Food Timeline>FAQs: muffins to yogurt

Muffins

English muffins & crumpets
American muffins
Blueberry muffins

Researching the history of bread-related products is difficult because bread is THE universal food. Ancient peoples of all places discovered the combination of *cooked* (baked, fried, steamed, boiled, sun-dried) ground grain and water created simple, inexpensive, nourishing food. Muffins, cakes, crackers, biscuits, cookies, sticky buns & Twinkies are not inventions. They are evolutions. All of these are variations on the theme of what happens when flour & water mix with human ingenuity, technological advancement, local ingredients, immediate need and cultural expectations.

What the food historians have to say about the origin of muffins...

"Muffin...a term connected with moufflet, an old French word applied to bread, meaning soft....The word muffin first appeared in print in the early 18th century, and recipes began to be published in the middle of the 18th century. There has always been some confusion between muffins, crumpets, and pikelets, both in recipes and in name. Muffin' usually meant a breadlike product (sometimes simply made from whatever bread dough was available), as opposed to the more pancake-like crumpets...Muffins were most popular during the 19th century, when muffin men traversed the town streets at teatime, ringing their bells. In the 1840s the muffin-man's bell was prohibited by Act of Parliament because many people objected to it, but the prohibition was ineffective..."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999(p. 517)

"Muffin...In Great Britain, a muffin is a traditional light-textured roll, round and flat, which is made with yeast dough. Muffins are usually enjoyed in the winter - split, toasted, buttered, and served hot for tea, and sometimes with jam. In the Victorian era muffins were bought in the street from sellers who carried trays of them on their heads, ringing a handbell to call their wares. In North America muffins are entirely different. The raising (leavening) agent is baking powder and the muffins are cooked in deep patty (muffin) tins. Cornmeal and bran are sometimes substituted for some of the flour."
---Larousse Gastronomique, Jenifer Harvey Lang editor [Crown:New York] 1988 (p. 703)

"Muffin...a small yeast cake usually sweetened with a bit of sugar. In England muffins were once called "tea cakes," while in America muffins are served primarily for breakfast or as an accompaniment to dinner...The origins of the word are obscure, but possible it is from Low German muffe [meaning] cake. The term was first printed in English in 1703, and Hannah Glasse in her 1747 cookbook fives a recipe for making muffins. Mush muffins (called slipperdowns in New England) were a Colonial muffin made with hominy on a hanging griddle."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Freidman Books:New York] 1999 (p. 211)

"Sometimes misnamed gems, muffins were baked in deeper pans and were not quite as breadlike as gems. Muffins graduated from being cooked in a utensil called muffin rings to a special baking pans. Muffin rings were hooplike accessories placed directly on a hot stove or the bottom of a skillet. Batter was then poured into them. The rings did not prove to be as popular with muffin consumers as molds of the same period. However, their demise as holders of raw muffin batter was not in vain, for they remain a valuable kitchen accessory to make popular English muffins or fried eggs. The muffin molds of the nineteenth century turned out to be an extremely deficient product. The baked their contents thoroughly and very evenly..."
---The Old West Baking Book, Lon Walters (p. 34)

About English muffins
"English muffins" as American know them today are most closely connected with the ancient Welsh tradition of cooking small round yeast cakes known as "bara" [bread] "maen" [stone] on bakestones. "English muffins" were later cooked on griddles, as opposed to muffin tins. Related food? crumpets & tea cakes.

The two best books on this topic are:

English Bread and Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David
--chapter on crumpets and muffins (pps. 341-361)
Food and Drink in Britain From the Stone Age to the 19th Century, C. Anne Wilson
--chapter on bread, cakes and pastry (pps. 229-274)

"The English muffin is round and made from a soft yeast-leavened dough enriched with milk and butter. It is usually cooked on a griddle, which gives it a flat, golden-brown top and bottom, and a white band around the waste and a light, spongy interior...This method appears as early as 1747 and was recommended by Hannah Glasse."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999

Mrs. Glasse's original recipe not called English muffins. She also includes instructions for proper opening (warning NOT! to use a knife).

"To make Muffings and Oat-Cakes
To a Buschel of Hertfordshire white Flour, take a Pint and a half of good Ale-yeast, from pale Malt if you can get it, becuase it is whitest; let the Yeast lie in Water all night, the next Day pour off the Water clear, make two Gallons of Water just Milk warm, not to scald your Yeast, and two Ounces of Salt, mix your Water, Yeast and Salt well toghether for about a quarter of an Hour, then strain it, and mix up your Dough as light as possible, and let it lie in your Trough an Hour to rise, then with your Hand roll it, and pull it into little Pieces about as big as a large Walnut, roll them with your Hand like a Ball, lay them on your Table, and as fast as you do them lay a Piece of Flannel over them, and be sure to keep your Dough cover'd with Flannel; when you have rolled out all your Dough, begin to bake the first, and by that Time they will be spread out in the right Form; lay them on your Iron, as one Side begins to change Colour turn the other, and take great Care they don't burn, or be too much discolour'd; but that you will be a Judge off in two or three Makings. Take care the middle of the Iron is not too hot, as it will be, but then you may put a Brick-bat or two in the middle of the Fire to slacken the heat. The Thing you bake on must be made thus. Build a Place just as if you was going to set a Copper, and in the Stead of a Copper a Piece of Iron all over the Top fix'd in Form, just the frame as the Bottom of the Iron Pot, and make your Fire underneath with Coal as in a Copper; observe, Muffings are made in the same Way, only this, when you pull them to Pieces roll them in a good deal of Flour, and with a Rolling-pin roll them thin, cover them with a Piece of Flannel, and they will rise to a proper Thickness; and if you find them too big or too little, you must roll Dough accordingly, these must not be the least discoloured.

And when you eat them, toast them with a Fork crisp on both Sides, then with your Hand pull them open, and they will be like a Honey-Comb; lay in as much Butter as you intend to use, then clap them together again, and set it by the Fire, when you think the Butter is melted turn them, that both Sides may be butter'd alike, but ton't touch them with a Knife, either to spread or cut them open, if you do they will be as heavy as Lead, only when they are quite butter'd and done, you may cut them across with a Knife."
---The Art of Cookery Made Plain & Easy, Hannah Glasse, facismile first edition 1747 [Prospect Books:Devon] 1995 (p. 151)

Did you know? Thomas Jefferson's muffin recipe would have produced "English muffins."

Thomas' brand English muffins were introduced to New York City in the late 19th century:

"Although tea muffins that were once popular in England resembled the American "English muffin," there is no single muffin in Britain by this specific name...Most of the store-bought varieties [of English muffin] derive from those made by the S. B. Thomas Company of New York, whose founder, Samuel Bath Thomas, emigrated from England in 1875 with his mother's recipe and began making muffins at his Ninth Avenue bakery in 1880. The name was first printed in 1925."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 123)

Related foods? crumpets & scones.

About crumpets & scones
The first use of any food often predates the first occurance of printed evidence by many years. To further complicate matters, variant spellings often appear in older texts. An inspection of recipes confirms or refutes culinary linkage. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the history of the word and recipe for crumpets back to 1382:

"Crumpet...[Not known till late in 17th century], Wyclif has however 'crompid cake' as a rendering in laganum, which may be the antecedent of the name. [1382:Wyclif] A cake of a loaf, a crusted cake spreynde with oyle, a crompid cake...[1694:Westmacott] The make Cakes of it (Buck Wheat)...as they do oat-cakes, and call it Crumpit. Crumpet...A soft cake made of flour, beaten egg, milk, and barm or baking powder, mixed into batter, and baked on an iron plate...Now usually a soft, round, doughy cake made wtiht flour and yeast, cooked on a griddle or the like and usually eaten toasted with butter. [1769:Raffald] To make tea crumpets..." ---Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, volume IV (p. 83)

"The earliest published recipe for crumpets of the kind known now is from Elizabeth Raffald (1769). Ayto...in an entertaining essay, discusses a possible 14th century ancestor, the crompid cake, and the buckwheat griddle cakes (called crumpit) which appeared from the late 17th century onwards. ...It seems clear enough that there is a connection with Welsh cremog (pancake) and Breton Krampoch (buckwheat pancake)."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 230)

Elizabeth Raffald's recipe:


"To make tea crumpets Beat two eggs very well, put them to a quart of warm milk and water, and a large spoonful of barm: beat in as much fine flour as will make them rather thicker than a common batter pudding, then make your bakestone very hot, and rub it with a little butter wrapped in a clean linen cloth, then pour a large spoonful of batter upon your stone, and let it run to the size of a tea-saucer; turn it, and when you want to use them roast them very crisp, and butter them."
---The Experienced English Housekeeper, Elizabeth Raffald, [unabridged facsimile 1769 print with an introduction by Roy Shipperbottom [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1997

" The probably origin of the word crumpit is the Welsh "cremog," a pancake or fritter. For some reason or other, probably because they are in some degree similar, and yet differing greatly, it is customary to associate muffins wtih crumpets, it being a rare occurance for either to appear at the table separately. Both are made of batter, both require re-cooking, and both are served hot and well buttered; yet there is so marked a difference between the two in flavour and constitution that most persons have a decided preference for one or the other.'"
---English Bread and Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David [Penguin:New York] 1979 (p. 341).
[NOTE: this is book is considered an authority on this topic. If you need more information (including historic recipes) ask your librarian to help you find a copy of it.]

Related foods? English muffins & pancakes.

ABOUT SCONES
The origin of scones is closely connected with the ancient Welsh tradition of cooking small round yeast cakes known as "bara" [bread] "maen" [stone] on bakestones. These early leavened bread products were later cooked on griddles. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the word "scone" in print to 1513. This book suggests the history of the word is derived from Middle Dutch (schoonbrot) or Middle German (schonbrot), meaning "fine bread." Scones that we know today are leavened with modern baking powder/soda, both mid-19th century inventions. About baking powder. Scones are traditionally connected with Scotland, Ireland and England.

"Scone. A large found cake made of wheat or barleymeal baked on a griddle; one of the four quadrant-shaped pieces into which which a cake is often cut; more generally, a soft cake of barley or oatmeal, or wheat-flour, baked in single portions on a griddle or in an oven."
---The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition

"The scone comes from Scotland--the first known reference to it comes in a translation of the Aeneid (1513) by the Scots poet Gavin Douglas: The flour sconnis war sett in, by and by, wyth other mesis.' Made from fine white fout (echoing the possible source of their name, Dutch schoonbroot, fine white bread'), sour milk or buttermilk, and a raising agent (since the mid-nineteenth century, bicarbonate of soda), and baked on a griddle or in the oven, scones originally came in the form of flat cakes cut into four, producing portions that were either square or, if the original cake were round, roughly triangular. Individually baked round scones are a later development. The pronunciation of the word scone has never really settled down. Early spellings suggest a short vowel, rhyming with swan, but the version with the diphthong, rhyming with stone, is if anything commoner today."
---An A to Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 304)

"Scone...What is certain is that the term is mainly a British one, and covers a wide range of small, farly plain cakes. Leavened with baking powder, or bicarbonate of soda, and an acid ingredient such a sour milk, they are quickly made and best eaten hot with butter. Scone recipes are found in great variety up and down the British Isles but, together with the closely related bannock, are particularly a Scottish specialty."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 704)

"The Scots are famous for the variety of scones (from the Gaelic, sgoon, and it should rhyme with gone'): some of the most popular ones are [soda scones, wholemeal scones, rich white scones, treacle scones, potato scones, ballater scones and drop scones.]"
---Traditional Scottish Cookery, Theodora Fitzgibbon [Fontana:Suffolk] 1980 (p. 231-5)
[NOTE: This book contains recipes for each of the scones listed above.]

[1874]
"Scones.
Put as much barley-meal as will be required into a bowl, add a pinch of salt, and stir in cold water to make a stiff apste. Roll this out into round cakes a quarter of an inch thick, and bake on a girdle. Split the cakes open, butter them well, and serve hot. A little butter may be rugged into the meal if liked. Richer scones may be made by dissolving an ounce of fresh butter in a pint of hot milk, and stirring this into as much flour as will make a stiff dough. When it is not convenient to bake the scones on a girdle, a thick frying-pan may be used instead. Time to bake the scones, about four minutes."

Scones, Soda.
Dissolve half a satl-spoonful of carbonate of soda and fie ounces of fresh butter or lard in a quarter of a pint of warm water or milk: put ten ounces of four into a bowl, add a pinch of slat, and stir in the liquor to make a stiff dough. Roll this out into a round cake a quarter of an inch thick, mark this into eight portions, and bake on a girdle or a thick frying-pan. Split the scones, butter them will, and serve very hot. Time, to bake, fifteen to twenty minutes. Probable cost, 6d.
---Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery with Numerous Illustrations [Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co.:London] 1987 (p. 842)

RECOMMENDED READING
English Bread and Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David
--chapter on crumpets and muffins (pps. 341-361)
Food and Drink in Britain From the Stone Age to the 19th Century, C. Anne Wilson
--chapter on bread, cakes and pastry (pps. 229-274).

Related food? Irish soda bread & English muffins.

About American muffins
American muffins today are quite distinguishable from their English counterparts. This was not always so. An examination of American muffin recipes printed in 19th and 20th century cookbooks reveals some interesting culinary history. Early American muffin recipes were quite similar (if not exact copies) of English muffins. Given the history of our country this is not surprising. These same cookbooks also contain recipes for tea cakes' and other cakes to be baked in small pans which read more like the cakey muffins we know today in America. Tea cakes often called for spices, nuts and dried fruits (currants, dates, etc.). They were sweeter and were more likely to be baked than griddled.

According to the Dictionary of American Regional English, Frederick G. Cassidy and Joan Houston Hall, editors, muffins are defined thusly "A small cake; a cupcake." The first print reference cited is "1879: Tyree, Housekeeping in Olde Virginia, 38, "Another recipe for muffins...make the batter the consistency of pound cake, and bake in snow-ball cups as soon as made." The Oxford English Dictionary does not describe American-type muffins.

"Muffins...Women were making muffins well before the twentieth century...these varied mainly according to the type of flour used-white, graham, rye, corn. Sometimes a handful of chopped dates and/or raisins would be added, inch which case muffins became "Fruit Gems."...For the most part, however, muffins remained basic-plain-until well into the twentieth Century. For years we had a fairly set repertoire of muffins: bran, blueberry, corn, date, apple, oatmeal, and such. Then in the 70s and 80s, muffin madness set in. Muffins exploded to three or four times their normal size...."
---American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century, Jean Anderson [Clarkson Potter:New York] 1997 (p. 332)

American cookbooks confirm Mrs. Anderson's statement. Even into the early part of the 20th century, muffin recipes are few and basic. In 1920s recipes for muffins became more prolific, but were variations on the same basic theme of nuts, dried fruits and different flours (Graham, corn, rice, potato, etc.). Muffins with meat (Ham-and-Bacon Muffins) and vegetables (Squash, Pumpkin, or Sweet Potato Muffins) are also included. Mrs. Allen on Cooking, Menus, Service, Ida Bailey Allen [1929] lists 23 different muffin recipes. The 1946 edition of Irma Rombauer's Joy of Cooking lists 19 different muffin recipes including directions for fresh fruit muffins (blueberry, apple, cranberry). She also includes cheese muffins. Gregg Gillespie's 1001 Muffins [1998] includes many standard recipes as well as some our colonial ancestors probably never dreamed possible: chocolate carrot?

About blueberry muffins
It is doubtful that you will be able to trace the exact place where blueberry muffins were invented, but we can make some assumptions. First, true blueberries are native to North America, bilberries (a similar type of berry) are native to Central and Northern Europe. European settlers adapted their recipes (muffins, cakes, breads & use of fresh/dried fruits) to New World foodstuffs out of necessity. Therefore, anyplace where blueberries (they would have been the wild variety, not the plump, juicy berries we are used to seeing in the stores) grew, blueberry muffins might have been made. In the New World blueberries grew from North Carolina to Nova Scotia. Native Americans also used blueberries in their foods:

"A favorite dish of the Native Americans during colonial times was Sautauthig (pronounced sawˇ-taw-teeg), a simple pudding made with dried, crushed blueberries, dried, cracked corn(or samp), and water. Later, the settlers added milk, butter and sugar when they were available. The Pilgrims loved Sautauthig and many historians believe that it was part of the first Thanksgiving feast. In a letter to friends back in England, one colonist describes how Sauthauthig was prepared:
"...this is to be boyled or stued with a gentle fire, till it be tender, of a fitt consistence, as of Rice so boyled, into which Milke, or butter be put either with sugar or without it, it is a food very pleasant...but it must be observed that it be very well boyled, the longer the better, some will let it be stuing the whole day: after it is Cold it groweth thicker, and is commonly Eaten by mixing a good Quantity of Milke amongst it."
Lesson plan from the U.S. Highbush Council

Mushrooms

Food historians tell us prehistoric peoples most likely consumed fungi and mushrooms. These foods were easy to forage and incorporate into meals. The Ancient Romans appreciated the taste and grew mushrooms. Modern cultivation commenced around the 16th century. Truffles, from the Perigord region in France are considered some of the most delicate and expensive specimens of this particular type of food. Portobello and Cremini are relative newcomers.

Mushrooms are a subset of the larger plant world of fungus:

"Fungus in the scientific sense, means any group of simple plants which include mushrooms and similar plants, yeasts, moulds, and the rusts which grow as parasites on crops. Unlike more advanced plants, fungi lack chlorophyll and so can only grown as sprophytes (from dead plants or animals); or as parasites (on living plants); or in a mycorrhizal relationship (symbiosis between fungi and the roots of trees)...The importance of fungi for human food is not limited to those which are eaten as such, or are visible. Many which are microorganisms play an important part in making or processing human food. Yeasts are an obvious example, and are regarded as beneficent because of their role in, for example, the making of bread dough...'Musrhooms', to use the term loosely as applying to edible fungi in general, are far better known as food in the northern than in the southern hemisphere."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 326)

"Mushrooms and other large varieties of fungus have geen eaten since earliest times, as traces of puffballs in the prehistoric lake dwellings of Switzerland, Germany, and Austria show; but not by everyone and not everywhere. The rarest and finest mushrooms, such as the truffle and the oronge, were highly esteemed in classical Greece and Rome, and have always been expensive...some mushrooms have been successfully cultivated for a long time. In classical times both Greeks and Romans grew the small Agrocybe aegerita...on slices of a poplar trunk. The Chinese and Japanese may have been growing chitake on rotting logs for even longer. Modern European cultivation goes back to 1600, when the French agriculturist Olivier de Serres suggested a method in his work Le Theatre d'agriculture des champs. In 1678 another Frenchman, the botanist Marchant, demonstrated to the Academie des Sciences how mushrooms could be sown in a controlled way by transplanting their mycelia (filaments whcih spread through the soil underneath them like fine roots)."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 519, 521)
[NOTE: This book contains separate entries for specific types of mushrooms...shiitake, enokitake, truffles, etc. If you need these details ask your librarian to help you find a copy of the book.]

"Fungi have been associated with humans since prehistoric times and must have been collected and eaten along with other plants by hunter-gatherers prior to the deveolpment of agriculture...Although their prehistoric use remains uncertain, they may have been employed as food, in the preparation of beverages, and as medicine. There is, however, no specific evidence for the use of fungi prior to the Neolithic period, when fungi consumption would have been associated with the drinking of mead (yeast-fermented diluted honey) and yeast-fermented beer or wine, and, somewhat later, the eating of yeast-fermented (leavened) bread."
---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Ornelas [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge] 2001, Volume One (p. 314)
[NOTE: This book contains information on mushrooms/fungi as they relate to different cultures: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Sudan, China, Greece/Rome, Japan, Mexico, Near East, and Europe.]

"Cave drawings and paintings tell us hardly anything about the plants the cavedwellers ate, and it is even rarer to find them showing mushrooms, which does not mean that the latter never featured on prehistoric menus. Residues identified prove that other vegetables were in fact eaten, even if few felt any urge to depict them on cabe walls. Morever, if we look at the dietary customs of contemporary peoples who are still at the Paleolithic or Neolithic stage of development, there is plenty of evidence of an interest in mushrooms both edible and poisonous. The latter can be used for hunting, fishing, or indeed for homicial purposes...The ancient Egyptians and Romans greatly enjoyed mushrooms...The Bible, although full of references to food of many kinds, never mentions mushrooms, either in praise or otherwise..."
---History of Food, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, translated by Anthea Bell [Barnes & Noble Books:New York] 1992 (p. 57)

"The first evidence that mushrooms were used as human food in prehistoric Europe is the recent find of a bowl of field mushrooms in a Bronze Age house near Nola in Italy. Mushrooms were gathered from the wild. Classical Greek authors tend to treat them as famine food, on the level with acorns. By Romans, however, they were so highly regarded that the Stoic writer Seneca gave up mushrooms (boleti) as unnecessary luxuries---an approach to the vegetarianism and asceticism that he toyed with. Recipes are suggested by Diphilus of Siphnos, in the third century BC, and in Apicius in the fourth century AD."
---Food in the Ancient World from A to Z, Andrew Dalby [Routledge:London] 2003 (p. 223)

Why are they called "mushrooms?"
"The word mushroom, first recorded in the early fifteenth century, was borrowed from Old French mousseron. This has been traced back to a late Latin mussirio, a word of unknown origin."
---An A to Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 221)

About mushrooms in America

"...it may seem surprosing that mushrooms entered the American culianry limelight only in the late nineteenth century. Until the 1890s, most mushroom recipes were for ketchups, sauces, and pickles, with occasional stewed mushooms or French-influenced dishes named "champignons." Few Americans included mushrooms in kitchen gardens, which was undertandable given Hannah Glasse's rare and unappetizing instructions for mushroom cultivation...mushroom gathering was fraught with danger, for no reliable American guides distinguished between gustatory pleasure and peril. Typical is The Kentucky Housewife (1839) by Lettice Bryan, which simply warns the cook to "be careful to select the esculent mushrooms, as some of them are very poisonous." Mushroom cultivation began in seventeeth-century France...The techniques were perfected in the 1870s and spread abroad, just as French cookery became fashionable in America. By the 1890s, a veritable fungus frenzy was sweeping America, bot as a fad food and as a scientific curiousity. Mushrooming clubs, were forager swapped tips, spring up quickly. Meticulously illustrated literature educated amateurs and professionals in identifying and cooking mushrooms...The first professional information on mushroom cultivation in America was disseminated on a large scale in the 1890s, mainly through the efforts of William Falconer."
---Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, Andrew F. Smith, editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2007 (p. 396-7)

19th/early 20th century examples of American mushroom cookery are available online courtesy of Michigan State Univeristy's Historic American Cookbook Project. Search mushroom in recipe title or as ingredient.

ABOUT TRUFFLES

"Truffles...A number of fleshy subterranean fungi of the genus Tuber are called truffles...Truffles are also among the oldest vegetables in the historical record. Food historian Reay Tannahill reports that they were known to the Babylonians and the Romans and that truffles were secured from the Arabian Desert in ancient times, just as today some of the richest truffle mines known are located in the Kalahari Desert. Truffles gained European attention in fourteenth century France, where they had developed a reputation as an aphrodesiac. In the late fifteenth century, their popularity as a flavoring agent was on the rise and by the seventeenth century, they were known in England...In France, the truffle of note (and the most famous variety) is the Perigord (Tuber melanosporum), a truffle that is black both inside and out, which Brillat-Savarin called a "black diamond.".."Mysterious" is a word often used in writings on truffles. Truffles vary in size from that of a walnut to that of a fist...are round shaped, and have a rough exterior."
---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Orneals [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge] 2001, Volume Two (p. 1872)

"The original truffle is the underground fungus of the genus Tuber, prized by gastronomes of several millennia for its ineffable perfume and its supposed aphrodesiac qualities. The Roman gourmet Apicius gave seven recipes for preparing it, and Brillat-Savarin apostophised it as 'the diamond in the art of cookery'. Until the nineteenth century truffles seem to have been relatively abundant...but these days demand so far outstrips the supply that (like oysters) they have passed beyond the reach of all but the very well-heeled."
---An A to Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2993 (p. 351)

"Truffles, althoug treated as a delicacy by both Greeks and Romans, were also somewhat of a puzzle to them. Mushrooms they could in their own way understand as they had both stalks and 'roots'. but truffles just appeared buried in the earth with no clue as to their origin. According to Pliny the most prized truffles came from Africa; Juevenal, more precisely, mentions Libya as the source of the best truffles, though Marital considered them to be still second to boleti. It us to Apicius again that we must turn to see how truffles were eaten in Ancient Rome. He recommends first scraping, then boiling, and afterards grilling them lightly on skewers; after this they are to be returned to a pan for boiling, this time with liquamen, carenum, pepper, wine and honey. When this sauce has thickened, he says, they can again be grilled wrapped in a sausage skin, and then served as they are. In addition, Apicius gives three sauces for serving with them and another recipe for cooking them. The Romans may not have known much about the origins of truffles but they certainly had ideas about preparing them for the table."
---Food in Antiquity: A Survey of the Diet of Early People, Don Brothwell and Patricia Brothwell, expanded edition [Johns Hopkins University Press:Baltimore] 1998 (p. 92-3)

What do truffles look like?
About Chocolate truffles (candy).

PORTOBELLO
The food experts generally agree on three points when it comes to the history of portabellas:

  1. This meaty mushroom is an American invention with Italian roots (spores, actually) made popular by clever marketing in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Both cremini and portobello mushrooms are first mentioned in the New York Times during the mid 1980s.
  2. There are several theories regarding the name. Although these mushrooms are also currenty enjoyed in fine dining establishments of Central/South America, there is no apparent connection between the town of Portobelo (Panama) the origination of the name or item.
  3. There is no definative spelling of this fungus. According to Google (not a scientific, but a popular survey), Portobello is preferred (169,000), followed by portabella (33,100) and portobella (3, 510).

"By the late 1800s...Italian growers also cultivated the common mushroom but prefering the brown-capped variety, which are often called cremini mushrooms (or Italian brown) and have an earthy flavor that is fine for soups and stews and for stuffing. The large and beefy Portabello (also Roma) is acutally a fully grown cremini, with dense and meaty flesh that lends itself nicely to grilling or roasting. Originally, cremini mushrooms were imported from Italy, but now they are cultivated in the United States."
---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Ornelas [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge] 2000, Volume Two (p. 1818)

"The name "portobello" began to be used in the 1980s as a brilliant marketing ploy to popularize an unglamorous mushroom that, more often than not, had to be disposed of because growers couldn't sell them."
---The New Food Lover's Companion, Sharon Tyler Herbst, 3rd edition [Barrons:New York] 2001 (p. 485)

"Portobellos are popping up on the nation's menus like mushrooms after a spring rain. From soups and salads to sandwiches and entrees, the portobellos are everywhere. "It's a phenomenon in the food business," says Wade Whitfield of the Mushroom Council, an industry trade group in Roseville, Calif. "This thing has gone from nearly zero in 1993 to a predicted 30 million pounds this year. It's a major item. It will be the largest specialty mushroom." And chefs have found portobellos their own specialty. Whitfield of the Mushroom Council said no one can put their finger on the precise development of the portobello. "I've talked to several growers, and one said that he almost got fired once for growing those things," Whitfield notes. "They are really culls. You didn't want them in the mushroom bed. He would throw them away. There was no market. Growers would take them home." Farges adds that most of the mushroom farmers, many in southeastern Pennsylvania, were of Italian origin. They originally produced brown mushrooms, but the public clamored for the white button variety because it was clean and pristine. In the 1960s and 1970s, with the back-to-earth movement, the growers again started producing the browns. "They are sometimes called Romans, cremini or browns," Farges explains. "It has a much meatier flavor. It became a gourmet item. By accident, they found that if you let it grow, it would grow into a portobello." White mushrooms are still 90 percent of the supply, but portobellos have taken a bite of the market in the past four years. More growers are converting operations from white to portobellos in their mushroom houses," says Whitfield, adding that the move leads to a reduction in price. With the increased popularity, however, comes a disagreement over the spelling of portobellos. Whitfield explains: "A great deal of the growers are of Italian descent. I don't know who named it, but I understand portabella means 'beautiful door.' With an instead of an 'a' in porto, it means 'beautiful port.'" The Mushroom Council prefers portabella, says Whitfield, but that's open to dispute. "To be honest, I've been here two and a half years, and portobellos were just coming on the scene," he says. "We had five varieties, and portobellos became the sixth. I got to the sticky little point of 'How do you spell it?' O's or A's? At the time I could identify six shippers who were selling portobellos. I called all six of them, and asked, 'How do you spell portobello?' Four out of six spelled it portabella."
---"FOR MANY CHEFS, IT'S SUNRISE FOR PORTOBELLOS," Ron Ruggless, Nation's Restaurant News, 5/13/96, Vol. 30, Issue 19

Cremini

"The chubby cremino (if that is the singular; no one can be sure), properly encouraged by environmental conditions, will metamorphose to a portly portobello (also portabella), a name as difficult to document as cremini. I asked dozens who work with mushrooms, here and in Italy, about the name. The marketing director of a mushroom farm told me, "It was named after Portobello Road in London, where they sell fashionable things, you know." An importer said, "Until ten years ago, the mushroom was cappelaccio in Italy. Then it was renamed after a TV show called Portobello because it sounds better." Another importer told me that "portobello is known only in northern Italy, where it is called capellone." To one authority, capellone means "big hat." To the director of an Italian trade board and a dictionary it means "hippie." Two northern Italian chefs had never heard of capellone or cappelaccio. The most outlandish derivation came from an Italian distributor: "Well, you know that champignon comes from the word for Champagne, and that a Champagne cork looks like a round port and that's how we get porto bello beautiful port." http://www.globalgourmet.com/food/kgk/2002/0402/kgk042602.html

Okra

Okra is an "Old World" vegetable. The exact place of origin is still matter of debate. Over the centuries, many cultures have embraced okra and used it to create traditional dishes. Mediterranean and African recipes combined with tomatoes (a new world fruit) were created after the Columbian Exchange. Okra was introduced to the New World by African slaves. This vegetable is still a favorite in the American south. General overview (with picture) here.

"Okra is the edible seedpods of a tropical and subtropical plant of the hollyhock family...Africa is the source of the name...which appears to be derived from or related to nkuruma, the word for 'okra' in the Twi language of West Africa. It is first recorded in English at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The mucilaginous pods, like miniature pentagonal green bananas, are an essential ingredient in, and thickener of, soups and stews in countries where they are grown...Other names of the polynomial okra include in English speaking countries lady's fingers, in India bhindi, and in the eastern Mediterranean and Arab countries bamies."
---An A to Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 230)

"Okra (Hibiscus esculentus)...and annual plant of tropical and subtropical regions which bears pods which are eaten as a vegetable. It is the only member of the mallow family...to be used in this way...Okra is generally regarded as native to Africa, and may have been first cultivated either in the vicinity of Ethiopia or in W. Africa. It is not known when it spread from Ethiopia to N. Africa, the E. Mediterranean, Arabia, and India. There is not trace of it in early Egyptian tombs, but it was recorded as growing beside the Nile in the 13th century. Its westward migration to the New World seems to have been a result of the traffic in slaves. Okra reached Brazil by 1658 and Dutch Guiana by 1686. It may also have arrived in the south of the USA during the 17th century, and was being grown as far north as Virginia and Philadelphia in the 18th century. The spread of okra eastwards from India as slow. Its appearance in SE Asia may be assigned to the 19th century, and it arrived in China soon therafter...Okra is only moderately popular in Europe...It is used much more extensively in the Middle East and India, as a vegetable."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 549-550)

"A native of Africa (most likely tropical Africa), okra was used by the Egyptians, was known to the Spanish Moors in the twelfth century A.D., and in the late seventeenth century was carried by slaves to the Americas. According to legend, okra was introduced to in southeastern North America by the "Cassette Girls"--25 young French women who landed at Mobile in 1704 in search of husbands. They had with them okra that had been obtained from slaves in the West Indies, and which they used to invent "gumbo," which is a soup or stew thickened with okra. Okra has played a major role in the cuisines of ex-slave societies in the Americas, where it continues to be popular. It is also cultivated in Africa and East and South Asia."
---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Ornelas [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge] 2001, Volume Two (p. 1824)

OKRA IN AMERICA

"Some of the new aliments were undeserved gifts from the slaves, who carried seeds of African plants with them to the New World. The black-eye pea, so popular in the South today, was introduced in this fashion in 1674; there were others--okra and w watermelon, for instance--but it is in the nature of things that we have no precise dates for their arrival."
---Eating in America: A History, Waverly Root & Richard de Rochemont [William Morrow:New York] 1976 (p. 84)

"Okra...derived from the West African nkruma, as in use in America by the 1780s. Okra was brought to America by African slaves, who used it in stews and soups and cut it up as a vegetable. The most famous use for okra is in Louisiana gumbo."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 220)

"The word "okra" clearly derives from West African nkru ma, which indicates that the plant was brought to the Americas through the slave trade directly from Africa or indirectly through the Carribean. Slaves grew okra in gardens on southern plantations and introduced its cookery into mainstream America. The Swedish scientist Peter Kalm reported in his Travels into North America (1748) that okra was growing in Philadelphia. Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), recorded that okra was cultivated there. Extensive directions for growing okra were published in Robert Squibb's The Gardener's Calendar for South Carolina, Georgia, and North Carolina (1787). The pod of the opkra is steamed, boiled, fried, pickled, and cooked in soups and stews, notably gumbo. The seeds are also ground into meal for use in making bread oand oil. Southerners used ground okra seeds as a coffee substitute, especially during the Civil War...The leaves and flower buds are also edible and are cooked as greens. The pods and the leaves are dried, crushed into powder, and used for flavoring and thickening soups, including pepper pot, and stews. Although recipes for okra appear in early American cookery manuscripts, Thomas Cooper's edition of the Domestic Encyclopedia (1821) includes the first publsihed reicpe with okra as an ingredient. Mary Randolph's Virginia House-wife (1821) offers recipes using okra...The word "gumbo" or "gombo" is another African name for okra. In New Orleans it was applied to both the vegetable and the complex Creole stew made with it...Gumbos migrated quickly throughout America...Since the 1960s, okra has entered the American culinary mainstream, although as many writers point out, it is an acquired taste. It is a significant component of soul food and southern cookery in general."
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford Univeristy Press:New York] 2004, Volume 2 (p. 211-2)

"Gumbo, Gombo, Gumbs--This name for hibsicus esculentus comes from Angolan kingombo; okra, another popular name, is through to come from West African nkru-ma (OED). The vegetable seems to have come to Virginia from black Africa, where it had long been cultivated, by way of the West Indies: Sir Hans Sloane reported in 1707 that Ocra was flourishing in Jamaica (OED), and Mrs. Randolph herself describes Gumbs (Gumbo in later editions) as a "West Indian Dish" (facsimile). ...Mrs. Randolph's Gumbs is simply buttered okra; her recipe for Ocra Soup...more nearly resembles later recipes for gumbo, however."
---The Virginia House-wife, Mary Randolph (facsimile 1824 edition), with Historical Notes and Commentaries by Karen Hess [Univeristy of South Carolina Press:Columbia SC] 1984 (p. 275-6)
[The passage quoted above is one of Ms. Hess' historical notes]

Ms. Randolph's recipes:

"Gumbs--A West India Dish
Gather young pods of ocra, wash them clean, and put them in a pan with a little water, wald tne pepper, stew them till tender, and serve them with melted butter. Thye are very nutricious and easy of digestion."
---The Virginia House-wife, Mary Randolph (facsimile 1824 edition), with Historical Notes and Commentaries by Karen Hess [Univeristy of South Carolina Press:Columbia SC] 1984 (p. 96)

"Ocra Soup
Get two double handsful of young ochra, wash and slice it thin, add two onions choppped fine, put it into a gallon of water at a very early hour in an earthen pipkin, or very nice iron pot: it must be kept steadily simmering, but not boiling: put in pepper and salt. At 12 o'clock, put in a handful of Lima beans, at half past one o'clock, add three young cimlins cleaned and cut in small pieces, a fowl, or knuckle of veal, a bit of bacon or pork that has been boiled, and six tomatats, with the skin taken off when nearly done; thicken with a spoonful of butter, mixed with one of flour. Have rice boiled to eat with it."
---ibid, (p. 34-5)
[NOTE: Cimlins are a type of squash.]

Additional early American okra recipes (search as recipe title and/or ingredient here, courtesy of Michigan State University.

ABOUT OKRA STEW
Okra stew is generally composed of tomatoes, onions and garlic. It is popular in Mediterranean countries and surrounding regions. Most of the ingredients are indigenous and have been combined since ancient times. Tomatoes date the recipe. These new world fruits (yes, they are fruits!) were introduced to the region in the 16th century. About tomatoes.

"Yakhnat al-Bamiya (Okra stew)
This is a Lebanese dish, but also popular in Egypt. Okra...is a mucilaginous vegetable in the Malvacaea family, as is cotton. Both Ethiopia and West Africa have been proposed as its place of origin and its date of arrival in the Mediterranean is not known. The cytotaxonomy of okra is so confused that it is possible the plant has an Asian origin. Lebanese and Palestinian cooks favor the baby okra, small and tender, about the size of the last joint on your little finger...The meatless version of this stew, called bamiya, is made with okra, tomatoes, onions, lots of garlic, and lemon juice. In Damascus they would also add lots of fresh coriander, while in Homs and Aleppo the okra would be cooked with copius quantities of garlic, pomegranate molasses, and tomato juice. Serve with rice pilaf and khubz arabi (Arabic flatbread or pita bread)."
---A Mediterranean Feast, Clifford A. Wright [William Morrow:New York] 1999 (p. 128)
[NOTE: This book contains a recipe for the above dish.]

Oranges

"One way to categorize this fruit of the genus Citrus is to distinguis bitter oranges...from sweet oranges...The bitter orange (also known as Sevilla, sour orange...) is a native of Southeast Asia and was cultivated in the Indus Valley some 6,000 years ago. The sweet orange...may also have originated in Southeast Asia, although many believe it to be a native of southern China, as is evidenced by its scientific name. Both fruits were slow to find their way to the Mediterranean basin; the bitter orange eventually arrived with the Arabs around A.D. 1000, but the Western advent of the sweet orange came more than 400 years later, perhaps with the help of Genoese traders or Portuguese explorers. Sweet-orange trees were planted at Versailles in 1421, and later (1521) in Lisbon. Meanwhile, in 1493, the second voyage of Christopher Columubus is said to have carried sweet-orange seeds...to Hispaniola, and Spaniards stationed in Florida were reportedly growing oranges there in 1565, the year St. Augustine was founded. A couple of centuries later, the Franciscans began planting orange groves at their mission of San Diego in California."
---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Orneals [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge] 2000, Volume Two (p. 1826)

"The orange is one of the most important fuits of the world and one of the oldest cultivated. Originating in the Orient, the fruit was cultivated in China as early as 2400 B.C. These were "bitter oranges"...later brought to Spain, where they became known as the "Seville orange." The "sweet orange"...also originated in China and was also brought to Spain, possibly by the Moors in the eighth century. Christopher Columbus brought Canary Islands orange seeds to Hispaniola in 1493, and plantings by the Spanish and Portuguese soon followed throughout the Caribbean, Mexico, and South America. Some believe Ponce de Leon brought orange seeds to Florida, but the first recorded evidence of the fruit on North American soil credits Hernando de Soto with bringin the orange in 1539 to St. Augustine, Florida, where the trees flouished until Sir Francis Drake sacked the city in 1586 and destroyed them. These grew back quickly, but commercial plantings were of only minor importance for more than two centuries...In Florida only one significant orange grower was to be found in the eighteenth century. His name was Jesse Fish...It was not until the United States acquired Florida in 1821 that orange growing became a profitable business for Americans...By the 1880s orange production was growing rapidly, owing to the development of refrigerated ships that could carry the fruit from California and to the building of railroads into the heart of Florida. Also, a new orange, the "navel"...entered California in 1873 from Bahia, Brazil...By the 1890s, the navel orange had become commercially important...By the 1920s nutritionists were promoting the benefits of orange juice...and the drink became as ubiquitious as coffee on American breakfast tables."
---The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 223-4)

"Citrus cultivation in the area that would become the United States dates from the Spanish exploration and settlement of Florida in the sixteenth century; it reached Louisiana around 1700 and California with the arrival of Franciscan friars in 1769. Since most citrus cannot tolerate temperatures more than a few degrees below freezing, open-air cultivation has generally been limited to warmer areas, but until the second half of the nineteenth century it was not uncommon for the wealthy to grow oranges and lemons in greenhouses. With the advent of steam transportation in the mid-nineteenth century, citrus was imported from Mexico, the West Indies, and Italy. Large-scale commercial cultivation began in Florida and California in the 1870s and 1880s, when the extension of railroads allowed fresh fruit to be shipped to major eastern and midwestern markets. Railroads and land promoters helped fashion a romatic image of citrus in the popualr imagination, symbolizing sunshine, health, and elegance, to lure settlers to Florida and California. To sell their corps profitably, growers formed marketing cooperatives, such as Sunkist, founded as the Southern California Fruit Exchange in 1893."
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 1 (p. 254)

Symbolism & mythology

"Oranges are native to Southeastern Asia. The ancient Egyptians knew nothing of this fruit, and the Greeks made no mention of them either; but the Chinese cultivated them in antiquity, and the Japanese identified them as the fruit of life. In Japanese myth, the emperor sent a hero named Tajima-mori to the Eternal Land, possibly southern China, to bring back the magical fruit, so that the emperor might gain immortality. But Tajima-mori returned too late. The emperor had already died, and the magic of oranges could no longer help him. Though the Chinese identified the fruit of life as the peach, they considered oragnes magical also, believing that the fruit brought good luck and joy and warded off evil spirits. Oranges possibly gained respect in myth and legend because of their color. Ancient peoples seem to have believed that orange or red fruits had magical properties, connecting them with blood and life force. The golden color of oranges also led some mythmakers to link them with the sun. In Flemish legend, a young prince once went in search of a bride hidden within a magic orange in a land of sunshine and orange groves..."
---Nectar and Ambrosia: An Encyclopedia of Food in World Mythology, Tamra Andrews [Firefly Books:Ontario] 2000 (p. 166)

Why give oranges at Christmas?
Food historians trace the practice of proferring fresh fruit gifts for major celebrations to ancient times. These exquisite, perishable objects were expensive and reflected the giver's wealth and status. Indeed, before the age of speedy transportation and reliable refrigeration, fresh citrus fruit was out of reach of the average person. As time progressed, fresh fruit out of season (including oranges in Northern Europe and/or North America) was possible, but still rare. This made these items perfect Christmas gifts. Today, when oranges are inexpensive and readily available throughout the year, this little history tidbit is overlooked. A child today who encounters an orange at the toe of his Christmas stocking is unlikely to appreciate the message unless someone takes the time to share the history.

"Strange and exotic fruits had begun to reach Britain...through trade with southern Europe where oranges, lemons and pomegranates were cultivated. The original home of the citrus fruits lay in northern India. They had been known to the Romans under the name of "Median apples', having apparantly arrived from Persia; and their juice had been used as a medicine, and occasionally also to sharpen the tang of vinegar...The first Englishmen to enjoy oranges, lemons and 'Adams apples'... were probably crusaders who wintered with Richard Coure-de-Lion in the fruit groves around Jaffa in 1191-2. About a hundred years later citrus fruits had begun to arrive in England itself...Also on the spice ships from southern Europe came great raisins, 'raisins of Corinth' or currants...prunes, figs and dates. All were consumed in vast quantities by the well-to-do, for the sweetness of dried fruits was greately appreciated while sugar was still rare and expensive. Poorer people ate them principally in festive pottages and pies during the twelve days of Christmas, but the rich enjoyed them at other times , too."
---Food and Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to the 19th Century, C. Anne Wilson [Academy Chicago:Chicago IL] 1991 (p. 332-4)

"In the nineteenth century poor children dreamed all the year round of getting the precious, scented present of an orange for Christmas. Most of them did not know what an orange tasted like, or even if they would dare eat that golden, almost magical fruit."
---History of Food, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, translated by Anthea Bell [Barnes & Noble Books:New York] 1992 (p. 659)

Florida orange juice & Sunkist oranges

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