What to Eat after a Wedding Feast

It is not uncommon to take a few days to recover one's appetite after indulging in a wedding feast.

In the jubilant spirit of mingling and merry-making –– seeing old relatives all grown up, and old friends all dressed up, and in my case, a whole lot of new people –– one eats and drinks freely and unhurriedly.  Restraint is exercised only in the interest of having sufficient stomach-space to enjoy everything brought to the table ... being sure to save room for the cake.  And why should there be any reason to refrain, especially when there are such delightful options available?  Beginning around noon, the guests were entertained with fat bacon wrapped scallops, dainty cubes of butternut squash topped with dollops of arugula pesto, and balls of coarsely chopped root vegetables encased in a breadcrumb crust, fried lightly enough that each one melted in the mouth and left but a touch of sweet oil on the thumb and the forefinger.

For Philip Miller, vegetable
cultivation was no laughing matter:
The cover of "The Gardener's Dictionary"

These gastronomical amusements, of course, constituted a mere fraction of the sundry wedding appetizers served.  And let it be known, voracious reader, that the main fare was equal if not superior in flavor to the above-mentioned dainties, even though I have neither the time nor the space to describe them all.

But what might one like to eat after such a feast (and two slices of rich pumpkin cake frosted with three layers of buttercream)?  Reader, I wanted a kale salad.

Were such concoctions available in 18th century Britain, I wondered?  (I admit that I often wonder about such things.)  It is likely that they were; the chief gardener to the Chelsea Physic Garden, Philip Miller, listed six of them in his chef d'oeuvre of 1731: The Gardener's Dictionary.  (Actually, he admitted that there were many additional varieties in existence, but claimed that they are not "cultivated for culinary use, being fit only for ornament or curiosity.")  However, he seemed to value kale (which he called borecole) primarily for its hardiness in bad weather rather than for its flavor, although he had some nice things to say about the Buda, or the "Russian Kail."

Lacking a bona fide historical recipe, I considered my 21st century options.  Perhaps I could replicate the blanched Lacinato conception (dressed with a blend of olive oil, lemon, dijon mustard and all the fresh rosemary and thyme I had on hand at the time) that I had tinkered with the week before?

Attempt #1: Blanched Kale and Shaved Parmesan

But there are many ways to love a kale salad, and last night I desired nothing but the one I had tasted for the first time at the rehearsal dinner.  The kale was served completely raw, but was chopped so finely that its texture –– light and ethereal –– betrayed none of the kale's natural fibrousness.  Sort of like tabouleh.

At Last: Travel-Weary and Salad-Happy 

"Before and After a Wedding" Kale Salad

- Lightly toast one cup of quinoa in olive oil over medium heat, and cook through (making sure to retain a little crunch).  Add generous amounts of parmesan cheese and a little olive oil and mix it up.
- Remove the stems of a large bunch of red kale, and chop very finely.  Do the same thing with half of a (large) bunch of Italian parsley.  Toss around in a bowl, and add a mixture of olive oil, salt, pepper, one or two garlic cloves, and about a tablespoon of lemon juice (and a little zest if you like).  Add the quinoa and mix it up again.
- Cook a handful of pumpkin seeds in some olive oil and add to the salad, along with some dried currants and more parmesan cheese.  



The whole thing takes about 20 minutes and 90% of the work is in the kale and parsley chopping.  It's hearty enough that the salad can be a dinner on its own if you wish, but it is particularly tasty when complemented with beer and pizza.  

Crawfish Soop and Leveret Pye: Eating Local in 1750

While special occasions –– holidays, weddings and such –– are lovingly recorded and preserved for posterity in letters and printed ephemera, the quotidian rhythms of our lives can be much harder to discern.  Such is the case when it comes to the study of English eating habits during the Enlightenment.  One need not delve too deeply into the archives in order to find accounts of men regaling themselves with beef-steak and arrack punch.  But did people eat like this on a day to day basis?  Ehh.  It's a lot harder to tell.

Stowe in the 18th Century: Where the Magic Happened

Thankfully, I recently managed to get my hands on a day to day "Household Menu Book" detailing nearly a year of dinners and suppers served to an aristocratic family in Buckinghamshire.  The meals served ostensibly date from around 1750, and I found myself eagerly flipping through the pages, hoping that they would betray some sense of how dining in the country differed from the fare served in taverns and inns found in London.

Given its access to roads, ports, and people with overseas connections, I had always imagined 18th century London to be, much as it is now, some sort of mecca for foodies: a place where one could eat things that were simply unimaginable in other parts of the kingdom.  Indeed, it was not until 1766 when James Woodforde, the gourmandizing country parson out in Somerset, recorded his first experience with pineapple: "the first I ever saw or tasted."  I will be the first to admit, good readers, that 18th century caricatures such as Squire Western, Fielding's loveable country bumpkin, not to mention the standard 21st century hypocrisies, had unduly influenced my conceptions of rural dining, even among elites, which I (rather unjustly) deemed to consist of large joints of meat, little dressing, and a few boiled vegetables, washed down with consecutive bottles of Rhenish, Claret, Madeira and Port. (Ever heard of the notorious "four bottle man"?)  But the Stowe family's records demonstrates that the story was more complicated than that.

The most striking aspect of these menus is the number of French names affixed to dishes.  In addition to a host of fricassees and terrines, the Stowe family regularly dined on things like poupeton of pidgeon, chicken a la royalle, and, most hilariously, veal au bourgeois.  Such dishes were still relatively unfamiliar even in the 1750s; indeed, new culinary fashions presented such a problem for aspiring parvenus that someone deemed it necessary to publish a pamphlet entitled "An Explanation and a Translation of a Modern Bill of Fare" so that diners would not be afraid to touch what was placed on the dinner table.

Particularly Trendy Dishes needed to
be explained to the general public

But when one compares these "sample" bills of fare presented in the pamphlet to the real deal, it becomes evident that these French trends were absorbed in a very partial manner.  You never get an unabashed Francophone feast with the Stowe family, even when they entertain guests.  More common are melanges of the common and the exotic; good old "Scotch Collops" and "Beans and Bacon" are served alongside "chicken a la tartarre."

It is also likely that many dishes eaten by the family were hunted on the the estate.  I didn't see any pineapples or cantaloupes –– things that would be imported from overseas –– but "crawfish," for example, pops up in everything from soups to ragouts, as well as a host of things I hadn't ran across on many London tables, such as leverets, woodcocks, sturgeon and the unabashedly local "new laid eggs."

We also might be seeing the beginnings of the veritable "Sunday Roast" enjoyed by many British families today.  Each Sunday the Stowe family unfailingly dined on:

a) Calves Head (either "hashed" or served "a la francaise"
b) At least two additional animals "Rost."  One must be a red meat (beef, venison, etc) and the other is a lighter one, such as turkeys or rabbits.
c) A "Soop"
d) Some kind of "Ragout"
No other day of the week exhibited the same degree of consistency of dishes served as Sundays did.

So if living in the country didn't cause one to lose out on variety, I realized that maybe the most indicative evidence of the family's "localism" resided not in the dishes themselves but rather in the cook's extremely creative orthography in describing them.  "Mucherooms" "Vinison" and "a Chaine of Porcke Boild" abound.  I pounded my head against the table trying to figure out what "laekes" could possibly mean.  ("Latkes?" asked my colleague quizzically.  "Ahh!"  I finally realized.  "Leeks!")  It seems likely that this cook wasn't reading a lot of contemporary cookery books.

Going over these bills of fare provides an important glimpse into both the tastes of the family that ate these meals and the economy of the estate.  Yet my over-earnest speculations and hypotheses, regrettably, only serve to underscore how much we do not know.  We need to know more about this cook; how he (or she) learned how to prepare these dishes and came to work for this family.  We need to know how long it took to prepare these crawfish soops and ox-cheek ragouts.  We need to know what kinds of foods were grown and hunted in Buckinghamshire, and what kind of status they afforded those who ate them.  We need to know who deemed it necessary to celebrate every Sunday with a Calves Head Hashed.

And lest this Blog's regrettable lack of resolution proves unsatisfying to my virtuous Readers, I can only hope to regale their Imaginations with the following Bill of Fare, which was served for dinner at Stowe on Friday, June 28, 1750.

First Course

Terrine

Tongue and Fowls Boil'd

Knuckle of Veal a la bourgeoise

Beans and Bacon

Pidgeon Pye

Remove:

Chine of Mutton

2nd Course:

3 Rabbits Roasted

3 Turkeys Roasted

Cherry Tart

Ragout of Sweetbreads

Sheep's Tongues and Rump

Pease