his accounts of his voyages around the world. Tasting History with Max Miller describes this as an early form of guacamole, but it's got a much more dessert-y flavor profile. This one's definitely getting added to my regular cooking rotation.

[heycarrots]

There’s been a lot of discourse about the nature of James and Miranda’s relationship. There’s even been a lot of discussion on my podcast about it. One thing I want to make clear is that my podcast is a platform for discussion on all points of view. I’m not going to agree, 100%, with everything that’s said, but it makes the views of my guests no less valid. There’s no right or wrong, here, because this is art and therefore, it is subject to interpretation.

My intent, however, is to attempt to get as close to the original intent of the actors as possible because we look at a show or a film or a play as going through several layers of distillation. Each level purifies the intended narrative leaving its truest essence.

When we make a reduction sauce using an alcohol of some kind, let’s say a red wine, the heat applied to it burns off things we don’t need for flavor. You’re never going to get drunk off of red wine reduction because there’s almost no alcohol left in it. That all gets burned off, leaving only the flavor components, which is what we wanted all along, anyway. We want that extra element that enriches the flavor of the steak, by adding nuance.

So let’s take apart that meal.

We start with the birth of the idea. The story kicks around in an author’s head, trying to get out, growing bigger and more persistent until it outgrows the confines of the mental box inspiration is stored in and has to be let out. That idea, that’s the cow.

The author raises that idea, feeds it, watches it grow, and then, ultimately slaughters it. That sounds awful, but once you have that idea pulsing, growing, evolving and then finally commit the final draft on paper, it is a kind of death. The life of the story comes to an end and it becomes memorialized in a mausoleum. Readers will come to visit, spend time with it, lay down flowers, cherish it, and mourn its passing.

The next level is adaptation. That’s the steak. There are many ways you can slice the story, large roasts encompassing the whole story or a smaller, hyper-focused character study fillet mignon.

A writers room gets hold of the cow and carves it up. They choose what gets cooked and what gets tossed. A GREAT group of writers saves the bones. They take in the entire supporting structure of the piece and while the whole story may not make it onto the screen, they will have slow roasted the bones for a stock. When you watch a show like Black Sails, where themes are introduced that won’t fully be explained or explored until several seasons later, that’s what that is. It is the stock being used to flavor the whole dish. You’ve distilled the entire cow to its purest essence and so every scene, every line of dialogue, every acting choice, encompasses the entirety of the story. A line from episode one is defined by knowledge of the finale and in regard to dialogue, defined by an actors’ knowledge of a character’s backstory. There are many writers rooms who are creating the bones of the story as they go, which means they aren’t starting with a rich stock. You can’t trace back character motivations or choices to begin with because those motivations changed throughout production.

Black Sails, again, isn’t one of those shows. Steinberg and Levine came into the writers room with their stock pot full and sloshing, spilling story everywhere. The richness of the details they were laying can make season one a bit hard to consume unless you are ready for a story on that level. Viewers need to come to the table with some bread to sop up all those character details because we WILL need them later.

Over the course of finalizing scripts and blocking out episodes, the steak is cooked. Like any great steak, this story is medium rare. More juice comes out with every bite. It’s what makes the show infinitely rewatchable. It continues to cook on the plate, but because it wasn’t overdone, it never dries out.

When the actors get ahold of it, that’s the reduction sauce we were talking about. That sauce provides nuance and flavor. That’s the emotion. A line of dialogue on a page is just ink. It’s nothing until it’s spoken aloud. And like any bit of language in this world, it’s subject to interpretation. In this case, it’s the actor who does the interpreting.

I spoke on the podcast about the art of subtext and how huge a role it plays in Black Sails. One example we used is Jane Eyre. It’s one of the most frequently adapted novels in the English language and with each adaptation, we get a new version of our characters. The most volatile and subject to change is Rochester. There are MANY versions of Rochester that I find appalling (including the original beast in the book), but each actor has formed him into something else, based on their performance. Toby Stephens takes Rochester and turns him into a silly tragic romantic, broken many times over by a society he never really fits into, despite the status of his birth. He connects with Ruth Wilson’s Jane because she fully and happily inhabits that space on the fringes that Rochester thinks he needs to climb out of. Jane takes his hand on the outside of the wall, turns him away from the guarded palace and shows him the wild world that was at his back this whole time.

This is what Toby Stephens, Luke Arnold, Louise Barnes, Zethu Dlomo, and really all the actors for whom their subtextual choices make them reflect like prisms, have done with their performances.

In the final distillation, character motivations and emotions are finalized by the actor. Writers can pontificate, the source material lies dead in its lovely tomb, but stories live and breathe by their storytellers.

What we’re left with is Toby’s face telling the world how deeply Flint loves Silver. Every single choice tells this story.

We’re left with Luke showing us how much Silver is repressing in his feelings for Flint. Luke’s face shows us an incredible depth of feeling and a door slamming shut.

We’re left with the incredible intimacy between James and Miranda, which speaks of a decade of shared physical intimacy. There’s an openness, a freeness to it until the moment in episode 3 when Miranda learns that James has found the Urca and is leaving soon to pursue it. She gives some of it away when she says “I thought I’d have you all to myself”. She is mourning the loss of intimacy that she only gets in short windows of time. They aren’t strained because James isn’t attracted to her, but because he’s rarely there. She has him for a few days at a time before he’s off on another hunt. The coldness starts from the moment he tells her he’s leaving in a few days because I believe she thinks he won’t be coming back, that this is the hunt he won’t survive and she’ll finally have lost both James and Thomas. From the moment Richard Guthrie darkens her door, she’s looking for a way to weaponize him and get them out. For her, it’s a race against the clock and she’s willing to sacrifice a bit of her relationship with James in the present to secure happiness for them in the future.

This is also why James still has sex with her before leaving, even though he’s furious for her reading Meditations to Richard. This is how they connect. They connected through physical intimacy in the flashbacks, as well. Him stroking her thumb in the carriage before the kiss. Tactile contact to seal their understanding of each other. Miranda bracing her hands on his chest during important moments in the Hamilton’s home, something she also does to Thomas, to show physical connection, physical intimacy. Miranda thrives on physical touch.

To think that, for 10 years, James is lying there like an object for Miranda to use, is, to me, short sighted. To think that James doesn’t love Miranda outside of a group, is also ignoring the fact that, 10 years on, James will not leave on a hunt (angry as they both are) without physically connecting with her, trying so hard to reach beyond his anger and the wound freshly opened from sight of that book he’s chosen not to look at for probably the better part of those 10 years. The way his hands hover over her back after she comes and he desperately wants to be with her in that moment, like the best of their moments, but he just can’t, speaks to the depth of his love for her.

So many fans of the show point to this sad sex scene as one of the most important character moments for James and Miranda, but I consistently come to the opposite conclusions about WHY it’s important and what we learn from it, because I’m taking my cues from the actor’s choices, not the director or the writers. On the page, in plain ink, he hates having sex with her. Toby and Louise show us, however, that they are trying to recapture a thing that is fleeting, reaching out to each other to patch up an old wound from which the scab has been picked off, leaving it seeping and raw.

From Toby’s performance, regardless of the words he uses years later to describe it, we see not a character who “loves men” or a character who “loves women”, but a character who LOVES. I don’t see Flint defining that love in terms of boxes and parameters. He’s a character who must be coaxed out, but then loves without reason, without a safety net, as he proves with his love of Silver. As was also referenced by a guest on the podcast, he places a sword in Silver’s hand and says “do it”.

Anyway, this post got away from me and took several turns, but the love between James and Miranda being dismissed by so many in the fandom has been bugging me for a while and I just needed to emotionally vomit on tumblr.