When Italian Futurists Declared War on Pasta (1930)

in Art, Food & Drink, History | December 11th, 2020

We must fight against pud­dles of sauce, dis­or­dered heaps of food, and above all, against flab­by, anti-vir­ile pas­ta­s­ciut­ta. —poet Fil­ip­po Tom­ma­so Marinet­ti

Odds are Fil­ip­po Tom­ma­so Marinet­ti, the father of Futur­ism and a ded­i­cat­ed provo­ca­teur, would be crest­fall­en to dis­cov­er how close­ly his most incen­di­ary gas­tro­nom­i­cal pro­nounce­ment aligns with the views of today’s low-carb cru­saders.

In denounc­ing pas­ta, “that absurd Ital­ian gas­tro­nom­ic reli­gion,” his inten­tion was to shock and crit­i­cize the bour­geoisie, not reduce bloat and inflam­ma­tion.

He did, how­ev­er, share the pop­u­lar 21st-cen­tu­ry view that heavy pas­ta meals leave din­ers feel­ing equal­ly heavy and lethar­gic.

As he declared in 1930 in The Futur­ist Cook­book:

Futur­ist cook­ing will be free of the old obses­sions with vol­ume and weight and will have as one of its prin­ci­ples the abo­li­tion of pas­ta­s­ciut­ta. Pas­ta­s­ciut­ta, how­ev­er agree­able to the palate, is a passéist food because it makes peo­ple heavy, brutish, deludes them into think­ing it is nutri­tious, makes them skep­ti­cal, slow, pes­simistic… Any pas­tas­cuit­tist who hon­est­ly exam­ines his con­science at the moment he ingur­gi­tates his biquo­tid­i­an pyra­mid of pas­ta will find with­in the gloomy sat­is­fac­tion of stop­ping up a black hole. This vora­cious hole is an incur­able sad­ness of his. He may delude him­self, but noth­ing can fill it. Only a Futur­ist meal can lift his spir­its. And pas­ta is anti-vir­ile because a heavy, bloat­ed stom­ach does not encour­age phys­i­cal enthu­si­asm for a woman, nor favour the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pos­sess­ing her at any time.

Bom­bast came nat­u­ral­ly to him. While he tru­ly believed in the tenets of Futur­ism—speed, indus­try, tech­nol­o­gy, and the cleans­ing effects of war, at the expense of tra­di­tion and the past—he glo­ried in hyper­bole, absur­di­ty, and showy pranks.

The Futur­ist Cook­book reflects this, although it does con­tain actu­al recipes, with very spe­cif­ic instruc­tions as to how each dish should be served. A sam­ple:

RAW MEAT TORN BY TRUMPET BLASTS: cut a per­fect cube of beef. Pass an elec­tric cur­rent through it, then mar­i­nate it for twen­ty-four hours in a mix­ture of rum, cognac and white ver­mouth. Remove it from the mix­ture and serve on a bed of red pep­per, black pep­per and snow. Each mouth­ful is to be chewed care­ful­ly for one minute, and each mouth­ful is divid­ed from the next by vehe­ment blasts on the trum­pet blown by the eater him­self.

Intre­pid host Trevor Dun­sei­th doc­u­ments his attempt to stage a faith­ful Futur­ist din­ner par­ty in the above video.

Guests eat sal­ad with their hands for max­i­mum “pre-labi­al tac­tile plea­sure” before bal­anc­ing oranges stuffed with antipas­to on their heads to ran­dom­ize the selec­tion of each mouth­ful. While not all of the fla­vors were a hit, the par­ty agreed that the expe­ri­ence was—as intend­ed—total­ly nov­el (and 100% pas­ta free).

Marinetti’s anti-pas­ta cam­paign chimed with Prime Min­is­ter Ben­i­to Mussolini’s goal of elim­i­nat­ing Italy’s eco­nom­ic depen­dence on for­eign mar­kets—the Bat­tle for Grain. North­ern farm­ers could pro­duce ample sup­plies of rice, but nowhere near the amount of wheat need­ed to sup­port the pop­u­lace’s pas­ta con­sump­tion. If Ital­ians couldn’t grow more wheat, Mus­soli­ni want­ed them to shift from pas­ta to rice.

F.T. Marinet­ti by W. Sel­dow, 1934

Marinet­ti agreed that rice would be the “patri­ot­ic” choice, but his desired ends were root­ed in his own avant-garde art move­ment:

… it is not just a ques­tion of replac­ing pas­ta with rice, or of pre­fer­ring one dish to anoth­er, but of invent­ing new foods. So many mechan­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic changes have come into effect in the prac­ti­cal life of mankind that it is also pos­si­ble to achieve culi­nary per­fec­tion and to orga­nize var­i­ous tastes, smells and func­tions, some­thing which until yes­ter­day would have seemed absurd because the gen­er­al con­di­tions of exis­tence were also dif­fer­ent. We must, by con­tin­u­al­ly vary­ing types of food and their com­bi­na­tions, kill off the old, deeply root­ed habits of the palate, and pre­pare men for future chem­i­cal food­stuffs. We may even pre­pare mankind for the not-too-dis­tant pos­si­bil­i­ty of broad­cast­ing nour­ish­ing waves over the radio.

Futurism’s ties to fas­cism are not a thing to brush off light­ly, but it’s also impor­tant to remem­ber that Marinet­ti believed it was the artist’s duty to put for­ward a bold pub­lic per­son­ae. He lived to ruf­fle feath­ers.

Mis­sion accom­plished. His anti-pas­ta pro­nounce­ments result­ed in a tumult of pub­lic indig­na­tion, both local­ly and in the States.

The Duke of Bovi­no, may­or of Naples, react­ed to Marinetti’s state­ment that pas­ta is “com­plete­ly hos­tile to the viva­cious spir­it and pas­sion­ate, gen­er­ous, intu­itive soul of the Neapoli­tans” by say­ing, “The angels in Heav­en eat noth­ing but ver­mi­cel­li al pomodoro.” Proof, Marinet­ti sniped back, of “the unap­pe­tiz­ing monot­o­ny of Par­adise and of the life of the Angels.”

He agi­tat­ed for a futur­is­tic world in which kitchens would be stocked with ”atmos­pher­ic and vac­u­um stills, cen­trifu­gal auto­claves (and) dia­lyz­ers.”

His recipes, as Trevor Dun­sei­th dis­cov­ered, func­tion bet­ter as one-time per­for­mance art than go-to dish­es to add to one’s culi­nary reper­toire.

There is a rea­son why Julia Child’s Coq a Vin and Tarte Tatin endure while Marinet­ti’s  Excit­ed Pig and Black Shirt Snack have fall­en into dis­use.

Uh… progress?

As Daniel A. Gross writes in the Sci­ence His­to­ry Institute’s Dis­til­la­tions:

Marinet­ti sup­port­ed Fas­cism to the extent that it too advo­cat­ed progress, but his alle­giance even­tu­al­ly wavered. To Marinet­ti, Roman ruins and Renais­sance paint­ings were not only bor­ing but also anti­thet­i­cal to progress. To Mus­soli­ni, by con­trast, they were polit­i­cal­ly use­ful. The dic­ta­tor drew on Ital­ian his­to­ry in his quest to build a new, pow­er­ful nation—which also led to a nation­al cam­paign in food self-suf­fi­cien­cy, encour­ag­ing the grow­ing and con­sump­tion of such tra­di­tion­al foods as wheat, rice, and grapes. The gov­ern­ment even fund­ed research into the nutri­tion­al ben­e­fits of wheat, with one sci­en­tist claim­ing whole-wheat bread boost­ed fer­til­i­ty. In short, the pre­war dream of futur­ist food was tabled yet again.

Get your own copy of Fil­ip­po Tom­ma­so Marinetti’s The Futur­ist Cook­book here.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

MoMA’s Artists’ Cook­book (1978) Reveals the Meals of Sal­vador Dalí, Willem de Koon­ing, Andy Warhol, Louise Bour­geois & More

Recipes from the Kitchen of Geor­gia O’Keeffe

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. See her as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Hertella Coffee Machine Mounted on a Volkswagen Dashboard (1959): The Most European Car Accessory Ever Made

in Food & Drink, History, Technology | December 8th, 2020

Cur­rent auto-indus­try wis­dom holds that no car with­out cup hold­ers will sell in Amer­i­ca. Though this also seems to have become increas­ing­ly true across the rest of the world, I like to imag­ine there still exists a coun­try or two whose dri­ving pub­lic holds fast against that par­tic­u­lar design vul­gar­ism. Such places would, of course, lie deep in unre­con­struct­ed Europe, where nobody can go long with­out cof­fee. The solu­tion? The Hertel­la Auto Kaf­feema­chine, the first and only known dash­board-mount­ed cof­fee mak­er.

Man­u­fac­tured specif­i­cal­ly for the Volk­swa­gen Bee­tle, this high­ly civ­i­lized auto­mo­bile acces­so­ry has, 60 years after its intro­duc­tion, near­ly van­ished from exis­tence. Judg­ing by the few known exam­ples, it nev­er had the time to evolve past its tech­ni­cal short­com­ings. For one, it lacks a pow­er switch: “As soon as you plug it into the cig­a­rette lighter, it just gets hot,” writes The Dri­ve’s Peter Holderith. “And as far as the type of cof­fee machine that it is, well, you would have to be pret­ty des­per­ate for caf­feine to make cof­fee in this thing.”

“I always thought they were a per­co­la­tor, or espres­so machine like a Moka… but nope,” says Dave Hord of Clas­sic Car Adven­tures, who pur­chased his own Hertel­la Auto Kaf­feema­chine from an own­er in Ser­bia. It seems “you fill the ves­sel with water, put your cof­fee in the (dou­ble lay­er) screen, and heat up the unit. I pre­sume you heat the unit up with the cof­fee in it, which means this basi­cal­ly brews cof­fee as though it’s tea.” Per­haps only a transcon­ti­nen­tal road-trip­per in 1959 would grow des­per­ate enough to drink it.

Still, as Holderith notes, “the machine does have a few clever fea­tures. The porce­lain cups that came with it appar­ent­ly had a met­al disc on the bot­tom of them that allowed them to stick to the machine mag­net­i­cal­ly” and the unit itself “mounts to the dash with a sim­ple brack­et, allow­ing for the pot to quick­ly be removed and cleaned when nec­es­sary.” Per­haps today’s car design­ers, a group once again look­ing to the past for inspi­ra­tion, will resume the pur­suit of dash­board brew­ing begun by the Hertel­la Auto Kaf­feema­chine. If not, Wes Ander­son can sure­ly find a use for the thing.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Espres­so Mak­er Made in Le Corbusier’s Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­tur­al Style: Raw Con­crete on the Out­side, High-End Parts on the Inside

The Cof­fee Pot That Fueled Hon­oré de Balzac’s Cof­fee Addic­tion

Wake Up & Smell the Cof­fee: The New All-in-One Cof­fee-Mak­er/Alarm Clock is Final­ly Here!

The Time­less Beau­ty of the Cit­roën DS, the Car Mythol­o­gized by Roland Barthes (1957)

178,000 Images Doc­u­ment­ing the His­to­ry of the Car Now Avail­able on a New Stan­ford Web Site

10 Essen­tial Tips for Mak­ing Great Cof­fee at Home

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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How Soy Sauce Has Been Made in Japan for Over 220 Years: An Inside View

in Food & Drink | November 17th, 2020

Soy sauce has fig­ured into the cui­sine of east Asia for more than two mil­len­nia. By that stan­dard, the two-cen­tu­ry-old Fue­ki Shoyu Brew­ing has­n’t been in the game long. But in run­ning the oper­a­tion today, Masat­sugu Fue­ki can hard­ly be accused of fail­ing to uphold tra­di­tion: he adheres to just the same prac­tices for mak­ing soy sauce (shoyu, in Japan­ese) as the com­pa­ny’s founders did back in 1879. You can see the entire process in the Eater video above, shot at the Fue­ki fac­to­ry in Saita­ma Pre­fec­ture, just north­west of Tokyo. Fue­ki him­self guides the tour, explain­ing first the sheer sim­plic­i­ty of the ingre­di­ents — soy­beans, flour, and salt — and then the intri­cate bio­log­i­cal inter­ac­tions between them that must be prop­er­ly man­aged if the result is to pos­sess a suit­ably rich uma­mi fla­vor.

That we all know what uma­mi is today owes in part to the prop­a­ga­tion of soy sauce across the world. One of the “five basic fla­vors,” this dis­tinc­tive savori­ness man­i­fests in cer­tain fish, cheeses, toma­toes, and mush­rooms, but if you need a quick shot of uma­mi, you reach for the soy sauce. In bot­tles small and large, it had already become a com­mon prod­uct in the Unit­ed States by the time I was grow­ing up there in the 1980s and 90s.

It must be said, how­ev­er, that Amer­i­cans then still had some odd ways of using it: the now-acknowl­edged West­ern faux pas, for instance, of lib­er­al­ly driz­zling the stuff over rice. But wider aware­ness of soy sauce has led to a wider under­stand­ing of its prop­er place in food, and also of what sets the best apart from the mediocre — as well as a curios­i­ty about what it takes to make the best.

Fue­ki and his work­ers take pains every step of the way, from steam­ing the soy­beans to decom­pos­ing the wheat with a mold called koji to heat­ing the raw soy sauce in tanks before bot­tling. But the key is the kioke, a large wood­en fer­men­ta­tion bar­rel, the old­est of which at Fue­ki Shoyu Brew­ing goes back 150 years. Today, Fue­ki explains, few­er that 50 crafts­men in all of Japan know how to make them: hence the launch of the in-house Kioke Project, a series of work­shops meant to revi­tal­ize the craft. As he climbs down into an emp­ty kioke, Fue­ki describes it as “filled with invis­i­ble yeast fun­gus that’s unique to our place” — far from a con­t­a­m­i­nant, “the most impor­tant ele­ment, or trea­sure and our heart.” The care and sen­si­tiv­i­ty required, and indeed the indus­tri­al tech­niques them­selves, aren’t so dif­fer­ent from those involved in the mak­ing of fine wines. But it sure­ly takes a palate as expe­ri­enced as Fuek­i’s to taste “choco­late, vanil­la, cof­fee, rose, hyacinth” in the final prod­uct.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Short Fas­ci­nat­ing Film Shows How Japan­ese Soy Sauce Has Been Made for the Past 750 years

How Japan­ese Things Are Made in 309 Videos: Bam­boo Tea Whisks, Hina Dolls, Steel Balls & More

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

The Right and Wrong Way to Eat Sushi: A Primer

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Plastic Bag Store: A Pop Art Installation with a Whimsical But Deadly Serious Environmental Message

in Art, Food & Drink | November 9th, 2020

When COVID-19 explod­ed in New York City last March, it erased every­thing on the cal­en­dar, includ­ing:

All live the­ater…

The city’s fresh­ly imple­ment­ed ban on sin­gle use plas­tic bags…

And The Plas­tic Bag Store, a pop-up instal­la­tion that was prepar­ing to open in Times Square.

The the­aters remain dark, but the ban is back on, as of Octo­ber 19th. The 7‑month pause was has­tened by the pan­dem­ic, but also by an unsuc­cess­ful law­suit brought by flex­i­ble pack­ing man­u­fac­tur­er Poly-Pak Indus­tries.

The Plas­tic Bag Store was allowed to open, too, albeit in an altered for­mat from the hybrid art instal­la­tion-adult pup­pet show cre­ator Robin Fro­hardt has been work­ing on for sev­er­al years.

She has long intend­ed for the project’s New York pre­miere to coin­cide with the ban.

Not because she hoped to get rich sell­ing bags to cit­i­zens accus­tomed to get­ting them free with pur­chase.

There’s noth­ing to buy in this “store.”

It’s a per­for­mance of sorts, but there’s no admis­sion charge.

It’s def­i­nite­ly an edu­ca­tion, and a med­i­ta­tion on how his­to­ry can be doomed to repeat itself, in one way or anoth­er.

The Plas­tic Bag Store just end­ed its sold out 3‑week run, play­ing to crowds of tick­et hold­ers now capped at 12 audi­ence mem­bers per per­for­mance. The live ele­ments have mor­phed into a trio of short films that are pro­ject­ed after tick­et holders—customers if you will—have had a chance to look around.

There’s plen­ty to see.

The Times Square instal­la­tion space has been kit­ted out to resem­ble a roomy bode­ga stocked with pro­duce, baked goods, sushi rolls on plas­tic trays, shrink wrapped meat, and oth­er famil­iar, if slight­ly skewed items.

Rows of 2 liter soda bot­tles with icon­ic red labels are shelved across from the mag­a­zine rack. Tubs of Bag & Jerry’s Mint Plas­tic Chip are in the freez­er case.

The orig­i­nal plan allowed for cus­tomers to han­dle the goods as they want­ed.  Now such inter­ac­tions are pro­hib­it­ed.

Pri­or to March, New York­ers were pret­ty handsy with pro­duce, unabashed­ly press­ing thumbs into avo­ca­dos and hold­ing toma­toes and mel­ons to nos­trils to deter­mine ripeness.

The pan­dem­ic curbed that habit.

No mat­ter. Noth­ing is ripe in the Plas­tic Bag Store, where any item not con­tained in a can or card­board box has been con­struct­ed from the thou­sands of plas­tic bags Fro­hardt has col­lect­ed over the years.

The fac­sim­i­les are shock­ing­ly adroit.

“I hunt plas­tic bags on the streets of New York,” she said in an inter­view with cul­tur­al fun­der Cre­ative Cap­i­tal:

I’m a real con­nois­seur now. There are cer­tain col­ors I’m real­ly attract­ed to. Cer­tain bags are hard­er to find. I def­i­nite­ly look at trash dif­fer­ent­ly than most peo­ple. I’m always look­ing for reds and oranges and greens. Some­times I find a real­ly inter­est­ing col­or that I haven’t seen before, like salmon or laven­der. That’s always excit­ing.

This diver­si­ty of mate­ri­als helps with visu­al verisimil­i­tude, most impres­sive in the pro­duce sec­tion.

The prod­uct labels been rich­ly for­ti­fied with satir­i­cal com­men­tary.

A fam­i­ly sized pack­age of Yucky Shards appeals to chil­dren with sparkles, a rain­bow, and a bright eyed car­toon mas­cot who does­n’t seem to mind the 6‑pack yoke that’s attached itself to its per­son.

Every­thing about the “non-organ­ic, triple-washed Spring Green Mix” from “Earth­bag Farm” looks famil­iar, includ­ing the plas­tic con­tain­er.

Pack­ages of Some­times fem­i­nine pads promise “super pro­tec­tion” that will “lit­er­al­ly last for­ev­er.”

The cup­cakes on dis­play in the bak­ery sec­tion are topped with such fes­tive embell­ish­ments as a “dis­pos­able” lighter and floss­ing pick.

The tone is not scold­ing but rather com­ic, as Fro­hardt uses her spoofs to delight atten­dees into seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of the “forever­ness” of plas­tic and its envi­ron­men­tal impact:

There is great humor to be found in the pit­falls of cap­i­tal­ism, and I find that humor and satire can be pow­er­ful tools for social crit­i­cism espe­cial­ly with issues that feel too sad and over­whelm­ing to con­front direct­ly.

It’s real­ly easy to turn away from images of tur­tles chok­ing on straws. That stuff comes up in my Insta­gram feed all the time, and I’m like “Whoa! Swipe on past” because it’s too hard to look at. So what I’m try­ing to do is to make some­thing that’s fun to look at, and fun to engage with, so you can think about it. Instead of just say­ing, “That’s fucked up! Ok on to the next thing.”

The Plas­tic Bag Store’s film seg­ments also wield com­e­dy to get their mes­sage across.

From the stiff shad­ow pup­pet Ancient Greeks who are seduced by the self-flat­ter­ing slo­gan of a new prod­uct, Knowl­edge Water, which comes in sin­gle use ves­sels, to the recip­i­ent of a mes­sage in a plas­tic bot­tle, dis­cov­ered so far into the future that he can only admire its crafts­man­ship, hav­ing no clue as to its pur­pose. (Let­ter car­ri­er is his best guess. Even­tu­al­ly, oth­er let­ter car­ri­ers are dis­cov­ered in the freez­ing equa­to­r­i­al ocean, and housed in a muse­um along­side oth­er hilar­i­ous­ly mis­la­beled relics of a long dead civ­i­liza­tion.)

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of the Müt­ter Muse­um and Its Many Anatom­i­cal­ly Pecu­liar Exhibits

The Dis­gust­ing Food Muse­um Curates 80 of the World’s Most Repul­sive Dish­es: Mag­got-Infest­ed Cheese, Putrid Shark & More

The Muse­um of Fail­ure: A New Swedish Muse­um Show­cas­es Harley-David­son Per­fume, Col­gate Beef Lasagne, Google Glass & Oth­er Failed Prod­ucts

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Digital Library for Bartenders: Vintage Cocktail Books with Recipes Dating Back to 1753

in Food & Drink, Libraries | November 4th, 2020

So, um… you look like you could use a drink… or anoth­er drink, or five…. I’ve giv­en it up, but I can still mix a mean cock­tail. How about a Stom­ach Julep (Julepum Stom­achicum). No white suit or veran­da required. It’s a “saf­fron syrup made with sher­ry, spir­it rec­ti­fied with mint, and a non-alco­holic mint dis­til­late” among oth­er “fas­ci­nat­ing ingre­di­ents.” Yes, this is a recipe from a 1753 phar­ma­col­o­gy text­book, but in 1753, one’s bar­tender might just as well also be the local alchemist, phar­ma­cist, and cap­tive audi­ence. Fear­ing a resur­gence of plague and oth­er mal­adies, lack­ing prop­er health­care or clean water, the Ear­ly Mod­ern British for­ti­fied them­selves with booze.

The New Eng­lish Dis­pen­sato­ry might seem like an odd text, nonethe­less, to include in an online library for bar­tenders, but it is per­fect­ly in keep­ing with the spir­it of the EUVS Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion, an appre­cia­ble sam­pling of man­u­als, cock­tail menus, recipe books, and his­tor­i­cal ephemera relat­ed to “a pro­fes­sion that has redis­cov­ered a jus­ti­fi­able sense of pride and pur­pose.”

This sense does seem to vary great­ly between estab­lish­ments, but the col­lec­tion does not dis­crim­i­nate, though it does dis­play a par­tic­u­lar fond­ness for Cuba in its cur­rent state of digitization—now up to a few dozen titles span­ning the years 1753 to 1959. More books will be com­ing online soon out of a phys­i­cal col­lec­tion of “over 1,000 vol­umes.”

It may be hard to imag­ine earn­ing a bar­tend­ing Ph.D. but one could cer­tain­ly find a dis­ser­ta­tion top­ic in the impres­sive breadth and depth of the col­lec­tion, even in its lim­it­ed state. Or, more like­ly, one could put togeth­er a unique­ly imag­i­na­tive cock­tail menu that no one else in town can boast of. Bar­tend­ing is both art and sci­ence. In his 1892 book The Flow­ing Bowl, New York bar­tender William Schmidt, also known as “The Only William,” com­ments:

Mixed drinks might be com­pared to music: an orches­tra will pro­duce good music, pro­vid­ed all play­ers are artists; but have only one or two infe­ri­or musi­cians in your band and you may be con­vinced they will spoil the entire har­mo­ny.

To the bartender’s list of sup­ple­men­tary roles in the lives of their cus­tomers, we can add anoth­er: con­duc­tor. William first came to promi­nence in the pro­fes­sion in Ham­burg, Ger­many before emi­grat­ing to Chica­go, then Man­hat­tan. His tastes, in music and liquors, remained Euro­pean. “The finest mixed drinks and their ingre­di­ents are of for­eign ori­gin. Are not all of the supe­ri­or cor­dials of for­eign make?” he wrote. Clear­ly he knew noth­ing of bour­bon.

The Only William did know that fine art requires show­man­ship and style. He was “renowned for his acro­bat­ic bar­tend­ing feats: throw­ing flam­ing and non-flam­ing drinks in grace­ful arcs.” The EUVS Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion presents William as a kind of bar­tend­ing folk hero, a larg­er-than-life fig­ure who was said to have invent­ed a new drink dai­ly. If this is so, it may not be so sur­pris­ing. William was not only total­ly devot­ed to his art, but he was also a schol­ar, “cred­it­ed with an ency­clo­pe­dic knowl­edge of the clas­sics.”

The Flow­ing Bowl con­tains Schmidt’s “his­to­ry of var­i­ous bev­er­ages, descrip­tions of his­toric Gre­co-Roman ban­quets, sam­ple menus with bev­er­age pair­ings, plus a live­ly selec­tion of poet­ry read­ings whose focus is on drink.” One gets the sense he rep­re­sents the ide­al patron of The Bartender’s Library. What would such a mod­el bar­tender do dur­ing the pan­dem­ic? I think he’d hit the books, espe­cial­ly giv­en that so many, like his own, are free online. And giv­en the ever-present pos­si­bil­i­ty of plague and oth­er calami­ties, I guess he’d offer spir­it­ed reme­dies to the peo­ple locked down at home with him.

Note: One com­menter on the Cock­tail archive site left these com­ments, which might prove handy:

Here is a list of con­ver­sions, with Impe­r­i­al mea­sure­ments (from the U.K), as well as few British ones–as both are found in many clas­sic cock­tail books and can be mighty con­fus­ing.

1 quart (Impe­r­i­al) = 40 ounces

1 quart = 32 ounces

1 bot­tle = 24 ounces

1 pint (Impe­r­i­al) = 20 ounces

1 pint = 16 ounces

1/2 pint (Impe­r­i­al) = 10 ounces

1/2 pint = 8 ounces

1 gill (Impe­r­i­al) = 4.8 ounces

1 gill = 4 ounces

1 dram = 1/4 table­spoon (found in the British met­ric sys­tem or Eng­lish recipes before approx. 1972)

1 wine­glass = 2 ounces

1 jig­ger = 1 1/2 ounces – 1 1/4 ounces

1 pony = 1 (flu­id) ounce = 2 table­spoons

1 table­spoon = 1/2 (flu­id) ounces

1 tea­spoon = 1/16 flu­id ounces

A dash is a tricky one. When applied to bit­ters, a “dash” makes sense: it’s what comes out the top of the bot­tle. But if you find a recipe call­ing for “dash­es of syrup,” check out sim­i­lar drink recipes and use your judg­ment in how much you need.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Sci­ence of Beer: A New Free Online Course Promis­es to Enhance Your Appre­ci­a­tion of the Time­less Bev­er­age

A New Dig­i­tized Menu Col­lec­tion Lets You Revis­it the Cui­sine from the “Gold­en Age of Rail­road Din­ing”

The Recipes of Famous Artists: Din­ners & Cock­tails From Tol­stoy, Miles Davis, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, David Lynch & Many More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Recipes from the Kitchen of Georgia O’Keeffe

in Art, Food & Drink, Libraries | October 23rd, 2020

What shall we read before bed?

Geor­gia O’Keeffe was a fan of cook­books, telling her young assis­tant Mar­garet Wood that they were “enjoy­able night­time com­pa­ny, pro­vid­ing brief and pleas­ant read­ing.”

Among the culi­nary vol­umes in her Abiquiu, New Mex­i­co ranch home were The Fan­ny Farmer Boston Cook­ing School Cook­book, The Joy of Cook­ing, Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit and Cook Right, Live Longer.

Also Pick­ups and Cheerups from the War­ing Blender, a 21-page pam­phlet fea­tur­ing blend­ed cock­tails, that now rests in Yale University’s Bei­necke Library, along with the rest of the con­tents of O’Keeffe’s recipe box, acquired the night before it was due to be auc­tioned at Sotheby’s. (Some of the images on this page come cour­tesy of Sothe­by’s.)

In addi­tion to recipes—inscribed by the artist’s own hand in ink from a foun­tain pen, typed by assis­tants, clipped from mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers, or in pro­mo­tion­al book­lets such as the one pub­lished by the War­ing Prod­ucts Company—the box housed man­u­als for O’Keeffe’s kitchen appli­ances.

The book­let that came with her pres­sure cook­er includes a spat­tered page devot­ed to cook­ing fresh veg­gies, a tes­ta­ment to her abid­ing inter­est in eat­ing health­ful­ly.

O’Keeffe had a high regard for sal­ads, gar­den fresh herbs, and sim­ple, local­ly sourced food.

Today’s bud­dha bowl craze is, how­ev­er, “the oppo­site of what she would enjoy” accord­ing to Wood, author of the books Remem­ber­ing Miss O’Ke­effe: Sto­ries from Abiquiu and A Painter’s Kitchen: Recipes from the Kitchen of Geor­gia O’Keeffe.

Wood, who was some 66 years younger than her employ­er, recent­ly vis­it­ed The Spork­ful pod­cast to recall her first days on the job :

…she said, “Do you like to cook?” 

And I said, “Yes, I cer­tain­ly do.” 

So she said, “Well, let’s give it a try.” 

And after two days of my hip­pie health food, she said, “My dear, let me show you how I like my food.” My first way of try­ing to cook for us was a lot of brown rice and chopped veg­eta­bles with chick­en added. And that was not what she liked. 

An exam­ple of what she did like: Roast­ed lemon chick­en with fried pota­toes, a green sal­ad fea­tur­ing let­tuce and herbs from her gar­den, and steamed broc­coli.

Also yogurt made with the milk of local goats, whole wheat flour ground on the premis­es, water­cress plucked from local streams, and home can­ning.

Most of these labor-inten­sive tasks fell to her staff, but she main­tained a keen inter­est in the pro­ceed­ings.

Not for noth­ing did the friend who referred Wood for the job warn her it would “require a lot of patience because Miss O’Ke­effe was extreme­ly par­tic­u­lar.”

The jot­tings from the recipe box don’t real­ly con­vey this exact­ing nature.

Those accus­tomed to the extreme­ly spe­cif­ic instruc­tions accom­pa­ny­ing even the sim­plest recipes to be found on the Inter­net may be shocked by O’Ke­ef­fe’s brevi­ty.

 

Per­haps we should assume that she sta­tioned her­self close by the first time any new hire pre­pared a recipe from one of her cards, know­ing she would have to ver­bal­ly cor­rect and redi­rect.

(O’Keeffe insist­ed that Wood stir accord­ing to her method—don’t scrape the sides, dig down and lift up.)

The box also con­tained recipes that were like­ly rar­i­ties on O’Keeffe’s table, giv­en her dietary pref­er­ences, though they are cer­tain­ly evoca­tive of the peri­od: toma­to aspic, Mary­land fried chick­en, Float­ing Islands, and a cock­tail she may have first sipped in a San­ta Fe hotel bar.

The Bei­necke plans to dig­i­tize its new­ly acquired col­lec­tion. This gives us hope that one day, the Geor­gia O’Keeffe Muse­um may fol­low suit with the red recipe binder Wood men­tions in A Painter’s Kitchen:

This was affec­tion­ate­ly referred to as “Mary’s Book,” named after a pre­vi­ous staff mem­ber who had com­piled it. That note­book was con­tin­u­al­ly con­sult­ed, and revised to include new recipes or to improve on old­er ones…. As she had col­lect­ed a num­ber of healthy and fla­vor­ful recipes, she would occa­sion­al­ly laugh and com­ment, “We should write a cook­book.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Explore 1,100 Works of Art by Geor­gia O’Keeffe: They’re Now Dig­i­tized and Free to View Online

Geor­gia O’Keeffe: A Life in Art, a Short Doc­u­men­tary on the Painter Nar­rat­ed by Gene Hack­man

The Art & Cook­ing of Fri­da Kahlo, Sal­vador Dali, Geor­gia O’Keeffe, Vin­cent Van Gogh & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How Some of the World’s Most Famous Cheeses Are Made: Camembert, Brie, Gorgonzola & More

in Food & Drink, Travel | October 19th, 2020

Atten­tion cheese lovers!

Do you sali­vate at the thought of a Cheese Chan­nel?

Care­ful what you wish for.

Food pho­tog­ra­phers employ all man­ner of dis­gust­ing tricks to make junky pan­cakes and fast food burg­ers look irre­sistibly mouth­wa­ter­ing.

Food Insid­ers’ Region­al Eats tour of the Ital­ian Gor­gonzo­la-mak­ing process inside a ven­er­a­ble, fam­i­ly-owned Ital­ian cream­ery is the inverse of that.

The fin­ished prod­uct is wor­thy of a still life, but look out!

Despite the delib­er­ate­ly gen­tle motion of the cus­tom-made machin­ery into which the milk is poured, get­ting there is a stom­ach churn­ing prospect.

Per­son­al­ly, we don’t find the smell of that ven­er­a­ble, veined cheese offen­sive. The pun­gent aro­ma is prac­ti­cal­ly music to our nose, stim­u­lat­ing the cil­ia at the tips of our sen­so­ry cells, alert­ing our tongue that a rare and favorite fla­vor is in range.

Nor is it a mold issue.

Mar­co Inv­ernizzi, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Trecate’s hun­dred-year-old Caseifi­cio Si Inv­ernizzi, exudes such deep respect for Peni­cil­li­um roque­for­ti and the oth­er par­tic­u­lars of Gorgonzola’s pedi­gree, it would sure­ly be our hon­or to sam­ple one of the 400 wheels his cream­ery pro­duces every day.

Just give us a sec for the visu­als of that griz­zly birth video to fade from our mem­o­ry.

With the excep­tion of a close up on a faucet gush­ing milk into a buck­et, the peek inside the Camem­bert-mak­ing process is a bit eas­i­er to stom­ach.

There are curds, but they’re con­tained.

The cheese at Le 5 Frères, a fam­i­ly farm in the vil­lage of Bermonville, is made by old fash­ioned means, ladling micro-organ­ism-rich milk to which ren­net has been added into per­fo­rat­ed forms, that are topped off a total of five times in an hour.

The steamy tem­per­a­tures inside the arti­sanal brie mold­ing room at Seine-et-Marne’s 30 Arpents caus­es Food Insid­ers’ cam­era lens to fog, mak­ing for an impres­sion­is­tic view, swagged in white.

Near­ly 20 years ago, Mad Cow dis­ease came close to wip­ing this oper­a­tion out.

The cur­rent herd of friend­ly Hol­steins were all born on 30 Arpents’ land. Each pro­duces about 30 liters of milk (or slight­ly more than one dai­ly wheel of brie de Meaux) per day.

Get the scoop on Swiss Emmen­taler, Italy’s largest buf­fa­lo moz­zarel­la balls, and oth­er world cheese MVPs on Food Insider’s 87-video Cheese Insid­er playlist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cheese: 10,000 Years in Under Six Min­utes

How to Break Open a Big Wheel of Parme­san Cheese: A Delight­ful, 15-Minute Primer

Does Play­ing Music for Cheese Dur­ing the Aging Process Change Its Fla­vor? Researchers Find That Hip Hop Makes It Smelli­er, and Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en” Makes It Milder

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Explore the Roman Cookbook, De Re Coquinaria, the Oldest Known Cookbook in Existence

in Food & Drink, History | October 14th, 2020

West­ern schol­ar­ship has had “a bias against study­ing sen­su­al expe­ri­ence,” writes Reina Gat­tuso at Atlas Obscu­ra, “the rel­ic of an Enlight­en­ment-era hier­ar­chy that con­sid­ered taste, touch, and fla­vor taboo top­ics for sober aca­d­e­m­ic inquiry.” This does not mean, how­ev­er, that cook­ing has been ignored by his­to­ri­ans. Many a schol­ar has tak­en Euro­pean cook­ing seri­ous­ly, before recent food schol­ar­ship expand­ed the canon. For exam­ple, in a 1926 Eng­lish trans­la­tion of an ancient Roman cook­book, Joseph Dom­mers Vehling makes a strong case for the cen­tral­i­ty of food schol­ar­ship.

“Any­one who would know some­thing worth while about the pri­vate and pub­lic lives of the ancients,” writes Vehling, “should be well acquaint­ed with their table.” Pub­lished as Cook­ery and Din­ing in Impe­r­i­al Rome (and avail­able here at Project Guten­berg), it is, he says, the old­est known cook­book in exis­tence.

The book, orig­i­nal­ly titled De Re Coquinar­ia, is attrib­uted to Api­cius and may date to the 1st cen­tu­ry A.C.E., though the old­est sur­viv­ing copy comes from the end of the Empire, some­time in the 5th cen­tu­ry. As with most ancient texts, copied over cen­turies, redact­ed, amend­ed, and edit­ed, the orig­i­nal cook­book is shroud­ed in mys­tery.

The cook­book’s author, Api­cius, could have been one of sev­er­al “renowned gas­tronomers of old Rome” who bore the sur­name. But whichev­er “famous eater” was respon­si­ble, over 2000 years lat­er the book has quite a lot to tell us about the Roman diet. (All of the illus­tra­tions here are by Vehling, who includes over two dozen exam­ples of ancient prac­tices and arti­facts.)

Meat played an impor­tant role, and “cru­el meth­ods of slaugh­ter were com­mon.” But the kind of meat avail­able seems to have changed dur­ing Apicius’s time:

With the increas­ing short­age of beef, with the increas­ing facil­i­ties for rais­ing chick­en and pork, a rever­sion to Api­cian meth­ods of cook­ery and diet is not only prob­a­bly but actu­al­ly seems inevitable. The ancient bill of fare and the ancient meth­ods of cook­ery were entire­ly guid­ed by the sup­ply of raw materials—precisely like ours. They had no great food stores nor very effi­cient mar­ket­ing and trans­porta­tion sys­tems, food cold stor­age. They knew, how­ev­er, to take care of what there was. They were good man­agers.

But veg­e­tar­i­ans were also well-served. “Api­cius cer­tain­ly excels in the prepa­ra­tion of veg­etable dish­es (cf. his cab­bage and aspara­gus) and in the uti­liza­tion of parts of food mate­ri­als that are today con­sid­ered infe­ri­or.” This appar­ent need to use every­thing, and to some­times heav­i­ly spice food to cov­er spoilage, may have led to an unusu­al Roman cus­tom. As How Stuff Works puts it, “cooks then were revered if they could dis­guise a com­mon food item so that din­ers had no idea what they were eat­ing.”

As for the recipes them­selves, well, any attempt to dupli­cate them will be at best a broad interpretation—a trans­la­tion from ancient meth­ods of cook­ing by smell, feel, and cus­tom to the mod­ern way of weights and mea­sures. Con­sid­er the fol­low­ing recipe:

WINE SAUCE FOR TRUFFLES

PEPPER, LOVAGE, CORIANDER, RUE, BROTH, HONEY AND A LITTLE OIL.

ANOTHER WAY: THYME, SATURY, PEPPER, LOVAGE, HONEY, BROTH AND OIL.

I fore­see much frus­trat­ing tri­al and error (and many hope­ful sub­sti­tu­tions for things like lovage or rue or “sat­u­ry”) for the cook who attempts this. Some foods that were plen­ti­ful­ly avail­able could cost hun­dreds now to pre­pare for a din­ner par­ty.

SEAFOOD MINCES ARE MADE OF SEA-ONION, OR SEA CRAB, FISH, LOBSTER, CUTTLE-FISH, INK FISH, SPINY LOBSTER, SCALLOPS AND OYSTERS. THE FORCEMEAT IS SEASONED WITH LOVAGE, PEPPER, CUMIN AND LASER ROOT.

Vehling’s foot­notes most­ly deal with ety­mol­o­gy and define unfa­mil­iar terms (“laser root” is wild fen­nel), but they pro­vide lit­tle prac­ti­cal insight for the cook. “Most of the Api­cian direc­tions are vague, hasti­ly jot­ted down, care­less­ly edit­ed,” much of the ter­mi­nol­o­gy is obscure: “with the advent of the dark ages, it ceased to be a prac­ti­cal cook­ery book.” We learn, instead, about Roman ingre­di­ents and home eco­nom­ic prac­tices, insep­a­ra­ble from Roman eco­nom­ics more gen­er­al­ly, accord­ing to Vehling.

He makes a judg­ment of his own time even more rel­e­vant to ours: “Such atroc­i­ties as the will­ful destruc­tion of huge quan­ti­ties of food of every descrip­tion on the one side and the starv­ing mul­ti­tudes on the oth­er as seen today nev­er occurred in antiq­ui­ty.” Per­haps more cur­rent his­to­ri­ans of antiq­ui­ty would beg to dif­fer, I wouldn’t know.

But if you’re just look­ing for a Roman recipe that you can make at home, might I sug­gest the Rose Wine?

ROSE WINE

MAKE ROSE WINE IN THIS MANNER: ROSE PETALS, THE LOWER WHITE PART REMOVED, SEWED INTO A LINEN BAG AND IMMERSED IN WINE FOR SEVEN DAYS. THEREUPON ADD A SACK OF NEW PETALS WHICH ALLOW TO DRAW FOR ANOTHER SEVEN DAYS. AGAIN REMOVE THE OLD PETALS AND REPLACE THEM BY FRESH ONES FOR ANOTHER WEEK; THEN STRAIN THE WINE THROUGH THE COLANDER. BEFORE SERVING, ADD HONEY SWEETENING TO TASTE. TAKE CARE THAT ONLY THE BEST PETALS FREE FROM DEW BE USED FOR SOAKING.

You could prob­a­bly go with red or white, though I’d haz­ard Api­cius went with a fine vinum rubrum. This con­coc­tion, Vehling tells us in a help­ful foot­note, dou­bles as a lax­a­tive. Clever, those Romans. Read the full Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the ancient Roman cook­book here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Cook Real Recipes from Ancient Rome: Ostrich Ragoût, Roast Wild Boar, Nut Tarts & More

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

Watch a 4000-Year Old Baby­lon­ian Recipe for Stew, Found on a Cuneiform Tablet, Get Cooked by Researchers from Yale & Har­vard

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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