The Hostess Book of Entertaining on ‘Putting it Right’ (part 2)

After a series of culinary mis-steps (none of which involved sauce), I feel inspired to share some more of the practical wisdom of Marguerite Patten.

Sauces

Sauce made with a roux (butter and flour) has formed lumps
Whisk the sauce briskly and quite often the lumps will go. If this technique fails then rub the sauce through a sieve or put it into a liquidiser and switch on for a few seconds. This treatment will produce a smooth sauce , but one that becomes thinner in consistency, so allow it to simmer gently for a time so it will become a little thicker.

Sauce too thick
Whisk in extra liquid, but taste the sauce after doing this to make certain there is adequate seasoning and flavouring.

Sauce too thin
Either allow the sauce to cook for a longer period or allow 1 level teaspoon of cornflour to each 150ml (1/4 pint) sauce. You will need to blend the cornflour with 2-3 tablespoons of milk, cream or stock, depending upon the type of sauce. Whisk this into the hot, but not boiling, sauce  and stir until thickened. A more subtle method of thickening the sauce [it will hardly know what happened to it] is too blend an egg yolk with a little milk, cream or stock, whisk this into the hot sauce and simmer gently for a short time.

Hot sauce containing egg curdles
Whisk very hard or treat as lumpy sauce above.

Mayonnaise sauce curdles during mixing
Put an egg yolk into a basin and gradually whisk the curdled mayonnaise on to this.

Sauce burns in pan
Do not stir the sauce, pour into a clean saucepan, taste very critically [Should I also frown? Wear a mortarboard?] and you may find the flavour unimpaired. If there is a very slight taste, a little extra flavouring and seasoning (or sugar, in the case of sweet sauce) may disguise this. Put plenty of salt and cold water into the burned pan and leave it to soak.

Scalloped Salmon – tinned salmon, flaked into  scallop shell topped with white sauce, breadcrumbs and grated cheddar.

Text and image from The Hostess Book of Entertaining by Marguerite Patten. (Charles and David, 1980.)

Canapes and Twitter

This  Saturday the Vintage Cook Book Trials is having our first ever Vintage Canape and Cocktail Party. Guests have been invited, recipe books have been consulted, cocktails have been thoroughly researched and now, in a possibly inadvisable move, those of you not in attendance can keep up with proceedings on our new Twitter account. We shall be twittering canape updates throughout the event (until we collapse under a mountain of vol-au-vents, that is).

Follow us here for thrilling updates, including the part where I, Alix, try a cocktail called Sherry and Egg. This is happening, people!

The Hostess Book of Entertaining on ‘Putting It Right’ (part 1)

In which home economics legend Marguerite Patten lists rectifications for the last-minute culinary disasters which can befall a cook who has over-refreshed themselves or spent too long in front of the mirror or with their guests. Or, as she reassures us:

From time to time even the most accomplished and experienced cook has a failure in the kitchen. What appears at first glance to be a spoiled dish amy well be disguised, or the fault remedied, with a little ‘know-how’. I hope the following hints will be helpful.

H’ors d’oeuvre

A fish cocktail sauce tastes dull
Add a few drops of Tabasco, soy or Worcestershire sauce, plus a little cream.

A pate has been over-cooked and is dry and crumbly
Put the pate into a bowl, stir in cream plus a little sherry or brandy until of the desired consistency. Add extra seasoning plus chopped herbs to taste.

Soup

The soup is over-salt
Add a little milk or cream and taste again. If this has not remedied the fault, peel and dice one or two potatoes, simmer in the soup for 10 – 15 minutes, the lift out the potatoes, add more cream or milk. By this time the soup could have become too thin in consistency so a little extra thickening may be necessary.

The soup lacks flavour and time is short
Add a little garlic and/or celery salt to a creamy soup; a pinch of curry powder and a little Worcestershire sauce to a meat-based soup; tomato puree is another excellent ingredient to add to meat or vegetable soups.

The soup looks dull
Add an interesting garnish such as yoghurt and diced fresh or canned red pepper to a dark-coloured soup; browned blanched almonds are an ideal topping for creamy soups. Try tiny balls of cream cheese on a bortsch.

Turkey Tarragon Soup

The Hostess Book of Entertaining by Marguerite Patten. (Charles and David, 1980.)

The Supersizers Eat…the Eighties

Giles Coren and Sue Perkins are at it again. I mostly enjoyed their thing in 2007 where they ate Edwardian food (Edwardian Supersize Me) , this first episode of The Supersizers Eat* they’re eating eighties food. I guess it’s not going to be much of a culture shock, but I’ll be interested to see how it goes.  It airs next Monday on BBC Two (shame I don’t have a telly, eh?).

*terrible name. Couldn’t they do better than that?

Not a recipe, just admin

Evening everyone. I’ve been making the most of my hangover today by fiddling around with the blog a bit. I’ve added/ altered the following things:

• There’s now a rudimentary index page listing all recipes alphabetically. I’d love to have an index page that was actually searchable, and a little less static, but I don’t know how to make one. Does anyone know?
• I’ve added a few more the list of blogs we read
• We’ve now got two, yes, two Flickr pools – firstly the existing Vintage Cookbook Trials Pool where anyone can contribute images from, and of vintage cookbooks, and the newly created Vintage Cookbook Trials Gallery, which is where myself, Elly and Sarah (and any future contributors) can upload photos from the recipes we make. This group is only open to us three, but everyone is free to look at the various catastrophes we upload.  Often when I’m cooking I take more than one photo of the process, but usually I only want to use one image on a blog post, so this pool is where I will put extra photos.
• Still with Flickr I’ve added some links to vintage cookery related pools set up by other people (see sidebar).

Ok! That’s the lot.  Comments, thoughts and suggestions on these changes all very welcome.

Bake-off Poll

ie, this or this?

Weight Watchers recipe cards

Apologies for the dearth of posts of late – I have no internet at home at the moment, which is seriously restricting my online activities. To tide us all over, I’m going to link to a set of 1970’s Weight Watcher recipe cards Elly alerted me to. They’re pretty special, so enjoy!

Also, you may be interested in my appearance on Freaky Trigger and the Lollards of Pop the other week on Resonance 104.4fm where I cackhandedly ruminate on the changing presentation styles of recipes through the ages. Listen to the podcast here. Why not tune in for future episodes? They’re good!

Scrawled by Alix

Ivan Day’s Historic Food

I heard this chap on the Food Programme on Radio 4 about a month back – Ivan Day is an expert on historic foods and methods of preparation, and recreation of them.  His recipes are much more ambitious than our (thus far at least), 20th century offerings, but I’d like to think that in time we will be attempting some more ancient recipes.

This is an elaborated decorated pie from the pie making course.