Mary Midnight's Bubble and Squeak

When I was a child in the 1950s one of my favourite dishes was 'bubble and squeak', made by my mother from potato and cabbage left over from the previous day. She fried the ingredients in a little beef dripping saved from the Sunday roast, creating a piping hot slush of brassica and mash trapped within a crisp browned crusty jacket. Sometimes she cooked it in bacon fat, which was even better. This humble dish is the stuff from which my earliest food memories were forged. Never mind Proust's dainty madeleines - just the thought of a pile of bubble and squeak infuses my whole being with a poignant yearning for those breakfasts of more than half a century ago. Sadly, I am now always disappointed with the dish as it never lives up to my nostalgia-driven expectations. 

The closest to my mother's I have experienced is Nigel Slater's excellent recipe. However, like most other modern versions this requires a non-stick pan, a luxury unknown in the 1950s. As a child, it was those crunchy, not quite burnt golden flakes of potato that had to be physically scrapped off the bottom of an old black cast iron frying pan that gave the dish its character. Without them it was bubble, but sadly deficient in squeak. 

Essential tools for bubble and squeak - a 19th century scrapper and cast iron frying pan

The off-set handles of these knives allows the ingredients to be chopped and scrapped in the pan as they cook

The process of making bubble and squeak required as much scrapping as it did frying. A specialised tool called a bubble and squeak scraper (above) was once used for making the job easier. However, the true purpose of these beautifully designed utensils has now been entirely forgotten. As well as having a sharp edge for scrapping the crunchy bits that stuck to the pan, they also allowed you to chop the vegetables as they fried. Their craftily designed handles enabled you to use them without being obstructed by the sides of the pan. 

Bubble and squeak choppers or scrappers

The English have also forgotten that the very nature of bubble and squeak changed radically at some point in the twentieth century. This favourite dish has been around since at least the middle of the eighteenth century, but for the first hundred and eighty years of its existence it was made by frying together small slices of meat, usually beef, with boiled cabbage. Potatoes did not even get a look in until the late nineteenth century. I suspect the meat got dropped from the recipe during the course of the Great War, but the jury is out on that one. By 1951, The Good Housekeeping Magazine Home Encyclopedia declared that 'in the modern version of bubble and squeak the meat is usually omitted'. This modern version is the one I remember from my childhood breakfasts and which is still cooked today.

In the 1890s the great Victorian chef Theodore Garrett, described bubble and squeak as, 'a favourite domestic réchauffee of cold meats and vegetables, variously compounded, according to what materials are at hand, or to fancy.' This is quite close to the modern concept of the dish, a kind of fried mish-mash of any vegetables left over from a previous meal. But Garrett's recipes all contain meat, so in the late Victorian period it was quite a different dish to the bubble and squeak the British enjoy today. I have appended Garrett's article on bubble and squeak at the very end of this posting.

Christopher Smart aka Mary Midnight, the author of the first printed recipe for bubble and squeak

As far as I know, ‘bubble and squeak’ first gets a mention in literature in 1752 in an issue of The Drury-lane Journal, by Madam Roxana Termagant. This was a scurrilous magazine, in reality written by the poet Bonnell Thornton. Thornton was a member of the Nonsense Club, a gathering of literary figures and artists, which included William Cowper among its members. The earliest recipe I know was published a year later in 1753, not in a cookery book, but in another irreverent collection of satirical verse and prose called The Midwife, or Old Woman’s Magazine by one Mary Midnight - again a pen name, this time used by the eccentric poet Christopher Smart (1722-1771). 

Title page and frontispiece of Christopher  Smart's The Midwife. This is the first number of October 1750. Mary Midnight's recipe for bubble and squeak was printed in Vol III in 1753.

Mary Midnight's style of writing is peppered with juvenile humour, much of it downright silly and often outrageous - a kind of Georgian Monty Python. The recipe had probably been around for decades and may have originated as a sailor's way of dealing with salt beef or pork. It is quite fitting that a recipe for a dish with such a ridiculous name first appeared in such an absurd journal. Mrs Midnight's 1753 recipe, reproduced below, is really a spoof, a satire on the life style of the Oxford and Cambridge students of the day, but it does work. 

The earliest 'recipe' for bubble and squeak -  made with salt meat.

Bubble and squeak naturally lent itself to comedy and features regularly in humorous poetry and prose during the second half of the eighteenth century and beyond. Peter Pindar's marvellous evocation of it noisily cooking in the pan, surely explains the onomatopoeic origins of its name -

What mortals Bubble call and Squeak 

When midst the Frying-pan in accents savage, 

The Beef so surly quarrels with the Cabbage. 

The first directions in an actual cookery book do not appear until 1773, and then only in a footnote to a recipe for boiled beef in Charlotte Mason's The Lady's Assistant (London: 1773). The dish seems always to have been of a homely nature. In his marvellous  Slang. A Dictionary (London: 1823), Jon Bee offers this definition - 'Bubble-and-squeak - a vulgar but savoury kind of omnium gatherum dinner of fried scraps, the scrapings of the cupboard.'

Although synonymous with plain living and making do, bubble and squeak had some surprising fans. According to Fraser's Magazine (1837 Vol. 15. p. 375), George IV, when Prince of Wales, was introduced to it when he dined with Sir Robert Leighton at Loton Hall in Shropshire - 

‘Sir Robert, being a batchelor, was unused to giving so large a dinner as this occasion called for; and his cook, being rather at a loss to fill all the numerous side-dishes required, decided on fried beef and cabbage for one of them. “What have you got in that dish?” said the prince to a gentleman before it happened to be placed. “That sir,” answered Sir Robert, “is a favourite dish in Shropshire, called bubble and squeak.” “Then give me some bubble and squeak,” resumed the prince; and he ate heartily of it. Thus far I can vouch for what I have said; but it was currently reported that this homely dish was afterwards frequently seen at Carlton House.’

To me, this is the whole point of bubble and squeak. George was a prince noted for his love of extravagant dining. He employed Antonin Câreme for a short while and ate the most sophisticated French cuisine off the grandest gilt service ever made in the history of English silversmithing. But he could still take pleasure in such a homely dish.

In a similar fashion, it is a common experience that after over indulgence in the rich foods of Christmas dinner, our jaded appetites can still be revived by this 'vulgar but savoury kind of omnium gatherum dinner of fried scraps', in other words the Boxing Day bubble and squeak made from the leftovers. Englishmen of every class have had a long lasting love affair with this most basic, but tasty of dishes.

The last word on the matter must go to the anonymous versifier who wrote the following lines for an edition of Punch magazine published at the height of the Crimean War.

BUBBLE AND SQUEAK

I am a man who dwells alone,

Save only that I keep a dog,

Who eats my scraps up, orts and bone,

So that the creature shares my prog.

I had a boiled salt round of beef

On Monday, all to my own cheek,

Wheron my hunger sought relief

From day to day, for near a week.

Of cold boiled beef the daily round,

After a while begins to tire,

One longs for something nicely browned,

Or steaming from the genial fire.

And then the beef was getting dry;

But food away I never fling,

What can be done with it? thought I:

Bubble and Squeek, sir! – that’s the thing.

KING GEORGE THE FOURTH was not a dunce

At least in gastronomic lore;

Bubble and Squeak he tasted once;

And then he ate it evermore.

The King had oft on turtle dined,

As I have sometimes chanced to do,

We both, to think I am inclined,

The less enjoyed it of the two.

So large with what it fed on grew

My whetted appetite’s increase,

That ‘twas as much as I could do

To leave my dog a little piece.

And even when I gave him that,

I muttered in a doubtful mood,

“is this quite right now – what I’m at,

In giving you, Sir, Christian food?”

The dish at which I’ve pegged away,

So that it my interior fills,

Would that they had it this cold day,

The Brave on the Crimea’s hills!

They in the cannon’s mouth do not

The Bubble reputation seek,

But Glory find; their onset hot,

Leaves to the Russians all the Squeak.

But Bubble, not of empty air,

And Squeak that’s more than idle sound,

Soon may those gallant heroes share

At mess on Russia’s conquered ground!

Anon. Punch 1855. vol. XXVIII, p.10

Theodore Garrett's article on bubble and squeak. The Encyclopaedia of Practical Cookery (London: nd. 1890s)

Bubble and squeak made with beef and cabbage arranged on the plate as in Garrett's method above

A nice recipe for modern bubble and squeak by Nigel Slater (though not as good as my mum's!

Syllabub Revisited and Sugar Plumb Theories

I recently bought a copy of James Gilray's satirical cartoon Heroes recruiting at Kelseys (1798) which is in its original uncoloured state (see detail above). All the other copies I have seen of this print have at some time been painted over with watercolour, as below. This very interesting image shows two military officers sampling the delights of a London confectionery shop. A bonneted proprietress of ample proportions is walking towards them with a bobbin-stemmed salver set out with jelly glasses. These are heaped up with a creamy froth, which the officer on the right is spooning out of a fairly conventional jelly glass. Is this ice cream, or  something else? 

A small bobbin stemmed waiter with pan top syllabub glass - both second half of eighteenth century. Note how the spoon is perfectly visible through the clear white wine below the foam of the whip syllabub

If you could afford it, ice cream was very popular and common enough in 1790s London confectioners' shops. But close scrutiny of the detail of the uncoloured Gilray reproduced above, shows that a spoon is visible through a clear liquid sitting below the frothy head. This would indicate that the artist's original intentions were to depict a glass of whip syllabub rather than ice cream. Ice cream is opaque and the spoon would therefore be concealed. The water colourist who tinted the print below (probably at a later date) did not appreciate this and has filled in the glass with a uniform pink wash.  It is amazing how much can be learnt from such small details.

The other officer is holding a conical twist of paper filled with 'sugar plumbs'. What on earth were these? Well according to some authorities, such as television historian Ruth Goodman, food historian Sharon Cohen and many websites out there in cyberspace, sugar-plums were quite literally plums that had been preserved or coated with sugar. Well I am afraid that this is terribly lazy and inaccurate history, because it is just not true.

Let me explain. Many of us are now familiar with the term sugar-plum from Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar-plum Fairy from the Nutcracker, first performed in St Petersburg in 1892. Tchaikovsky's original French name for this music was Danse de la fée dragée. Dragée is a word still used in France. It means a sugar-coated seed, or nut, not a sugar-coated plum. The Italian equivalent word is confetto, giving us the English comfit. So the literal meaning of Danse de la fée dragée was the Dance of the Sugar Comfit Fairy. However, in England comfits had been known by the nickname sugar-plums since at least the early seventeenth century, because they were the shape of a plum, not made with plums. The Dance of  the Sugar Plum Fairy was a more poetic translation and made perfect sense in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Nowadays, the term is so obsolete that even some self-styled historians, who are meant to study the past critically from primary sources have forgotten what it means.  But anyone who cares to look up sugar-plum in the OED will find the definition, 'A small round or oval sweetmeat, made of boiled sugar and variously flavoured and coloured; a comfit.' The definition is followed by many instances of its use. This is not to say that plums were not preserved with sugar. They were, but they were not called sugar plums in the past.  

There is a bit more on sugar-plums and comfits on my website, including explanations of how they were really made. Below are links to some sites which have misunderstood the true nature of these interesting sweeties. If you would like to learn how to make real sugar plums, come to my Historic Food Sugar and Confectionery Course.

  

Ruth Goodman's video of "sugar plum" making
Sharon Cohen's essay on "sugar plums"
Another website which tells you how to make 'sugar plums'

$1000 REWARD FOR LOST PUDDING DECREE

One thing that really, really annoys me is a tendency in the world of food journalism, broadcasting and food writing to continuously repeat stories about the history of our food which have very little basis in fact. Many food writers, celebrity chefs and yes, even people who actually describe themselves as food historians are guilty of this. This is a plea to all of you out there to stop accepting secondhand, often suspect statements without questioning the sources upon which they are based. I have already given some examples on this blog of this uncritical approach and in the future, I will offer you many more. And I will spare no blushes.

Perhaps no other food in the English culinary canon has been subjected to this process of popular mythologising more than Christmas pudding. In her book Food and Cooking in Victorian England - A History (Greenwood. Westport CT: 2007, pp.149-50), Andrea Broomfield, Associate Professor of English at Johnston Community College, tells us,


‘The plum pudding’s association with Christmas takes us back to medieval England and the Roman Catholic Church’s decree that the “pudding should be made on the twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity, that it be prepared with thirteen ingredients to represent Christ and the twelve apostles, and that
 every family member stir it in turn from east to west to honor the Magi and the supposed journey in that direction.” 


Now being a professor, Dr. Broomfield naturally provides us with a reference for her source. I was hoping that she had consulted the original medieval decree, because I would love to see it myself. But no, she refers us to a book written by the celebrated English actor Simon Callow called Dicken's Christmas (Francis Lincoln. London: 2003), which she quotes. Mr Callow is a brilliant thespian, in fact he is one of my favourite actors, but he is not noted for his research into English pre-Reformation Ecclesiastical decrees, or Christmas pudding for that matter. His book is an attractive one and is full of interesting information, but it is unreferenced and he repeats a number of the usual annoying cliches about Christmas foods, such as mince pies being representations of Christ's manger etc. Unfortunately Mr Callow does not give us a reference for the source of his information, so where it comes from is anyone's guess. If by any slim chance, you read this posting Mr Callow, I would be grateful if you could let me know your source. By the way, I loved your Dr Marigold and Mr Chops at the Riverside Studios!


Broomfield/Callow are nowadays quoted by Wikipedia in their article on Christmas Pudding and as a result the medieval decree theory can be seen all over that most efficient myth spreader in the history of mankind, the world wide web. 


But is there anyone out there who can tell me where I can find a copy of the original decree? Did it really exist? I am genuinely offering a $1000 reward to the first person who can find me the original medieval text of this so-called decree and point me to the library in which it is housed. If the decree came from the very highest authority - the pope, I suggest you start by looking in the Vatican archives for a papal bull, motu proprio or papal brief.  Perhaps it was a decree created by one of the Ecumenical Councils, or since it was specifically aimed at the English congregation, it may have been issued in our own ecclesiastical province at a synod under the authority of the Archbiship of Canterbury. Anyway, brush up your Church Latin and I wish you all good hunting in the archives. The reward will be valid until midnight on 24th December 2012, when the offer will close. Good luck! There will be much more on Christmas Pudding in a future posting.

An original papal bull. Papal bulls got their name from the bulla, the small ball shaped seal made of lead which was attached to them. If there was ever a papal bull on the subject of Christmas pudding, perhaps the bulla would have looked like this. Or perhaps the whole thing is just a load of old papal bull----.

Salads to reach round the world

A Grand Salad for Winter

Minimalism and simplicity were not features of high status life in the seventeenth century. Intricate aesthetic and allegorical schemes dominated the fine and applied arts of the period. A baroque ceiling painting in a church in Rome - or nearer to home - a Purcell anthem, or a Grinling Gibbon's overmantel, are all survivals of an age when complex, florid forms were much to the taste of both Church and nobility. Even in fields like medicine, there was a tendency towards complexity. A remedy might have many ingredients in the hope that one may actually be effective. The astrologer and physician Nicholas Culpeper, commenting on a popular 'antidote to plague and pestilence', which was made up of hundreds of different ingredients said "I am very loath to leave out this medicine, which if it were stretched out, and cut in thongs, would reach round the world.'

The ingredients of early modern English grand salads were arranged either  in concentric circles as in the first illustration, or radially as here. 

So it was with food. The more princely cookery books of the period are packed with recipes for complex olios, bisques and other dishes, packed to the brim with a bewildering variety of meats and game birds. Elaborate and highly decorative salads with many ingredients were also fashionable. In this country these were known as Grand Sallets and some recipes have such an abundance of ingredients that they too, when "cut in thongs, would reach round the world". These colourful arrangements were among the most decorative dishes that ever graced the English table. Take the recipe below from 1709  -

From T. Hall, The Queen's Royal Cookery (London: 1709)

Unlike a modern salad this is more like an arrangement of pickles and was designed specifically for winter. As well as pickled garden stuff, such as the French beans and asparagus (sparrow-grass), there are some seafoods - anchovies, pickled oysters and scallops. The sallet also contains two exotics - mango and bamboo. These had been available in England for some time through the East India trade and were imported in pickled and preserved form. Both were served to James II at his coronation feast in 1685. Most eighteenth century cookery books teach us various ways of counterfeiting them. The fake mangos were made from melons or cucumbers and the bamboo with elder shoots. The real articles must have been rare and expensive. Flowers were also pickled in the summer months to make very decorative salads for winter.

A half pound of butter clapped down on the plate and covered with red cabbage, white cabbage and parsley

Many recipes for grand sallets feature a 'standard', a decorative feature like the sprig of bay laurel described here. Others, such as the one illustrated at the top of the page are embellished with a sprig of rosemary, in this case flicked over with whipped egg white to represent snow and therefore suitable for a winter table. The twig was usually stuck into a half lemon or other fruit, or into a mound of disguised butter.

T. Hall's grand sallet with its whole pickled mango. The small red berries garnishing the rim are pickled barberries

The finished sallet with its plume of bay laurel

Complex salads were also a favourite dish on the baroque table in Spain and Italy, where they were known as royal salads. My favourite insalata reale is from Naples. It appears in Antonio Latini's Lo Scalo Moderna (Napoli: 1692 and 1694). The recipe is below. Like English winter salads, this heroic concoction contains a lot of preserved items such as olives, capers, botarga, anchovies etc. One of the more unusual of these is tarantello, salted tuna belly, a very important ingredient in Italian renaissance cuisine. It is very, very difficult to get hold of these days, but I make my own. If you like anchovies, you will love tarantello. 

Tarantello (below) and botarga (above)

Insalata reale


Take endive, or wild chicory, mince it finely and put it to one side, until you have prepared a large basin, at the bottom of which are eight, or ten biscottini, friselle, or taralli, soaked in water, and vinegar, with a little white salt; put the said chopped endive on top, intermix with other salad stuff, albeit minced finely, make the body of the said salad on top at your discretion, intermix with radishes cut into pieces lengthways, filling in the gaps in the said basin with the ingredients listed below, all arranged in order. Pinenuts four ounces; stoned olives six ounce; capers four ounce; one pomegranate; white and black grapes ten ounces; twelve anchovies; tarantello (salted belly of tuna) four ounces; botargo three ounces; comfits six ounces; preserved citron and preserved pumpkin twelve ounces; four hard boiled eggs; whole pistachios four ounces; four ounces of raisins; other black olives six ounces. Caviar, four ounces; minced flesh of white fish, six ounces; little radishes, salt, oil, and vinegar to taste, garnish the plate with slices of citrons, and citron flowers round about in order, take heed not to add salt or seasonings, until it goes to the table, and is about to be eaten.


From Antonio Latini. Lo Scalo Moderna (Napoli: 1692 and 1694). My translation.

Latini's salad is constructed over a bed of biscuit soaked in vinegar. I have used his option of taralli.

This salad can be made at most times of year as it contains items that would be kept in most larders

The finished salad with its 28 ingredients including sugar comfits

The Leeds symposium on History and Traditions on 21st April this year is on the subject of vegetables. I am reading a paper on salads, so expect to see much more on the subject on this blog. I will leave you with a close up of T. Hall's Grand Salad of 1709. Yummy - especially those pickled scallops and oysters!

John Parkinson's Orange Sprig Sallet

Carved preserved oranges

Here is a very simple, but effective thing. Seville oranges are in the shops here in England, which makes it marmalade making time. In a month's time, the International Marmalade Festival takes place here in Cumbria at Dalemain House just up the road from me. I make marmalade, and am one of the judges at the festival, but I also use a very large number of Seville oranges to make preserved and candied orange peels like those above. I need a lot of these for my courses. Seville oranges contain enormous numbers of pips. When making marmalade, I usually boil these in a little cloth bag to get extra pectin into the mix. However, when preparing preserved peel, I end up with a lot of pips which are surplus to requirements. So what I do is to plant them in the garden and in flowerpots - not to end up with a forest of orange trees in about twenty years, but to produce a small amount of tiny citrus flavoured sprigs later in the year, which are delicious chopped and sprinkled on top of a salad.

Seville oranges are notorious for the sheer abundance of their pips

A flowerpot sown with Seville orange pips ready to be covered with compost

The same flowerpot a few months later

I found this idea in John Parkinson's wonderful book on gardening, Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris (London: 1629). Parkinson was 'herbarist' to James I and had a physic garden in Long Acre in Covent Garden. This is what he says,

 "The kernels or seeds beeing cast into the ground in the spring time, will quickly grow up, (but will not abide the winter with us, to bee kept for growing trees) and when they are of a finger length high, being pluckt up, and put among sallets, will give them a marvellous fine aromatic or spicy taste, very acceptable." 

Yesterday, I rescued about two hundred of these 'kernels' and 'cast' them in a number of flower pots. When they are ready, I will tell you what I do with them.

John Parkinson. Woodcut from Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris  (London: 1629)

Parkinson names his orange as the Mala Arantia,  equivalent to our bitter Seville orange Citrus X aurantium. At this time he did not know of the existence of the sweet orange, which became known as the Portugal, or China orange after it was introduced into Europe by the Portuguese. As the marmalade season advances, there will be much more on this blog on matters citrus.

Mala arantia from John Parkinson, Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris  (London: 1629)

The International Marmalade Festival

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Bohemian Baroque

A Hapsburg period pie from 1719 I made from a Hagger design a few years ago

How would you like to wine and dine in true eighteenth century Hapsburg style in a magnificent palace in Prague? Well in 2113 I am joining forces with my two friends Rostislav and Zlatuše Müller, who are responsible for reviving the remarkable Prague Carnevale, or Masopust. Though outlawed during the communist regime, this ancient lenten festival has grown since its revival seven years ago into a major cultural event. Of particular note is the Crystal Ball, a baroque inspired extravaganza held in the beautiful Clam-Gallas Palace in the historic centre of the city. Featuring period music, choreography and authentic food, it is an opportunity for all who attend to dress in sumptuous Hapsburg outfits. This is an extraordinary event, held in extraordinary surroundings. If you come, you will be following in the footsteps of Casanova and Mozart, who were both enthusiastic carnevale participants. 

Prima donna in the ballroom of the Clam-Gallas Palace

My role is to organise the food for the Crystal Ball. I intend to create a ball supper of authentic Hapsburg dishes served in true baroque style. My theme for 2013 is to celebrate the wonderful cuisine of Conrad Hagger, whose lavishly illustrated Neues Saltzburgisches Koch-Buch published in Augsburg in 1719 is the text book for all interested in baroque food. Born in 1666, Hagger started his career in St. Gallen and then served as a campaign cook under the Earl of Latour in the Balkans. He saw further action as a military cook in other occupations in Austria, Germany and Italy. He ended his career as cook to Johann Ernst von Thun und Hohenstein, prince archbishop of Salzburg, who he served for 27 years.  Many of Hagger's dishes are surprisingly simple and suited to modern taste, but others, particularly his pastry work, are very technically challenging. I have been a proud owner of a magnificent copy of Hagger's book for many years and have attempted some of the remarkable dishes illustrated in this bible of baroque cookery. To be invited to recreate and lay out his extravagant dishes in an authentic table display in this major European baroque palace is a real honour. I am very excited by the prospect. 

With its 305 engravings, Hagger's massive tome is the most
valuable resource we have on the appearance of Baroque food

The Clam-Gallas Palace, the venue for the Crystal Ball, as it was in the eighteenth century

This cook is probably Hagger himself, in the act of preparing an ornate pasty

You will dine under this ceiling painting 

One of Hagger's sumptuous cakes

While you dine, you will be entertained by some of the most talented artists in Bohemia

A Hagger tart design

This remarkable hairpiece was designed and constructed by Rostislav Muller

The food matches the lavishness of the wigs. One of Hagger's remarkable pies

In future years we will be holding baroque dining events in other Bohemian locations, including this painted ballroom at the Troja Palace, designed purely for the summer divertimenti of Emperor Leopold I. Even the stables at Troja have painted ceilings!

I will be posting much more information about these events on future blogs as well as on my website. Meanwhile, it is not too late to order tickets for this year's Crystal Ball, which is being held at the Clam Gallas Palace on February 18th. Go to the official Prague Carnevale website.

This blog is created by Historic Food. Go to the Historic Food Website.

Spongata - An Italian Minced Pie in Georgian London

A slice of spongata made from Jarrin's 1820 recipe

Every Christmas for the past 25 years, I have made spongata from a recipe published in 1820 by one of my favourite cookery authors, the Italian confectioner Giuliamo Jarrin. This delicious peppery honey cake is still made at Christmas in villages and towns throughout Emilia Romagna, Jarrin's native region. Indeed, just about every family have their own recipe, as do the professional pastry shops. All keep their own specific methods and ingredients as proudly guarded secrets. This interesting celebration cake is sometimes compared to the English mince pie, though in reality it is much more closely related to the better known Italian confections panpepato and panforte. Though unlike these celebrated cakes, spongata has a thin coating of crisp pastry.

Jarrin was born in the town of Colorno near Parma in 1784. After working in Paris for a while during the reign of Napoleon, he came to London in 1817, where he lived for the rest of his life, running various confectionery establishments in the West End until his death in 1848. He even anglicised his name to William. Jarrin's book The Italian Confectioner, which he wrote in English, was first published in London in 1820. It is by far the most important work on confectionery published in Europe at this period and offers a wonderful insight into the techniques and processes used by the professionals. Sadly, it is hardly known in Italy. Though I don't suppose many contemporary cooks and chefs in England are aware of this seminal work on dessert foods either. Unfortunately there is no modern printed edition of Jarrin's book, but the good news is that the third edition of 1827 is now available on Google books (link at end of this posting). 

Giuliamo Alexis Jarrin from the third edition of The Italian Confectioner 1827. There is another portrait of Jarrin as a younger man on this blog in a posting about cupcakes.

To my knowledge, there are no recipes for spongata in any of the works on cookery and confectionery printed in Italy during the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. Jarrin actually gives us two. As far as I know they are the earliest printed recipes for this regional cake, predating any published in Italy. It is ironic that they were issued in London in English. Both of Jarrin's recipes can be found at the end of this post. Do try at least the first one, as it is easy to make and very good. The second is a bit more tricky.

There are a number of theories concerning the origin of spongata. Some suggest that the cake is a survival from Roman times and offer a rather tenuous argument that it is similar to one described in Petronius's Satyricon, written in the 1st century AD. Cakes are mentioned in the celebrated passage describing Trimalchio's extravagant feast, but not in enough detail to make a positive identification as spongata precursors. Certainly, all the ingredients spongate contain - honey, breadcrumbs, pinenuts, walnuts, currants, pepper, cinnamon and cloves - were all familiar in the Roman kitchen, but there does not seem to be any actual evidence that the Romans made these cakes. Others believe that the cake is Jewish in origin. Whatever the truth, it is certainly pretty ancient. It first gets mentioned in a letter dating from 1454 to Francesco Sforza, the Duke of Milan.* As you would expect, there are many other stories about this iconic and delicious cake, but like many other food legends they are very difficult to verify from historic sources. 

However, as an historian who enjoys replicating period dishes, what interests me much more than trying to figure out the origin of spongata from the scant historical record, is to understand a little more about its appearance and how it was made. Happily, help is at hand in the evidence provided by the marvellous etching reproduced below, a small detail from a board game published in Bologna in 1691.

A spongata vendor from a board game published in Bologna in 1691.

In his recipe Jarrin tells us to prick the finished cake all over with 'the point of a knife'. Most modern day spongate made in Emilia Romagna are still pricked all over in this way, usually with a skewer. However, what strikes me about the late seventeenth century spongate being sold by the long nosed gentleman above, is that they are marked criss-cross fashion with holes in the centre of the individual diamond shaped lozenges. This is a very familiar pattern to me, because an identical one was once called for in pricking or  'docking' Shrewsbury Cakes in seventeenth century England. This effect was achieved by marking the cakes with the teeth of a comb and then making a small hole in each lozenge, as in the photo below. 

17th century English Shrewsbury Cakes were marked with a comb

In his manuscript cookery book, the diarist and courtier John Evelyn gives a recipe To make Shrewsbery cakes, in which he instructs us to 'pricke them with the great teeth of a comb that is new and kept for that use'. A similar pattern was used to mark another Shrewsbury speciality, the simnel cakes made for mid-lent Sunday and illustrated (as below) by Robert Chambers in The Book of Days (London: 1862). The probable origin of these markings, at least with the Shrewsbury cakes was to enable the cakes to be broken into smaller pieces without having to cut them. I suspect that the markings on the spongate in the 1691 Bologna etching were for the same purpose.

A recreated Shrewsbury simnel

So in recreating my spongata cakes, I now mark them with a comb as in the picture below. After baking, I dust them with icing sugar, which is still common practice thoughout Emilia Romagna. 

A spongata marked with a comb and skewer

One traditional spongata made in Corniglio, a small town about 40 km northwest of Parma, is printed with a geometric design with a wooden mould as well as being pricked or docked - see below. Interestingly in Jarrin's second spongata recipe, he tells us that 'You may have wooden moulds, representing different subjects, into which you may put your paste, and fill the moulds as above, covering them with a wafer paper.'    

Spongata di Corniglio - the website where I borrowed this image has another showing a baker printing  a spongata on top of a wafer paper just as Jarrin describes.

Jarrin's recipe for spongata from The Italian Confectioner. (London: 1820).

Jarrin's second recipe for spongata or Italian Christmas cake.

* G. BERNARDINI, La spongata: dolce tipico di localita del territorio parmense. Origini storiche, le tipiche località di produzione, le ricette, Parma, Tecnografica, 1995.  Accademia Italiana della cucina, Delegazione di Parma.

Download G. A. Jarrin. The Italian Confectioner. 3rd edition. (London:1827) - Google Books

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