concerning oatmeal

When rolling through the glens of the Highlands in your touring car, you may be overcome by the desire to ‘go antiquing’. Aside from the whole stake-through-the-groin noun-as-verb pitfall, and the logistics of tying wooden furniture to your Mazda Miata, there is another booby trap lurking for the unwary. Never buy a sweet granny’s Scots pine dresser without checking first for the oatmeal tidemark to guarantee its provenance. Back before Stouffers frozen meals, porridge used to be made in large batches, poured into a top dresser drawer, and left to set overnight. Nothing like a freshly cut slab of cold solid porridge for a lovely picnic on the heather.

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words (that i suspect are) wholly related

syllable & sillabub

Syllable comes from the greek syllambanein, meaning to gather together. Sillabubs are made by using booze to tighten milk into a set mass of smooth spoonable curds, but the OED claims the etymology of the name is unknown (although they feel perfectly competent to decree a preferred spelling). Frankly, what the eff? A sillabub should be the grammarian’s go-to allegory, the preferred demo m.o. for grabbing the attention of recalcitrant six year olds. In protest at this havering by the etymological referees, I shall now go and make a syllabubble with my spare bottle of champagne. What? Wanna prove me wrong? Have at it. I’ll send you my syllabubble recipe.

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terms of dismemberment

After this morning’s transparent attempt to rouse some interdenominational interest, I thought I should come clean. The truth is that, despite a selection of blades on my knife strip that Lizzie Borden would approve of, I’m totally squeamish about horror films, and I mainly use just two knives to cook with: a biggish one and a smaller one. The real reason I want to see a cutlery renaissance is because cutting tools come with linguistic accessories, and I want to be a flash git the next time I’m in charge of a brace of widgeons. I bet you thought that at Thanksgiving the token alpha male gets to “carve” the turkey. You did, didn’t you? Wrong. Below, an arsenal of verbs applicable to the presentation of delicacies furred, feathered and finned:  

Break the deer, rear the goose, lift the swan, sauce the capon, spoil the hen, frust the chicken, unbrace the mallard, unlace the coney, display the crane, disfigure the peacock, unjoynt the bittern, allay the pheasant, wing the partridge, mince the plover, thigh all manner of small birds.

Chine the salmon, string the lamprey, splat the pike, side the haddock, tusk the barbel, culpon the trout, fin the chivin, transon the eel, tranch the sturgeon, undertranch the porpus, tame the crab, barb that lobster.

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from: The Accomplisht Cook, or the Art & Mystery of Cookery by Robert May (1685)

a caveat from the legal eagle department: Ramona’s little sister (who really does get paid to be legal for eagles) has expressed concern that some readers of the ragbag may take this post as license to go out and snaffle some protected species for their next underground gourmet locavore potluck. It is not. Go to Save-A-Lot like everyone else, my friends.

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f-words to fluff your fritters

Now that I am a foodie (now there’s an f-word for you) and can converse fluently on the subject of what my steak ate before I ate it, and how the apples I prefer grow on trees mentioned in the Magna Carta or spared by the tyro George Washington, it seems appropriate that the ragbag should rustle up a list of those f-words that help create the right vibe at the farmers’ market. These are the sort of bucolic tidbits I mention airily when at my most Bathsheba Everdene, chit-chatting to a besmocked yokel with straw in his ears and dollar signs in his eyes.

• fairing: any baked sweet thing brought back from a fair as a gift for your best beloved or your apple-cheeked progeny.
• finnan haddie: smoked haddock from Findon in Kincardineshire. The principal ingredient in cullen skink and not to be confused with an Arbroath smokie. (Everything about those two sentences makes me grin like a loon.)
• fitchett/fidget pie: potato, meat and apple filling baked with a short crust.
• flead cakes: scone (limey) or biscuit (yank) -esque little bundles of flaky delight made with flead, which is flare fat, and which you must pound into oblivion if you want to get it to cooperate and pretend to be butter.
• flummery: a sweetened starch jelly made from oatmeal or rice. Also used figuratively to mean empty talk and waffling. The Scottish approach to either type of flummery has always involved the addition of large quantities of whisky.
• friar’s omelet: a rich baked apple and egg custard
• frumenty/firmity: cree’d wheat cooked to a jellied porridge and served as an accompaniment to porpoise at the wedding of Henry IV and Joan of Navarre in 1403. (But if you’re not in the mood to put on the Lancastrian dog, it is perfectly acceptable to serve your frumenty Flipper-free.)

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from: Good Things in England: A Practical Cookery Book for Everyday Use, Containing Traditional and Regional Recipes suited to Modern Tastes contributed by English Men and Women between 1399 and 1932 edited by the wonderful, one-eyed Florence White (1932).

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