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| Magimix Cookery, published 1982 |
Magimix Cookery was a sequel to a 1978
bestseller Magimix and Food Processor Cookery Book.
Back then, books clearly
didn’t need snappy titles to sell in numbers.
Written when food processors were a
completely new and revolutionary bit of kitchen tech, the book is a guide to all the things the home cook can do with their new gadget.
Reading it now, it’s an anthology of long-gone
dishes, quaint techniques and pointers to what society, and its attitude to
food, was like back then.
Here are a few things that stuck out.
1/ Early 80s home-makers were seriously industrious
This schedule puts that of Maggie Thatcher’s
to shame. A call to Gorbachev and a cabinet meeting before lunch? Pah! This woman
has made enough cakes to embarrass the W.I. and three different sorts of
terrine by then.
And wait til you hear about her pancake
handling:
2/ Food photography was unsentimental
In this littoral scene, a grieving family
of crabs visit their slaughtered relatives, who are now in the form of crab
soup.
On the next page, these kippers and
mackerel have beached themselves in order to attend the wake of their
shoal-mates, who were turned into smoked fish pate.
I flick to the Game section expecting the
characters from Watership Down to be mourning a rabbit pie.
3/ The food supply chain has changed a lot in 30 years
This entry really shows its age:
I’ll repeat that. She froze leeks in winter,
so she could use them in summer.
It says a lot for our understanding of food
these days and how far it has become separated from seasonality. So much for harvesting in season, to eat out
of season.
Now we eat what we want, when we want.
The food miles debate turned up for a bit
in the mid nineties and looked like it might return things back to this kitchen -garden idyll. But it proved no match for the forces of globalization.
And in any case, in more recent years, the food miles argument has been challenged.
4/ Poussin came served ‘smothered in cottage cheese and butter’
Sounds like a dish out of Brian Jacques’
Redwall, and you’d need the metabolism of a hummingbird to digest it. But this
dish was the answer to ‘what to cook
for an unexpected supper party’ back then.
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| Special Abbey trifle? Shrimp n' Hotroot soup? Turnip and Tater Deeper n' Ever Pie? Cottage Cheese & Butter Poussin would have fitted in famously |
5/ Supper parties were never more showy than in the 80s
At dinner parties today, showing off about
food is verbal. Just tune into the conversations around the cramped tables at
Rok in Shoreditch and you’ll see what I mean.
Have you been to Uchi yet? Is Bellanger the
start of the end for Corbin & King? Will
the Clove Club team pull off Italian with their latest foray? Is Sexy Fish
ironic good or just bad?
But in the 70s, the food itself did the showing off. Boasting was visible, not audible. Vol au vents. Jugged
hare. Curried chicken and ham served in a rice ring.
Those were the days.
6/
You can build up your cheffy vocabulary
Agree that showing off about food these
days is all talk, but don’t know where to begin?
Simply grab yourself an old recipe book and watch your cheffy vocabulary
soar.
This book gives us the following terms that
will have your tryabee foodie mates lunging for their Larousse Gastronomique:
A list that would give Fergus Henderson a
frisson of excitement.
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