Cooking a Baroque Omelette

For lunch I tried a Baroque period recipe for mini-omelettes.

Michael Barczyk published the German-language book Essen und Trinken Im Barock ("Eating and Drinking in the Baroque Period") in 1981. It concentrates especially on Upper Swabia, a region in eastern Germany, and gives a cross-section of the food eaten by the social classes of the time.

"Colourful fowl" (1882)
by Carl Jutz
Found on Wikimedia Commons

His Eierflädlein recipe was presumably cooked for the middle class, as eggs were a precious commodity. I served them with a spinach soup.

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Eierflädlein (adapted, makes 4 mini-omelettes)

1 level teaspoon flour

4 eggs

2 teaspoons milk

Butter for frying

1. Beat together the ingredients.
2. Melt butter in a pan until it sizzles. Pour in 1 ladleful of the egg mixture.
3. Fry until the omelette is almost set.
4. Roll it up and transfer to a serving plate, and repeat with the next ladleful.

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"Eat these every day"
American World-War-II-era poster from the Work Projects Administration  (1941-1943)
Found on Wikimedia Commons

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Environmental impact of eggs

Eggs have a lower CO2 equivalent footprint than white or red meat. However, a 2014 article in the journal Poultry Science notes that the chicken feed required for egg production is still resource-intensive:

Eggs represent a relatively low-carbon supply of animal protein, but their production is heavily dependent on cereals and soy
— Taylor, R C et al. “The greenhouse emissions footprint of free-range eggs.” Poultry Science vol. 93,1 (2014): 231-7. doi:10.3382/ps.2013-03489

During World War II, fresh eggs were rationed in the United Kingdom: 1 egg per person per week with exceptions for children, pregnant women, and some invalids. It was more common to consume them dried, powdered, and imported from the United States.

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Sources

"Rationing in the United Kingdom" [Wikipedia]

"The Supersizers Go...Wartime" BBC: 2008

Sick Day: Arrowroot Pudding

Ingredients 

1/2 litre milk

3 tbsp arrowroot powder

2 tsp sugar

Optional toppings: green apple, nutmeg, date syrup, and/or Ovaltine drink powder

Instructions: Please find them from a cook on YouTube here.

Image from page 137 of "Diet in illness and convalescence" (1899)
Author: Alice Worthington Winthrop
Published in New York/London: Harper & Brothers
Found on Flickr: Internet Archive Book Images

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When I woke up this morning with a sore throat, I followed the example of Britons in the Regency and Victorian periods, cooking an arrowroot pudding.

 (Arrowroot is mentioned in Jane Austen's Emma)

Arrowroot has been tricky to get right. The key is not to let the milk boil before the arrowroot powder is added. Besides it is necessary to wait for the pudding to thicken, stirring until it reaches a thick and glossy consistency like vanilla pudding.

I ate the pudding warm, after fifteen minutes or so in the hay box, instead of letting it set.

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Sources:

How to make Arrowroot powder pudding ||Simple Recipes [YouTube] December 11, 2020.

"Arrowroot" [Wikipedia]

"Arrow-root Blanc-mange." in Three meals a day : a choice collection of valuable and reliable recipes in all classes of cookery and a comprehensive cyclopedia of information for the home including toilet, health and housekeeping departments, cooking recipes, menus, table etiquette, and a thousand facts worth knowing by Maud C. Cooke. 1902. [Archive.org]

Concord Grapes on the Day of German Reunification

Concord grapes from a Berlin allotment garden, October 2022
Photograph by the author
Public domain

I found apples, two damson plums, and a few bunches of purple Concord grapes at the allotment gardens this afternoon. A lot of the baskets were empty, presumably ransacked nicely by city-dwellers out on a walk on our Day of German Reunification holiday. But the gardener who grew the grapes was sitting in her garden, so we had a chat over her fence and I was able to say thank you.

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CONCORD GRAPES grew in private gardens around the city where I grew up in Canada. We also bought them (grown in the Okanagan Valley, most likely) on rare occasions from chain grocery stores during the peak season.

They are also native to North America. So I was surprised to find them in a Berlin garden. Ephraim Wales Bull developed them in Massachusetts in 1849.

Their flavour is akin to the artificial grape flavouring in lollipops, fruit gums, and all kinds of other candy. But they are also used to make jellies and grape juice.

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I've mostly eaten them fresh; I haven't tried to bake or cook them. But Martha Stewart's website has a whole set of Concord grape recipes, from mulled grape juice for Halloween to a grape and lavender sorbet.

Photographic plate of Concord grape
from the book The Grapes of New York, 1908
by Ulysses Prentiss Hedrick
Found on Wikipedia

Source: "Concord grape" [Wikipedia]

A Pot of Nettle Tea

Nettles grow everywhere in Berlin.

They like nitrogen and phosphate-rich soil. But it is not a pleasure to run into them. Their leaves release formic acid and cause stinging, round welts to appear on the skin, which is of course why they are known as "stinging nettles."

One learns to handle them with care and to enjoy their culinary benefits.

Morgan M.873, f.90r
Manuscript in the Morgan Library & Museum, New York City,
Written 1350-1375
Found in Wikimedia Commons

The nettle leaves are often used for tea, when they have not sprouted flowers. Their flavour is reminiscent of raw green beans, however, although their tea already has a pleasant green colour and vitamins (C, B₂, B₅, E, K₁).

So I've taken a leaf from the book of German herbal tea manufacturers, adding fennel seeds to the nettle tea to offer a better flavour.

For this tea recipe I foraged the nettle leaves from my uncle's garden in Brandenburg. From my perspective, almost any chemical or biological substance might be in the soil in Berlin, owing to centuries of industry, warfare, and human and animal waste. Outside of dedicated garden areas, it might be best not to eat city foliage.

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Recipe

1 big sprig of nettle (~3 tablespoons worth of leaves)

1/2 tsp fennel seeds

5 cups of water

Bring the water to a boil and pour over the nettle and fennel seeds.

Steep for 5 to 8 minutes.

"The British are encouraged to try new tea on the day"
Photograph attributed to Wikimedia Commons user Mg123$, 2017
Found on Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 4.0

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Health Warning

After the stinging nettle enters its flowering and seed-setting stages, the leaves develop gritty particles called cystoliths, which can irritate the kidneys and urinary tract.  Cystoliths are made of calcium carbonate, and will not dissolve when boiled. Leaves harvested post-flowering must have their cystoliths broken down by acid, as in the fermentation process.
—"Urtica dioica" (Wikipedia)

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Sources:

Urtica dioica [Wikipedia]

Dormant Gardens, Frugal Heating, and an Oregano, Celery Stick and Mushroom Salad

Today I visited family in Brandenburg, at the outskirts of Berlin, and received permission to forage in the garden.

Laid out by my late aunt in honour of nuns' kitchen gardens, it is now a natural landscape of firewood, rain-drenched grass, one or two orange-hipped rose bushes, blossoming herbs, Canada goldenrod spires, and nettles.

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BEHIND THE GARDEN, the walnut tree is carrying plenty of nuts. 

My uncle explained that, given the acorns and other supplies of food in the area, the squirrels in the area hardly need the walnut tree. So I was relieved to find that nobody was chattering frantically and bombarding me with gnawed fragments of husks from the branches of the tree.

A few walnuts are now drying on the unused coal stove in my room.

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I also found sorrel (Sauerampfer) and dandelion (Löwenzahn) leaves, but aside from two leaves of sorrel, I left them intact.

Oregano
Photograph by Christian Bauer, 2004
Found on Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 2.0

In the end I made a plain salad at home. It was inspired by the purple-blossomed oregano from the garden.

Agaricus campestris
From "Twelve edible mushrooms of the United States",
by Thomas Taylor (1893)
Found on Wikimedia Commons

The mushrooms and celery are, as far as I recall, German produce. Wild mushrooms are especially abundant in the forests of Brandenburg now; but they should of course be picked with caution as they may be toxic.

Oregano, Celery and Mushroom Salad

• 1 medium mushroom
• 1 celery stalk, diced
• 2 to 5 sprigs of oregano
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 3/4 teaspoon aceto balsamico vinegar
• salt
• pepper
• (optional) cayenne pepper

1. Quarter and slice the mushroom.

2. Pluck the oregano leaves from the stems.

3. Assemble with the diced celery, vinaigrette, pepper and salt.

4. (Decorate with celery leaves if you like.)

Serves one

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A Note On Vegetable Oils

Olea Europæa, sylvestris = Olivier d'Europe, sauvage. [Wild olives]
From the

Traité des arbres et arbustes
que l'on cultive en France en pleine terre

(1801)
Found on Wikimedia Commons

If olive oil is produced by an agricultural operation that relies heavily on tilling as well as artificial fertilization and irrigation, it harms the environment.

Writing in the Guardian food section, Clare Finney links to an academic study about these risks, but also notes that

Traditional small-scale methods of olive oil production have very little environmental impact, however. Olive trees can grow in areas of mixed land use, promoting biodiversity, and require very little water compared with other crops

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MY UNCLE had turned the gas heating low in his house in Brandenburg. My family still hasn't begun heating with coal yet in Berlin either. (My ballet teacher also sent around an email this past week and mentioned the trend, saying that we could warm ourselves up in her Monday class.) So when eating a cold salad like this during early October in an unheated home, I'd suggest following it up with a hearty bowl of soup.