As a group of people who enjoy both Patrick O'Brian and food (historical and modern), we were thrilled to discover "Lobscouse and Spotted Dog" by Anne Chotzinoff Grossman and Lisa Grossman Thomas. Combine that with a bottle of very good vintage port that Tori had been given as a birthday present, and we really had no excuse NOT to throw this party.
A number of people reacted to us using the cookbook along the lines of "wow! I didn't think any of that food even looked edible!". In fact, this shows merely that they had given the book a very superficial look. The recipe for Lobster Bisque is virtually unchanged in the last 200 years, and most of the other dishes have fairly modern analogues. Where we did occasionally venture into the "weird", the results were generally very positive. Both the Lobscouse and the Little Balls of Tripe were surprise hits of the evening (but then, Surprise was on our side). To this day I prefer the Lobscouse to most modern corn beef hashes I've had over the years. The only real "disaster" was the pigeon pie, which may have come from the use of squab (about twice as large as wild pigeons), a misunderstanding of the recipe or something else, but find me a modern cookbook where no dish can be cooked by everyone without problems. Even Julia Child has a couple of slightly dubious recipes. So, thanks to Ms Grossman and Ms Grossman Thomas for an extremely successful evening.
Primary cooks were Kathryn, Tori and me, Matthew Crosby. Also present were Stephen, Steve, Eli, Megan, Dario, Rose, Francis and cats.
As is mentioned on the title page, the dinner was nominally in honour of the battle of The Glorious First Of June, which took place in 1794. We had no particular year in mind for the dinner itself other then early 19th century, though the ready availability of French wines on our menu presumably meant at least that the smugglers had been active that year.
Me opening wine in preparation
Matthew: Amontillado is known mostly due to the Poe story, but was developed in the 18th century and certainly would have been drunk in the period of the books. It's more alcoholic then Fino, the "standard" dry sherry and therefore travels better and would be more likely to be found aboard ship.
The bisque
Tori: I was really pleased with how the bisque turned out--I'd only made it once before during the practice run, and it was a multi-hour battle, but it went much more smoothly the second time around. Helpful tip to aspiring lobster-butchers: your most valuable tool is a ballpeen hammer. I would also like to note that it is a really glorious thing to set an enormous pot of lobster pieces on fire.
Kathryn: The most memorable part of this dish for me was when I was dispatched to the basement to bring up the lobsters which had been cleverly stored in a deep wash sink. Tori's cats were prowling around the base of it trying to decide if they were brave enough to look inside and see what that scritching noise was. By the way, long barbeque tongs make excellent lobster wrangling tools.
Ships biscuit on a plate with halibut
Tori: The breads were on the table for the whole dinner, of course. The Ship's Biscuit was made according to the Navy Board's recipe, only on much smaller scale, though was only a few days old so had not reached the epic levels of tooth-breaking that they've achieved by now. (Nor did we have weevils, lesser or greater.)
Wines
Matthew: Tattinger was founded in 1734 as a maker of champagne, though at the time it was called Fourneaux-Forest. In hindsight I should have served a somewhat sweeter one (brut champagne didn't come along until later in the 19th century) and I'm not 100% sure they made rosé champagne back then, but there is certainly no technical reason they couldn't have, rosé being a perfectly well established technique at the time. In fact the English name "claret" comes from "clairet", a style of Bordeaux rosé popular long before this period.
Tori: All three of these dishes required a lot of last-minute prep time, so all of the cooks had to keep jumping up during the soup course to attend to things; this had occurred to me when we were planning the schedule, but according to our sources it was traditional to serve fancy "made-dishes" in this point of the dinner. And it turned out well enough, if not all on the table at the same moment.
Lobscouse
Tori: Lobscouse is basically just a variation of corned beef hash, though variant enough that the Beloved Husband, who does not care for ordinary hash, thought it the best dish of the day. It was generally very well received, though the amount in the recipe made so VASTLY much it also served for the next day's breakfast. We also had a little complication in that our Ship's Biscuit was not, as noted, stale enough to pound with a marlinespike, so we had to enact emergency measures.)
Kathryn: I made the Ship's Biscuit a couple of days ahead because we knew we needed it to dry out a bit. It is basically just flour, water, and salt which makes kneading it a real work out. In fact, the cookbook authors suggest that you "put it in a large stout bag and repeatedly drive a car over it." On the day of the feast I tried pounding it to make crumbs for the Lobscouse but to no avail. I wound up on the back porch going at it with a hammer. Eventually, we popped it in the oven to dry it out more, which did the trick.
The halibut on a bed of greens
Tori: The halibut--well, poached fish is pretty well poached fish all over, I daresay. The anchovy sauce gave it a nice kick of unusual flavor, though. (I should also note that the others made Mushroom Ketchup specifically for this dish.) And of course, unlike most everything else on this menu, it's reasonably healthy.
Balls of tripe
Tori: The little tripe balls I threw in out of sheer stubbornness; I anticipated hating them, since I loathe organ meats, and when I was parboiling the tripe the night before it smelled absolutely awful. However, they were something of a surprise hit. The long parboiling removes the organ-meat flavor, and when mushed up with herbs and bread crumbs and other nice things and then fried, they taste very rich and very pleasing.
Eli enjoying soft tack after months aboard ship
Matthew: This is not, I confess, a particularly old house, but the wine store didn't have the one I wanted (Hugel, which was founded in 1639), and their vineyards would certainly have been producing similar wines back then under different ownership. Also, the Humbrecht family that own this have themselves have been growing wine since 1620. The English of the period often called Riesling "Hock" from the german word Hockamore (after the town Hochheim). Alsace at this point was being fought over rather vigorously and I'm sure the vintners would have sold their wine to whichever army happened to be there at the time, whether British, French, Austrian or otherwise.
Matthew: See above. Gewürztraminer is either the same as or very similar to "Traminer", which is what the Alsatians of the period would have called it. (The grape itself is known to have been used for wine at least as early as the 10th century).
We'd hoped to make jugged hare, too, but there were no hares to be had at the time.
Pigeon Pie
Tori: Raised pies are a very old cookery form; they exist medievally, though in those the crust is inedible. The idea is that the crust is sturdy enough to form your actual dish, and is large enough to contain an heroic amount of meat. In theory, if you do it correctly and seal it perfectly, it can also keep unrefrigerated for awhile. I'd tried one beforehand as a test run, with middling success; the crust on this one was better, but was not well-sealed, so the interior did not cook as moistly as it should have. Also, pigeons were out of season, and we had to make do with squab, which are twice as large; with pigeons you are supposed to leave them whole, which we did with the squab as well, and this turned out to be an inauspicious choice when it came to trying to actually eat the darn thing.
Roast leg of pork
Tori: I am blessed with a "Swiss Pork Store" right up the street, and the kindly gentlemen there were very helpful when we came in waving our book and asking for a half-leg of pork with the skin on, they helped us get to the right chunk of meat. (And removed the bone, too.) Lacking a fire to roast in front of, we got an electric spit to go in my grill, and this was a quite workable approximation. The stuffing is not too unusual flavor-wise, though I wish we'd made more--you don't really need very much to go in the cavity of a half-leg, and people only got a nibble each. The brown onion sauce is, I understand, a traditional English choice with pork still (and indeed, I remember the North Star Pub used to serve something very similar).
Matthew: Voltaire famously said that the English had "a hundred religions, but only one sauce", perhaps meaning gravy like this.
Claret
Matthew: The above change in spelling is deliberate, they changed to Rauzan in 1994, though Rauzan was actually the original spelling so it was more a change back.
The Rauzan estate was created in 1661 by Pierre des Mesures de Rauzan; It was split into 3 in the early 19th century and Rausan-Ségla was an original 2nd growth in the 1855 classification. The Rauzans would certainly have been exporting lots of claret to the English at this time (even though it was nominally blockaded, smuggled wine was widely available).
One of the the interesting things about shopping for this meal was that good wine has not changed all that much, and particularly in Bordeaux, what was considered the best (or certainly most expensive) wine then is still the most expensive. So, while I would have loved to have served the Lafite or Margaux mentioned in the book, the budget only goes so far...
Eli and Megan wrestling with the pigeon
Matthew: Supposedly Chateau Talbot got its name from Sir John Talbot, the Earl Of Shrewsbury and (English) governor of Aquitaine in the 15th century, but sources are mixed and I don't have time to really do enough research to confirm this. At the time of the war it was owned by the Marquis d'Aux de Lescout (he somehow managed to keep it throughout the revolution and into the 19th century) and would have definitely been sold in England, being a large and fairly commercial (for its time) producer.
Spotted Dog with custard
Tori: Steamed puddings are familiar ground for me, so the spotted dog was an easy choice. (For those who have not encountered such, it's a cakelike entity with currants in it.) I failed at the custard sauce, however--it never thickened.
Kathryn: Tip for any Spotted Dog cooks out there: use dried currants from Trader Joe's. They were moist, not completely dried out and raisin-like which I think made the pudding tastier.
Voluptuous little pies
Tori: The "little pies" are an example of what seems to be a standard motif of the era: a pastry shell with some kind of delicate filling. In this case it was apricot jam, ground nuts with various flavoring, and whipped cream. (The puff pastry for the shells was also hand-made by Kathryn.) They are indeed voluptuous, and very nibble-worthy.
Plum Cake
Tori: Plum-cake has no plums. In the language of the period, "plum" refers to dried fruits, usually currants, sometimes raisins--we used both. It didn't quite raise like I expected it to, so was more than a bit dense, but on the other hand it's supposed to keep for quite some time, so maybe that was correct.
Banyuls
Matthew: At the time only the Bordelaise were sufficiently marketing-savvy to actually sell their wines from the producer, certainly for a Banyuls one would just buy a "Banyuls". I've no idea how old this producer is, but I'm sure someone was making Banyuls there back in the days. Banyuls is actually mentioned a few times in the book, it was someone more popular back then.
Matthew: This is is a premiere cru from the 1855 classification (which actually means 2nd growth, there is only one 1st growth Sauternes, d'Yquem.). It was around in the 18th century, just like d'Yquem, but I'm not sure who owned it then.
(which they didn't actually do)
Tori not withdrawing despite being a lady
We used store-bought nut candies
Shrewsbury cakes and comfits
Tori: In spite of the name, Shrewsbury cakes are really more like a spice cookie. Simple to make, too--a basic refrigerator dough. They aren't too sweet and they aren't too strongly flavored, which means they were exactly what was wanted at this stage of the game.
Steve and Stephen watching wine being opened
The anchovy sauce being made
Pork being roasted
Kathryn and Tori making Lobscouse
The gravy boat running away with some greens
The Pigeon Pie