After I made my last post I decided to see if Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices by George Leonard Herter and Berthe E. Herter, the cookbook that Bill Saunders gave to my grandfather on the day I was born, was actually valuable or not.
No, it turns out.
You can get original copies of it on eBay for about $30, and new reprints on Amazon for about half that. So I’m not going to retire on my rare book collection anytime soon.
Also, I discovered that this was actually volume one of what eventually became a three-volume set. I cannot imagine that anyone would actually write three volumes of this particular cookbook, let alone anyone else actually buying three volumes of this particular cookbook, but it turns out I was wrong about that too. It’s apparently a cult classic. Esquire Magazine described it as “the manliest cookbook ever written.” The New York Times, in a bid for simplicity, just called it “unhinged.”
Honestly, the fact that it’s still being reprinted should have tipped me off regarding its current value.
As I had just come to the end of a book I was reading (Debbie Harry’s fascinating memoir, Face It), I decided that perhaps it was time for me to read this book.
One the one hand, this is not as far-fetched as it seems. It’s not a standard cookbook. Everything is in paragraphs rather than lists, and most of the words in it are not really directed at the recipes per se. It’s the original recipe blog, where you have to work your way through pages of stories, opinions, random asides and general trivia before you actually get to any practical advice on how to prepare food, so the idea of reading it straight through is not in itself unreasonable.
On the other hand, well.
I am all of 23 pages into this book so far, and let me tell you it has been a wild ride.
By all accounts the text was written almost entirely by George, with his wife Berthe’s name on the cover primarily to maintain marital bliss – a difficult task for a man who subsequently published a book entitled How to Live With a Bitch, which then went into a second edition that contained the (very good and no doubt hard earned) advice, “Under no circumstance should you call your wife a bitch.” But this kind of experienced caution when it came to expressing his opinions did not occur to George until well after Bull Cook was published and sweet dancing monkeys on a stick but this is clearly the work of a guy whose confidence in his own views far outstripped any rational justification for it. The man was a walking Dunning-Kruger diagnosis who likely would have had a successful career in politics in the 21st century and we should all be grateful for simpler times when such people would vent their fury in cultural pursuits instead.
He lets you know this right from the start. On page 5, which is the first page of the book for some reason (he does not tell you what happened to the other four pages and it is probably not wise to ask), Herter lays out the plan for his book.
“For your convenience,” he helpfully begins, “I will start with meats, fish, eggs, soups and sauces, sandwiches, vegetables, the art of French frying, desserts, how to dress game, how to properly sharpen a knife, how to make wines and beer, how to make French soap, what to do in case of hydrogen or cobalt bomb attack. Keeping as much in alphabetical order as possible.”
Because when confronted by a list that includes both soups and civil defense, alphabetization is of course the key concern for all discerning readers. It should be noted that the extensive index in the back of the book is not, in fact, alphabetized but is instead simply a detailed table of contents with items listed in the order in which they appear in the text.
So far in the 23 pages I have read since that bombshell (HA! I kill me…) paragraph, I have learned the following things:
1. The corned beef you think of as corned beef is not actually corned beef at all but an inferior South American substitute that got switched in during the food shortages of World War I and given to American troops in Europe. The original has never reappeared, though George is here to teach you how to fix that.
2. One should never use charcoal in grilling meat. Charcoal absorbs toxic gases – that’s why they use it in gas masks – so instead you should use “hard coal.” I’m going to assume he means anthracite, but I suppose bituminous would also be harder than charcoal so perhaps it could be either. All the best restaurants in Minnesota grill their meats this way, apparently. George does not discuss HVAC systems, so one must take that as read.
3. Napoleon’s cook, a man identified only as “Signor Quallioti,” invented chow-chow mustard pickles. These, in combination with “Roquefort Stuffed Chopped Beef” (essentially a blue-cheese-stuffed hamburger invented by Napoleon's second wife, the Austrian princess Maria Luisa, which does raise the question of how precisely princesses were educated in the Hapsburg court) and fries, were Napoleon’s favorite meal. “When he was a prisoner on St. Helena Island he requested that he would be served this menu at least once a week. His request was never granted. I have always thought this was carrying punishment way too far,” George complained.
4. Palm Springs is a terrible place, mostly because it is full of Hollywood types. Fortunately, said George writing in 1960, “Hollywood, thank goodness, is dead. Television has at least done incalculable good in destroying this evil group.”
(Did I mention this was a cookbook? It is definitely labeled as a cookbook.)
5. The best hamburgers were invented by Francois Rene Viscount de Chateaubriand, who was born in 1768 and “grew up to be just a fair author but an excellent eater.” You make them with a pound each of ground beef and ground pork liver, though George – the original Karen – notes that “You may have trouble getting your butcher to grind the pork liver for you, as they do not like to run pork liver through their grinders. They have to wash out the grinder afterwards so other meat that they grind will not have a tinge of liver taste. If he refuses to do it for you, just tell him that you will take your business to someone who will, and you will have no difficulty with him.” The recipe also calls for two cups of rolled oats.
6. George is a great fan of tripe, though only when done to his specifications. “In some parts of the Southwest tripe is served with hominy,” he warns. “Hominy is certainly good food but should never be used in menudo. Eating hominy in menudo is like shaking hands with an empty glove.”
7. Henry VIII of England is, George feels, best remembered for his love of organ meats, which is not a euphemism for anything at all. “Henry VIII actually never amounted anything and would not have made a good ditch digger,” he says. “The only thing that he ever did do to his credit was to highly endorse the kidneys made by Elizabeth Grant, one of his many cooks.” So to all you Anglicans and Episcopalians out there, well, sucks to be you.
I’m not even going to go into his description of sex life of the Russian Empress Catherine the Great, which for some reason is extensively described in the introduction to a recipe for Beef Stroganoff, other than to say that the phrase “praying mantis” kept running through my head while reading it.
Please note: I am less than 8% of the way through this book. He’s just warming up.
Buckle up, folks. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
I have to admit to considering the purchase of this book so that I could follow along.
ReplyDeleteDecided that it wasn't worth the effort, and, especially since you have volunteered yourself, I will trust you to slay this particular Dragoon.
Lucy
Well you know, it isn't that expensive!
ReplyDeleteI will do my best - I suspect that there are multiple posts to be made from this one. It's one of those books where every page you find yourself shaking your head and asking, "Did I really just read that?" and then you look back and damn if you didn't just read that. Huh.
It's a hoot.
I suspected as much - I get enough head-banging from poorly written owner's manuals to keep me entertained. I will trust you to do the hard work on this one.
ReplyDeleteOn an entirely unrelated relatable note, with absolutely no intention of hi-jacking this:
I have only once in my life purchased a DVD based entirely on what I saw in the preview, and this is it:
https://www.amazon.com/Lucy-Scarlett-Johansson/dp/B00M25DDQE
While there are a couple of plot holes large enough to turn a semi-truck around in, I am still going to give this movie five stars without hesitation. Luc Besson's direction is on par with some of his best work. The story is believable; Scarlet Johansson and Morgan Freeman's performances are impeccable; and the special effects are superior. (Well, in point of fact, actually, I did leave a five-star review and what I've written here is largely taken from that review. And it should be noted that I rarely leave reviews on anything unless I'm genuinely moved to do so.
I will admit to being curious because of the title (Lucy), but what intrigued me and moved me to purchase the DVD was the premise of the movie. Well, that and the price. 😃
I was not disappointed. I'm not suggesting that you purchase the DVD, but if you get a chance to watch Lucy, know that it comes highly recommended by another ...
Lucy
The thing is that this is not actually poorly written. It's just completely bonkers.
ReplyDeleteLucy looks like an interesting movie, but whether I get to it will be an open question as I have not really been able to sit through movies for years now, regardless of how objectively good they are. I'll add it to my list, though - I checked it out and it did look like fun. :)
I had to wonder, as I was reading your (excellent) post if Herter wasn't doing a bit, kind of a precursor to Nick Offerman's Ron Swanson character/persona. The NYT profile even points out his photos don't quite live up to the persona cultivated by the books, describing him as "John Hodgman with a gun." The quotes and excerpts I'm seeing may be 100% Genuine American Crank, but I do see things that suggest to me maybe it's a bit of a put-on.
ReplyDeleteThough, even considering that possibility, a piece in The Village Voice suggests that if Herter was trying to be funny, the jokes may be so racist, misogynistic, and religiously bigoted as to have not aged well (to put it mildly). (Unfortunately, the vitriol doesn't preclude it all from being a gag; that kind of thing was common in 20th Century culture and a fair bit of our contemporary culture war crap involves people complaining they're being "censored" or "cancelled" because of jokes that now get called-out instead of laughed at.)
Anyway, I enjoyed your post and look forward to updates.
I suppose it's possible, but at least so far that's not the vibe I'm getting from it.
ReplyDeleteFor one thing, I haven't found anything so far (I'm on page 28) that would really count as racist, misogynistic, or religiously bigoted, at least not beyond what a mid-20th-century American white man might say without any particular animosity or intent.
I mean, the guy ran an outfitter company for decades - the sort of market now served by Bass Pro Shops and Cabelas - so the whole Rugged Man schtick wasn't entirely an act he was doing, even if he himself was not exactly Davy Crockett reborn.
And at some point the put-on becomes so all encompassing that it stops being an act. As Kurt Vonnegut once put it, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."
What I get out of this is weaponized ignorance and overwhelming ego. This is the guy at the end of the bar who Knows Everything and bah gawd is going to make you sit there and listen to it, who makes no meaningful distinction between verifiable reality and things pulled directly out of his lower intestine. As I said on the FB post, imagine Cliff Clavin of Cheers stripped of any vestige of humor, self-awareness, and likeability and you're pretty much there.