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

in Food & Drink, Literature | December 24th, 2013

OrwellsPudding1

British cook­ing has been the butt of many jokes, and seri­ous thought-pieces have been devot­ed to “why British food was so bad for so long.” While that arti­cle blames WWI for the decline of Eng­lish Cui­sine, the stig­ma long pre­cedes the 20th cen­tu­ry. In his unpub­lished essay “British Cook­ery,” for exam­ple, George Orwell opens with a quote from Voltaire, who wrote that Britain has “a hun­dred reli­gions and only one sauce.” This, Orwell writes, “was untrue” and “is equal­ly untrue today.” His “today” was 1945, before the best British cui­sine was Indi­an. And though he does defend his country’s cook­ing, and did so in anoth­er essay pub­lished that year in the Evening Stan­dard, Orwell also makes some crit­i­cal com­ments that con­firm some of the stereo­types, call­ing the British diet “a sim­ple, rather heavy, per­haps slight­ly bar­barous diet” and writ­ing: “Cheap restau­rants in Britain are almost invari­ably bad, while in expen­sive restau­rants the cook­ery is almost always French, or imi­ta­tion French.”

OrwellsPudding2

The essay is an exhaus­tive sur­vey of the British palate of the time, and it con­cludes with some of Orwell’s own recipes for sweets, includ­ing trea­cle tart, orange mar­malade, plum cake, and, last­ly, Christ­mas pud­ding. You can see the stained type­script of the last two recipes above, and read the full tran­script of Orwell’s “British Cook­ery” here (the recipes are at the end). Hav­ing no expe­ri­ence with the strange world of British sweets and pies, I’ll have to take The Guardian’s Alex Renton’s word when he tells us that “the Orwell Christ­mas pud­ding is noth­ing rad­i­cal.” Nonethe­less, I’m tempt­ed to try this recipe more than any of the oth­ers Ren­ton men­tions, even if I may not get my hands on real suet or sul­tanas. Read a tran­script of Orwell’s Christ­mas pud­ding recipe below.

CHRISTMAS PUDDING.

Ingre­di­ents:

1 lb each of cur­rants, sul­tanas & raisins


2 ounces sweet almonds


1 ounces sweet almonds


1 ounces bit­ter almonds


4 ounces mixed peel


½ lb brown sug­ar


½ lb flour


¼ lb bread­crumbs


½ tea­spoon­ful salt


½ tea­spoon­ful grat­ed nut­meg


¼ tea­spoon­ful pow­dered cin­na­mon


6 ounces suet


The rind and juice of 1 lemon


5 eggs


A lit­tle milk


1/8 of a pint of brandy, or a lit­tle beer

 Method. Wash the fruit. Chop the suet, shred and chop the peel, stone and chop the raisins, blanch and chop the almonds. Pre­pare the bread­crumbs. Sift the spices and salt into the flour. Mix all the dry ingre­di­ents into a basin. Heat the eggs, mix them with the lemon juice and the oth­er liq­uids. Add to the dry ingre­di­ents and stir well. If the mix­ture is too stiff, add a lit­tle more milk. Allow the mix­ture to stand for a few hours in a cov­ered basin. Then mix well again and place in well-greased basins of about 8 inch­es diam­e­ter. Cov­er with rounds of greased paper. Then tie the tops of the basins over the floured cloths if the pud­dings are to be boiled, or with thick greased paper if they are to be steamed. Boil or steam for 5 or 6 hours. On the day when the pud­ding is to be eat­en, re-heat it by steam­ing it for 3 hours. When serv­ing, pour a large spoon­ful of warm brandy over it and set fire to it.

In Britain it is unusu­al to mix into each pud­ding one or two small coins, tiny chi­na dolls or sil­ver charms which are sup­posed to bring luck.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell and Dou­glas Adams Explain How to Make a Prop­er Cup of Tea

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

Pre­pare Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Per­son­al, Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe on Thanks­giv­ing

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

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French Café Adds Extra Charge for Rude Customers

in Food & Drink, Life | December 19th, 2013

french-rude-cafe

A cou­ple of days ago, we high­light­ed a delight­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Eti­quette Guide Explain­ing How to Ride the Paris Metro in a Civ­i­lized Way. It comes to you cour­tesy of the RATP, the gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tion that makes the sub­ways and trains run in Paris (some­times on time).

Let’s now head 600 miles south, to the Riv­iera city of Nice, where some café own­ers opt­ed for anoth­er way to keep bad behav­ior in check. At the Petite Syrah, they’ve imple­ment­ed a sim­ple pric­ing scheme that works like this:

If you ask for “a cof­fee” (it’s most like­ly an espres­so), it will run you 7 euros, or $9.50.

If you ask for a “cof­fee please,” the charge drops to €4.25/$5.80.

But if you start your order by say­ing “Hel­lo, may I have a cof­fee, please,” the bill becomes a man­age­able €1.40.

Now, truth be told, the pric­ing scheme is more car­rot than stick. The café’s man­ag­er read­i­ly admits that he has nev­er actu­al­ly charged any of the puni­tive high­er prices. But that’s not to say that the scheme does­n’t work. Accord­ing to manager/owner Fab­rice Pepino, reg­u­lar cus­tomers quick­ly took note of the sign and began to “say, ‘Hel­lo, your high­ness, will you serve me one of your beau­ti­ful cof­fees.” Eh voilà, no more cof­fee jerks.

via Kot­tke/The Local

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email orRSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Illus­trat­ed Eti­quette Guide Explains How to Ride the Paris Metro in a Civ­i­lized Way

Men In Com­mer­cials Being Jerks About Cof­fee: A Mashup of 1950s & 1960s TV Ads

The (Beau­ti­ful) Physics of Adding Cream to Your Cof­fee

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

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The (Beautiful) Physics of Adding Cream to Your Coffee

in Food & Drink | December 10th, 2013

Here’s a quick sce­nario for you. You’ve poured your­self a fresh cup of black cof­fee, and you want to keep it hot until you’re ready to drink it. Are you mak­ing a mis­take by adding cream to that cof­fee? Does cof­fee with cream cool faster than black cof­fee left alone? Intu­ition says yes. The laws of physics lead to a dif­fer­ent con­clu­sion.

Last year, the web site Mod­ernist Cui­sine gave three rea­sons why “cof­fee with cream cools about 20% slow­er than black cof­fee” alone. To sum­ma­rize:

1) Black cof­fee is dark­er, and dark col­ors emit heat faster than light col­ors. As such, “by light­en­ing the col­or of your cof­fee, you slow the rate at which it cools,” if only slight­ly.

2) The Ste­fan-Boltz­mann Law (appar­ent­ly) says that hot­ter sur­faces radi­ate heat faster— than cool­er ones. So if you add cream to a cup of black cof­fee, it might low­er the tem­per­a­ture of that cup of cof­fee. How­ev­er that cup could still cool at a slow­er rate than a cup of hot black cof­fee.

3) Final­ly, and per­haps most impor­tant­ly, “adding cream thick­ens the cof­fee (adds vis­cos­i­ty), so it evap­o­rates slow­er.” And, in turn, less heat gets car­ried away by the evap­o­ra­tion.

To top things off, Mod­ernist Cui­sine also pro­duced a video show­ing cream being poured into cof­fee in super slow motion. Even if you don’t care to con­sid­er the physics of cof­fee & cream, it’s pret­ty cool to watch an aver­age cup of joe get­ting turned into a roil­ing sea.

via Petapix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Physics of Cof­fee Rings Final­ly Explained

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: London’s First Cafe Cre­ates Ad for Cof­fee in the 1650s

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

Free Online Physics Cours­es

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The World’s First “Roast-Grind-Brew” Coffee Machine Could Bring About a Coffee Revolution

in Food & Drink, Technology | December 6th, 2013

Bonaverde is “a small, ded­i­cat­ed team of young, sleep­less Berlin­er entre­pre­neurs that [have] made it their goal to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the cof­fee world.” How? By build­ing the world’s first “Roast-Grind-Brew Cof­fee Machine.” Oth­er machines might grind and brew the cof­fee. This one will roast the beans too, which is no triv­ial inno­va­tion. It promis­es to sig­nif­i­cant­ly decrease the num­ber of steps, and the amount of time, it takes to turn a har­vest­ed cof­fee bean into your morn­ing cup of joe, which means a much fresh­er cup of cof­fee. And per­haps a cheap­er one too.

Bonaverde has already devel­oped a pro­to­type. (See how it works below.) Now the ven­ture needs to bring the machine into pro­duc­tion. Through a Kick­starter cam­paign end­ing on Decem­ber 8th, the ven­ture ini­tial­ly hoped to raise $135,000. But it has already blown past that fig­ure, rais­ing $582,693 thus far. Any­one who con­tributes $250 (or more) to the cam­paign will get one of the very first Roast-Grind-Brew Cof­fee Machines, plus 6.6 lbs. (3kg) of green cof­fee. The­o­ret­i­cal­ly all you need to brew one very fresh cup of cof­fee. Find more infor­ma­tion on the next-gen­er­a­tion cof­fee machine over on Bonaverde’s Kick­starter page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: London’s First Cafe Cre­ates Ad for Cof­fee in the 1650s

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

How Cli­mate Change Is Threat­en­ing Your Dai­ly Cup of Cof­fee

A Short, Ani­mat­ed Look at What’s Inside Your Aver­age Cup of Cof­fee

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

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Filmmaker Luis Buñuel Shows How to Make the Perfect Dry Martini

in Food & Drink | December 5th, 2013

The once-sur­re­al­ist (and, in a sense, always sur­re­al­ist) Span­ish film­mak­er Luis Buñuel made such clas­si­cal­ly bleak, humor­ous, and bleak­ly humor­ous pic­tures like Virid­i­ana, The Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel, The Dis­creet Charm of the Bour­geoisie, and That Obscure Object of Desire. He also made per­son­al con­nec­tions with an inter­na­tion­al range of idio­syn­crat­ic cre­ative lumi­nar­ies includ­ing Fed­eri­co Gar­cía Lor­ca, Sergei Eisen­stein, Char­lie Chap­lin, Aldous Hux­ley, Pablo Picas­so, Bertolt Brecht, Octavio Paz, Alexan­der Calder, and Sal­vador Dalí (his col­lab­o­ra­tor on the noto­ri­ous short Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or). Hav­ing lived a life like that, Buñuel sure­ly could­n’t help but write one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing auto­bi­ogra­phies in print. To become such a human cul­tur­al nexus, one needs not make motion pic­tures as endur­ing­ly strik­ing as Buñuel’s, but one must cer­tain­ly make a dry mar­ti­ni on the lev­el of his own. For­tu­nate­ly for the aspir­ing Buñuels of the world, My Last Sigh, that for­mi­da­bly intrigu­ing life sto­ry, includes his per­son­al recipe.

Dan­ger­ous Minds has post­ed the rel­e­vant excerpt. “To pro­voke, or sus­tain, a rever­ie in a bar, you have to drink Eng­lish gin, espe­cial­ly in the form of the dry mar­ti­ni,” writes Buñuel. “To be frank, giv­en the pri­mor­dial role in my life played by the dry mar­ti­ni, I think I real­ly ought to give it at least a page.” He rec­om­mends that “the ice be so cold and hard that it won’t melt, since nothing’s worse than a watery mar­ti­ni,” then offers up his pro­ce­dure, “the fruit of long exper­i­men­ta­tion and guar­an­teed to pro­duce per­fect results. The day before your guests arrive, put all the ingredients—glasses, gin, and shaker—in the refrig­er­a­tor. Use a ther­mome­ter to make sure the ice is about twen­ty degrees below zero (centi­grade). Don’t take any­thing out until your friends arrive; then pour a few drops of Noil­ly Prat and half a demi­tasse spoon of Angos­tu­ra bit­ters over the ice. Stir it, then pour it out, keep­ing only the ice, which retains a faint taste of both. Then pour straight gin over the ice, stir it again, and serve.” In the clip above, you can wit­ness the man him­self in action, a sight that gets me won­der­ing whether Buñuel ever crossed paths with John Updike. Imag­in­ing such a meet­ing sets the mind reel­ing, but few quotes seem as apro­pos here as the New Eng­land nov­el­ist’s obser­va­tion that “excel­lence in the great things is built upon excel­lence in the small.”

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 13 Tips for What to Do with Your Leftover Thanksgiving Turkey

in Comedy, Food & Drink | November 29th, 2013

fitzgerald turkey

Image by “The World’s Work” via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“At this post hol­i­day sea­son, the refrig­er­a­tors of the nation are over­stuffed with large mass­es of turkey, the sight of which is cal­cu­lat­ed to give an adult an attack of dizzi­ness. It seems, there­fore, an appro­pri­ate time to give the own­ers the ben­e­fit of my expe­ri­ence as an old gourmet, in using this sur­plus mate­r­i­al.” There writes no less a leg­end of Amer­i­can let­ters than F. Scott Fitzger­ald, author of The Great Gats­by and Ten­der is the Night (both avail­able in our Free eBooks col­lec­tion). His words quot­ed here, from “Turkey Remains and How to Inter Them with Numer­ous Scarce Recipes,” a col­umn found in the Fitzger­ald mis­cel­lany col­lec­tion The Crack-Up, hold just as true this day-after-Thanks­giv­ing  as they did dur­ing those his life­time. Lists of Note offers the full piece, which itself offers thir­teen poten­tial uses for your left­over bird, some of which, Fitzger­ald writes, “have been in my fam­i­ly for gen­er­a­tions”:

1. Turkey Cock­tail: To one large turkey add one gal­lon of ver­mouth and a demi­john of angos­tu­ra bit­ters. Shake.

2. Turkey à la Fran­cais: Take a large ripe turkey, pre­pare as for bast­ing and stuff with old watch­es and chains and mon­key meat. Pro­ceed as with cot­tage pud­ding.

3. Turkey and Water: Take one turkey and one pan of water. Heat the lat­ter to the boil­ing point and then put in the refrig­er­a­tor. When it has jelled, drown the turkey in it. Eat. In prepar­ing this recipe it is best to have a few ham sand­wich­es around in case things go wrong.

4. Turkey Mon­gole: Take three butts of sala­mi and a large turkey skele­ton, from which the feath­ers and nat­ur­al stuff­ing have been removed. Lay them out on the table and call up some Mon­gole in the neigh­bor­hood to tell you how to pro­ceed from there.

5. Turkey Mousse: Seed a large prone turkey, being care­ful to remove the bones, flesh, fins, gravy, etc. Blow up with a bicy­cle pump. Mount in becom­ing style and hang in the front hall.

6. Stolen Turkey: Walk quick­ly from the mar­ket, and, if accost­ed, remark with a laugh that it had just flown into your arms and you had­n’t noticed it. Then drop the turkey with the white of one egg—well, any­how, beat it.

7. Turkey à la Crême: Pre­pare the crême a day in advance. Del­uge the turkey with it and cook for six days over a blast fur­nace. Wrap in fly paper and serve.

8. Turkey Hash: This is the delight of all con­nois­seurs of the hol­i­day beast, but few under­stand how real­ly to pre­pare it. Like a lob­ster, it must be plunged alive into boil­ing water, until it becomes bright red or pur­ple or some­thing, and then before the col­or fades, placed quick­ly in a wash­ing machine and allowed to stew in its own gore as it is whirled around. Only then is it ready for hash. To hash, take a large sharp tool like a nail-file or, if none is handy, a bay­o­net will serve the purpose—and then get at it! Hash it well! Bind the remains with den­tal floss and serve.

9. Feath­ered Turkey: To pre­pare this, a turkey is nec­es­sary and a one pounder can­non to com­pel any­one to eat it. Broil the feath­ers and stuff with sage-brush, old clothes, almost any­thing you can dig up. Then sit down and sim­mer. The feath­ers are to be eat­en like arti­chokes (and this is not to be con­fused with the old Roman cus­tom of tick­ling the throat.)

10. Turkey à la Mary­land: Take a plump turkey to a bar­ber’s and have him shaved, or if a female bird, giv­en a facial and a water wave. Then, before killing him, stuff with old news­pa­pers and put him to roost. He can then be served hot or raw, usu­al­ly with a thick gravy of min­er­al oil and rub­bing alco­hol. (Note: This recipe was giv­en me by an old black mam­my.)

11. Turkey Rem­nant: This is one of the most use­ful recipes for, though not, “chic,” it tells what to do with the turkey after the hol­i­day, and how to extract the most val­ue from it. Take the remants, or, if they have been con­sumed, take the var­i­ous plates on which the turkey or its parts have rest­ed and stew them for two hours in milk of mag­ne­sia. Stuff with moth-balls.

12. Turkey with Whiskey Sauce: This recipe is for a par­ty of four. Obtain a gal­lon of whiskey, and allow it to age for sev­er­al hours. Then serve, allow­ing one quart for each guest. The next day the turkey should be added, lit­tle by lit­tle, con­stant­ly stir­ring and bast­ing.

13. For Wed­dings or Funer­als: Obtain a gross of small white box­es such as are used for bride’s cake. Cut the turkey into small squares, roast, stuff, kill, boil, bake and allow to skew­er. Now we are ready to begin. Fill each box with a quan­ti­ty of soup stock and pile in a handy place. As the liq­uid elaps­es, the pre­pared turkey is added until the guests arrive. The box­es del­i­cate­ly tied with white rib­bons are then placed in the hand­bags of the ladies, or in the men’s side pock­ets.

What, you expect­ed recipes more… fol­low­able than these? And per­haps recipes with less alco­hol involved? These all make much more sense if you bear in mind Fitzger­ald’s for­mi­da­ble cre­ativ­i­ty, his even more for­mi­da­ble pen­chant for the drink, and his mor­dant sense of humor about it all. “I guess that’s enough turkey talk,” con­cludes this lit­er­ary icon of my Thanks­giv­ing-cel­e­brat­ing nation. “I hope I’ll nev­er see or hear of anoth­er until—well, until next year.” If you haven’t had enough, and indeed feel like get­ting the jump on next year, see also the Air­ship’s list of twelve Thanks­giv­ing recipes from favorite authors, includ­ing Jonathan Franzen’s pas­ta with kale, Alice Munro’s rose­mary bread pud­ding, and Ralph Ellison’s sweet yams.

via Lists of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

Pre­pare Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Per­son­al, Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe on Thanks­giv­ing

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Tells His 11-Year-Old Daugh­ter What to Wor­ry About (and Not Wor­ry About) in Life, 1933

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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William Shatner Raps About How to Not Kill Yourself Deep Frying a Turkey

in Food & Drink, Music | November 28th, 2013

Like many oth­ers on Thanks­giv­ing, William Shat­ner sought a “moister, tasti­er” turkey expe­ri­ence. The for­mer Star Trek star had pur­chased a siz­able fry­er and, turned brash by pangs of hunger, threw cau­tion to the wind; despite know­ing Archimedes’ prin­ci­ple full well, Shat­ner bold­ly went where no cook should go and deposit­ed the turkey into a vat brim­ming with oil. Oh, woe­ful day! The oil, dis­placed by the turkey, ran over the fryer’s sides and onto the open flame. Flames then shot up, burn­ing Shatner’s arms.

In 2011, Shat­ner joined forces with the insur­ance com­pa­ny State Farm to cre­ate a cau­tion­ary video warn­ing would-be Thanks­giv­ing turkey fry­ers about the per­ils of engag­ing in such a gas­tro­nom­ic enter­prise. Accord­ing to State Farm, insur­ance claims relat­ed to Thanks­giv­ing grease & cook­ing-acci­dents dropped by half after this pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment came out.

In what can only be inter­pret­ed as an attempt to tam­per with per­fec­tion, in 2012, State Farm decid­ed to have YouTube’s melodysheep remix Shatner’s orig­i­nal video, giv­ing it a glis­ten­ing new coat of Inter­net viral­i­ty. We are pleased to say that the endeav­or proved to be a resound­ing suc­cess. Please enjoy the video, above, and remem­ber the fol­low­ing fry­ing tips:

1: Avoid oil spillover–don’t over­fill the pot.

2: Turn off the flame when low­er­ing the turkey into oil.

3: Fry out­side, away from the house.

4: Prop­er­ly thaw the turkey before fry­ing.

5: Keep a grease-fire-approved extin­guish­er near­by.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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Marilyn Monroe’s Handwritten Turkey-and-Stuffing Recipe

in Food & Drink, History | November 27th, 2013

marilynturkey1

Entire indus­tries seem to have sprung up around the mis­sion of demon­strat­ing that Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe did more in her short life than become an icon — the icon — of mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can star­let­hood. We here at Open Cul­ture have pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured not just her famous­ly pho­tographed read­ing of James Joyce’s Ulysses, but the con­tents of her per­son­al library as well. The new book Frag­ments pro­vides a great deal of rich ephemera to those schol­ars of Mon­roe’s pur­suits off the screen, includ­ing, as Matt Lee and Ted Lee in the New York Times describe it, “assort­ed let­ters, poems and back-of-the-enve­lope scrib­blings that span the time from Monroe’s first mar­riage in 1943 to her death in 1962.” The arti­cle appears in the paper’s Din­ing & Wine sec­tion thanks to one Mon­rov­ian frag­ment of par­tic­u­lar inter­est this time of year: her per­son­al recipe for turkey and stuff­ing.

marilynturkey3

“Scrawled on sta­tionery with a let­ter­head from a title insur­ance com­pa­ny,” write Lee and Lee, “the recipe describes in some detail how to pre­pare a stuff­ing for chick­en or turkey. The for­mu­la is exten­sive in the num­ber of ingre­di­ents (11, not includ­ing the 5 herbs and spices, or salt and pep­per), and in their diver­si­ty (3 kinds of nuts and 3 ani­mal pro­teins). It is unortho­dox for an Amer­i­can stuff­ing in its use of a bread loaf soaked in water, wrung dry and shred­ded, and in its lack of added fat, broth, raw egg or any oth­er binder.” You can find a tran­script of the steps right below. And if you give a whirl on Thanks­giv­ing, let us know how it turns out.

For the Stuff­ing

  • No gar­lic
  • Sour­dough
  • French bread — soak in cold water, wring out, then shred
  • For chick­en giblets — boil in water 5–10 mins
  • Liv­er — heart then chop
  • 1 whole or ½ onion,  chop & pars­ley / four stalk cel­ery,  chop togeth­er fol­low­ing spices — put in rose­mary
  • Thyme, bay leaf, oregano, poul­try sea­son­ing, salt, pep­per,
  • Grat­ed Parme­san cheese, 1 hand­ful
  • 1/2lb – 1/4lb ground round — put in fry­ing pan — brown (no oil) then mix raisin 1 ½ cuops or more
  • 1 cup chop nuts (wal­nuts, chest­nuts, peanuts)
  • 1 or 2 hard boiled eggs — chopped mix togeth­er

To Prep the Bird

  • Salt & pep­per inside chick­en or turkey — out­side same and but­ter
  • Sew up clamp birds put chick­en or turkey in 350 oven
  • Roast­ing chick­en — 3or 4lbs or larg­er
  • Cooks 30 min to 1lbs
  • Brown chick­en or pheas­ant (vine­gar, oil, onion, spices) — let cook in own juice
  • Add lit­tle water as you go
  • ½ glass vine­gar — put in when half done
  • Cooks 2 hours
  • Put pota­toes
  • Mush­room — but­ton canned
  • Peas — fresh

via NYTimes,  Brain Pick­ings and The Dai­ly Mail

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Reads Joyce’s Ulysses at the Play­ground (1955)

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Explains Rel­a­tiv­i­ty to Albert Ein­stein (in a Nico­las Roeg Movie)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.