vittles
The Paris Review Daily has recently displayed much ardor for retro gormandizing. Both Robin Bellinger’s experiments with “invalid cookery” and Sadie Stein’s fascination with a cookbook from 1917 called A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband make for wonderful essays. I can see why one would be intrigued by “boubons with tomato sauce” or “chilly cubes of chicken jelly on warm toast.” Ancient, baroque methods of food preparation seem exotic in comparison to our microwaved steaks and Toaster Strudels.
I’m reading James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers at the moment. The novel contains a scene in which a wealthy family sits down to a feast, and this feast is no ordinary carve ‘n’ serve Thanksgiving. There’s an “enormous roasted turkey” present, of course, but also “certain curiously twisted and complicated figures called ‘nut-cakes’,” “sweet-cake,” and for the boozehounds, “decanters of brandy, rum, gin, and wine” plus “sundry pitchers of cider.”
The pie is the best. Please try to imagine this pie: “A motley-looking pie, composed of triangular slices of apple, mince, pumpkin, cranberry, and custard, so arranged as to form an entire whole.” Can you imagine? No one but colonial settlers, who were used to all kinds of labor-intensive tasks, would go so far as to amalgamate five pies into one.
