Taking the Bull by the Horns, Part 2

I have now made it through the Meat section and it has been quite a journey.

Really, the only book I can compare this to is English As She Is Spoke, written by Pedro Carolino. Carolino, it says in the introduction to the reprint edition I have, “sat down in 1855 to write an English phrasebook for Portuguese students. He had a serious problem: he didn’t know any English. Even worse, he didn’t own an English-to-Portuguese dictionary. What he did have was a Portuguese-to-French phrasebook and a French-to-English dictionary.” What came out of that was perhaps the funniest book published in the English language in the 19th century – “a linguistic train wreck” that Mark Twain once took the time to caution his readers about. “Nobody can add to the absurdity of this book,” Twain wrote. “Nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to reproduce its fellow; it is perfect.”

Because when Can-Do Confidence meets Don’t-Do Cluelessness, the results can only be memorable.

And thus we come back to George Herter and Bull Cook.

As others have noted before me, there is a general pattern to the entries in Herter’s book.

More often than not, he will start with anywhere from a few sentences to several pages of biography and opinion about a historical figure. I’m not sure how he chooses these figures – his overt motivation is to declare that whatever recipe follows was created by that figure, but as a historian I confess I often have my doubts about that. Sometimes it checks out, though. I was somewhat surprised to find that he is not the only person who attributes the invention of sauerbraten to Charlemagne, for example, though it has also been attributed to Julius Caesar and St. Albertus Magnus so there is that. But Herter is never shy about expressing opinions ranging from admiring to confusing to downright dyspeptic about these people, and you never really know how much to credit him after slogging through all that.

Biographies over (or skipped), Herter then declares that the current version of whatever he is about to discuss is completely inferior, barely deserving of the name, with the original recipe lost in the depths of time. He often notes that things were better Then, though Then is a fairly elastic period.

At this point he will proudly declare that he and he alone has the original recipe (quite possibly in Charlemagne’s actual handwriting) and he will dispense that wisdom now.

“This is fine eating,” he will wrap up. “Everyone likes this, even people who don’t like this.”

Sometimes he will also state, with the absolute certainty of someone to whom doubt is a stranger, that you can also find a True and Good version of this recipe at a local restaurant in Minnesota, a center of fine dining and a gastronomic beacon to the rest of the benighted world. “Wire ahead to make sure they have the ingredients!” he helpfully advises.

As I have gone through this section I have made a few discoveries, to wit:

1. According to the recipe for Gethsemane Beef, the Last Supper was likely a form of mutton stew that George has greatly improved by substituting beef for mutton because mutton might have been good enough for the Savior but it is not good enough for George. The recipe had a surprising variety of spices for the day, including cardamom, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, garlic, bay leaves, and black pepper.

2. Jefferson Davis discovered the best way to cook chicken, a process which involved holding down a pot lid with two cast iron bars though you in the modern age can get the same results with a pressure cooker. George was a great fan of the South and always refers to the 1861-1865 conflict as the War Between the States, a phrasing designed to give the Confederacy a respectability it does not deserve. Along these lines, George insists that General Stonewall Jackson was an exceptional cook.

3. “Chicken can only be fried in butter.” Away with your inferior oils, fats, and substitutes.

4. The only place in the United States where you can get properly done Chicken Kiev (which should be called “Chicken Supreme,” says George, though what could you do in those degenerate times when Kyiv was spelled the Russian way?) is the Café Exceptionale in Minneapolis. Unfortunately the Café Exceptionale closed in 1982 so we will just have to take George’s word for it.

5. Catherine de Medici “invented women’s panties so that she could ride a horse with her skirts up high showing off her beautiful legs. Up until this time women wore no panties of any kind.” How George found this out he does not say nor am I all that sure I wish to know.

6. Mongolia and Tibet “were the first lands out of the sea when the earth was formed.” This bit of geographical information precedes several paragraphs on the history of Chinese food in general and in America (George is not a fan of chop suey, which he correctly identifies as an American dish which – credit where due – put him ahead of a great many Americans of his day) before segueing into Genghis Khan’s recipe for duck. Presumably whoever taught this recipe to the Great Khan was then murdered so it would not fall into the hands of others, though how George ended up with it is therefore something of a mystery.

7. Paris was once a “fabulous town” very much like New Orleans, but seems to have fallen on hard times. Given that George is writing in 1960, only a decade and a half after World War II, this could perhaps be excused as part of the general rebuilding.

8. Among other recipes in this section are fried robins (a recipe he claims to have adapted from Thomas Aquinas, of all people), Swedish muskrat, and prairie dogs as prepared by the Old West gunslinger Bat Masterson who rates an exceptionally long and sympathetic biography here. Also, the original chili con carne had beans, so chew on that, Texas.

9. Oddly enough George seems to hold Native Americans, the Spanish, and Asians in general in very high esteem. He is not a great fan of Philadelphia, however, and in particular does not like Old Original Bookbinders, a seafood restaurant that I once went to with Kim and found perfectly fine. This might be due to the oysters. “Here oysters are opened by laying them on a wooden bar. This is not the way to do it, you need a heavy strip of curved lead about four inches to hold an oyster while you open it. They should send someone down to New Orleans to learn how it is really done.”

10. “French and German foods make an ideal combination just like French and German marriages.” This bit of sociology is found smack in the middle of a recipe for sauerbraten.

11. Squirrels are good eating, particularly when prepared in the Belgian style and served with gravy. “Squirrel meat is far superior to venison or moose and you do not tire of it as easily as you do with such meats when you have it for a more or less steady diet.”

12. Butchers are a devious and untrustworthy lot. “It is sad but very true that most butchers, when they see a deer carcass with really fine meat, often give it to a special friend of theirs or keep it for themselves, and give you the meat of a deer which is not so good. Then again, if the butcher is not your friend he more than likely will take off several sirloin steaks and a rib roast or two from your deer carcass for himself figuring you will never know the difference. … The same butcher who would return your wallet if you lost it and he found it will think nothing of taking your best sirloins and rib roasts.”

And my personal favorite from this bit of reading:

13. “Johannes Kepler was a well-known German astrologer. He was born in 1571 and died in 1630. His work on astronomy has long since been forgotten but his creating liverwurst will never be forgotten.”

Leaving aside the fact that George seems to recognize no particular distinction between astrology and astronomy (although in George’s defense neither did Kepler), the sheer unwarranted confidence of this pronouncement is absolutely breathtaking.

Up next: Fish.