George Orwell’s Essay “British Cookery” is Officially Published 70 Years After It Was Rejected by the British Council (1946)

Image by BBC, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Voltaire once joked that Britain had “a hun­dred reli­gions and only one sauce.” In my expe­ri­ence, that sauce is a cur­ry, which was already a British sta­ple in Voltaire’s time. No doubt he had some­thing much bland­er in mind. Of course, it’s all hyper­bol­ic fun until some­one takes offense, as did George Orwell in 1946, when he wrote, against Voltaire­an stereo­types, about the mis­un­der­stood plea­sures of British food. His essay, “British Cook­ery,” was com­mis­sioned by the British Coun­cil, but they sub­se­quent­ly deemed that it would be “’unwise to pub­lish,’” reports the Dai­ly Mail, “so soon after the hun­gry win­ter of 1946 and wartime rationing.”

Not that it mat­ters much now, but the Coun­cil has for­mal­ly apol­o­gized to the deceased Orwell, over 70 years lat­er. Senior pol­i­cy ana­lyst Alas­dair Don­ald­son explains they are “delight­ed to make amends” by pub­lish­ing the essay in full, along­side “the unfor­tu­nate rejec­tion let­ter.” You can read it here at the British Coun­cil site. Orwell grants that the British diet is “sim­ple, rather heavy, per­haps slight­ly bar­barous… with its main empha­sis on sug­ar and ani­mal fats…. Cheap restau­rants in Britain are almost invari­ably bad, while in expen­sive restau­rants the cook­ery is almost always French, or imi­ta­tion French.”

Else­where, he con­cedes, “the British are not great eaters of sal­ads.” Indeed, he says, “the two great short­com­ings of British cook­ery are a fail­ure to treat veg­eta­bles with due seri­ous­ness, and an exces­sive use of sug­ar.” He does go on at length, in fact, about what sounds like a nation­al epi­dem­ic of sug­ar addic­tion. Such laps­es of taste are also what we would now label a nutri­tion­al emer­gency. He may seem to grant too much to crit­ics of British cook­ing. But this is main­ly by con­trast with spici­er, more veg­etable-friend­ly cuisines of the con­ti­nent and colonies. The kind of cook­ing he describes makes cre­ative­ly var­ied uses of stur­dy but lim­it­ed local resources (except for the sug­ar).

Orwell’s bru­tal hon­esty about British food’s defi­cien­cies makes him sound like a trust­wor­thy guide to its true delights. One of the truths he tells is that “British cook­ery dis­plays more vari­ety and more orig­i­nal­i­ty than for­eign vis­i­tors are usu­al­ly ready to allow.” The aver­age vis­i­tor encoun­ters British food prin­ci­pal­ly in restau­rants, pubs, and hotels, which, “whether cheap or expen­sive” are not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of “the diet of the great mass of the peo­ple.” This may be said of many region­al cuisines. But Orwell is devot­ed to a native British cook­ing which had, at the time, almost dis­ap­peared after six years of war rationing.

This cook­ing is rich in roast and cold meats, cheeses, breads, York­shire and suet pud­dings, pota­toes and turnips. The British diet is, or was, Orwell writes, eat­en by the low­er and upper class­es alike, under dif­fer­ent names and prices. Sea­son­ings are few. “Gar­lic, for instance, is unknown in British cook­ery prop­er.” What stands out is mint, vine­gar, but­ter, dried fruits, jam, and mar­malade.

Orwell him­self includ­ed a mar­malade recipe. (A hand­writ­ten note reads “Bad recipe! Too much sug­ar and water.”), which you can see below. Decide for your­self how much sug­ar to add.

ORANGE MARMALADE 

Ingre­di­ents:

2 seville oranges

2 sweet oranges (no)

2 lemons (no)

8lbs of pre­serv­ing sug­ar

8 pints of water

Method. Wash and dry the fruit. Halve them and squeeze out the juice. Remove some of the pith, then shred the fruit fine­ly. Tie the pips in a muslin bag. Put the strained juice, rind and pips into the water and soak for 48 hours. Place in a large pan and sim­mer for 1/2 hours until the rind is ten­der. Leave to stand overnight, then add the sug­ar and let it dis­solve before bring­ing to the boil. Boil rapid­ly until a lit­tle of the mix­ture will set into a jel­ly when placed on a cold plate. Pour into jars which have been heat­ed before­hand, and cov­er with paper cov­ers.

An increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple are cut­ting back or quit­ting near­ly every main ingre­di­ent in what Orwell describes as authen­tic British cook­ing: from meat to dairy to gluten to sug­ar to suet…. But if we are going to give it a fair shake, he argues, we must try the real thing. Or his ver­sion of it any­way. He includes sev­er­al more recipes: Welsh rarebit, York­shire pud­ding, trea­cle tart, plum cake, and Christ­mas pud­ding.

Orwell’s “British Cook­ery” wars with itself and comes to terms. He fills each para­graph with frank acknowl­edge­ments of British cuisine’s short­com­ings, yet he rel­ish­es its sim­ple, sol­id virtues. He writes that “British cook­ery” is “best stud­ied in pri­vate hous­es, and more par­tic­u­lar­ly in the homes of the mid­dle-class and work­ing-class mass­es who have not become Euro­peanized in their tastes.” It’s a kind of cul­tur­al nation­al­ism, but per­haps one sug­gest­ing those who want oth­ers to under­stand and appre­ci­ate a spe­cif­ic kind British cul­ture should invite out­siders in to share a meal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell Explains How to Make a Prop­er Cup of Tea

Try George Orwell’s Recipe for Christ­mas Pud­ding, from His Essay “British Cook­ery” (1945)

George Orwell’s Five Great­est Essays (as Select­ed by Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Colum­nist Michael Hiltzik)

Food­ie Alert: New York Pub­lic Library Presents an Archive of 17,000 Restau­rant Menus (1851–2008)

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

Nutritional Psychiatry: Why Diet May Play an Essential Role in Treating Mental Health Conditions, Including Depression, Anxiety & Beyond

For years neu­ro­sci­en­tists have been try­ing to cor­rect the old assump­tion that our minds are reducible to our brains. Research into what is known as the gut micro­bio­me, for exam­ple, has shown that mood and men­tal health are inti­mate­ly linked to the func­tion­ing of an ecosys­tem of microor­gan­isms with­in the diges­tive sys­tem. As researchers write in the Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science, “exper­i­men­tal changes to the gut micro­bio­me can affect emo­tion­al behav­ior and relat­ed brain sys­tems [and] may play a patho­phys­i­o­log­i­cal role in human brain dis­eases, includ­ing autism spec­trum dis­or­der, anx­i­ety, depres­sion, and chron­ic pain.”

Even Parkinson’s Dis­ease has been linked to gut bac­te­ria in stud­ies per­formed by micro­bi­ol­o­gist Sarkis Maz­man­ian, who points out that “70 per­cent of all neu­rons in the periph­er­al ner­vous system—that is, not the brain or spinal cord—are in the intestines, and the gut’s ner­vous sys­tem is direct­ly con­nect­ed to the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem through the vagus nerve.” Our guts also sup­ply the brain with fuel, and it requires a “con­stant sup­ply,” notes Dr. Eva Sel­hub at the Har­vard Health Blog. “That ‘fuel’ comes from the foods you eat—and what’s in that fuel makes all the dif­fer­ence. Put sim­ply, what you eat direct­ly affects the struc­ture and func­tion of your brain and, ulti­mate­ly, your mood.”

Such find­ings have giv­en rise to the emerg­ing field of Nutri­tion­al Psy­chi­a­try, which you can hear described in the TEDx talk above by clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist Julia Ruck­lidge. Ini­tial­ly taught that “nutri­tion and diet were of triv­ial sig­nif­i­cance for men­tal health,” Ruck­lidge, like most of her col­leagues, believed that “only drugs and psy­chother­a­py could treat these seri­ous con­di­tions.” But after encoun­ter­ing evi­dence to the con­trary, she decid­ed to do her own stud­ies. Begin­ning at around 5:30, she presents com­pelling evi­dence for a dra­mat­ic reduc­tion in rates of ADHD, PTSD, depres­sion, and psy­chosis after dietary treat­ments.

That’s not to say that drugs and psy­chother­a­py do not play impor­tant roles in treat­ment, nor that they should be sup­plant­ed by a nutri­tion-only approach. But it does mean that nutri­tion­al treat­ments are shown by many fields of study to be effec­tive and per­haps essen­tial, for rea­sons con­sis­tent with wide­spread knowl­edge about the body and brain. “It is now known,” for exam­ple, as Joyce Cavaye reports at the Inde­pen­dent, “that many men­tal health con­di­tions are caused by inflam­ma­tion in the brain which ulti­mate­ly caus­es our brain cells to die.” Inflam­ma­tion is, in part, caused by “a lack of nutri­ents such as mag­ne­sium, omega‑3 fat­ty acids, pro­bi­otics, vit­a­mins and min­er­als… all essen­tial for the opti­mum func­tion­ing of our bod­ies.”

Diets con­sist­ing pri­mar­i­ly of high­ly processed foods and sug­ars are also a cause of inflam­ma­tion. “Mul­ti­ple stud­ies have found a cor­re­la­tion between a diet high in refined sug­ars and impaired brain func­tion,” Dr. Sel­hub writes. These diets pro­mote a “wors­en­ing of symp­toms of mood dis­or­ders, such as depres­sion.” Processed foods with high car­bo­hy­drate con­tent and few nutri­ents have cre­at­ed an epi­dem­ic of mal­nu­tri­tion among a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion who oth­er­wise seem to have plen­ty to eat. The sit­u­a­tion seems to have major­ly con­tributed to the cor­re­spond­ing epi­demics of depres­sion and oth­er men­tal health con­di­tions.

Nutri­tion­al psy­chi­a­try is not a fad or a pro­gram claim­ing to recre­ate the diet of ear­ly humans. While “a poten­tial evo­lu­tion­ary mis­match between our ances­tral past (Pale­olith­ic, Neolith­ic) and the con­tem­po­rary nutri­tion­al envi­ron­ment” mer­its explo­ration, as researchers write in an arti­cle pub­lished at the Jour­nal of Phys­i­o­log­i­cal Anthro­pol­o­gy, many more con­tem­po­rary factors—such as eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment and the rise of sci­en­tif­ic medicine—play a role in how we under­stand diet and men­tal health.

Rather than look to pre­his­to­ry, sci­en­tists have stud­ied the diets of “tra­di­tion­al” soci­eties (those not reliant on mass-pro­duced processed foods) in the Mediter­ranean and Japan. They have found a 25–35% low­er rate of depres­sion, for exam­ple, in those who eat diets “high in veg­eta­bles, fruits, unprocessed grains, and fish and seafood,” writes Sel­hub, with “only mod­est amounts of lean meats and dairy.” There is no per­fect dietary for­mu­la, how­ev­er. Everyone’s gut process­es things dif­fer­ent­ly. Dr. Sel­hub rec­om­mends cut­ting out processed foods and sug­ar and exper­i­ment­ing with adding and sub­tract­ing foods to see how you feel. (Nutri­tion­al exper­i­ments like these are prob­a­bly best car­ried out after con­sult­ing with your doc­tor.)

Just as we will need to change the way we eat if we want to pre­serve our out­er envi­ron­ment, the health of that rich, and no less nec­es­sary, inner world known as the micro­bio­me will require what for many is a dra­mat­ic change in eat­ing habits. Sad­ly, it is not a change every­one can afford to make. But for mil­lions suf­fer­ing from men­tal ill­ness­es, nutri­tion­al psy­chi­a­try may rep­re­sent a life-alter­ing course of treat­ment.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stanford’s Robert Sapol­sky Demys­ti­fies Depres­sion, Which, Like Dia­betes, Is Root­ed in Biol­o­gy

Psilo­cy­bin Could Soon Be a Legal Treat­ment for Depres­sion: Johns Hop­kins Pro­fes­sor, Roland Grif­fiths, Explains How Psilo­cy­bin Can Relieve Suf­fer­ing

How Bak­ing, Cook­ing & Oth­er Dai­ly Activ­i­ties Help Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness and Alle­vi­ate Depres­sion and Anx­i­ety

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

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

We can now eat cheese near­ly any­where in the world, and most world cuisines seem to have found — to vary­ing degrees of suc­cess — ways of work­ing the stuff into their native dish­es. But if cheese has gone and con­tin­ues to go glob­al, from where did its jour­ney begin? The TED-Ed video above can tell you that and more, hav­ing been writ­ten by Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont pro­fes­sor of nutri­tion and food sci­ences Paul Kind­st­edt, author of Cheese and Cul­ture: A His­to­ry of Cheese and its Place in West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion. Titled “A Brie(f) His­to­ry of Cheese,” it begins in 8000 BCE in the Fer­tile Cres­cent and arrives at our avid­ly cheese-eat­ing present in under six min­utes.

Human­i­ty’s dis­cov­ery of cheese hap­pened not long after its imple­men­ta­tion of agri­cul­ture. Left under the sun, the milk of domes­ti­cat­ed ani­mals would sep­a­rate into a liq­uid, which we now call whey, and solids, called curds. These curds, says Kind­st­edt, “became the build­ing blocks of cheese, which would even­tu­al­ly be aged, pressed, ripened, and whizzed into a diverse cor­nu­copia of dairy delights.”

Cheese gained pop­u­lar­i­ty quick­ly enough to become a stan­dard com­mod­i­ty, even a sta­ple, through­out the east­ern Mediter­ranean by the end of the Bronze Age. In the full­ness of time, region­al vari­a­tions devel­oped, from the hard, sun-dried Mon­go­lian byaslag to Egypt­ian goat’s-milk cot­tage cheese to south Asian paneer.

Some pop­u­la­tions, of course, have an eas­i­er time eat­ing cheese than oth­ers, and some indi­vid­u­als sim­ply don’t like it. But exam­ined close­ly, few foods reveal as much about human­i­ty’s long efforts to nour­ish itself with as much effi­cien­cy and vari­ety as pos­si­ble as cheese does. “Today, the world pro­duces rough­ly 22 bil­lion kilo­grams of cheese a year,” says Kind­st­edt, “shipped and pro­duced around the globe. But 10,000 years after its inven­tion, local farms are still fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of their Neolith­ic ances­tors, hand-craft­ing one of human­i­ty’s old­est and favorite foods.” And the more you appre­ci­ate that fact — learn­able in greater depth in the accom­pa­ny­ing TED-Ed les­son, the hard­er time you’ll have, say, turn­ing down the cheese course when next you dine at a French restau­rant. Cheese may be rich, but it’s rich not least in his­to­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac ‘N’ Cheese

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Tea

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

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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 or on Face­book.

How the Astonishing Sushi Scene in Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs Was Animated: A Time-Lapse of the Month-Long Shoot

Since the moviego­ing pub­lic first start­ed hear­ing it twen­ty years ago, Wes Ander­son­’s name has been a byword for cin­e­mat­ic metic­u­lous­ness. The asso­ci­a­tion has only grown stronger with each film he’s made, as the live-action ones have fea­tured increas­ing­ly com­plex ships, trains, and grand hotels — to say noth­ing of the cos­tumes worn and accou­trements pos­sessed by the char­ac­ters who inhab­it them — and the stop-motion ani­mat­ed ones have demand­ed a super­hu­man atten­tion to detail by their very nature. It made per­fect sense when it was revealed that Isle of Dogs, Ander­son­’s sec­ond ani­mat­ed pic­ture, would take place in Japan: not only because of Japan­ese film, which opens up a vast field of new cin­e­mat­ic ref­er­ences to make, but also because of tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese cul­ture, whose metic­u­lous­ness match­es, indeed exceeds, Ander­son­’s own.

Most of us first expe­ri­ence that tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese metic­u­lous­ness through food. And so most of us will rec­og­nize the form of the ben­to, or meal in a box, pre­pared step-by-step before our eyes in Isle of Dogs, though we may nev­er before have wit­nessed the actu­al process of carv­ing up the wrig­gling, scur­ry­ing sea crea­tures that fill it.

One view­ing of this 45-sec­ond shot is enough to sug­gest how much work must have gone into it, but this time-lapse of its 32-day-long shoot (with­in a longer sev­en-month process to make the entire sequence) reveals the extent of the labor involved. In it you can see ani­ma­tors Andy Bid­dle (who’d pre­vi­ous­ly worked on Ander­son­’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, and before that his ani­mat­ed The Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox) and Tony Far­quhar-Smith painstak­ing­ly posi­tion­ing and repo­si­tion­ing each and every one of the ben­to’s ingre­di­ents — all of which had to be spe­cial­ly made to look right even when chopped up and sliced open — as well as the dis­em­bod­ied hands of the sushi mas­ter prepar­ing them.

Shoot­ing stop-motion ani­ma­tion takes a huge amount of time, and so does mak­ing sushi, as any­one who has tried to do either at home knows. Per­form­ing the for­mer to Ander­son­ian stan­dards and the lat­ter to Japan­ese stan­dards hard­ly makes the tasks any eas­i­er. But just as a well craft­ed ben­to pro­vides an enjoy­able and uni­fied aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ence, one that would­n’t dare to remind the con­sumer of how much time and effort went into it, a movie like Isle of Dogs pro­vides thrills and laughs to its view­ers who only lat­er con­sid­er what it must have tak­en to bring such an elab­o­rate vision to life on screen. If you want to hear more about the demands it made on its ani­ma­tors, have a look at the Vari­ety video above, in which Andy Gent, head of Isle of Dogs’ pup­pet depart­ment, explains the process and its con­se­quences. “It took three ani­ma­tors, because it broke quite a few peo­ple to get it through the shot,” he says. “Sev­en months lat­er, we end up with one minute of ani­ma­tion.” But that minute would do even the most exact­ing sushi mas­ter proud.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the New Trail­er for Wes Anderson’s Stop Motion Film, Isle of Dogs, Inspired by Aki­ra Kuro­sawa

The Geo­met­ric Beau­ty of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Wes Anderson’s Films

Wes Ander­son & Yasu­jiro Ozu: New Video Essay Reveals the Unex­pect­ed Par­al­lels Between Two Great Film­mak­ers

The His­to­ry of Stop-Motion Films: 39 Films, Span­ning 116 Years, Revis­it­ed in a 3‑Minute Video

How to Make Sushi: Free Video Lessons from a Mas­ter Sushi Chef

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 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 or on Face­book.

Watch Andy Warhol Eat an Entire Burger King Whopper–While Wishing the Burger Came from McDonald’s (1981)

In the ear­ly 1980s, Dan­ish exper­i­men­tal film­mak­er Jør­gen Leth came to Amer­i­ca intent on cap­tur­ing it live as it was actu­al­ly lived across that vast, still-new, and often strange coun­try. The result, 66 Scenes from Amer­i­ca, offers images of road­side motels and din­ers, desert land­scapes, the Man­hat­tan sky­line, miles of lone­ly high­way, and stars and stripes aplen­ty. Halfway through it all comes the longest, and per­haps most Amer­i­can, scene of all: Andy Warhol eat­ing a fast-food ham­burg­er. A few moments after he accom­plish­es that task, he deliv­ers the film’s most mem­o­rable line by far: “My name is Andy Warhol, and I just fin­ished eat­ing a ham­burg­er.”

“Leth did not know Warhol, but he was a bit obsessed with him so he def­i­nite­ly want­ed to have him in his movie,” writes Dai­l­yArt’s Zuzan­na Stan­s­ka. And so when Leth came to New York, he sim­ply showed up at Warhol’s Fac­to­ry and pitched him the idea of con­sum­ing a “sym­bol­ic” burg­er on film. “Warhol imme­di­ate­ly liked the idea and agreed to the scene – he liked it because it was such a real scene, some­thing he would like to do.”

When Warhol showed up at the pho­to stu­dio Leth had set up to shoot the scene, com­plete with a vari­ety of fast-food ham­burg­ers from which he could choose, he had only one ques­tion: “Where is the McDon­ald’s?” Leth had­n’t thought to pick one up from the Gold­en Arch­es as well, not know­ing that Warhol con­sid­ered McDon­ald’s pack­ag­ing “the most beau­ti­ful.”

Warhol had a deep inter­est in Amer­i­can brands. “What’s great about this coun­try is that Amer­i­ca start­ed the tra­di­tion where the rich­est con­sumers buy essen­tial­ly the same things as the poor­est,” he wrote in The Phi­los­o­phy of Andy Warhol. “You can be watch­ing TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the Pres­i­dent drinks Coke, Liz Tay­lor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of mon­ey can get you a bet­ter Coke than the one the bum on the cor­ner is drink­ing. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.” Sure­ly the same could be said of any par­tic­u­lar fast-food burg­er, even if Warhol could­n’t have his pre­ferred brand on that par­tic­u­lar day in New York in 1981. In the event, he chose a Whop­per from Burg­er King, still a well-known brand if hard­ly as icon­ic as McDon­ald’s — or, for that mat­ter, as icon­ic as Warhol him­self.

Above, you can see Leth talk­ing years lat­er about his expe­ri­ence film­ing Warhol.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

130,000 Pho­tographs by Andy Warhol Are Now Avail­able Online, Cour­tesy of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty

When Steve Jobs Taught Andy Warhol to Make Art on the Very First Mac­in­tosh (1984)

Andy Warhol Dig­i­tal­ly Paints Deb­bie Har­ry with the Ami­ga 1000 Com­put­er (1985)

Warhol’s Cin­e­ma: A Mir­ror for the Six­ties (1989)

The Case for Andy Warhol in Three Min­utes

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Ham­burg­er Recipe

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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 or on Face­book.

Celebrate Emily Dickinson’s 188th Birthday with Her Own Cake Recipes: Coconut Cake, Gingerbread, Doughnuts & More

Hap­py Emi­ly Dick­in­son Day!

What are you doing to cel­e­brate the poet’s 188th birth­day?

The Emi­ly Dick­in­son Muse­um took advan­tage of the week­end to cel­e­brate the occa­sion a cou­ple of days ear­ly with Vic­to­ri­an crafts, read­ings, fes­tive piano music, a dis­play explor­ing the Dick­in­son fam­i­ly’s gift-giv­ing tra­di­tion, and slices of coconut cake, baked from the birth­day girl’s own recipe.

Giv­en the Belle’s pen­chant for home-baked good­ies, we’re dis­pens­ing with the more high-mind­ed endeav­ors to con­cen­trate on the sweet side of this lit­er­ary hol­i­day.

LitHub reports that

…when­ev­er Dick­in­son saw chil­dren play­ing in her fam­i­ly gar­dens, “she head­ed for the pantry, filled a bas­ket with cook­ies or slices of cake—often gingerbread—carried it upstairs to a win­dow in the rear of the house (so their moth­ers wouldn’t see), and attached the bas­ket to a rope to slow­ly low­er it to the “storm-tossed, starv­ing pirates” or the “lost, roam­ing cir­cus per­form­ers” eager­ly wait­ing below.

Tru­ly, we owe it to her to return the favor.

Shall we start with some Emi­ly Dick­in­son dough­nuts?

Like many expe­ri­enced home cooks of the peri­od, Dickinson’s instruc­tions are a bit vague. She seems to have got­ten the recipe from an acquain­tance named Kate, jot­ting down mea­sure­ments and ingre­di­ents, after which, she knew what to do.

If you’ve nev­er worked with yeast before, you might want to pro­ceed straight to her Black Cake recipe…

Or not. You may have 5 pounds of raisins on hand, but this is no spur-of-the-moment recipe.

As librar­i­ans Heather Cole, Emi­lie Hard­man, and Emi­ly Wal­hout demon­strate below, this whop­per needs to spend 3 weeks wrapped in a brandy-soaked cheese­cloth after it comes out of the oven.

Onward then to Miss Dickinson’s gin­ger­bread.

As if those with Decem­ber birth­days aren’t over­shad­owed enough by the tyran­ny of Christ­mas! Must their spe­cial day’s cake fla­vor be dic­tat­ed by that big goril­la too? (For those who say yes, Rosa Lil­lo of Pem­ber­ley Cup and Cakes breaks the recipe down 21st-cen­tu­ry style, adding a sim­ple icing sug­ar glaze and an embossed flo­ral pat­tern.)

Per­haps that famous coconut cake real­ly is the best choice for observ­ing Emi­ly Dick­in­son Day.

See if you can detect a note of inspi­ra­tion in that but­tery fla­vor. As was her habit, Dick­in­son flipped the scrap of paper on which she’d list­ed the ingre­di­ents, and pen­cilled in the begin­nings of a poem:

The Things that nev­er can come back, are sev­er­al —

Child­hood — some forms of Hope — the Dead —

Though Joys — like Men — may some­times make a Jour­ney —

And still abide —

We do not mourn for Trav­el­er, or Sailor,

Their Routes are fair —

But think enlarged of all that they will tell us

Return­ing here —

“Here!” There are typ­ic “Heres” —

Fore­told Loca­tions —

The Spir­it does not stand —

Him­self — at what­so­ev­er Fath­om

His Native Land —

Those whose Emi­ly Dick­in­son Day gift giv­ing list includes a poet­ry lover / ama­teur cook may wish to stuff their stock­ings with a copy of the 1976 book Emi­ly Dick­in­son: Pro­file of the Poet as Cook with Select­ed Recipes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Emi­ly Dickinson’s Hand­writ­ten Coconut Cake Recipe Hints at How Bak­ing Fig­ured Into Her Cre­ative Process

The Online Emi­ly Dick­in­son Archive Makes Thou­sands of the Poet’s Man­u­scripts Freely Avail­able

An 8‑Hour Marathon Read­ing of 500 Emi­ly Dick­in­son Poems

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City through Decem­ber 20th in the 10th anniver­sary pro­duc­tion of Greg Kotis’ apoc­a­lyp­tic hol­i­day tale, The Truth About San­ta, and tonight, as the host of the book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The First House Powered by Coffee

Since 2006, Dunkin’ Donuts has used the tagline “Amer­i­ca Runs on Dunkin’,” pre­sum­ably allud­ing to the cof­fee and donuts that get mil­lions of Amer­i­cans through each morn­ing. But maybe, all along, they’ve had some­thing more in mind. Above, Dunkin’ presents a tiny home pow­ered by bio­fu­el made from spent cof­fee grounds, a process mas­ter­mind­ed by a com­pa­ny called Blue Mar­ble Bio­ma­te­ri­als. Work­ing with lux­u­ry tiny home­builder New Fron­tier Tiny Homes, they’ve cre­at­ed a process–notes a Dunkin’ press release–that works some­thing like this:

  • Step 1: Extract excess oils in the spent cof­fee grounds. There can be nat­ur­al oils left in spent cof­fee grounds, all depend­ing on the cof­fee bean type and orig­i­nal pro­cess­ing meth­ods.
  • Step 2: Mix and react. These oils are then mixed with an alco­hol to under­go a chem­i­cal reac­tion known as trans­es­ter­i­fi­ca­tion. This pro­duces biodiesel and glyc­erin as a byprod­uct.
  • Step 3: Refine. The biodiesel is washed and refined to cre­ate the final prod­uct.

When all is said and done, 170 pounds of used cof­fee grounds trans­lates into one gal­lon of fuel. From 65,000 pounds of cof­fee grounds, you got enough juice to pow­er a 275 square foot home, at least for a while.

Take a 360 degree inter­ac­tive tour of the tiny home here.

via New Atlas

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Make the World’s Small­est Cup of Cof­fee, from Just One Cof­fee Bean

A Rol­lick­ing French Ani­ma­tion on the Per­ils of Drink­ing a Lit­tle Too Much Cof­fee

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

J.S. Bach’s Com­ic Opera, “The Cof­fee Can­ta­ta,” Sings the Prais­es of the Great Stim­u­lat­ing Drink (1735)

“The Virtues of Cof­fee” Explained in 1690 Ad: The Cure for Lethar­gy, Scurvy, Drop­sy, Gout & More

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

Often we get to know each oth­er by talk­ing which foods we like. Per­haps even more often, we get to know each oth­er by talk­ing about which foods we hate. Enter­tain­ing dis­agree­ments tend to arise from such dis­cus­sions, usu­al­ly around tra­di­tion­al­ly divi­sive comestibles like anchovies, cilantro, brus­sel sprouts, or the Japan­ese dish of fer­ment­ed soy­beans known as nat­to. But how­ev­er many of us pre­fer to avoid them, these foods all look more or less con­ven­tion­al com­pared to the dish­es curat­ed by the Dis­gust­ing Food Muse­um, which the Wash­ing­ton Post’s Mau­ra Jud­kis describes as “the world’s first exhi­bi­tion devot­ed to foods that some would call revolt­ing.”

“The exhib­it has 80 of the world’s most dis­gust­ing foods,” says the muse­um’s offi­cial site. Adven­tur­ous vis­i­tors will appre­ci­ate the oppor­tu­ni­ty to smell and taste some of these noto­ri­ous foods. Do you dare smell the world’s stinki­est cheese? Or taste sweets made with met­al cleans­ing chem­i­cals?” Jud­kis notes that “the museum’s name and its con­tents are pret­ty con­tro­ver­sial — one culture’s dis­gust­ing is anoth­er culture’s del­i­ca­cy.

That goes for escamoles, the tree-ant lar­vae eat­en in Mex­i­co, or shi­rako, the cod sperm eat­en in Japan, or bird’s nest soup, a Chi­nese dish of nests made from bird sali­va.” It all goes to empha­size the Dis­gust­ing Food Muse­um’s stat­ed premis­es: “Dis­gust is one of the six fun­da­men­tal human emo­tions. While the emo­tion is uni­ver­sal, the foods that we find dis­gust­ing are not. What is deli­cious to one per­son can be revolt­ing to anoth­er.”

With inter­est in food seem­ing­ly at an all-time high — and not just food, but tra­di­tion­al food from all around the world — the cul­tur­al stud­ies wing of acad­e­mia has begun to get seri­ous mileage out of that propo­si­tion. But the Dis­gust­ing Food Muse­um has tak­en on a less intel­lec­tu­al and much more vis­cer­al mis­sion, plac­ing before its vis­i­tors duri­an fruit, banned from many a pub­lic space across Asia for its sheer stink­i­ness; casu marzu, which the muse­um’s site describes as “mag­got-infest­ed cheese from Sar­dinia”; and hákarl, which Jud­kis describes as “a putrid shark meat dish from Ice­land that the late Antho­ny Bour­dain said was one of the worst things he had ever tast­ed.”

You can learn more about these and the Dis­gust­ing Food Muse­um’s oth­er offer­ings from the Asso­ci­at­ed Press video at the top of the post, as well as at Smith­son­ian and the New York Times. If you’d like to see, smell, and even taste some of its exhibits for your­self, you’ll have to make the trek out to Malmö, Swe­den. The project comes from the mind of Samuel West, a Swede best known for cre­at­ing the Muse­um of Fail­ure (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), whose half-Amer­i­can parent­age has made him famil­iar with sev­er­al items of U.S. cui­sine that gross out non-Amer­i­cans, from Spam to Jell‑O pas­ta sal­ad (shades of James Lileks’ mid­cen­tu­ry mid­west-focused Gallery of Regret­table Food) to Rocky Moun­tain oys­ters. Despite being Amer­i­can myself, I’ve nev­er known any­one who likes that last, a dish made of bull tes­ti­cles, or at least no one has ever admit­ted to me that they like it. But if some­one did, I’d cer­tain­ly feel as if I’d learned some­thing about them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Muse­um of Fail­ure: A Liv­ing Shrine to New Coke, the Ford Edsel, Google Glass & Oth­er Epic Cor­po­rate Fails

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

What Pris­on­ers Ate at Alca­traz in 1946: A Vin­tage Prison Menu

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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 or on Face­book.

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