You say Catsup, I say Ketchup

Posted on 2 July, 2008 by Janice Brown

Although today we think of a red tomato-based concoction, catsup in colonial days was quite different. Wild and dried meat and other dishes were flavored with a catsup made from fruit, mushrooms, and walnuts. Relish and mustard were additional home-made condiments.  Tomatoes didn’t appear in catsup until the 1830s.

I grew up saying and writing “ketchup” rather than “catsup.” Apparently this spelling of the term goes back to 1711, and the former has always been more prevalent in North America (as opposed to the U.K.)

A June 14, 1800 edition of the “United States Oracle,” published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, noted among a number of foodstuffs, that Catsup” was available for sale.  Earlier editions of New Hampshire newspapers, i.e. March 1, 1796 edition of the New Hampshire Journal (Walpole, New Hampshire), and the March 8, 1796 issues of The Rising Sun (Keene, New Hampshire) deems the same product to be “ketchup.”

.WORKSHOP AT REMICK MUSEUM.

The Remick Museum in Tamworth, New Hampshire is offering a “Ketchup, Mustard, & Mayo Workshop” on July 5, 2008 from 10 Am to 12 Noon.  Learn how to prepare two types of ketchup that were commonplace in pre-19th century America–cranberry and cucumber.  Take a trip back in time and leave behind the tomato ketchup.  Learn to make mustard and mayonnaise as well.

The workshop fee is $20.00 and pre-pregistration is required. Materials are include din the fee. The workshop is designed for adults; young people age 16 and older are welcome with an accompanying adult.

The Museum can now take workshop registration over the phone using a credit card. To register, call (603) 323-7591 or (800) 686-6117.

The Remick Museum has many additional events planned, from Traditional Cooking Workshops for Children (August 23), to Hearthside Dinners where guests help to prepare meals using historic recipes and ingredients (July 19, August 16, October 4, November 22, December 13, and December 20). Visit their web site for more information.

Remick Museum is located at 58 Cleveland Road, Tamworth, NH.

Janice

“There shall thy favorite herbs and plants be found,
The cat-mint there shall shed its sweets around;
The savoury mushroom from the sod shall start,
And to the breeze its catsup sweets impart.”
–Portsmouth Journal of Literature and Politics, pub. 23 Apr 1825, Portsmouth NH

Catsup Recipe as published in The Farmer’s Cabinet of Amherst, New Hampshire, on 16 September 1852
“To a gallon skinned tomatoes and 4 tablespoons of salt, 4 do. black pepper, half a spoonful allspice, 8 red peppers, and three spoonfuls mustard.  All these ingredients must be found find, and simmered very slowly in sharp vinegar so as to leave half a gallon of liquor when the process is over.  Strain thro’ a wire sieve, and bottle, and seal from the air. This may be used in two weeks, but improves by age, and will keep several years.”

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Photograph: Tomatoes

Posted on 30 June, 2008 by Janice Brown

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New Hampshire Glossary: Food Preservation

Posted on 30 June, 2008 by Janice Brown

Today when we think of food preservation, we envision the act of enveloping a half-eaten burrito in plastic wrap and tossing it into the refrigerator.  There are fewer people every day who can remember life without an electrically powered food cooling device,  yet the refrigerator is still relatively new technology.

Prior to the use of mechanical coolers, the methods of food preservation included salting, smoking, curing, pickling, corning, preserving/sugaring (fruit), drying, bulk storage in a root cellar, sulfuring, and cold storage.

Salting: The earliest European settlers used salt to cure fish as a preserving agent. Corning is a technique of dry-curing meat with coarse “corns” of salt that were rubbed into the beef. Modern day corning is achieved by brining, or using salt water along with peppercorns and bay leaf as spices.

Smoking: in colonial days the smoking of meat was usually performed during cold months, with December being particularly popular for pig butchering and smoking. A small enclosed shelter where a fire could smolder for weeks was built as an out-building. The meat was hung high enough to be safe from rodents. Usually the meat was packed in a tub of coarse salt for six weeks before being smoked. This building was sometimes called a “meat house.” Smoking was a technique known and used by the Native Peoples.

Pickling: salt, water, spices and homemade vinegar were combined with vegetables (and other items such as flowers) and placed in crocks to preserve the summer crops. A colonial housewife knew that her mixture was strong enough when a fresh egg floated in it. Sometimes the vegetables were cooked prior to preservation. A seal was placed over the top of the jar or crock (a wet piece of leather, and sometimes a wet pig's bladder was used, when the item dried out, it shrunk making a tight seal).

Sugaring: this was the frequent method for preserving fresh fruit, if you had the sugar. Fruit boiled in a sugar syrup then dried were called confections. Sweetmeats were fruit preserved by cooking in a sugar syrup then stored covered in a transparent sugar syrup. The pulp was made into marmalades, while the juice of the fruit was made into jellies.

Drying: Both the Native peoples and the early European colonists used drying as a method to preserve food, however the colonists preferred salting. Peas, pumpkins, apples, beans and blueberries were often dried. The Native Peoples pounded meat to small pieces and mixed it with melted fat, bone marrow and wild berries to make “pemmican.”

root cellar: thick-walled rooms were built beneath the ground. Root vegetables, tubers and hardy vegetables could be kept cool here. The preservation here was temporary as it was subject to rot, rats and other animals.

sulfuring: slices of fruit, such as apples, apricots, peaches and pears are exposed to sulfur smoke to kill bacteria.

cold storage: besides using a root cellar, another early form of keeping food cold was to place it in a spring-house.  This was a shed or outbuilding built over a flowing spring. Butter, cream and milk was placed in the running water to stay cool. Eventually the wealthy settlers built ice-houses that were stocked with winter ice and surrounded by hay and sawdust to slow the melting process.

Janice

**Also See**

–IN A PICKLE! TYPES OF FOOD PRESERVATION IN THE 19 CENTURY Virginia (PDF)–

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New Hampshire Architecture: Italianate Style

Posted on 28 June, 2008 by Janice Brown

The Italianate style house was built from the mid to late 1800s, and was inspired by the villas of Italy.


These two and sometimes three storied houses made use of single or paired decorative brackets under wide comices. The roof was typically flat or hip. New Hampshire has several fine examples of this style including:

–Historical Society of Chester County–

–Benjamin F. Webster House, Broad Street, Portsmouth NH (1880 Italianate)-
Benjamin Webster began as a carpenter’s apprentice and became rich through real estate and construction. Note the steeply pitched roof that is not typical of Italianate architecture. No doubt the roof was pitched to avoid collapse during years of heavy snowfall.

–Post Office Block, Manchester NH–

–Plumercrest Bed and Breakfast, Epping NH–

–Lewis Downing Jr. Home at 13 Pleasant Street, Concord NH-

Janice

P.S. The photograph pictured above is of the Benjamin F. Webster House in Portsmouth New Hampshire– its copyright belongs to David Taylor. He gives permission to use it for one-time private or educational use. Consider yourself educated 🙂

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"How To Survive A Summer Vacation," by B. Elwin Sherman

Posted on 26 June, 2008 by Janice Brown


 
“I work harder on my summer vacation than I do on my job.”
 
I'm here, dear dedicated readers, to prevent those words from ever being uttered again.  No one should come away from leisure time without feeling leisurely, and my dictionary defines “vacation” as “leisure time spent away from work devoted to rest or pleasure.”
 
Right there is where we get into trouble.  Rest is always pleasurable, but pleasure is not always restful.  In fact, pleasure can be downright laborious, as we all recognize from this column's opening declaration.
 
Thus, having a pleasurable, restful summer vacation takes careful planning: the kind that a carpet-flopped dog applies when it gets up and moves away from the couch, only to re-flop over there by the TV.  (As a general rule, we should pay more attention to animals.  They have no ulterior motives, and often have no apparent motives at all.)
 
As a specific rule, surviving summer leisure is far more challenging than making it through a winter's labor.  Winter is easy in our North Country, once you resolve to not pummel anyone who crunches around the re-formed frozen tundra spouting: “Well, at least you can dress for the cold.”  These people should be duct-taped into six layers of woolen hats and thermal union suits, then parachuted over the equator.
 
Yes, you can dress for the cold, but you can also not dress for the heat–a far more pleasurable, restful and cheaper application, as we enter the canicule.
 
“Canicule,” as we all recall from our high school French lessons, means “a chocolate-glazed jelly doughnut.”  This is what I recall, anyway, which is why I flunked French class.  It actually means “heatwave,” or “scorcher,” or “the hot period between early July and early September.”  I remember spending my last adolescent canicule wondering how I'd ever survive it without the unrequited affections of my senior class French teacher.
 
(CONFIDENTIAL to Mademoiselle Rousseau:  If you're still out there, that was my longest, hottest summer vacation ever, and I did finally give up wearing a beret, eating chocolate-glazed jelly doughnuts, and calling everything “magnifique!”)
 
No summer vacation plan (remember the flopping dog) should ever be set in motion without a Plan B.  Here, I confess to being a worst case scenario kind of guy.  No, this is not being pessimistic.  A pessimist is always expecting the worst.  I'm always expecting the best, but I'm ready with a satisfying alternative when everything goes wrong, which it usually does (the first rule in: “Sherman's Two Rules For Living With Rules”).
 
Again, look to your dog's example.  You don't see him descending into a combination of road rage and helpless funk when the family car breaks down enroute to visiting Crocodile Safari Land.  He's just happy for the chance to go off and chase jackalopes while you wait for the tow truck.
 
So, as you “plan” your summer vacation, a few do's and don'ts:
 
DON'T use this time to “catch up” on projects in and around the house.  These activities have few, if any, leisurely components to them, and are almost always dangerous, irritating or beyond your expertise.  If they weren't, you wouldn't have waited until now to tackle them.
 
Yes, the eaves at the top of your house where the ladder just barely reaches are still unpainted.  Big deal.  Go with Plan B, and think of yourself as the neighborhood's king of the unpainted peaks.  Then, lie down next to the dog and have a nice restful AND pleasurable nap.
 
This will avoid your having to spend a long-awaited canicule (and beyond) in the restful but most decidedly unpleasureable mode of orthopedic traction after you went with Plan A, painted over the hornet's nest hole YOU KNEW was up there, and jackknifed backwards off the abbreviated ladder into the juniper bushes.
 
DO let them know at your job that you are not to be called during your vacation for ANY reason.  Yes, maybe that invoice you misrouted on your last day of work resulted in the entire eastern seaboard's widget vendors being mistakenly billed for doohickeys, but you don't need or want to know this until you return to work.
 
Save it for when you end your off-duty canicule and go back to find your desk emptied.  You should always avoid receiving word that you've been fired (Sherman's 2nd Rule) while lying in a body cast and recovering from an overdose of hornet venom.
 
DON'T take the family to Crocodile Safari Land, unless your idea of restful pleasure is ogling big lizards in a concrete sinkhole, and watching some disaffected guy (probably an ex-widget invoicer just out of rehab) stunning them into submission with hypnotic underbelly rubs.
 
DO take time to embrace every day of your well-earned respite as if it were your last (and have faith that this will not be the case).
 
DON'T forget to just plain relax, and enjoy every restful, pleasurable moment that life affords you free of charge:  walk in the woods, swim in the water, sit in the sun, and nap with the dog.
 
DO remember the Plan B bug repellant, life jackets, sunblock and flea collar, and if you're going to stop and smell the flowers, I'd first check for hornets.
 
We'll save Plan C for next winter.
 
* * * * *
Syndicated humor columnist B. Elwin Sherman is off somewhere not painting over a hornet's nest in the North Country.  He can be reached via his website at elwinshumor.com.  Copyright 2008 B. Elwin Sherman.  All rights reserved.  Used here with permission.
* * * * *  
 
B. Elwin Sherman's Humor — Books/Columns.
http://www.elwinshumor.com
 
WITBONES — “Ask A Humorist!”

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