Warrant Officers Mess - 1903 - Kevin Danks

 East Coast Lissun Gathering - The Menu - Phillip Sellew

Midwestern Holiday Menu - Gerry Strey

An English Christmas Dinner - Kevin Danks

Roberta Lovatelli's Sunday Brunch

Food at Sea - Richard Blackburn

Patrick O'Brian, in his life of Joseph Banks aboard the Endeavour, quotes Banks' comments on the biscuit, for example.

The diet was substantial compared to that available to many on shore, where meat wasn't often available.

At sea, on alternate days, each man got a pound of salt pork or 2 pounds of salt beef. Every day there was a pound of biscuit, and a gallon of beer. Weekly, there was 2 pints of peas, 3 of oatmeal half a pound of butter and a pound of cheese. And although the food sounds awful, tastes have changed. Cook flogged two men for refusing their meat, and Flinders flogged for refusing soup. Seamen were very conservative, as Jack says to Stephen on many occasions, and many others in the canon also make this point. The famous Captain Cook remarked that:

 "Every innovation whatever on board ship, though ever so much to the advantage of seamen, is sure to meet with their highest disapprobation. Both portable soup and sauerkraut were at first condemned as stuff unfit for human beings. Few commanders have introduced more novelties as useful varieties of food and drink than I have done. It has been in great measure owing to various little deviations from established practice that I have been able to preserve my people form that dreadful distemper, scurvy".

 Portable soup is worth a mention. Essentially it was dried soup, invented by Mrs Dubois in 1756, and supplied to the Navy by the appropriately named Mr Cookworthy, a Plymouth apothecary. Diana refers to the soup as 'lukewarm glue' - presumably the contractors added glue to keep the dried soup in blocks (it was packed in slabs in wooden boxes). Sauerkraut was recommended by Dr Lind (of scurvy fame) as an alternative for fresh vegetables.

Canned meat and vegetables were tried out in 1813. I seem to remember that Hornblower experienced canned beef, though I forget the reference. As a matter of interest, it was first supplied regularly in 1866, and called bully beef (adapted from the French recipe for boeuf bouilli. Unfortunately a year later a notable prostitute, Fanny Adams was murdered, and cut up into small pieces. The word went round that the Navy was supplying "sweet Fanny Adams."

This is the menu from the dinner given in honour of my great-grandfather, W C Norris, by the Warrant Officers' mess of HMS Agincourt a few days after he rescued the mate and a crewman of the Norwegian barque Patria which came ashore on Chesil Beach in a storm on the night of 26 October 1903.

Soup - Gravy
Fish - Fillets of plaice
Entree - Mutton cutlets
Joint - Roast beef, potatoes and brussels sprouts
Removes - Boiled fowl
Sweets - Plum pudding and sweet sauce
Savoury - Welsh rabbit

 I will pass no comment ... other than to note the spelling of "rabbit" where one might expect "rarebit".

Isis Sherry
Cold collation: gherkins, anchovies, pickled beets, hard boiled eggs
Starters: barley soup
Roast pork tenderloin from the grill
Armenian rice pilaf with mushrooms
Carrots with herb butter
Australian claret (Leasingham Shiraz '96)
Pudding: Gooseberry fool, shortbread
Afters: Port, Stilton cheese, fruit, nuts

The true Midwestern idea of any kind of holiday dinner involves three of everything--three desserts, three "salads" (two jello plus cranberry relish), mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, creamed onions, peas and carrots, stuffing (the Midwest calls it dressing), gravy, three kinds of hot rolls with choice of butter and preserves, two kinds of olives, five or six kinds of pickles, and an enormous roasted something or other. All of this, except for the desserts, went on the table at once, just as in Jack's day. Oh, and a really thorough-going dinner would have three kinds of cranberry relish--the slithery canned kind, the rough made-from-fresh berries kind, and the piquant cranberry orange relish.

The full-scale Midwestern Thanksgiving dinner would have pumpkin and mince pies. The ambitious housewife (men didn't cook) would have an additional dessert; something exotic culled from a church cookbook or women's magazine that she hoped would be new to her guests. These experiments were pretty much confined to the desserts and salads, as the menfolk wouldn't stand for any messing about with the meat and potatoes. This ambition to surprise, impress and please with the novel reflects Jack's table exactly, as he aimed to give his guests something their own catering couldn't supply. Even when reduced to ship's fare, Jack expected his cook to dress it up in some way.

At Christmas we shall have turkey, served with roast and boiled potatoes, roast parsnips, carrots, brussels sprouts, chipolata sausages wrapped in bacon, bread sauce and gravy. For those that can manage another mouthful after all that there will be Christmas pudding with whipped cream or brandy butter. Later on I dare say I shall force down couple of mince pies and a slice of Christmas cake with a glass or two of something.

Here is a menu for those who would like a late lunch on a Sunday afternoon, followed by long nap on hammock outside where the breeze sways you slowly.

Feijoada
The Rice
Roasted and Glazed Loin of Pork
Now for the Sausages
Bananas With Rum
Onions in Hot Sauce
Kale
Farofa

Oranges

As the feijoada is served with MUCH hot sauce. Please peel and cut thinly roundwise several oranges -- taking out the pips -- and serve to eat with the feijoada.

Desert --

Batida de Maracuja (But I don't think any of you would be ready for desert after this one!!!!)

Now For The Vodka Caipirinha

Now don't be put off because the recipes look long and complicated. It really is a lot of fun to do together with a couple of more people and then sit down and enjoy the lunch.