Sunday 12 February 2006

Posh Nosh

In the years before they liked to be called actors, successful actresses led the kind of life in which flowers and champagne played a major part. This is reflected in the following recipes, which were among those contributed by four hundred actresses to The Stage Favourites’ Cook Book, published in 1923:

Truffes au vin de champagne
Brown one or two slices of veal and of ham in melted bacon fat in a casserole; cover them with peeled truffles and add a bouquet garni, salt, pepper and a layer of peeled and roughly chopped mushrooms. Then cover with thin slices of bacon, moisten nicely with champagne, put on lid and allow contents to cook very slowly till tender, when serve with its own sauce strained and skimmed.

Salade des Roses
Gather half a pint of fresh pink scented rose-petals, pick them over carefully to see they are perfectly fresh, then add them to half a pint of thick cream and bruise them with a wooden spoon. When cream is delicately flavoured and fragrantly scented, pile up some large sound hulled strawberries in a crystal dish, sprinkle them with castor sugar, strain over the juice of a lemon and pour over two glasses of sherry or chablis. Whip the cream and pile up rockily on top.

[I should think these would go well together in the same meal, as a main course and dessert, perhaps adding as a starter my own Herring with Gin and Dandelion Sauce.
Both the recipes also contain hints about how to handle your guests: on arrival, moisten nicely with champagne, but if it flows too freely then to restore order at a later stage you may have to bruise them with a wooden spoon.]

5 comments:

Teddy III said...

OK Tony,let's see your recipe for Herring/Gin/Dandelion.

Tony said...

Sorry, Teddy. This came to me through L'Association Française des Amis des Plats de Fantaisie and as you know members are forbidden to divulge any of their recipes.

Minerva said...

Was the herring rouge by any chance?

Tony said...

What can she mean?

Gigibird said...

I have just discovered this little gem of a book and only today posted one of the recipes on my blog! Marshmallow Rice Pudding contributed by May Carpenter.
Small world?